By Mahesh Admankar

Mahesh Admankar is a Civic Action Project Fellow, at the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and PhD scholar at the McCormack School of Policy & Global Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston.

The Massachusetts Business Roundtable opened my eyes to the amazing work of the business community in affirming informed public policy and social justice. When I was selected as a Civic Action Project fellow, I had a hard time of choosing an organization to begin my fellowship for the summer. I was hesitant to join MBR for two reasons: 1) I thought it was an organization focused on pushing only profit interests of the business community; and 2) I was already dissatisfied by the not so good work of the business community for social equity in India, my home country.

However, after several attempts in finding a good match, the Civic Action Project team recommended I take advantage of the opportunity to join the Massachusetts Business Roundtable for my summer fellowship. At the time, I had no money to fund my living expenses for the summer in Boston, so I had no choice but to accept the offer. After only living in Boston for the past 11 months and coming from a poor family back in rural India, I began this experience feeling very stressed.

But to my surprise, I was welcomed by the team at MBR with a very warm, understanding, and inclusive culture. Throughout my career I never worked with top leadership such as the CEO or senior executives. However, MBR provided an opening space for me to work with senior executives by introducing myself, expanding my knowledge, and sharing my interests in a very warm and friendly way. After my first meeting with President & CEO JD Chesloff and Executive Vice President Lauren Jones, I felt blessed to be in a unique and inspiring organization. I was very well respected, valued, mentored, and supported in ways that I never thought I would by this type of organization.

After my first week at MBR, I had only tears of joy as I wrote and published my first piece in the US. It was only possible because of the inclusive culture and support at MBR. I was so excited to post a blog, and due to the encouragement of the team at MBR I published my first article on eliminating barriers to create black wealth in the US. From this early assignment, I realized how much MBR included social justice in its work with its members. My supervisor, Lauren, encouraged me to write this blog and guided me like I would be treated by family. JD, despite his hectic schedule, spent his precious time in answering my questions with great details. Honestly, I never thought an organization like the Roundtable existed, where businesses talk to each other and learn from each other to do the right thing to make the United States both a better and inclusive place to live. I have to say a few words about MBR Vice President Claire Cooper. She was very warm and guided me like my teacher in creating my first-ever online survey for MBR. JD, Lauren, and Claire have been one of the most supportive, warm, understanding, and inspiring people I have met in the U.S.

Through all this support, MBR opened me to this new world where a proactive role is played by the business community in influencing the social policy. Hailing from a country where the social hierarchy is spread into different sectors, working at MBR introduced me to learn about a new possibility of an engaged and just business world.

The MBR team not only enlarged my understanding of the robust policy work but more importantly it expanded my network by connecting me with several business leaders. In my ten weeks of fellowship at the MBR, I had the chance to work on several projects such as building Black wealth, early childcare policy, environmental sustainability practices of businesses, and workforce development in the U.S. The MBR team also cheered me up with multiple in person meetings and provided me a chance to participate, learn, and share my thoughts in the summer meetings with its members.

A big focus during my time at the MBR centered on researching on the recognition of international credentials in the Massachusetts labor market to address the talent shortage problem. In the initial weeks, I had no idea how to work on this project and deliver the same as I felt extremely nervous. However, Lauren understood what I was going through and built my confidence by introducing me to several organizations and people who work on tapping immigrants’ talent in Massachusetts.

Eventually, I had a great chance to learn from several organizations that work with immigrants in the state of Massachusetts. I was given both time and freedom by the MBR team to take initiative on researching, learning, and then reflecting on the work done on this topic. Due to all these amazing efforts by the MBR team, I not only built a wealth of knowledge on this important policy topic of tapping the immigrant talent but more importantly I was trained as a public policy professional. Additionally, MBR connected the dots for me when I shared my learnings at the Thursday CAP sessions.

At the end of my fellowship, I was able to put together a 30-page report on research related to recognizing credentials for international talent as I was given a chance to present the same to the MBFR leadership. With all this experience, I strongly believe that we need more institutions such as MBR throughout the world. Because i believe   it is a unique institution that facilitates a dialogue, mutual learning, and unified public policy action by bridging the gap between business, community, and the government.

What’s the most important thing that I learned at MBR? Businesses care about society because doing the right thing is paramount for them. Given all this inspiring experience at the MBR, I whole heartedly thank MBR for many of my first-time experiences such as creating my first online survey, first time interviewing people in the U.S, and first time writing policy blog articles. As an emerging policy leader, MBR taught me on how to mentor the new staff and how to value, welcome, and support them.

To conclude, I would like to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank the MBR team and its members for providing me this unique opportunity with their time, treasure, and talent. I will surely miss MBR and CAP as I am looking forward to keeping in touch and learning more from their future work. I once again thank the MBR, CAP, and Dean Professor Edozie`s office at UMass Boston for this historical opportunity. I heartfully join in echoing the experience of MBR’s previous CAP fellow, Rebecca, who told me that MBR is a great and amazing place to work.