Harvard Business School Graduate Launches Social Impact Platform: Zoosa

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With unemployment rates near 10% and many young professionals searching for work, one recent graduate of Harvard Business School is doing his part to give individuals another way to stand out from the crowd. Mike McGlade, HBS 2009, created Zoosa, a website that gives professionals the opportunity to enhance their resume by connecting with nonprofit advisory boards and skills-based volunteer positions.

“HBS is focused on supporting students who want to get involved in social entrepreneurship. As a result, Harvard was the perfect foundation to launch Zoosa”

Zoosa aggregates the best social enterprise resources, including industry news and employment and volunteer opportunities, to create a single destination where professionals can learn about the renewable energy, education, and nonprofit sectors. While visiting Zoosa, individuals can create a social impact profile that highlights their professional skills, their offline actions, and their interests in certain social impact issues.

Although professional networks built around connecting passive job seekers with high level jobs already exist (e.g. LinkedIn, Plaxo), until Zoosa, there hasn’t been a way for organizations to find individuals who do not volunteer today, but would be willing to join a nonprofit board or donate their professional skills if asked. Given the tough economic climate, most current students, recent graduates, and experienced professionals will benefit from creating a social impact profile and adding specialized volunteer work to their resume.

After a successful launch last month, Zoosa has already become a useful tool for professionals searching for social impact news and opportunities. Several thousand news stories, blogs, and tweets are included in Zoosa’s community section and, with over 1,000 positions included in Zoosa’s jobs & volunteering section, professionals now have a single location to find all relevant positions without searching multiple sites. Organizations can post their open positions directly on Zoosa if they are not already included.

McGlade first began working on Zoosa while a student at Harvard Business School, through the HBS Social Enterprise Summer Fellowships program. Formed in 1982, the program provides financial support to MBA students working with social enterprises during the summer to address important managerial issues utilizing their analytic and strategic skills, and recently expanded to support students starting their own social enterprises. “HBS is focused on supporting students who want to get involved in social entrepreneurship. As a result, Harvard was the perfect foundation to launch Zoosa,” adds Mike McGlade, CEO of Zoosa.