Social Entrepreneur Profile
Michael Barth
Founder
and CEO
upublic
Shadowed
by:
Bethany Hale, Tessa Randall,
Joshua Spodek and Aparna Wilder
Entrepreneur
Contact Data:
Email: michael@upublic.net
Phone: 212.678.6648
Fax: 212.678.4137
Website: http://www.upublic.net/
Basics:
Founding Date: 2005
Corporate Form: 501(c) Hybrid - LLC, independent 501(c)3, and
university research center 501(c)3
Employees: 4 full-time and 15 part-time
Industry: Education
and Consulting
Social Mission
Area: Community Development and Education
Mission:
Short for “universal
public,” upublic brings together three complementary educational
organizations to offer comprehensive services to enable learning to
flourish in any community.
Those organizations are:
- upublic
Education Consulting, an
international consulting firm
- upublic
Center for Innovation in Research, Policy and Practice, a research center at Teachers College, Columbia University
- upublic
Education Fund, a non-profit
entity that raises funds for public education
Q
and A with Students:
Q:
Can you give us some background on Michael Barth?
A: Prior
to founding upublic, Michael worked at the U.S. Department of Education
in Washington, D.C. on projects related to both school reform and
electronic learning, where he contributed to the vision and framework
behind the country’s first national learning portal for adult
education.
Michael has consulted on the
design and implementation of two charter schools in New York City, ran his own school on
Central Park West that offered a free liberal arts education to anyone in
the community with a desire to learn, and worked with the Edison
Project. While at Edison, Michael
collaborated on the design of their national high school model, and was
instrumental in making character and ethics a pervasive element of the
project’s K-12 learning environment.
Michael is currently a Ph.D.
candidate in Philosophy and Education at Columbia University,
where he was a 2004-2005 Educational Policy Fellow and the former head
coach of the men’s lacrosse team.
Michael holds an Ed.M. in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University,
Teachers College, an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St.
John’s College
in Annapolis, and a B.A. in English
Literature from Clark
University.
Q:
What led you to choose to shadow him?
A: One member of our team had connections with the
founders of upublic. Given our team's general interest in education,
entreprenuership and consulting, upublic seemed to be a good way to
explore our own interests and learn from a budding business model.
Q:
What issues did your social entrepreneur face during the project?
A: 1) The organization's legal structure 2) Sources of
funding 3) Defining a business strategy
Q:
What was interesting, surprising or inspiring about shadowing this
SE?
A: One of the most inspiring aspects of working with
upublic during our shadow project was the fact that we were spectators
when the organization secured its first large client engagement. Under
a direct mandate from King Abdullah of Jordan, technology in
education has become a key priority of the country. upublic is working
with Safwan Masri, former vice dean at Columbia Business School who
recently announced plans to start a high school called King’s
Academy, the Middle East’s first coeducational boarding school.
In an article from the March 1, 2006 issue of The New York Times, Masri
said, “We want to bring the best of American education and create
a school like no other in the region, one focused on preparing leaders,
both men and women, in the public and private sectors.” Upublic
will be at the forefront of this initiative, which is so exciting for
all of us!
Q:
What did you learn about being a social entrepreneur from this project?
A: During the course of this
project we have taken away many useful lessons for our own careers. One
is the importance of having people ask us simple questions to challenge
our ability to explain exactly what it is we do and how we do it.
Michael and James, the other co-founder, both remarked at how some of
these questions, while simple, were hard to answer. We also realize the
benefits of having people with different backgrounds and viewpoints
challenge our assumptions, as we did with Michael and James. This helps
to build responses when challenged in a critical environment. Most of
all, we learned how much one must struggle to start up a social
enterprise. While management experience and networking are important,
it takes a lot of guts to start something and persevere even when
nothing seems to be coming together. Successful social entrepreneurship
takes a very unique individual with a worthwhile vision and an even
stronger gift to propel that vision into action.
Back to Social
Entrepreneurs
|
