Two individuals of Indian descent, Madhav Datt and Raghav Srinivasan, have been chosen as recipients of the prestigious Horace W. Goldsmith fellowships at Harvard Business School (HBS). Madhav Datt, a student pursuing a joint degree at HBS and SEAS, has a remarkable track record in social entrepreneurship. At the young age of eight, he initiated Green the Gene in 2004, which grew into one of the world’s largest youth-led environmental nonprofit organizations, operating in 62 countries with the support of over 7,000 volunteers.
In 2021, Madhav co-founded Nostos Homes, an endeavor dedicated to constructing innovative homes for forcibly displaced individuals. This initiative has provided 480,000 nights of shelter to flood-displaced communities in India and Malawi, as highlighted in the HBS release. Madhav expressed his enthusiasm for the fellowship, emphasizing its role as a platform for testing ideas and collaborating with other awardees during his first year.
Meanwhile, Raghav Srinivasan brings an impressive four years of international development experience to HBS.In his position as a strategy manager at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, he played a key role in enhancing Gavi’s corporate strategy by integrating findings from COVAX, a worldwide effort jointly led by Gavi and the WHO to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to this, at Dalberg, Raghav designed strategies aimed at aiding developmental organizations in serving and uplifting underserved populations in developing nations. Raghav shared his aspirations to leverage the support of the Goldsmith Fellowship to further his commitment to enhancing global healthcare access.
The Horace W. Goldsmith fellowships were established in 1988 by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and Richard L. Menschel, an alumnus of HBS (MBA 1959) and a former director of the foundation, who also held a limited partnership at Goldman Sachs. These fellowships were created with the intention of encouraging students from the nonprofit and public sectors to attend HBS. The fellowships provide $10,000 to a select group of incoming MBA students, a tradition that has continued since the class of 1990. Over the years, 257 incoming students have been honored with this fellowship. Recipients of the award have gone on to assume leadership positions within nonprofit and public sector organizations, demonstrating a strong dedication to careers in these fields. New awardees are invited to engage in events with current and former fellows, as well as local social enterprise leaders, fostering a network of individuals passionately committed to working in social enterprise.
