Many students dread entering the ‘real-world’ and associate a job with mundane tasks and the same unchanging landscape. However, fourth-year Commerce student Ben Cunningham proves having a job can mean blending multiple interests and doing something new with your life.
Starting this August, Cunningham will work for Study Hall Educational Foundation, which fosters learning for disadvantaged youths in India, including children with mental disorders and underprivileged girls. One of the foundation’s main goals is to instill arts into their curriculum in order to give students confidence and a new way of learning. Although Cunningham will mostly be doing back office work, he will also have the opportunity to help develop a class based on playwriting and performance.
“I want to work with people writing plays off of their own experiences,” Cunningham said. “It kind of gives them a medium to look at the issues they have at home … they can try to get to some emotional resolution with it.”
While at the University, Cunningham not only focused his efforts on his Commerce classes but also stayed involved in theater through plays with Spectrum Theatre, theater classes at the University and assisting an after-school theater program.
Cunningham first learned of the SHEF opportunity last summer while interning for Accenture in Washington, D.C.
“I liked the experience, but I wasn’t totally fulfilled,” Cunningham said. “There are people who do consulting and they like it, but it’s not like their passion.”
In October, Cunningham met with the founder of SHEF in New York and was able to turn the opportunity into a job. While SHEF has a number of schools aimed at educating different types of students at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels, the office Cunningham will be working at in Lucknow, India, works closely with a school solely for girls.
Although in February Cunningham will leave India and eventually start work at McKinsey & Company in Atlanta, it is likely his foray into the nonprofit world will not stop there.
“[Cunningham] is incredibly passionate about helping others,” third-year College student Matthew Golden said. “I know long term he wants to go work in the nonprofit world, and he sees this as a great opportunity to learn about potential things he could do before going on and getting more concrete business skills that he can then bring back to the nonprofit world.”
Cunningham expects the experience to be different from anything he’s ever done before.
“I am so nervous,” Cunningham said. “I’m like the only intern there, and I’m the only person my age there. I’m going to be completely alone, which is good because college is a place where you’re never alone. I’m hoping to learn from it and not go crazy.”
In particular, Cunningham said he is excited to learn about the difference in business culture between India and America.
“They have a very relaxed demeanor and mentality [in India] … but they work very hard,” Cunningham said.
Golden, who is also a brother of Cunningham’s business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi, said this next step in Cunningham’s life did not seem at all uncharacteristic of him.
“He is very adventurous and has a drive to constantly want more out of the world,” Golden said. “He’s incredibly spontaneous, whether that means deciding to fly to Iceland on a week’s notice or sleeping in a garden to watch the Purple Shadows. He’s always trying to try something new and get more out of life.”
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