Skip to content
GIVING DAY is April 11! Starting now, you can support CSSH students and programs with a $5+ gift to any of our funds.
Apply
Stories

Students reflect on once-in-a-lifetime global experience

Photo of Caitlin behind a camera

Fourth-year political science and international affairs major Caitlin Morelli reflects on her five-​​month mis­sion to build rela­tion­ships with the world’s most inno­v­a­tive social enter­prises.

Matt Bilotti, DMSB’15, and Caitlin Morelli, SSH’16, settle into the gray plastic chairs at a high-​​top table in after­HOURS, the pop­ular study space in the Curry Stu­dent Center. Time is short—their day is filled with meet­ings and interviews—but their col­lec­tive esprit is high, their desire to share per­sonal anec­dotes and life-​​defining lessons par­tic­u­larly strong.

It’s Wednesday, May 20, and Pres­i­dent Joseph E. Aoun’s first two Global Offi­cers have returned to campus for a brief respite from trav­eling the world. By Friday, he will be in Texas and she Peru, two glo­be­trot­ters back on the road for their final month of this once-​​in-​​a-​​lifetime experience.

And they wouldn’t have it any other way. “The adren­a­line,” says Bilotti over the din of com­merce, “is still there.”

Where in the world were Bilotti and Morelli?

Bilotti’s journey—a five-​​month mis­sion to pio­neer new part­ner­ships with the world’s top entre­pre­neurial leaders—began in Jan­uary in London. The first 120-​​some-​​odd days of his adven­ture were marked by change, the only con­stants his single suit­case and his smartphone.

I didn’t have a normal form of cul­ture shock,” he says, “because I was forced to con­front a new lan­guage and a new way of doing things every week.”

Bilotti vis­ited 19 coun­tries, including Sin­ga­pore, Switzer­land, and South Africa, where he net­worked with the movers and shakers in the startup industry. His favorite startup in all of Europe, he says, is Wooga, a Berlin-​​based mobile-​​first game devel­oper. “They cel­e­brate failure as a true learning expe­ri­ence,” he wrote in his Global Officer blog, noting that the ven­ture employs one game design co-​​op per cycle. “When a game shuts down, team mem­bers go into a learning limbo where they learn new coding lan­guages, get men­tored by others in the com­pany, or build their own things.”

Morelli’s journey—a five-​​month mis­sion to build rela­tion­ships with the world’s most inno­v­a­tive social enter­prises—began in Mumbai, India, a city “packed with social entre­pre­neurs starting new ven­tures and others that are at the cusp of enor­mous growth.”

Her first four months on the road com­prised stops in 18 coun­tries, including Thai­land, Chile, and Brazil. One of her most vis­ceral expe­ri­ences took place in the kitchen of Akshaya Patra, a Bangalore-​​based non­profit that runs a daily school lunch pro­gram for some 1.4 mil­lion chil­dren in India.

The menu included rice and sambar, a lentil-​​based veg­etable stew. “This isn’t the kind of fac­tory food we get in the U.S.,” Morelli wrote in her Global Officer blog. “This is hygienic, healthy, deli­cious food cooked with the cus­tomer in mind—kids!”

 

All about that blog

Bilotti and Morelli have remained con­nected to the North­eastern com­mu­nity through social media, doc­u­menting their jour­neys on Twitter, Insta­gram, and their afore­men­tioned Global Officer blogs.

Morelli is par­tic­u­larly keen on inspiring stu­dents through her blog posts, many of which focus on the social entre­pre­neurs she’s met and the com­pa­nies they’ve founded.“I’ve posted photos, videos, and write-​​ups of these orga­ni­za­tions in order to moti­vate stu­dents to become more aware of what’s hap­pening in the world,” she says. “The blog,” she adds, “is focused on cre­ating con­tent that will out­last my stay at North­eastern and piquing the interest of stu­dents who want to do co-​​ops in these coun­tries and at these organizations.”

Her Feb. 4 blog post high­lighted the social entre­pre­neur­ship ecosystem in India, where human­i­tar­ians have been using busi­ness prin­ci­ples to solve prob­lems in fields ranging from organic farming to renew­able energy. A social entre­pre­neur named Nilima, Morelli noted, is but one of the many “cool people doing cool things” in Mumbai, where she is working to pro­mote gender equality and sex education.

If I’ve learned any­thing from these sto­ries,” Morelli blogged, fol­lowing her meeting with Nilima in a Mumbai coffee shop, “it’s that life some­times tells us where to go instead of the other way around.”

Bilotti, for his part, has focused on spot­lighting well-​​connected young alumni and telling the startup story, typing up post after post on new ven­tures in cities ranging from Dublin to Ams­terdam. But one of his most poignant write-​​ups derived from a more per­sonal expe­ri­ence. His April 29 entry, titled “Hit­ting the Pause Button,” delved into the recent death of his grand­mother, which forced him to cancel his trip to Cape Town, South Africa, in order to return home to New York to attend her funeral.

The expe­ri­ence, he says, has taught him a valu­able lesson: “It’s really easy to get wrapped up in some­thing that’s exciting and then forget what’s really impor­tant in life,” he explains. “I couldn’t be hap­pier that I did go home, because being there for my family showed me that some­times you have to put your own stuff aside.”

If you build it…

Bilotti and Morelli say that their global expe­di­tions have shaped their career paths. That pio­neering new oppor­tu­ni­ties in new places for cur­rent and future cohorts of North­eastern stu­dents has made it easier for them to foresee their own futures.

Bilotti—a fifth-​​year major in busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion with a con­cen­tra­tion in entre­pre­neur­ship and new ven­ture management—wants to build his own com­pany from the ground up. He plans to grad­uate in August and then stay in Boston, where he’ll have access to his new net­work of global men­tors, advisers, and investors.

A ven­ture cap­i­talist whom he met in Sydney, Aus­tralia, has already offered him a par­tic­u­larly per­ti­nent piece of career advice: “Don’t just focus on a spe­cific market,” Bill Bartee, the cofounder of Black­bird Ven­tures, told him. “If you build a com­pany, make it a global busi­ness from day 1.”

Morelli—a fourth-​​year com­bined major in polit­ical sci­ence and inter­na­tional affairs—is an aspiring social entre­pre­neur. And though she is unsure of her first career move, she is par­tic­u­larly cog­nizant of the com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion it will take to effect global change.

After trav­eling from country to country, I now want to pick one place and get to know it well,” she says. “I’m very mindful of sus­tain­ability and I want to ground myself.”

She adds: “The most suc­cessful people who I’ve met on this journey are those who know how to take advan­tage of an oppor­tu­nity when it comes up. Hope­fully I’ll be able to rec­og­nize the oppor­tu­ni­ties that come my way and then act on them.”

-By Jason Kornwitz

More Stories

Photo of the Capitol Building at night

High stakes for politics, SCOTUS in 2018

01.04.2018
Photo of the crashed truck that was used in the October 31st attack in Manhattan.

Weaponizing Language: How the meaning of “allahu akbar” has been distorted

11.08.2017
Northeastern logo

Why I love studying Spanish

05.29.20
Uncategorized