Bauer Marketing Professor Betsy Gelb recently checked in with an alumnus to see how it’s going. Here is Daniel Pinto’s response in his own words. 

I am currently working as an accountant for a law firm in downtown Houston. It is a small law firm with approximately 15 employees that primarily focuses on liquid natural gas contracts and M&A deals. The work is fairy interesting and keeps me busy from 8-5.

As a side project, my family is working with the Jesuits in Northeast India to build an orphanage/children’s home in an economically depressed region called the East Garo Hills. I am not sure if I mentioned it to you before, but I spent 6 months volunteering in that region at a different children’s home before the start of my MBA and again for 4 months after graduating. Both were wonderful experiences and my parents really like the work that I was doing there.  They decided to embark on a project to start up a brand new home in a village that is in a similar economic region to the one I was volunteering. The project started approximately 3 years ago, and the home is now complete and is occupied by 60 children (40 girls and 20 boys) . The ratio of boys to girls is skewed because the tribal society in the Northeast is geared toward a matriarchal structure. The theory is that if the girls are raised and educated to be prosperous members in society, the boys follow suite.  The theory has actually been tested and proven at the other home that I was working in over the last 40 years since it has been there. However, in this region the society does not view girls as highly as boys in regards to education or opportunities. Many of the children’s homes in the region are segregated by gender and the girls’ homes do not receive the same kind of funding or opportunities as the boys’ homes. Hence, the girls are not educated properly and many are sent to work in the fields or they are abandoned by the family and possibly fall victim to human trafficking or other terrible situations. Hopefully, this can change the lives of a few of the kids.   The name of the home is “Olive Children’s’ Home”, and it is located in the state of Meghalaya, in the town of William Nagar.