Fletcher Students Generate Real Results for Real World Clients: The Case of Dominican Republic Avocados and Beauty Products

From left to right: Lisa Carse, F'05, Melissa Tritter, F'05, Alison Jarret, F'06, Timothy Cleary, F'06
Team members unable to attend: Alejandra Ruiz-Dana, F'05 and Cecilia Calvo, F'05

Did I ever think a Fletcher course would make me an expert in Dominican avocados and hair products? No. Am I glad I became one? Definitely! Through Professor Christopher Tunnard’s “Field Studies in Global Consulting” course, I learned valuable skills that I will use long after I graduate and I enjoyed the opportunity to work outside the Fletcher bubble, all of which culminated in an exciting trip to the Dominican Republic!

Professor Christopher Tunnard, a former principal of Arthur D. Little, teaches this course in the spring to give students the opportunity to learn consulting and business skills through high impact projects for real world clients. The projects and the client sponsors garnered through the International Business Program vary each semester, and last spring several Fletcher student consulting teams developed a Latin American market entry strategy for Standard Bank’s Regional Head of Global Markets, provided emerging market due diligence for the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Monster, and developed a business model for the President and CEO of Corn Products International for the African subcontinent.

What do Dominicans living in the U.S. miss from home?

Our particular team worked on a private sector development project for the Dominican Republic government’s National Competitiveness Council (CNC), which reports directly to the President of the country, Leonel Fernández. The CNC’s mission is to help Dominican industries become more competitive in the global marketplace, and in this effort they enlisted the help of the Fletcher Global Consulting class and sponsorship program.

Considering that approximately 10% of the Dominican population lives in the U.S, the CNC wanted to know if Dominicans abroad were a market for Dominican exports. Our task was to find out what products Dominicans living in the U.S miss from home and determine if there is a viable export opportunity for these products.

In an early meeting, our client, Andrés van der Horst, Executive Director of the CNC, encouraged us to generate practical results for his industry leaders in the Dominican Republic. The last thing he wanted was another academic study with high-level recommendations that would sit on the office shelf. His industry leaders wanted to better understand the U.S. market and he wanted us to recommend tactics the producers could put into action quickly.

Our motivation was high after this meeting with our charismatic client, but it escalated to another level that same day when we met President Fernández who was in Boston for a conference. President Fernández knew about our project and was enthusiastic about it since he previously headed an NGO focused on the role U.S.-based Dominicans can play in the Dominican Republic’s development. Later that day, President Fernández gave the keynote address at the conference in which he eloquently described both the challenges and the potential of his country: hearing him illustrate the opportunity perched in front of the Dominican Republic left us all deeply motivated to contribute.

Dominican Avocados and Hair Products

Armed with our new focus and enthusiastic to generate results for the CNC and the Dominican Republic, our team set off to Lawrence, Massachusetts, the second largest concentration of Dominicans in the U.S outside of New York City, to find out what the people wanted. We spent quite a few Saturday afternoons in “bodegas” talking with store owners and their customers to understand what they missed from home. We heard everything from rum, to candy, to mangoes, but in the end, we decided to focus on two very different items: avocados and hair products.

We dove into the world of avocados and hair products and became experts on the respective industries in the U.S. We tracked down avocado distributors in Miami and hair care experts in New York City. We got up in the early hours of the morning to watch local store owners buy their produce from a hub in Boston, and spent numerous hours in beauty salons talking to stylists and their patrons.

Our goal was to identify the primary challenges for each product in the U.S. market and to uncover opportunities for the Dominican producers. This research was quite different than digging through online journal databases in Fletcher’s Ginn Library. It forced us to work outside of the academic setting, which was at times awkward, often challenging, but always refreshing.

Beyond Just Problem Sets and Research Papers

So what did we learn? We learned that Dominican avocados, or green skins, have 1/3 less fat than the Hass variety most of us are used to – but green skins are only allowed into the country during a very specific timeframe which is determined by the USDA. We also learned that there are women in Georgia and Virginia, two states with rather low Dominican populations, who are dying to get their hands on Dominican hair conditioners but don’t have access to the product in their areas. Sure, that’s what we learned about the products themselves, but now that our job is done, I realize what we really learned was how to break down a problem into workable parts, how to work as a team, and how to effectively communicate our recommendations.

Early on in the course we learned frameworks to help dissect a big problem into manageable sections, which helped us effectively answer the CNC’s question. However, as with most large projects, it was our ability to work well as a team that was the main reason for our success. It wasn’t easy, since we had never worked together before, and unlike most study groups, we didn’t choose our teammates. However, we all shared the same interest in tackling this problem and contributing to the CNC’s goals. In true Fletcher fashion, it was our diversity that was also our strength. My background is in high-tech marketing and product management; another team member had a background in finance, another in economics, and still others in trade and the environment. Three team members were native Spanish speakers, one was half Dominican, but none of us knew anything about the agriculture or beauty industries. Acknowledging these diverse backgrounds, and working as a unit, allowed us to integrate our skills and unique experiences to develop actionable recommendations for the CNC.

Finally, the course taught us how to communicate the essence of our research to the client using the often dreaded PowerPoint slides. This may have been the toughest part of the project because we had become so passionate about Dominican avocados and hair products that we wanted to sit the client down and tell them everything we learned. Luckily, we realized this wasn’t a very effective approach, and with Professor Tunnard’s guidance, we focused on communicating only the information the client needed most. Boiling down months of research into short and long term recommendations the Dominican producers could act on immediately is a communication style that is quite different from the typical 20-page research paper. The task was challenging, but the skills we developed in the process, are extremely valuable.

The Impact

After our final presentation in Boston in the spring, our client acknowledged the quality of our insight and our ability to dig deep into the issues to uncover tangible solutions. To our delight, Mr. van der Horst invited us to the Dominican Republic to give our presentation to the country’s top avocado growers and beauty product producers. We couldn’t believe it! We were finally going to have the opportunity to meet the people whose businesses had been the focus of our research for the last few months.

It was intimidating facing a room full of business owners who, despite our months of research, knew a lot more about these industries than we did. After all, this was their livelihood. We believed in our consulting work though, and the producers recognized the value we provided in our perspective of the U.S. market and our expertise on the industries.

Throughout the semester, the main reason we were so passionate about this project (and one of the aspects of the course that made it so fun) was because we knew we were working on a real world project where achieving real results mattered. It wasn’t about finishing problem sets on time, or writing insightful papers, or getting good grades. . . it was about people and their livelihoods.

Meeting the business owners in the Dominican Republic, and putting our recommendations up for their review, really drove this feeling home. We were all energized by the experience because it confirmed that our consulting work did have an impact on people’s lives. Yet, we were also humbled by our interaction with the Dominican industry leaders because we felt the responsibility to do our work, and future work like it, with great integrity.

Alison Jarrett is a second year Fletcher student focusing her studies on International Business and Development Economics. She spent her summer internship working for the CNC in the Dominican Republic where she developed export growth strategies for the Dominican footwear industry.

Special thanks to Timothy Cleary, F’06, Melissa Tritter, F’05 and Lisa Carse, F’05 for their edits and input on this article.