Business economics academia (BEA) – Showing Up Anyway & Rebuilding BEA From the Ground Up

Taking over with four board members in 2025 and fewer than 300 Instagram followers, I worked through the problems one by one. The structural problem was that everything depended on a tiny executive board with no real systems. I replaced elections with an application and interview process, created a VP-Director-Intern leadership model, built 8 functional teams, and launched a formal orientation for all incoming members. The funding problem was that fundraisers were generating under $100 at a time and taking hours to run. I shifted Finance to a presentation-based model pitching to SFAC, SOFA, Giving Day, Spring Give, and 10 student governments, which generated 700 to 800% more funding per quarter. The visibility problem was that almost no one knew BEA existed. Growing from 300 to nearly 1,000 followers organically in one year, building the brand through partnerships with AKPsi, DSP, 180° Consulting, the Economics Department, and local businesses, and originating the LinkedIn Speed Dating event as a signature recurring program all helped change that.

But the hardest problem was community. A club isn't just an org chart and a budget. It's the members who become friends, then roommates, then people I'm writing recommendation letters for. That's what I've been building, and seeing it actually happen has made all of it worth it.