Center for Global Business Participates in Smith in the City 2020

Undergraduate student, Joe Ward, class of 2022, international business and operations management and business analytics major, writes about SUSA's Smith in the City trip to Washington, D.C., held on March 6, 2020.

The Center for Global Business at Maryland Smith supported 10 students in the International Business (IB) Trek of Smith in the City: D.C. on March 6, 2020. Hosted and organized by the Smith Undergraduate Student Association and the Office of Career Services, Smith in the City is a one-day event for undergraduate students to visit companies in Washington, D.C. in order to learn about business practices in various sectors. The center’s main goal in supporting the IB Trek was to expose students to companies that do business across borders and encourage them to follow career paths in this area.

The students visited three organizations on the day of their trek, the U.S. Commercial Service, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Wipro. Each organization offered a different perspective on how students could follow a path in international business.

The first visit to the U.S. Commercial Service was hosted at the University of Maryland campus in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. The group heard from Sandra Collazo, senior international trade specialist, and her guest Elizabeth Thomas, business development specialist from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Collazo and Thomas work closely together between government agencies to help American businesses engage in international trade. Both experts discussed what it takes to start exporting from the U.S. and the roles they both play to make the task easier for businesses as small as six people. Collazo and Thomas have both had a hand in making transactions as small as a thousand dollars to multi-million dollar deals. It was incredibly insightful for the students to hear firsthand the government’s role in facilitating international trade.

At the IDB, students were greeted by Luis Simón, senior communications analyst, in the IDB’s visitor center. Simón presented an overview of the role of the development bank around the world and the specific projects the IDB has in funding across South and Central America and the Caribbean. The IDB is currently involved in over 500 active projects across the 27 borrowing countries. Afterward, the group was given a tour of the visitor center with interactive exhibits based on programs they helped create such as a government identification system for native communities to access public services. Students were able to see the work development banks such as the IDB and World Bank complete to finance and assist developing countries and emerging markets.

Their final visit of the day was to Wipro, hosted by Kapil Sharma, VP for government and public affairs for North America, and Vikrum Mathur MBA ‘17, senior executive for government relations. Wipro is an Indian-based IT company with a global presence. Sharma and Mathur explained they have benefitted from previous work in the public sector and the many different evolutions their careers have taken since. Mathur highlighted the utility of gaining an MBA from Maryland Smith in allowing him to enter the private sector while leveraging his experience working for congress. The conversation was enlightening in both the ways globally focused career paths can change and the methods for which students can transition between the public and private sectors.

Students were able to learn the role of government and nonprofits in igniting global business development as well as the way individual companies engage with them. Each student who participated was able to take away a more robust understanding of international business and the various ways it is conducted every day by people who were in the same place as them at one point. Each speaker displayed a global mindset expanded by their careers.

Learn more about the Center for Global Business.

The support of the Center for Global Business was provided in part by CIBE, a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.