Stillman Students Make a Global Impact through Business Consulting with Panamanian Microentrepreneurs

This spring and summer, M.B.A. students in the Stillman School of Business's international business core course are trading textbook case studies for real clients, as part of a new global social impact partnership with Kambia, a nonprofit that connects university students with microentrepreneurs in underserved communities abroad.

The initiative, launched by Nicolas Dahan, Ph.D., in his Spring 2026 international business class, pairs M.B.A. students with five microenterprises in rural Panama. Throughout each term, students meet weekly with their assigned businesses, consulting on everything from basic financial planning to marketing strategy, while listening firsthand to the day-to-day challenges facing entrepreneurs in a developing economy.

The course goes well beyond a standard consulting project. Students are also asked to examine how culture, geography and environmental context shape the business decisions their clients make, lessons that are difficult to replicate in a traditional classroom.

“What makes this experience valuable isn’t just that our students are advising real businesses, it’s that they have to learn to advise within someone else’s context, not their own. They’re seeing how national culture, local infrastructure and environmental realities shape decisions in ways no case study can teach,” said Nicolas Dahan, who joined the Stillman School faculty in 2023 and whose research focuses on the intersection of entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility and international business.

Kambia works with rural communities in Panama where a large share of the population is indigenous, low-income and largely excluded from traditional banking. Through the partnership, Stillman students work directly with local entrepreneurs and, in some cases, with the community bank Kambia helped establish, to extend small loans and savings accounts to residents.

Megan Cohen, an M.B.A. student enrolled in the course during the summer 2026 term, is among those consulting with a Panamanian microenterprise this summer and she shared the unique value of this type of global impact project." Hearing directly from our clients about the obstacles they face and knowing that our recommendations could actually make a difference for their business, has taught me more than a textbook could. It’s changed how I think about what it means to be a global business leader,” Cohen said.

For Stillman School of Business Dean Joyce Strawser, the Kambia partnership reflects a broader institutional commitment to social and community impact, one that is also central to the school’s accreditation standards.

Programs like this one embody what a Stillman education is about, preparing principled leaders who understand that business decisions carry real consequences for real communities. It’s exactly the kind of experiential, values-driven learning that AACSB expects of accredited business schools and it is core to our mission,” Strawser said.

The Stillman School is accredited by AACSB International, which requires member schools to demonstrate a commitment to societal impact and experiential learning as part of its accreditation standards. The Kambia partnership is expected to continue offering students in Dahan’s international business classes opportunities to consult with microentrepreneurs abroad in future terms.

This story is part of a series of stories highlighting globally impactful teaching, research and service at Seton Hall, curated by the Office of International Programs.

Categories: Business, Nation and World