Casting a Wide Net
Next up at Stanford we connected with Jack Marzulli, MBA/M.Ed. ’18, who spent the summer of 2017 in Washington, DC, interning at the Partnership for Public Service. Calling itself a nonpartisan nonprofit, the organization’s mission is to make the federal government more effective. “Where many other organizations have specific policy agendas, we think of ourselves as outcome agnostic,” Marzulli explained. “Instead we’re focused on the business of management, how is it run, how effective is hiring, how effective is talent retention and development, how do the different pieces fit together?”
A Princeton alum, Marzulli came to Stanford as a sponsored student from Bain. After he finishes his MBA, along with a simultaneous master of education at the Stanford School of Education, he’ll head back to Bain. But longer term he’s always envisioned something else, leaning toward education. It kind of runs in his family.
His mother co-founded a Brooklyn charter school and his sister is now an assistant principal, having gotten her start as a Teach for America volunteer. “I also spent a lot of years out of school thinking about what issues I cared most about and where I could have an impact,” Marzulli said. “I ultimately settled on education because it felt like the most obvious and uncontroversial way to do good.”
In terms of an internship, he purposefully cast a wide net. “I had always known this summer would be a chance to try something I had never done before,” he said. He talked to a wide range of organizations in the private, nonprofit, and government sectors, and not only those exclusively focused on education. In the end, he found his way to the Partnership thanks to a combination of chance and connections.
When he first learned about the Partnership, he wasn’t thinking about internships at all. He just happened to attend a talk about the presidential election given by Partnership CEO Max Stier, a Stanford Law alum. “I loved the talk and had a chance to chat briefly with him afterward,” Marzulli recalled. Before long, the organization was not only among those he was considering—it was at the top of his list. “Especially amid all the discussion in the last year about government and politics, I felt like it would be an especially interesting time to come to DC and get a feel for how things work,” he said.
He shared his interest with one of the directors in Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation (CIS),who had just heard that the Partnership was seeking an intern. “They said, ‘Let’s put you in touch with the VP of business strategy—we think he could be a really interesting mentor to you for the summer.’”
Fast forward to summer 2017, and that’s exactly what happened. Alongside the Partnership’s business strategy VP, Marzulli got to work with stakeholders in the private sector, at other nonprofits, and across all the major federal government departments. “It was great for getting a feel for who all the stakeholders in DC are and how things happen,” he said. He was also one of 28 students awarded the Social Management Immersion Fellowship (SMIF) by the in 2017, which supports students interning in the public and nonprofit sectors. So his DC summer was subsidized.
That policy-making piece was one avenue of several he came to Stanford hoping to explore. Others included impact investing, ed-tech startups, and opportunities within schools. And then it’s back to Bain for a few years before a planned pivot into the social impact space. “I still need to decide just what that is, but coming out of the summer I have a much more informed perspective of what options in the DC nonprofit realm looks like.” He also now knows what it’s like to work at a nonprofit and inside the federal government—as well as people who do both.
“The awesome and somewhat overwhelming thing about showing up at Stanford is that there are so many different options for things you can try and get involved in,” he said. Case in point: Marzulli went on to manage the Stanford GSB Impact Fund in his second year, obtaining some of the impact investing experience he hoped for along with 40 fellow MBA students.
