Q&A With a Rice Business Board Fellow

Becoming a Rice Business Board Fellow offers MBAs a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in nonprofit management. Students are matched with local organizations and learn valuable leadership skills as non-voting board members through the year-long experiential learning program.

Meet Jordyn-Marie Dudley, a PMBA student who recently served as a board fellow with nonprofit hair care organization Have Shears Will Travel. She discusses the value in serving others and giving back to the community while reaching for the stars professionally.

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What inspired you to become a board fellow?

I applied to Rice Business Board Fellows for an opportunity to engage with the local Houston community while learning about nonprofit management. I’m also interested in leading my own community initiative someday.

Tell us about Have Shears Will Travel, the nonprofit you matched with.

Have Shears Will Travel is a nonprofit hair care ministry that provides free services to people experiencing homelessness or hardship in Houston. The organization uses a mobile RV salon, allowing them to serve people across the city. This year, they also launched Shear Success to provide barber and cosmetology training to the community with affordable tuition, payment options and scholarship opportunities.

What were some of your primary responsibilities as a board fellow?

During my time with Have Shears Will Travel, I attended quarterly board meetings and offered suggestions for marketing the organization’s activities. I also helped update materials to collect donations and advertise services for both Have Shears Will Travel and Shear Success. This experience allowed me to consider business frameworks from the perspective of a smaller grassroots nonprofit organization, since many of the case studies we review in my MBA classes typically focus on large for-profit companies.

Overall, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience and I have enjoyed working with the founder, volunteers and stylists. The group’s shared commitment to the organization and its mission is inspiring. I recently visited Shear Success after its ribbon cutting in September, and it was so exciting to see the vision become a reality after learning about the work that went into this new initiative.

What is your current role?

I work as a government contractor for Amentum at NASA Johnson Space Center. I am a planetary scientist and project manager supporting the Mars Sample Return Sample Receiving Project, and my team is currently performing research and development to prepare to receive and curate the first samples returned from Mars.

What motivated you to pursue your MBA at Rice Business?

I learn best from hands-on work and real-world applications. Rice Business offers many experiential learning opportunities, like the Global Field Experience, Rice Business Board Fellows and The Washington Campus residency intensive, which drew me to the MBA program. Before coming to Rice, I studied chemistry and planetary science and performed academic research for most of my career. Since beginning my MBA at Rice Business, I have gained new perspectives on organizational strategy, operations, project planning and the intersection between business, government and policy.

What are your post-MBA plans?

I’m starting a new role as section manager for curation collections at NASA Johnson Space Center. I will transition from preparing for Mars Sample Return to leading a team of curators and scientists who help support NASA’s current collections of extraterrestrial materials — including samples from the sun, moon, Mars, asteroids, comets, other stars and space-exposed hardware. I look forward to applying the concepts and skills I learned at Rice Business to my new role!

Any advice for MBAs considering becoming a Board Fellow?

Once you are matched with an organization, think about how your skills and hobbies can best support them. During my fellowship, I applied creative skills from my background as an artist and data analysis skills from my career as a scientist to develop marketing and advertising suggestions, even though they were very different from the projects in my current role.

As a student at Rice Business, you’ll receive many opportunities to foster personal and professional growth. Jordyn-Marie’s experiences with the Rice Business Board Fellows program exemplify the impact you can have in the community.

Learn More About Rice Business Board Fellows