Returning Peace Corps volunteer finds skills that transfer to business

Tahira Taylor realized that volunteering for the Peace Corps at both ends of the African continent means gaining a host of skills that serve her well as a Georgetown University MBA student. The second-year student and Consortium fellow recently returned from her Peace Corps experience and wrote about it on Georgetown’s blog.

“I had to create projects from the ground up through realizing what the community needed, what they were lacking, and how my skills would be able to help them fix the problem,” she wrote on Georgetown’s blog. “Additionally, I had a challenge of even convincing them that the problems I had identified were problems in the first place.”

That’s not where the work ended. Tahira also had to persuade locals that an American could help solve the problems, then she had to marshal a group of local volunteers to develop the solution in a culturally appropriate way while seeking the resources from individuals and organizations.

“But the Peace Corps experience made me gritty,” she wrote. Her post was republished on a Peace Corps blog as well. “It raised the bar I had set for myself and for the things I want to accomplish.”

Tahira joined the McDonough School of Business’ MBA program after a career in marketing and her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco and Lesotho.

Tahira goes on to describe what she was looking for in her MBA experience and how that experience has gone so far. Take a look at Tahira’s blog post for more of her insights.

Above: Tahira Taylor, who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho, is currently pursuing an MBA degree at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Photos courtesy of Georgetown University.