Two Stern MBA Students Help Advise the City of Detroit
The City of Detroit is at a transitional point in its history. The city government is currently working on plans to reorganize its existing systems and structures in hopes of improving its economic condition. The Urbanization Project at New York University’s Stern School of Business has been providing advisory services to the City of Detroit to help with its transformation. Those advisory services have been supported by MBA students Michael Caruana and Shyamali Rajivan as part of an NYU Stern Faculty Fellows Project.
Faculty Fellows Projects give Stern MBA students the opportunity to work with NYU research centers and faculty to address current problems facing business and society. Faculty Fellows working with the Urbanization Project have developed actionable policy recommendations, written business plans, and provided advice for governments in urbanizing countries and cities facing business challenges.
Rajivan and Caruana were asked to research management best practices to develop a plan for Detroit. Rajivan worked with CityStat, a system that provides accountability, transparency, and measurement for city government. The program measures indicators of city services, like response time to civilian complaints or crime rates. Caruana worked with employee management systems, trying to determine how governments attract, develop, and retain talented employees. Caruana studied the governments of Singapore and Indiana to determine how their successes in supporting employees could be adapted for Detroit.
Caruana and Rajivan were mentored by Johnathan Stewart, MBA’13, a Research Scholar for the Urbanization Project. The group held weekly phone meetings to discuss findings, research gaps, and potential topics.
The project also helped Caruana and Rajivan refine their ideas of what they wanted their careers to involve. “I came to Stern thinking I wanted to work in financial services, but through projects I’ve done at Stern, I had the chance to try something different, first on a project working with a nonprofit last year, and now this one,” says Caruana. “I’ve discovered that I want to pursue a career in strategy. My hope is that the experience gained through these projects will help me achieve that goal.”
