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The Dartmouth
July 11, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Fellows work with Tuck on microfinance

This summer, five Dartmouth students embarked on the first collaborative program between Dartmouth and the Tuck School of Business as participants of the newly created Paganucci Fellowship Program. The first topic of the three-year grant will be a study of how businesses can alleviate world poverty through microfinance.

Desmond Ang '08, Michael Belinsky '08, Michelle Chen '08, Patrick Dooley '08 and Lauren Penneys '08 applied for the program after hearing about it through the economics department.

"I think it's exciting that we might actually have a real-world impact, which is my goal coming in," Ang said.

Microfinance refers to the practice of extending financial services -- such as credit or small loans -- generally in small doses to people living in poverty, thereby reducing their financial burdens.

"You are helping people in poverty by giving them access to financial services like credit; that's what microloans are," Ang said.

This summer, the fellows will do background research on microfinance and conduct phone surveys with microfinance industry practitioners, which will culminate in a final project that they hope will contribute to how businesses can act as a positive social force.

The fellows will also use their summer research to help design a new microfinance course that the Tuck School of Business will offer this coming Fall term, in response to a general shift among business schools to place more emphasis on "soft skills" such as business ethics, according to Fortune 500 magazine.

"I don't know of any other business school in the country that has a program like this," Richard McNulty, a professor of business administration and director of career development at Tuck, said.

Paganucci fellows work as a consulting team, meeting daily with project manager Dave Gilbertson Tu '05 to discuss their progress and goals. They also meet weekly with professors Andrew Bernard and Richard McNulty, who will be teaching the microfinance class this fall.

The fellows began the nine-week summer portion of the program on June 18 and have just moved into the primary phase of their research -- directly interviewing people who work in microfinance institutions.

"We're trying to fill out a survey by calling people from MFIs [microfinance institutions] and investment funds but most of them are international, so that's a significant barrier because they don't speak English," Dooley said.

The other members also shared Dooley's frustration.

"My Spanish skills are pretty rusty," Belinsky said.

For their final project, the students hope to produce a long-term program that will allow Dartmouth undergraduates and Tuck MBA students to work together as a consulting team at a MFI.

"The point is to produce something for Dartmouth," Chen said.