BASES Spotlight: BASES Co-Presidents Mallika Jhamb and Vibhav Mariwala reflect on past year, navigating BASES through the Coronavirus pandemic

BASES Spotlight April 24, 2020

Vibhav Mariwala, ‘20, and Mallika Jhamb, ‘21, led BASES during the 2019-2020 academic year. Vibhav is a History major and Psychology and Political Science double minor. Mallika is pursuing a Management Science Engineering major and an Economics minor. Through their leadership, external relations improved and BASES developed a stronger community. The Co-Presidents also provide their insights in bringing clarity during a global pandemic.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background in BASES? 

MJ: I joined BASES in the Spring of my Freshman year as a director on the Global Entrepreneurship team. Coming into Stanford, I was a Pre-Med majoring in Biochemistry. It took organic chemistry [for me to] realize that it just wasn't meant for me. I knew that I did not want to pursue research as a career, and this led me to re-evaluating my choices. I went to high school in the UK, but decided to come to the US because of the flexibility and plethora of extra-curricular resources. So, that change came in the winter quarter—people usually go through the “sophomore slump”—I went through a mini version in freshman year. I started talking to different faculty, trying to figure out what excited me most and ended up choosing Management Science and Engineering as my major. When I was talking to my major advisor, Prof. Tom Byers, I learned that BASES was omnipresent in this space. I knew I wanted to put what I was learning in MS&E into action because entrepreneurship to me was always a buzzword. I'd been exposed to it because of side projects in high school, but not truly to the extent that Silicon Valley is known for entrepreneurship. So, my best bet would be to learn by doing, which is why I decided to try again (after not getting in through Frosh Battalion). I ended up joining as a director on the Global Entrepreneurship team, which was led by Vibhav. All throughout high school, I was really passionate about empowering women (I still am :)) and understanding their trajectory in different careers, so I knew this is what I hoped to pursue within BASES. I knew that I I wanted to learn and grow as a leader, and learn more about entrepreneurship while pursuing the cause that I was passionate about.

VM: I'm a senior now, and I'm graduating in [a few] months. That's crazy. I'm majoring in History, double minoring in Psych and Political Science, but I also jokingly say, I’m in an entrepreneurship class because running BASES is essentially a five-to-seven unit class. [It’s] by far one of the best experiences I've ever had here. I got to meet so many people, especially a lot of underclassmen who I wouldn't have met otherwise. It was very engaging because I'm focusing on things I don't cover in class at all. I'm dealing a lot with VCs, with excellent sponsors, with the university administration, learning how to budget, managing people, making sure people are motivated and committed to just a student organization. And, to be perfectly honest, I applied to BASES at the end of my freshman year. I was not in Frosh Battalion, I did not know what BASES was in my freshman year up until I had this mini existential crisis of, okay, what have I done apart from writing for The Daily and going to class and socializing? I think my mom actually told me about BASES because she heard about it from some friends who graduated from Stanford. And it seemed interesting, I just wasn't sure that entrepreneurship was my thing because when you're here in Silicon Valley, it's like, Oh, are you an entrepreneur, are you starting a start-up and dropping out of school. I wasn't really in the mood for that because I enjoy school, so why would I want to commit my time to a project when I'm still a freshman? That was my initial thinking, and then I ended up looking at the different applications for the different teams that were out there, and ended up joining.

How was being president of BASES a learning experience? 

VM: The best way to summarize my experiences is in three questions I try to ask: What do you want out of this experience, how can I help you get what you want out of this experience, and what can I do to make your life in this organization as easy as possible. Those are the three questions I've asked every almost director that has approached us. At Stanford, we’re very spoiled with all the speakers and resources we have, so why BASES? And that's why our platform rested on professional development, community development, and also team collaboration. Now I do think we could have done a lot more and ran things better, but just trying to really promote some sort of community, whether it was a Halloween party or a Dish hike, it's hard to get people to come. But Mallika and I both prioritized drawing boundaries between being friends but also being VPS and directors. So even with everyone on Exec, I can have a conversation one-on-one with every single Exec member, and that's something that’s been very helpful to make sure our [team has been] very cohesive and very willing to work with each other and provide open, honest feedback.

MJ: I've learned a lot about administration within the university, and how to deal with different stakeholders. It's something that's mentioned so often, yet something that’s not truly understood. If you truly want to be an entrepreneurial leader, entrepreneur or founder, you have to know how to balance each party. Our main aim was to be most transparent without jeopardizing our activities, and the needs & wants of our members. This year, we were able to establish a good relationship with the administration, and gained invaluable mentors through the process. This was one of the biggest learning experiences. The other is how to lead an organization of 100+ people. It is really important to have conversations centered around the bigger picture: What are the consequences of the decisions we are making? How can we be better leaders? Are we staying true to our principles and values? And as entrepreneurial student leaders, why don't we take heed to ethical entrepreneurship? There’s definitely steps that we've both taken, but there’s also a big learning curve. No one could have predicted that Coronavirus would have happened this year, but we learned adapt to our current scenario, and keep the larger picture in mind. The main thing is being proactive and leading those discussions. 

What is one challenge you’ve dealt with in leadership?

MJ: We tried to make sure that this was an open space for everyone to have a conversation. There's definitely more we could have done looking back. But I think our main goal was to strengthen the organization and its people because we’ve had a high turnover rate in the past. The challenges in building community are centered around the fact that there were so many people, and it’s harder on a larger scale. We had an all-BASES retreat , which was attended by a lot of the freshmen and some directors, but not everyone was as interested. But we tried. What we realized is that we needed to create a value-add for our members, apart from the events they lead. We’ve had skill building workshops and career workshops for freshman, but we wanted to find a way to scale it. So, true to our mission statement, we did this though establishing a Professional Development Team. We had some difficulty with setting the team, but by the end of winter quarter, we established a great team that has lead some amazing internal events. Overall, understanding how to best cater to each member’s need is challenging in such a large organization but we're constantly incorporating feedback!

VM: There's a lot of other management and a lot of things that directors [and VPs] don't even know about. As one of Stanford's oldest and largest organizations, we fundraise a lot, so there's a lot more oversight from the university. We [have worked and still] work with the Office of Student Engagement, and, for the first time in a while, we’ve had a good reputation with them. We also have an oversight board within the university with people from corporate relations, from the endowment, we have faculty advisors that we work with. And we work a lot with STVP, so we're working with at least four to five different offices. It’s just a question of how do you as a student get taken seriously and have your input treated as equally as someone in a professional role. That's been a very good learning [but] challenging experience for both of us because, [even though] you’re the president of a student organization, you’re still a student at the end of the day. 

How has BASES informed your academic and career plans? 

MJ: I think one of the most rewarding part of my experience within BASES is how I was exposed to different stakeholders within the realm of entrepreneurship. Throughout my journey, I’ve learned that my strengths lie in working with people, and in the future, I see myself working in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. I can say for a fact that I have brought the skills and knowledge that I have gained through BASES, to classes and broader conversations. I think leading BASES has expedited my understanding on what goes into building an organization, and led me to reflect on my decisions as a leader. What I have learned through leading BASES, is that cultivating relationships and learning how to manage them is critical. I think putting yourself in the other person’s shoes to understand their perspective is the first step in doing so. I personally believe that I have met some of the most inspiring leaders and mentors because of BASES and the advice I have gained has been invaluable.

VM: I think every member has a different, nuanced take on entrepreneurship. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather, both my grandparents and my parents have had their own companies in some way. Growing up, [I thought] entrepreneurship was a buzzword. To be fair, I still don't know all the nuances of being an entrepreneur. There's a lot more I wish I could have learned. But I think if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be really good at cultivating, maintaining, and advancing your relationships with people. You need to be genuinely vulnerable and just be a good nice normal person as weird as that sounds. One thing Mallika and I have talked a lot about is the “so what?” of why you’re starting a company. Is it just to be the next Google, Facebook, Snapchat, or is it because there's some issue that you identify with that you wanted to try to solve through starting a company.

What has your experience been trying to lead such a large organization in the pandemic?

MJ: Vibhav and I knew we needed to do something about it. Being the largest student organization on campus, we have the resources, and we've gained so much from this community that we need to give back. The first thing we did was reach out to all our members to make sure they were okay and doing well, and if they needed any support. We then spoke to our Executive board to go over the possible ways in which we could respond, creating meaningful impact. After multiple meetings with our Exec board, and internal administrative board, we decided to publish our response in the form of a letter to make sure that our stakeholders are aware of our response. We are taking our time to figure out how to best support the Stanford community as well as our local community. We want to cater to our members’ needs, and also make sure that we were being transparent with all our stakeholders because we feel responsible for our sponsors, alumni, and the broader student community. We hope to build and provide entrepreneurial resources for our community through newsletters in the short-term, but are still working on our long-term response, through which we hope to make the most impact to our community. While it hasn’t been easy, given that everyone is in different parts of the world, I think being proactive in leading these conversations and ensuring that we’re on the same page in our response is very important.

VM: When Covid-19 hit and all students were asked to leave campus, Mallika and I knew that we had to come up with a coherent response to ensure that BASES can function as an organization and to ensure members are still engaged with us. BASES luckily has the ability to make an immense difference to campus, and in the face of this pandemic, we realized we could mobilize our resources to help. The question was not if we should do something, but what we should do to guarantee the largest impact?, Over the past year, when BASES has had tough questions, Mallika and I have turned to our Executive Board and our advisors who have been immensely supportive. Leading an organization like BASES requires consensus and transparency, and to develop a cogent response to the crisis, we wanted to ensure we factored in the perspectives of our stakeholders. After a series of meetings with VPs, the full executive team, and our internal advisors, we published our response on our website, and our working to develop resources for the Stanford community related to entrepreneurship. Coordinating meetings across time zones, and factoring in these different perspectives was challenging, but it showed me that the best way to lead an organization in tough times is to be upfront. Consequently, we agreed to move our programming virtually and focus on professional development.