Jennifer Koo Works without Borders

Jennifer KooBotswana. Malta. Jordan. These are just a few of the countries Jennifer Koo (BComm’02) has already travelled to for work in the early stages of her career. And it’s some of these travels that have inspired Koo to become part of the “Without Borders” family.

After graduation, Koo earned a dream job with Big Media Group. She had applied online as a lark and was surprised to find herself at a week-long recruitment process that proved to be very successful.

“Even as I stepped off the plane in Europe, I still couldn’t quite believe it,” says Koo about her role as an international sales and market research consultant with the Belgium-based company. Her first project sent her to Botswana, and her life of travel and work was non-stop for the next two years. Koo had been asked to become a producer for some of the group’s television programs, which saw her living out of a suitcase and on the road for three weeks of every month.

The glamour of jetting across the globe quickly wore off, but what Koo witnessed and learned on those travels still resides strongly. “I visited a lot of countries in Africa,” says Koo. “Every which way I looked, there was beauty emanating from the landscape, from the music, from the warmth of its people. And every which way I looked, I also saw devastation.”

That devastation is something Koo still thinks about regularly, even now that she’s back living in Calgary and working as an advisor in the web business unit for WestJet. That devastation is what has spurned her on to try and create Commerce without Borders. “I heard of MBAs without Borders when I came back home and thought it was a great idea. But I wondered about all of us BComm grads who also have a host of skills to help.”

The choices many of Koo’s friends are making have also helped with the inspiration. Many of them who’ve been in the workforce for a few years are quitting their jobs. They’re taking time off to head overseas and volunteer for one organization or another. Koo admits that she doesn’t have a formal game plan yet. Her focus now is to gain interest and support for the idea.

“I need to get some people on board to get it off the ground and running.” She also realizes that she doesn’t have non-profit expertise and is hoping to create a committee of U of C alumni and students who can help flush out the idea. From there, it’ll be about getting the appropriate legal registrations. Fundraising and establishing overseas partnerships. She’s also hoping that her alma mater, the Haskayne School of Business, will play a key role in the Commerce without Borders organizational development.

With such good intentions, it’s hard to imagine the project being anything but a success. Koo knows what she’s working for: “A world without borders means a more unified world.”

By Leslie Strudwick