Charlotte Allan, who is studying social entrepreneurship and creative activism with a focus on Latin America, found the typical college curriculum “too formalized and inflexible.” Gallatin, she says, “rekindled my love for learning within the classroom by giving me the opportunity to take my studies into my own hands.” Gallatin faculty member Martha Diaz’s “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship” course instilled in Allan a passion for doing business with a conscience, she says, and thanks to the School’s emphasis on interdisciplinary learning, her definition of an entrepreneur has expanded.
Allan worked at LinkedIn last summer summer and has been involved in a range of extracurricular activities: she has been a Gallatin Peer Mentor, a club member of Oxfam NYU, a member of the Gallatin Dean’s Team for Recruitment and an Ashoka Youth Mentor. Allan assisted Oxfam with its campaign against fracking, and through an arts workshop at Gallatin, she participated in a protest performance in Washington Square Park during a student rally. “Many of my classes,” she observes, “view solutions to social injustices in alternative ways.” Allen adds that her involvement with the social entrepreneurship community at the School has provided her with the skills and experience to draw up a number of business plans that she hopes to use in the future.
