Melissa Little – Sept. Runner Up

Nominator said: “Melissa Little, a Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA graduate, figured out a way to donate hundreds of pounds of leftover food each Saturday to the Dorothy Day House in Berkeley. The food—everything from boxed lunches to huge pans of cooked meat dishes—is used to supplement 600 meals made daily at the house, which is run by volunteers and shelters and services homeless and low-income people. During the first year of her MBA program, Little discovered that extra student lunches in her program were thrown out. ‘It drove me crazy for the rest of the school year,’ she said. ‘I live in Berkeley and ride my bike past unhoused people.’ She wanted to figure out how to donate the food, so Little worked on an answer to the problem during her Design Thinking class with Haas Lecturer David Rochlin. Her group focused on solving issues for the unhoused and she went on site visits, which was how she found out about Dorothy Day. Little met with the executive director, who agreed to pick up the food every Saturday if Little could do paperwork and get approval from campus. It was an arduous process, but she did it!! Dorothy Day started picking up the leftovers in October of 2022. ‘The cooks don’t set the dinner menu until they see what we have,’ she said. ‘We are donating hundreds of pounds of food every Saturday during the school year.'”