Tobin Grad Wins Award for Academic Service Learning Project

Angelica Cruz ‘18TCB won the 2018 Flourish Award for her video case study, Escaping Poverty and Producing Fair Trade, her Spring 2017 academic service learning project.

The prize was given by AIM2flourish, an initiative of the Principles for Responsible Management Education, of which The Peter J. Tobin College of Business is a Champion Institution. PRME supports the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which were established in 2015 as a call to action to address issues of poverty, inequality and climate change. “Escaping Poverty and Producing Fair Trade” was cited for meeting Global Goal #8, “Decent Work and Economic Growth.”

Cruz’s project profiles Fairtrasa, a company that promotes fair trade and helps small-scale urban farmers in South America to sell their products. It was produced under the direction of Professor of Management Charles Wankel, Ph.D., in his “Managing Through Social Media” course, one of three online management courses at St. John’s that involves interviewing business executives about their efforts to realize one of the SDGs. Cruz’s project features an interview with Fairtrasa’s owner, Patrick Streubi.

“AIM2Flourish was suggested to me by Dr. Linda Sama and it has proved to be a top-notch service learning activity for my students,” said Wankel, crediting Linda Sama, Ph.D., the Associate Dean for Global Initiatives and the Executive Director of the Center for Global Business Stewardship at Tobin.

“I am so excited to be a 2018 AIM2Flourish award recipient,” said Cruz. “I hope that shining a light on the incredible work that Fairtrasa is doing shows that doing business that creates equal, equitable, and sustainable opportunity will help us accomplish the SDGs." 

Cruz recently completed an internship in the brand and events department at The Hoxton, a boutique hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She hopes to continue to work in cultural events and experiential marketing.