“I’ll be studying ‘responsible’ business,” said Isserman, “focusing on socially responsible finance.” He said he will look at “how businesses and investors attempt to create environmental or social benefits along with profits.”
Isserman began to explore the field of responsible business as a co-owner of MAStorage while at Amherst. “In the course of running the business, we realized that there were some pretty easy and really helpful things we could do without changing our core business model at all,” he said. “If we’re sending out 60 trucks to college dorms, we might as well be collecting school supplies for [Hurricane] Katrina relief or textbooks for schools in Baghdad,” he added, describing two of MAStorage’s efforts during his time at Amherst. “We could also be sustainable within our normal rates while offering financial assistance, on an honor system, to those students who needed it as well as our services.” While at Amherst, Isserman was also a member of the men’s varsity soccer team, chaired the NESCAC Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and served as vice president of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS). Isserman cited work in Sri Lanka his sophomore summer (supported by an Amherst fellowship) and work at UBS Financial Services the following year as influential in shaping his research interests. “We need a lot of change, and market forces have a tremendous and remarkable power to create it—to create really powerful and sustainable change for the better,” he said.
Isserman plans to pursue a research master’s degree, fully supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust, in the highly interdisciplinary field of economic geography. He described it as “in some ways a natural extension of [his] research at Amherst, albeit on a social rather than individual, neural level.” Isserman’s senior thesis at Amherst sought to explore the neural and hormonal response when fairness is balanced against economic return.
Isserman cited the term “ESG Business, business taking into account the environment, society and (corporate) governance” as central to his work, along with the “allied, often synonymous fields” of social entrepreneurship and double- or triple-bottom line business, in which the creation of some other good is seen as a goal alongside profit. He said he was looking at “business that tries to make the world a better place.”
The Gates Scholarships were established in 2001 by a gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Scholarships’ Web site describes the ideal candidate for the program as a student “with enthusiasm, robustness of intellect, a willingness to engage and an appropriate humility that comes from an awareness that nothing is ever really simple.” Gates Scholars should also be driven by “a commitment to reducing inequities and improving lives around the world.”
“Noah Isserman brought here a genuinely original mind,” said Professor of English Barry O’Connell, with whom Isserman studied social and educational reform. “His curiosity leads him to ask probing questions. These abilities along with charm, wit and good looks make him as natural a leader as I know.”
Isserman also credited Professor of Biology Stephen George, the chair of his thesis committee, as instrumental in his work at Amherst. “Professor George is just fantastic as an adviser and teacher,” Isserman said.
After graduating, Isserman spent some months traveling in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia, including taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad with his brother. He said he wanted to take some time off “instead of jumping immediately into a somewhat arbitrarily selected, high-salaried, high-powered job with the title of analyst in whatever industry.”
Since returning from traveling, Isserman has been working as a consultant for non-profit and non-government organizations in Washington, D.C. He works for Common Ground Consulting, which he described as “a two-man operation that works to help social profit organizations on four continents do their very important work in better ways.”