Mallari: Scaling requires sacrificing high-touch individual attention to serve more people
Ana Rowena Mallari · Scaling a summer program into a national org (QuestBridge's Ana Rowena Mallari) | Masters of Scale · May 30, 2024 · at 15:17
QuestBridge Co-Founder Ana Rowena Mallari explains the operational shift introduced by former Yahoo executive Tim Brady to help the organization scale beyond high-touch personal interactions.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 25.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“He was able to convince us in a very compelling way that actually we could do much more if we just stepped back a little bit and allowed our energies to go towards a larger number of students at one time. Because at any given moment you can pour your, you know, pour a lot of time into one or two, and then suddenly you don't have enough time for, you know, the larger questions.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ana Rowena Mallari
Mallari: Low-income students missed elite colleges primarily from lack of information
“What we realized was there was talent sort of all over the country. That was just not accessing these amazing opportunities for lack of information and not even, I mean, they were extremely hardworking. They were very compelling humans.”
Mallari: Elite colleges use the QuestBridge application instead of their own
“And so over the course of time, what happened was the colleges realized they're getting more information through the application to QuestBridge, and the students are spending so much time Putting together these things that they actually didn't need additional …”
Mallari: QuestBridge has connected and supported about 30,000 students
“We've, Connected and supported these, you know, 30,000 or so individuals.”
Mallari: QuestBridge began as a 20-student Stanford summer program
“It was a very small residential summer program on the Stanford campus. Our very first program, I was, I find this delightful, the very first program was housed in a dorm, which is currently named Narnia. We had 20 students from all over the country. They were …”