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IDOIA ORTIZ DE ARTINANO
GONI: So my name is Idoia.

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I've been working with
Anjali Sastry for a year now.

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In two independent studies,
actually, I did two.

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I am in the class of
the Sloan Fellows '18.

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I just graduated two weeks ago.

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So when I came here to
Sloan, I was interested,

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and I was super focused
on working in intersection

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of government,
technology, innovation,

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and entrepreneurship.

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When I started
doing my research,

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I realized that there was
a super interesting space,

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that it's about the
startups doing work

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in selling to governments to
improve the service delivery.

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So my research, my
independent study,

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has been focused on this space.

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So to narrow the topic
of my independent study,

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the key was the work
that I did with Anjali.

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Actually, she helped me a lot.

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And when you come here
to the university,

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you have a lot of interests.

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And everything is super broad.

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You want to do everything,
and you can't in this kind

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of independent study.

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So having these kind
of conversations

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every week, several hours
per week, helped me a lot.

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So what I wanted to do
with my independent study

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was a combination
of research to see

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which was the academic
or these research

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papers already made in the
market, in this market,

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or in this specific space,
but also see and take

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advantage of the connections
that you have here at MIT

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to see what was going
on in the market.

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So with Anjali, we
decided to create

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what we call Public Tech
at MIT Series of speakers,

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that it was a good excuse
for us to go out there,

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say, OK, I'm doing
this research.

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I'm doing these
lines of research

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about these, these,
and these things.

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But I want to know what you
are doing in this space.

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So please, can you
come here to MIT

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and explain us
what you are doing?

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And I mean, that was amazing.

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I don't think that no
one is coming nowhere

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if you as a student go.

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But if you go and
you say, I'm studying

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what you are doing here at MIT.

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They come.

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So with this excuse,
we had several people,

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super level people doing
super interesting stuff, that

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came here to explain us
what they were doing.

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And afterwards, we had the
opportunity, of course,

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to take all that experience
and all that information

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to put it, in my case,
in my research paper.

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And that was amazing.

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Here in Sloan, you
come, and suddenly, you

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have an entire
ecosystem for you.

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The challenge here is to
understand the ecosystem

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and to know where is
your tribe of people that

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are interested in
the same things

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that you are
interested in and to be

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super efficient with your time.

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Because at the end of the day,
you have so many things to do.

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So that combination
of good classes--

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I mean like the state of
the art of many things

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in these classes--

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and this ecosystem on
opportunities to do

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and action learning and to
have this kind of interaction

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and debates and
conversations with people

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that are already doing these
kind of things, it's amazing.

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I don't think that
you will have these

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in many other universities.

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Well, I learned many
things during this process,

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especially because I was
interested in something

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super, super specific and
not necessarily very common

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in this school.

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So I was coming from
the public sector.

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This is a business school.

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But it still is a business and
administration school, right?

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So in Australia, you have
also in the government.

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So what I had the chance
with this independent study

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was like to focus on a
specifically this space

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that maybe I didn't have
too many chances or too

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many opportunities to
work on in other classes

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or in another events or whatever
that they had in the school.

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So the structure, the
work, in independent study

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is kind of complicated.

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I think that it's the
most challenging thing.

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Why?

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Because at the end of the
day, you have a lot of classes

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with a lot of a homework
and assignments due

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tomorrow or yesterday.

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So when you have these
independent studies

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that you know that you have
the whole term to do it,

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you are always having
other kind of priorities.

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So for me, it was key to create
an outline from the beginning

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and create a schedule
for that outline.

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So at least I knew, and I
was tracking my performance

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and my development.

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And that helped a lot.

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It's true that at
the end of the day

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you take this last week that
you have at the end of the term

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to focus or to create,
to edit, or to make

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it the substantial thing
of the independent study,

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but I think that I
did a very good job

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of doing these all these
research and everything before.

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I would say in the
first part of the term.

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Talking about the
challenges that I

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had when working my
independent study,

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I would say that maybe in
my second independent study

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that it was about,
as I said before,

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taking a case, a
real case, and use

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the research and the academic
content that I was studying,

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apply it, and see
what could happen.

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And so I started with,
let's say, with an idea,

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thinking that that was
the right thing to do

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and that it could work
in that specific context.

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For a specific example there,
I was studying in Peru.

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And when I went through
all the research,

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I was realizing that it
was not going to work.

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And that's super complicated
because it's a real case.

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It's real people working
with a lot of engagement

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and a lot of ideas or are super
positive about doing something

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like that.

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And I was seen studying
different cases,

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studying the research done,
studying all the information

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that I could get from
the MIT, that thing

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that they were doing.

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And I was studying.

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It was not going to work.

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So for me, it was kind of
struggling in the process

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because I didn't want
to tell them that,

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but I could not do it.

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So I remember that I went
through all the process

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of writing everything.

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And at the end of the day, at
the end of the process, I said,

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I need to put down
my recommendations

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and hard recommendations.

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Like saying, OK, so
there are some baselines

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that you are taking from
random that are not OK--

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blah, blah, blah, this kind of
things that it was kind of--

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And I had a
conversation with them.

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It was hard.

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But you can see
there the real value

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of the independent
study and the process

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that you are doing, right?

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At least I guess that--

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I don't think that they are
doing any more this project

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because the conversation that
we had because the research

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that I did.

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And that has value.

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But it was hard.