Tal Dehtiar

The bottom line: it's all about business -- notwithstanding the fact it helps people in developing countries.

MBAs Without Borders is now headquartered in Oakville and its co-founder and president, Tal Dehtiar, says he's embarrassed to take too much credit for doing good.

With family roots that have stretched from Israel to Siberia and Latvia, Dehtiar is a global citizen, and it's on that stage that MBAs Without Borders operates.

Dehtiar came to Canada as a young child, when his parents, Emil, a cartographer, and Illana, an engineer who eventually worked at deHavilland upon settling here, had a last-minute change in their plans to emigrate to South Africa.

The couple, while raising their family, operated a pawn shop on Queen Street and then a three-store furniture business. However, Dehtiar's parents, who he describes as having an Eastern European work ethic, now run their own home decor shop in western Ontario and have come to embrace their son's not-for-profit venture -- upon graduation from McMaster University's DeGroote School of Business.

Armed with his MBA and a BA in communications from the University of Western Ontario, Dehtiar has a diverse background which includes previous work in the healthcare and mining industry in Canada.

He has worked on numerous international projects prior to starting MBAs Without Borders, including launching an agri-business to support rural communities in Belize, creating a small-scale volunteer program in Costa Rica and starting up and producing a radio show in Singapore.

So the type of work that MBAs Without Borders does is familiar.

With just short of three decades under his belt, Dehtiar has impressively travelled, worked, studied or lived in more than 50 countries, and speaks English, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish.

You could describe him as a truly global citizen. Using business principles to assist the needy across the globe is his mission.

From his Oakville home, Dehtiar isn't as concerned about commuting to Toronto as he is connecting with the world.

He is a recipient of the 2004 Ontario Global Trader Award, 2005 Arch Award, was nominated for the 2005 YMCA Peace Award and Canada's Top 40 Under 40 in 2005 and 2006. Just recently he was named one of the Youth Action Fellows for 2007.

Amid all that acclaim, MBAs Without Borders was founded in 2005 when Dehtiar and Michael Brown of Germany, who Dehtiar calls "one of the smartest guys I know," co-founded the agency while still attending DeGroote.

Today, Dehtiar runs it himself, serving as its president.

Having moved to Oakville with his fiance, MBAs Without Borders (www.mbaswithoutborders.org) operates from here.

"Genocide, rape and pillaging continue in Sudan and Chad. Zimbabwe's inflation continues to rise into the thousands of percents, Haiti remains the poorest country in the Americas, the gap in wealth in Brazil, India, China and Mexico continues to widen, and I can pretty much guarantee in the next year, there will be new wars, more malnourished children dying from simple things as lack of iodized salt and new economic crises in the developing world will emerge," said Dehtiar.

"Yet, with all those horrid realities that exist in the developing world - something always remains constant, it is the quiet secret rarely told --business has always and still can do amazing things," he said.

"We believed business can and must play a key role in bringing economic equality to developing nations and we believed young business professionals... MBAs, were the means to make that concept a reality," said Dehtiar.

MBAs Without Borders is registered as a charity in Canada and the U.S and attracts MBAs from all over the world, including Canada, the U.S., France, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa and Pakistan.

Its MBAs support small businesses and not-for-profits working in more than 15 countries including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, Pakistan, Nepal and India.

In its first year, MBAs Without Borders sent one MBA to support one business.

Last year, it supported more than 20 organizations.

This year, Dehtiar hopes to support more than 50 groups.

"By 2010 we hope to have supported close to 200 small businesses and not-for-profits in more than 25 countries," said Dehtiar.

MBAs Without Borders doesn't ignore cash however.

It collects donations and for every 200 people who donate $50, it can send an MBA volunteer to support a local business or NGO in Africa, Asia or Latin America.

Assignments are usually a couple of months. The MBA volunteer is paid and gains work experience or the experience of having helped out.

Surprisingly to Dehtiar, MBAs Without Borders has been appealing to those professionals aged 25 to 45, many of whom want to give back or find the attraction of working in another part of the globe -- often one fraught with turmoil -- somehow sexy or dangerous.

According to Dehtiar, MBAs Without Borders helps the middle class or small business operations.

By doing so, those businesses can then in turn boost local economies and offer employment.

That adds up to sustainable development.

MBAs Without Borders assists those who Dehtiar said, "Get it already," and assists them in doing even better.

The businesses in question must also demonstrate their end of the bargain -- by paying a percentage of the cost of sending the MBA their way, according to Dehtiar.

MBAs maintain blogs while on the job and submit reports on their experience.

And the experiences are many.

Dehtiar outlines an example of one that took place in Columbia.

There, a monkey was in danger of extinction because it was being exported as a substitute business when deforestation resulted from over-harvesting of the mountain forest.

As a means of providing an alternative source of income to exporting the wildlife, a group of people began shredding plastic shopping bags and crocheting the strips into colourful backpacks, purses and wallets.

The items were "discovered" locally and then further afield. They have now become immensely popular in places like California. They are a good reuse of plastic bags, so it's leading to an export of plastic bags Stateside as well as the import of the products, now including iPod cases.

MBAs Without Borders is called in to a situation like that to provide business acumen on taking the business forward.

Dehtiar said MBAs Without Borders allows the participating business to hire its choice of a pared selection of candidates.

The MBA volunteers provide a wide range of business support providing training to management and staff in finance, accounting, strategy, marketing, human resources, business development and more.

They also provide support on developing and implementing business plans, launching products and services to new markets, building sales and distribution channels within a country, developing fundraising strategies and managing projects in the field.

For each project, MBAs Without Borders recruits from more than 400 MBA communities around the world.

It receives 50 to 100 MBA applicants per position in the field.

And here at home, and afar, using technology is how MBAs Without Borders does its own business. It operates on websites like Facebook and MySpace and was recently selected as the first Canadian recipient of YouTube Grants, which will allow it to get free advertising space while visitors view videos on the website.