Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
From HBS Student to Case Protagonist: Risking It All for Impact - Guillermo "Billy" Jaime
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
It’s rare to attend Harvard Business School as a student and even rarer to later become the subject of two HBS case studies. Billy Jaime did both. While enrolled in the Owner/President Management (OPM) program, his work building MIA, a for-profit social enterprise delivering affordable housing at scale stood out so strongly that renowned HBS professor Linda Applegate wrote two cases on his journey.
What makes Billy’s story extraordinary is not just the scale - over 70,000 homes built across rural Mexico - but the risk he took at the very beginning. He left a fast-rising corporate career at Cemex, voluntarily giving up roughly 75% of his income at a time when he had a one-year-old child at home. Without financial security or guarantees, he bet on a belief: that profit and purpose could coexist.
MIA’s model blends family savings, government funding, NGO partnerships, and guided self-construction, allowing families excluded from formal credit to own dignified housing. Billy shares hard-earned lessons on ethical negotiation with governments, refusing corruption, betting on volume over margins, and continuously sharpening judgment through education. The conversation reveals leadership rooted in conviction, courage, and responsibility, not comfort.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
- Conviction shows up in sacrifice: Giving up 75% of income with a one-year-old is belief in action.
- From HBS student to case protagonist: Impact in the real world can redefine who gets studied.
- Profit and purpose can scale together: Social impact doesn’t require philanthropy alone.
- Volume beats margins: Serving millions at low cost compounds both profit and impact.
- Ownership restores dignity: A home is not aid. It’s identity and pride.
- Fear is a feature, not a bug: If the decision isn’t scary, it’s probably too small.
- Your partner matters more than capital: Alignment at home enables bold professional risk.
- Governments are negotiable, not immovable: Understanding incentives unlocks scale without corruption.
- Education sharpens instinct: HBS OPM turned experience into intentional leadership.
- Wisdom is balance: True success integrates family, health, impact, and happiness, not just growth.
Books:
