Editor’s note: Knight Foundation V.P. of Finance Juan Martinez is attending Wharton’s Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania for the next five weeks. He will be sharing some of his experiences learning more about social entrepreneurship and emerging economies in future posts.

Though today was my first full day at the Wharton Advanced Management Program, we actually began yesterday at 3:30pm until 9:30pm. The faculty didn’t waste any time trying to create a learning community among the 54 participants.

There’s a huge amount of diversity in the class, geographically (only 25% from the US and representation from Europe, India, Nigeria, the Mid-East, China and SE Asia) and industry (manufacturing, telecom, entrepreneurs, finance). I’m really looking forward to not only learning from the faculty but from my classmates.

Yesterday I was explaining what Knight Foundation does to a classmate, Juliet Anammah (an exec at Accenture in Nigeria). I told her that we try to find opportunities for investments within our communities that will positively affect and change systems.

Before I could finish, she said, ‘oh, you’re trying to create transformation.’

Smart lady.