From the outside, business development can look like a numbers game: leads identified, opportunities qualified, proposals pursued, projects won.

But behind every opportunity is a much more human process, one that involves building relationships, timing, judgement, collaboration and, ultimately, people finding the right reasons to work together.

For Mahlet Tadesse and the Business Development (BD) Circle, that is where the real work begins. “BD is the primary fuel that keeps work flowing, and members engaged in Eureka.”

It is a simple description of a role that carries a lot of weight within EIC. The BD Circle identifies, qualifies and pursues opportunities that are not only valuable, but genuinely aligned with the EIC community.

For Mahlet, the most meaningful part is not simply seeing an opportunity come through the door. It is seeing what happens after that: from being identified and qualified to being pursued and eventually won, and then watching how people come together to make the work happen.

Problems are solved. Leaders emerge. Members take initiative. Teams are formed. People who may not otherwise have had a reason to work together begin collaborating.

The opportunity becomes more than a contract. It becomes a point of connection.

Finding the right fit

One of Mahlet’s biggest lessons from leading the BD Circle is that business development depends on aligning four things: the right opportunity, the right client, the right team and the right time. “When any one of those elements is off, friction arises immediately,” she explains.

It is a useful reminder that winning work is not simply about finding an opportunity and going after it. The opportunity has to make sense for the client. The client has to be the right fit. The community needs to have the right expertise and capacity to deliver. Sometimes, even when everything else lines up, the timing simply doesn’t.

Another layer to that challenge is that people experience BD differently.

For some members, pursuing opportunities and thinking about where the next piece of work might come from feels natural. For others, business development is something they think about only after a project has already ended.

Part of Mahlet’s work, therefore, is finding a way to engage people across that spectrum without assuming that everyone approaches BD in the same way. That balance matters because EIC’s strength lies not only in the opportunities it attracts, but in the people who come together around them.

More than a pipeline

In 2025, the BD Circle met many of its key performance indicators and established an active opportunities channel with strong member engagement. Building on the momentum,new strategies are being implemented to amplify that impact further.

But behind the pipeline and performance indicators is a bigger question:

What does more work make possible for the community?

“Work is often one of the main reasons people come together.”

Within EIC, Mahlet sees that dynamic as a genuine strength. It is a space where people can collaborate in a supportive way, and where members know the community cares not only about the work, but about them as people. That changes the meaning of BD.

Bringing in opportunities is not simply about keeping a pipeline healthy. It is about creating more opportunities for members to work together, earn a living, contribute their expertise and participate in something larger than an individual project.

In that sense, the BD Circle sits at an interesting intersection between opportunity and community. A lead may begin as a response to a grant request, an email, a conversation or a cold introduction. But its potential extends far beyond that first interaction.

When numbers become opportunities

Business development is, inevitably, driven by numbers. There are leads to track, opportunities to qualify, targets to meet and projects to win.

But Mahlet sees the numbers differently.

“While BD is inherently driven by numbers, those numbers translate into real opportunities.”

A successful pipeline can mean a new project; a new project can mean a new team; a new team can mean members learning from one another, building relationships, earning income and delivering something meaningful together.

And that is perhaps the less visible contribution of business development: creating the conditions for other people’s work to happen.

The BD Circle’s ambition going forward is therefore not simply to generate more leads. It is to build a steady pipeline of projects that enables EIC to continue delivering impact, while giving its members the opportunity to work, collaborate and thrive together.

For Mahlet, that is what makes the work meaningful.

Because sometimes, creating impact starts with something as practical as creating the opportunity to do the work in the first place.

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