Nearly three weeks ago, I returned to South America for the first time since 2000. That was the year that I took my first and only trip to the continent for my first training session at McKinsey in Caracas, Venezuela.
I remember a city crammed into a large valley surrounded by beautiful mountains carved into by desperate shanty towns and mansions walled off from unseen but very real dangers like some medieval castles. But the people, like I've encountered almost everywhere else in the world, were friendly, polite, and helpful. The food was delicious. The mood was a mixture of hope and a wariness developed through seemingly endless cycles of growing prosperity and leaders who failed to deliver on ambitious promises.
Santiago, Chile was my first stop in a five-week long journey of countless meetings with government leaders, scholarship providers, universities, and other representatives to raise awareness of Carnegie Mellon's Australia campus. In addition, we're working in conjunction with the South Australia government to offer generous partial scholarships that will result in more applicants from the region in our post graduate programs in public policy and management, and information technology.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Chile is one of the wealthier countries in South America with a per capita GDP (PPP) at 59th in the world and, according the the UN, a Human Development Index placing it in the world's top 40. Unfortunately, like much of Latin America (and many other parts of the world), it also has a vast gap between rich and poor with a 2006 Gini Index of 54.
Like Caracas, Santiago it sits in a bowl formed by majestic mountain ranges like the Andes with weather like South Australia which supports a similarly rich agriculture and wine industry.
My hotel was packed with tourists and tour groups from around the world, all looking to enjoy a safe, clean managable city of five million. Even in what were described as "poor" neighboorhoods, the "wealth gap" wasn't so obvious. It's hard to believe that less than twenty years ago, Chile was lead by Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who rose to power in a violent 1973 coup.
One of the most obvious examples of how progressive the country's government has become is the recently announced Bicentennial Fund. Formed to celebrate Chile's upcoming 200th anniversary, the Fund was created by current President Michelle Bachelet (the only woman leader in Lantin America and the first in Chile's history) to provide thousands of post graduate scholarships to the country's "best and brightest" in areas like public policy and IT, and create a new generation of leaders throughout the government, business, and social sectors.
One country down, five to go. Next stop: Argentina.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Watch This Space
The South Australian Government has an exceptionally innovative program called Thinkers In Residence which brings some of the world's leading intellectuals to the state for extended residencies. Their objective: make specific recommendations and catalyze actions in areas of critical importance to the state and, in many cases by extension, Australia and beyond. The current Thinker in Residence is my friend Laura Lee, former head of Carnegie Mellon's Architecture Department and an expert on sustainable design.
At the conclusion of the residency of Geoff Mulgan, head of the UK's Young Foundation and one of the world's leading thinkers on social innovation, last June South Australia's visionary Premier, Mike Rann announced the formation of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (ACSI). This independent organization, seed funded with $6 million, intends to develop, test, and support innovative approaches to address the kinds of social problems endemic to South Australia and countless other "hotspots" around the world--clean and plentiful water, shelter, and renewable energy just to name a few.
On February 6, at an event honoring the memory of his political mentor, Mike announced that the ACSI was ready to spin-out from the nurturing incubation chamber provided by his government and formally named its inaugural Board, lead by Phillip Adams, one of Australia's leading commentators and polymaths. I was honored to be asked by the Premier to join this august group (albeit in a phone call taken during the 2nd quarter of Super Bowl XLIII, ultimately won by my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers).
In the weeks and months ahead, we'll name ACSI's first CEO, help shape its strategy and operational plan, and figure out where and how to start, borrowing liberally from and linking to related initiatives around the world.
As they say in Australia: "Watch This Space."
At the conclusion of the residency of Geoff Mulgan, head of the UK's Young Foundation and one of the world's leading thinkers on social innovation, last June South Australia's visionary Premier, Mike Rann announced the formation of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (ACSI). This independent organization, seed funded with $6 million, intends to develop, test, and support innovative approaches to address the kinds of social problems endemic to South Australia and countless other "hotspots" around the world--clean and plentiful water, shelter, and renewable energy just to name a few.
On February 6, at an event honoring the memory of his political mentor, Mike announced that the ACSI was ready to spin-out from the nurturing incubation chamber provided by his government and formally named its inaugural Board, lead by Phillip Adams, one of Australia's leading commentators and polymaths. I was honored to be asked by the Premier to join this august group (albeit in a phone call taken during the 2nd quarter of Super Bowl XLIII, ultimately won by my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers).
In the weeks and months ahead, we'll name ACSI's first CEO, help shape its strategy and operational plan, and figure out where and how to start, borrowing liberally from and linking to related initiatives around the world.
As they say in Australia: "Watch This Space."
Thursday, January 15, 2009
An Affair To Remember
On December 11, 2008, Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College Australia had it's biggest graduating ceremony yet with 50 scholars representing nearly 20 different countries picking up their diplomas.
This year's graduation was moderated by Carnegie Mellon's Provost, Dr. Mark Kamlet (a former Dean of the Heinz College), and featured Alan Noble, the Engineering Director for Google Australia and a Heinz College Australia Advisory Board member, as the keynote speaker.
In my role as Executive Director of Carnegie Mellon Australia, I get to give the "Charge to the Graduates" at the end of the ceremony, which is kind of a gentle shove out the door, a verbal line of demarcation between life as a graduate student and the challenges of the "real world".
Here are my remarks from a remarkable day:
First of all, I’d like to add my congratulations to all of our graduates and, in particular, the trailblazers that make up our first graduating class of part-time students. As someone who got two graduate degrees while trying to hold down a job, have a life, and keep my wife from forgetting what I looked like, I know how challenging this journey has been for all of you. Make sure that you take at least a few minutes to take great pride in your accomplishments.
And that brings me to my Charge to the Graduates.
I was pretty proud to get accepted into Carnegie Mellon as an undergraduate in the early 1980’s, although I probably didn’t understand how significant it was at the time. I was a pretty good student but I have to admit that my primary focus in high school was sports and girls, not always in that order.
My life changed forever about halfway through my first day of orientation as a freshman. I was sitting between two guys in a packed lecture hall. On my left was a guy who had worked at an IBM research lab over the summer. On my right was a guy proudly talking about the computer he had just built from scratch, from soldering the circuit boards to writing the operating system. As I glanced down a couple of rows, I noticed another incoming student, obviously from somewhere outside the US, working on page-wide equations located on the back cover of our new calculus book.
As a computer science major that had taken one programming class in high school and got a ‘B’, I was clearly in a new land. Unfortunately, it was a land where I had the wrong kind of passport, didn’t speak the language, and the natives seemed hostile.
I learned something pretty important in that moment—my success or failure would be directly connected to how much I was willing to change and how hard I was willing to work. It was also reminded me that having a good dose of humility is a pretty desirable character trait.
I’ve had lots of challenges in my academic and professional life since then but getting through Carnegie Mellon is still the toughest thing I’ve ever done. Ever though I eventually graduated from CMU as a University Scholar, I was so happy that my time at Carnegie Mellon was over, and so intent to put that difficult period in my life behind me, that I chose not to stay in touch with the university for nearly a decade.
So I hope that our graduates, this year and every year, enter the world with what I’ll call a “confident humility”. That while they take great pride in the accomplishments that we recognize today, they balance that confidence with a recognition that they have stood on the shoulders of giants—friends, family, classmates, and colleagues—to get this far and that they’ll need other shoulders—to stand on, depend on, and occasionally cry on—to make their difference in the world.
Congratulations again to our graduates. All of us at the Heinz College hope that you won’t be as foolish as I was and let ten years go by before you let us know what you’re up to. You’re now officially part of the Carnegie Mellon family and, like the family and friends that are with you here today, we’ll be cheering you on every step of the way.
Thank You.
Photos courtesy of Roy VanDerVegt www.royvphotography.com.au
This year's graduation was moderated by Carnegie Mellon's Provost, Dr. Mark Kamlet (a former Dean of the Heinz College), and featured Alan Noble, the Engineering Director for Google Australia and a Heinz College Australia Advisory Board member, as the keynote speaker.
In my role as Executive Director of Carnegie Mellon Australia, I get to give the "Charge to the Graduates" at the end of the ceremony, which is kind of a gentle shove out the door, a verbal line of demarcation between life as a graduate student and the challenges of the "real world".
Here are my remarks from a remarkable day:
First of all, I’d like to add my congratulations to all of our graduates and, in particular, the trailblazers that make up our first graduating class of part-time students. As someone who got two graduate degrees while trying to hold down a job, have a life, and keep my wife from forgetting what I looked like, I know how challenging this journey has been for all of you. Make sure that you take at least a few minutes to take great pride in your accomplishments.
And that brings me to my Charge to the Graduates.
I was pretty proud to get accepted into Carnegie Mellon as an undergraduate in the early 1980’s, although I probably didn’t understand how significant it was at the time. I was a pretty good student but I have to admit that my primary focus in high school was sports and girls, not always in that order.
My life changed forever about halfway through my first day of orientation as a freshman. I was sitting between two guys in a packed lecture hall. On my left was a guy who had worked at an IBM research lab over the summer. On my right was a guy proudly talking about the computer he had just built from scratch, from soldering the circuit boards to writing the operating system. As I glanced down a couple of rows, I noticed another incoming student, obviously from somewhere outside the US, working on page-wide equations located on the back cover of our new calculus book.
As a computer science major that had taken one programming class in high school and got a ‘B’, I was clearly in a new land. Unfortunately, it was a land where I had the wrong kind of passport, didn’t speak the language, and the natives seemed hostile.
I learned something pretty important in that moment—my success or failure would be directly connected to how much I was willing to change and how hard I was willing to work. It was also reminded me that having a good dose of humility is a pretty desirable character trait.
I’ve had lots of challenges in my academic and professional life since then but getting through Carnegie Mellon is still the toughest thing I’ve ever done. Ever though I eventually graduated from CMU as a University Scholar, I was so happy that my time at Carnegie Mellon was over, and so intent to put that difficult period in my life behind me, that I chose not to stay in touch with the university for nearly a decade.
So I hope that our graduates, this year and every year, enter the world with what I’ll call a “confident humility”. That while they take great pride in the accomplishments that we recognize today, they balance that confidence with a recognition that they have stood on the shoulders of giants—friends, family, classmates, and colleagues—to get this far and that they’ll need other shoulders—to stand on, depend on, and occasionally cry on—to make their difference in the world.
Congratulations again to our graduates. All of us at the Heinz College hope that you won’t be as foolish as I was and let ten years go by before you let us know what you’re up to. You’re now officially part of the Carnegie Mellon family and, like the family and friends that are with you here today, we’ll be cheering you on every step of the way.
Thank You.
Photos courtesy of Roy VanDerVegt www.royvphotography.com.au
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