Please read Part III below before reading this post.
Vignette #3: Social impact of a Tuckie
On the sidelines of the PE Conference, I met with Jacques, a Tuckie who I’ve known for the past eighteen months. After graduating from Tuck, he went to work for AIG, stuck with it through thick and thin, and is now playing an important role in an organization that was spun-off last year from the troubled insurance giant.
Apart from all his accomplishments in the for-profit world, Jacques is very involved in the society through his work in non-profit organizations. He is founder and chairman of The Global Syndicate, a group of like-minded individuals who mobilize their resources for paradigm shifting activities. Since early 2009 (mark the timing), the Syndicate’s campaign entitled “The Haiti Project” was helping raise substantial awareness and dollars for education, economic development, and health-related issues in Haiti.
Jacques is a Founder/Board Member of The Council of Urban Professionals (CUP)—a nonprofit focused on education reform, access to capital, and leadership development opportunities for under-represented groups. In 3 years CUP has mobilized 5,000+ people and $2 million+ for its programming. In addition to founding these organizations, Jacques is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a member of the Executive Leadership Council’s NextGen Network.
I knew about Jacques’ activities in the non-profit sector, but little did I know (until I met him at the conference) that his family hailed from Haiti and that he lost some of his family members in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck the country last month. Even while he was engulfed in grief, he never lost sight of what needed to be done for Haitians at large, whose suffering became more and more evident as the extent of destruction unfolded in the days that followed.
The Haiti Project, which was already up and running, was able make a difference in the lives of Haitians after the earthquake. Jacques was asked by George Clooney to become an Advisory Board Member of the Hope for Haiti Now Fund, which has raised tens of millions of dollars toward relief efforts.
You must be thinking Jacques is pretty old given his numerous accomplishments. Well, he graduated from Tuck in 2007. Yes, he is barely 2-1/2 years into his post-Tuck career and he has accomplished so much already! While my heart goes out to Jacques and his family as they cope with this disaster, I am honored to have had the opportunity to get to know him during my time at Tuck. I wish him the very best, and hope to follow his example in terms of how one can have a tremendous impact on the society while fulfilling one’s career aspirations.
My thoughts were drawn to a prism as I typed the above. The way I envisioned it, the base of the prism, the foundation, is a person’s value-system. The three faces of the prism are professional life, personal life, and social life. These three faces derive their strength and stability from the base, and where they converge is the pinnacle of that person’s success. I’m in the process of building my own prism, and my wish for each reader is to start building her/his prism as well, and start the exciting journey on the path to personal edification! (Continue to Part V above)
Read the full article: Vignettes from the past two weeks – Part IV