Action plan
By Aseem
[…] I hope to take on more quant based tasks with enthusiasm as I did during our consulting project and learn from my missed opportunities to speak up and give my feedback in a respectful manner.
“So how was your trip!?” “Was it dangerous?” “I have heard so many terrible things about carjackings there…”. Each of these questions and statements, I have heard on repeat when I was asked about my recent trip to South Africa. After coming back to Boston and making the final touches on our consulting project, I find myself reflecting not just on how incredible my time in Johannesburg and Capetown were, but also on what I could take away in my career, missed opportunities, and what could be improved upon for the next batch of students.
Upon arriving back in Boston and beginning the usual motions of starting classes again, I find myself thinking about the seminar and all the issues I had written about previously, especially in relation to inequality. I wrote and later spoke about how beautiful Capetown was with the spectacular sunsets at Table Mountain, the lush vineyards in Stellenbosch, and the epic views from the Cape of Good Hope. While this was all well and good, it felt in many ways like it was almost exclusively reserved for the wealthy elite, and to be honest…mostly wealthy white elite. As a person of color, it began to be obvious that all around Capetown, I would often be the only non-white person with my travel group. In some ways this was obvious while our group was in Johannesburg as well. The neighborhood we stayed in called Sandton looked and felt like a well-developed business area in any major city in the US, where mostly wealthy white people went out to or worked in. These mere feelings simply illustrated the overall sense of feelings that the country still has much to grapple with when it comes to confronting its legacy of the Apartheid. In some ways, I do wish that I had spoken up further about these feelings I had and had a more honest/vocal conversation about these issues, rather than simply writing about them.
Additionally after the week we got back to Boston, our team completed our report to the NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF). It seemed like after visiting the headquarters and meeting with the staff, our team came away feeling very positively and were able to deliver a specific and quantifiable recommendation/action plan. I was pleasantly surprised about how I took on a more financial role, concerning one piece of our recommendation, something I usually would feel uncomfortable about. Overall, I felt very positively about the other company visits that took place. Using my knowledge and interests as a joint MBA and MA in International Relation candidate, I found myself engaging with each company representative about how their organizations were affected by macro level problems with neighboring countries as well as the upcoming elections. However, I felt less positively about our tours. While in the historical township Soweto, I felt uncomfortable about the wording and depictions used by our tour guide to describe residents of Soweto. One suggestion I would make is for another similar trip to maybe work with a tour company that specifically employs people of color and/or residents of the township/community. It might not only give future students a better opportunity to understand the community, but also provide a more accurate barometer of what the country is going through when it comes to inequality. Again, I felt that this was a missed opportunity to discuss this with our instructor. If anything this trip has given me more sense to speak up, participate, and offer more constructive feedback.
Lastly, my thoughts on the overall trip relate to how I will make an action plan to take what I accomplished on my consulting project and what I learned on the trip to further my education plans and career. In the upcoming year I am excited to say that I will be taking a classes called Leading Sustainable Enterprises and Grassroots Finance in the Developing World. I look forward to the opportunity to leverage my experience in these classes. Since I will be working with IBM in their HR Leadership Development Program this fall, I hope to take on more quant based tasks with enthusiasm as I did during our consulting project and learn from my missed opportunities to speak up and give my feedback in a respectful manner. And as for the questions that people keep asking me about my trip, I can only answer from my own experiences and recommend that they visit and experience its beauty and contrasts.