RIESTER

World Intellectual Property Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.

I am not an espresso drinker usually, so this must explain the fact that it is 2:30 in the morning here after a full day and evening and I am writing to share the day.  I think I found the cure for that mid afternoon wall I tend to hit at my desk when nothing sounds better to me than a power nap!

Today I was letting my mind wander around one of the consistent themes that come up when talking to Thunderbird MBA students and that is the idea of being a “global citizen.”  What does it mean exactly?  Am I a global citizen?  Do you have to aspire to run global organizations, or to travel extensively and speak multiple languages?  There is more for me to see and hear before I can offer anything deeper than the fact that I might actually be able to learn French if I really tried.

Tuesday in Geneva was unseasonably warm. It felt like a great winter day in Arizona – minus the brown cloud of smog.  Today was a day when our three person marketing production team headed out on our own to meet with an alumnus at his place of business in the morning and then bussed into the world renowned financial district of Geneva for photos that captured the essence of international business and finance here in this truly international city.  It was a lunchtime scene dotted with book fairs, vendors, cobblestone alleys, street musicians (some friendly, some not) and waves of elegantly dressed business folk maneuvering deftly through bicycles, trolleys, trams, buses and mopeds.  I don’t mean to poke at my hometown of Phoenix, but I wonder if a couple hundred years of business and culture in our downtown center would develop a similar richness and depth of character that you feel walking through this area?

Afterwards we rushed to the new satellite campus of Thunderbird here in Geneva. Historic Chateaus are used for classrooms. The student housing is in post-modern buildings. It all sits within a majestic public park at the edge of Lake Geneva. The snow-capped Alps were off in the distance.  I am sure a poet could find all the right words to describe the fall colors carpeting the grounds along with the young lovers that cooed at each other, perched on an old stone wall, while my photo partner Andrew and I ran around like crazy men capturing all the pictures we could in the limited hour of dying light that we had.

We closed our work day interviewing two students at the hotel.  One in particular, a business executive from Brazil, nearly brought us to tears with the recounting of the way in which he surprised his mother by flying his wife and young son to her home with him to Brazil to share the news that he was accepted to the Thunderbird School of Global Management.  For him the quest to be a Thunderbird student was a dream that started 12 years earlier.  The development sessions that the students participated in today were discussions about the concepts and practical applications of creating sustainable prosperity in global business ventures.  Sustainable prosperity is one of those unique Thunderbird applications that impress the principals of sustainability into the global business mindset.  For this student from Brazil, something clicked today and he was one step deeper into his life as a global citizen.

Below is a video we shot late this evening that further inspires the feeling of being a global citizen.  It is the bells peeling at Cathedral St. Pierre in old town Geneva.  For me it synthesized a day having immersed myself one step deeper into a global mindset, head swimming with the ever moving definitions of a citizenship on the planet and eyes keyed to capture the spirit of men and women striving to develop sustainable prosperity on an international level.  Sometimes you just have to stop and appreciate something beautiful to have it all make sense.

Bon Jour.

Robert Farthing
Geneva, Switzerland