Wow..what an end we had to the semester! The Sloan Fellows class trip to NYC was pretty wild with meetings with four major Wall St CEOs- Merril, UBS, General Electric and NY Stock Exchange; then very welcome aesthetic stops with the Director of MoMA, the CEO of Time Inc and Ogilvy marketing agency. The final day was at the United Nations. It was a diverse bunch of amazing leaders all with different stories and advice for us. Many had undergone some unprecedented learnings over the last few months as the crisis unfolded and they had to deal with it.
We concluded it's important to be a strong leader in the good times as that's when many lose their heads...
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…
This brings me to our performance of Julius Caesar- put on by 6 of us women Fellows (or Fellowettes) during a toga party with light Italian fare. This taught us a lot about Shakespeare's insightful speeches which we can learn from as well as the power we can tap into from acting out such great leaders speaking to the whole of Rome. Hopefully we can tap into this again when doing public speaking.
The rest of the NYC trip involved Chanel on Madison Ave closing down the entire store and hosting a party exclusively for us; a champagne Botox party in a plastic surgeon's office and an insightful and considered guided tour of Stefan's favourite pieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was delighted to be moved by some visual stimulation after months of spreadsheets, powerpoints, S-curves and other strategic frameworks! Reed and I also visited Aquavit, the hip Swedish restaurant and had more than we bargained for, with their Christmas Plate!
I wrote a 30 page business plan about solar energy venture in India and presented to 10 VCs as part of a class with my team made up of a very smart undergrad. Engineers are incredible and they pick up Econ and Finance in a few weeks and wonder why it takes the rest of us years to study them!
Now I am trying to fly back to London despite the heavy snowfall..which although beautiful is pretty impractical in a city. Taxis don't run and I've been in my apartment for 2 days now. The Edgerton crew and I spent a lovely evening snowed in, reliving the student riots in Paris of 1968 by watching The Dreamers and drinking wine and rum..very cosy It's kind of nice, as my yoga teacher said, you HAVE to slow down and stay in.Also it's difficult to spend money, which is good for all of us, especially in these times of financial restraint and after a cash-blowing week in NYC.
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