tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35559794187113622642024-03-18T10:29:05.768-07:00derekpando.comDerek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-79476059265292149422023-12-06T19:31:00.000-08:002023-12-18T08:36:19.972-08:00My Pilgrimage to Cuba<p>First off, I’ve got to share that I understand that for many Cuban Americans like myself they can have a variety of feelings about going back to Cuba. In my family, no one has returned to Cuba since they left for political reasons in 1960. Many in the family have not gone back and discouraged others from returning until there is more political change and freedoms in Cuba. I understand and respect that. The goal of this is not to convince anyone of anything, but to just share my personal experience. <br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPLus8NiqSNMd3fnly4VSiUZopdOk11JRjbMYKFD5C8ITKyhi9yIkPGRyTJo3JxG7udGNxPyHadLy1I5tQCOQ1tkJ40FcbktkOEchuQ1tA_TnXQPCrCbkCR7mG8ZdP_bLFV_o5EeTbdo3NlovcyqEdD-Xxo72-KkgHS8NC_3_qo4uPXzr-F96DAXbyCgAv/s4032/2023-11-30_15-44-41_443.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPLus8NiqSNMd3fnly4VSiUZopdOk11JRjbMYKFD5C8ITKyhi9yIkPGRyTJo3JxG7udGNxPyHadLy1I5tQCOQ1tkJ40FcbktkOEchuQ1tA_TnXQPCrCbkCR7mG8ZdP_bLFV_o5EeTbdo3NlovcyqEdD-Xxo72-KkgHS8NC_3_qo4uPXzr-F96DAXbyCgAv/s320/2023-11-30_15-44-41_443.heic" width="320" /></a></div><p><b>Why did I go? </b><br /><br />I have heard about Cuba my whole life from my family. I’ve always been interested in and felt connected to Cuba. After someone would find out I’m Cuban American, the next question would often be “Have you been?”. Over time, the answer “no” to that question has bothered me more and more. It has been on my bucket list my whole life and in recent years I started really thinking about what was preventing me from going. Of course, there is a whole lot about the Cuban government that I don’t support or believe in, but I’ve visited plenty of other countries before where I felt the same about their government. I was born in the US, so I can understand why when I look at Cuba/US relations that it might not feel as personal as someone who was born there and felt forced to leave, experienced oppression, or saw upsetting changes first hand. <br /><br />Generally as well, when I see disagreements and conflicts big and small, I’m a big believer in getting face to face and truly trying to understand each other better is almost always a good thing. I make new year's resolutions every year and in January, going to Cuba was on my list.<br /><br />The fact that I’m nearing 40 might have something to do with it, but hey, I can think of a worse mid-life crisis to have...<br /><br />This would not be an ordinary trip though, going to Cuba is not a trip, or a beach vacation, but I really saw it as a pilgrimage and structured it that way. I wanted the trip to be about getting to know my roots, really understanding Cuba better and trying to help the Cuban people. There are already laws in place for American citizens that try to limit how an American citizen can benefit the Cuban government by traveling there, but we tried to go beyond. I believe that any benefit to the government was negligible, but the benefit to many Cubans and myself was extremely meaningful.<br /><br />Initially, I hoped to get a big family trip together, but ultimately it ended up being, for a variety of reasons, more of a smaller trip. It was myself, my brother Brian, my cousin Danny and a great friend from college, Alex who is also Cuban American. We all spoke Spanish, were experienced travelers and ok with a trip with a high amount of uncertainty and adventure. We viewed it as a scouting trip that would hopefully make it easier for us to return with more family members in the future. <br /><br />I read endless blogs, talked to tour guides and friends that have been to Cuba. Ultimately because I was OK with doing a lot of research on my own, we all speak Spanish and we were willing to be flexible, we decided to organize everything ourselves. There are several approved categories for travel for US citizens under the embargo, we traveled under the “support for the Cuban people” category. <br /><br />A friend that travels to Cuba often HIGHLY recommended booking as much as possible through Airbnb and it was a great decision. We booked our apartment and most of our activities through Airbnb. For the Airbnb hosts, their business lives or dies by the ratings, so they were all EXTREMELY attentive and helpful. Anything we needed, we could ask them for and if they could not do it, they would arrange it and make sure that you paid a fair price and had a high quality experience. <br /><br />We stayed in the Vedado neighborhood, it’s around 15 minutes from the most popular touristy area, old Havana, but I believe we had a much more authentic experience by not staying in the most touristy areas. It was safe and a short cab ride away from just about everything. <br /><br />Before we went on our trip, I got in contact with members from my church’s local congregation. The member I was communicating with was a Doctor. I asked her what they needed from the US and she humbly requested lots of over the counter medicine. We learned in some of our tours that something as basic as 6 ibuprofen pills would go for $10 USD on the black market in Cuba. Before the trip, we went to Costco and loaded up. My Dad lives in Miami and is talking to recently immigrated Cubans constantly (usually people he meets at Publix for some reason, I’ve started to suspect he eats lunch there almost every day) and they recommended we bring food, specifically meats, seasoning and coffee. We made sure to pack stuff for kids like crayons, baseballs, hair ties and more. <br /><br />A few weeks before the trip we got serious about investigating some of our family history in Cuba. My Dad, my brother and I started digging around and figured out our great grandfather was potentially buried in the most famous cemetery in Havana, <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crist%C3%B3bal+Col%C3%B3n+Cemetery/@23.1231116,-82.4015304,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x88cd775cc06cfebb:0xde85760caf852cd8!8m2!3d23.1231116!4d-82.3989555!16zL20vMGZycjZt?entry=ttu">Cristóbal Colón Cemetery</a>. My brother got in contact with the cemetery before we left and with the information we had, they told us they had a record and location of the grave. We were shocked, no one in the family had ever talked about any family graves. We also tried to track down the house my Dad grew up in. He had a few things like the address and the name of the neighborhood. We did some google map sleuthing until we thought we figured out where it was, then my brother found some Facebook groups for that neighborhood. He posted a google map screenshot of where we thought the house was in those groups and was shocked when he got responses that said “I know that house, I live in it”. We could not believe it. We made plans to try to visit both the grave and the family house, unsure if we’d find the right places or what we’d encounter but excited with a lot of optimism from the clues we had. <br /><br />If I think about what overall was most special about the trip, it was how we were treated. Everyone treated us nicely from the start, but as we talked to people one of the first questions they always asked was “Where are you from?”. When we answered “from the United States”, they always looked surprised and asked how we spoke Spanish. We then would launch into the explanation that we have Cuban born parents and explain why we wanted to come to Cuba. We always included our legitimate desire to know our roots and shared our plans of trying to visit important family sites. Most Cubans seemed very touched by why we were there and quickly shifted to “you’re family” mode. They would tell us we were part of Cuba and that we belonged there and we’d discuss our shared heritage. I never visited another country and had people make me feel like I really belonged there. It was a special, emotional feeling to feel our common heritage bring us together and bridge differences. I often felt like I was talking to family and would feel the spirit of my relatives especially the ones that have passed, in these Cubans we had just met. <br /><br />I had read a lot about the scarcity challenges in Cuba for food and other goods. We made sure to bring everything we needed like sunscreen, bug spray and hand sanitizer, so we never went looking for those things, but it seemed like they would have been hard to find. Food wise, we never had issues finding things to eat, especially with American dollars, but also we tried to go into the trip with an open mind and low expectations. That being said, we did eat some incredible food. I’ve been eating Cuban food my whole life and I like it, so I’m not sure how someone without that background would feel, but I immensely enjoyed the food. I do recognize though that finding food is a big problem in Cuba and was only easier for us because we were able to pay much more than a normal Cuban could afford. Our first night we had a truly, incredible and authentic meal at <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/El+Idilio/@23.1399154,-82.3930764,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x88cd777d3aed91fb:0xc494327a529eecb2!8m2!3d23.1399154!4d-82.3905015!16s%2Fg%2F119v84p90?entry=ttu">El Edilio.</a> It was an awesome start to our trip and we topped it off by walking the entire Malecon, which is a famous sea wall with a wide walkway that takes you all the way to old Havana. We even got some ice cream, which was fun because they had some very unique Cuban flavors. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBoTPnrx2vlWpyQNzoRYYYeUfvenS_Je-VCbDq5CUHSx7a5Dx1ONupVE1JU1Wakw5gloRpaaJVo4tyI7Mty2YKyc_vDp6E7GBi4qnxXD9fGD-Bebl97KENxkK-PBTqEsPg1qhpz7kYfeMfCLFNvJWeI83V8qewnei5PIXD6_u3Co-9ScCtbA4KpnnCvFl/s4032/2023-11-30_17-54-03_910.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigBoTPnrx2vlWpyQNzoRYYYeUfvenS_Je-VCbDq5CUHSx7a5Dx1ONupVE1JU1Wakw5gloRpaaJVo4tyI7Mty2YKyc_vDp6E7GBi4qnxXD9fGD-Bebl97KENxkK-PBTqEsPg1qhpz7kYfeMfCLFNvJWeI83V8qewnei5PIXD6_u3Co-9ScCtbA4KpnnCvFl/s320/2023-11-30_17-54-03_910.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDgoHVCku7i2DO7Gp-E2BeQl0LH7bW1d0BLZ6wxtJBvl2nHbPnAOpNGVm-qbYqvvQsu5SRYrl2G1kygGDrmSfU-aksCUqnChcZHCnuZ-oBlSUwyUOhnyYjEKqQm08r-J9Fct09DkgVwrnZ2UXTRQqkvhylx76QWx9_t5AWQmzbYKpKDQjt19J3C0tlfHrF/s4032/2023-11-30_18-34-43_733.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDgoHVCku7i2DO7Gp-E2BeQl0LH7bW1d0BLZ6wxtJBvl2nHbPnAOpNGVm-qbYqvvQsu5SRYrl2G1kygGDrmSfU-aksCUqnChcZHCnuZ-oBlSUwyUOhnyYjEKqQm08r-J9Fct09DkgVwrnZ2UXTRQqkvhylx76QWx9_t5AWQmzbYKpKDQjt19J3C0tlfHrF/s320/2023-11-30_18-34-43_733.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFuKRvU9MiJLxeyt_IU_iEKzxPe4gd8MOcqy26wzsVF6yLIW5YqbplVdUrIlFvzGEYzOOBWihSsOR8h3Q7BGJnC5Msojm0nUq5YldFKc8q4rf_q-1weHc7qX9-ck86-PytdB2Oa0NtM34QFqgQbZgFV8sHvrwGsvtZbZgNNfWTFzkp0D5XSS148_MB389L/s4032/2023-11-30_18-39-56_548.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFuKRvU9MiJLxeyt_IU_iEKzxPe4gd8MOcqy26wzsVF6yLIW5YqbplVdUrIlFvzGEYzOOBWihSsOR8h3Q7BGJnC5Msojm0nUq5YldFKc8q4rf_q-1weHc7qX9-ck86-PytdB2Oa0NtM34QFqgQbZgFV8sHvrwGsvtZbZgNNfWTFzkp0D5XSS148_MB389L/s320/2023-11-30_18-39-56_548.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRr3rRaHgKFIfHPbnsXJVi0s10FDPmctFt1d6D2X65MM9mOEx1asDvFT-8WDU3ELclnvJvmrIZWguaMWBVWn1YU_8hLQROIq_MtmpyVJjSeLIpw4sPbuNFXa3KqHyAiwChmhkabxmc6Wt1w-WzCDgT-6Tb85WHXed4U7_Ra-aXDpLHe6CBQFvmuviLuITy/s4032/2023-11-30_19-51-09_112.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRr3rRaHgKFIfHPbnsXJVi0s10FDPmctFt1d6D2X65MM9mOEx1asDvFT-8WDU3ELclnvJvmrIZWguaMWBVWn1YU_8hLQROIq_MtmpyVJjSeLIpw4sPbuNFXa3KqHyAiwChmhkabxmc6Wt1w-WzCDgT-6Tb85WHXed4U7_Ra-aXDpLHe6CBQFvmuviLuITy/s320/2023-11-30_19-51-09_112.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSjObaRGNraw9EhnibIW9MvjwmAr7ajbj8tA_Qa0QavHPA_rHs88Rf63uqS-slr4P4g2kxHsX3Kp_tWCwtlK4hxzwI09jgdxQAoFY2YhhIAScrm2S7xcoBL444mEY8bn2bj6l39M_hhUugCfQd_5KLp7fmtIfJ_we5jdVIVcXtJLkbxYgg_Uv-LCpQryQt/s4000/20231130_205905.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSjObaRGNraw9EhnibIW9MvjwmAr7ajbj8tA_Qa0QavHPA_rHs88Rf63uqS-slr4P4g2kxHsX3Kp_tWCwtlK4hxzwI09jgdxQAoFY2YhhIAScrm2S7xcoBL444mEY8bn2bj6l39M_hhUugCfQd_5KLp7fmtIfJ_we5jdVIVcXtJLkbxYgg_Uv-LCpQryQt/s320/20231130_205905.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><br />The second day of the trip we booked a breakfast with an academic with an incredible local professor named Eduardo. We had a great breakfast with fresh Cuban bread and peppered Eduardo with questions for over three hours about the history, politics, economics, he was incredibly thoughtful and it was a great way to kick off our trip. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhbmE9U5QiNM5nI3BNA-9CJIxuWnv6XDq9U3VPU42zLhJpbGMTDLhDKnZXXMsoyCIJT15yup7Ob2I3uTCTqhTJSJbpyJnfIlvDASQVPqCSfuX7lC9RoGzjK557slkJUVPb9IYn63AOVINpXBV1yf9VzJJtlK_f3c63_kzJQR87Esu_RHRNv24e8O2D3bgM/s4032/2023-12-01_11-03-11_372.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhbmE9U5QiNM5nI3BNA-9CJIxuWnv6XDq9U3VPU42zLhJpbGMTDLhDKnZXXMsoyCIJT15yup7Ob2I3uTCTqhTJSJbpyJnfIlvDASQVPqCSfuX7lC9RoGzjK557slkJUVPb9IYn63AOVINpXBV1yf9VzJJtlK_f3c63_kzJQR87Esu_RHRNv24e8O2D3bgM/s320/2023-12-01_11-03-11_372.heic" width="320" /></a></div>From there, we went on a street food tour. This felt super authentic, we saw almost no other tourists and everywhere we ate was filled with Cubans. Our guide was incredible. I got to eat some things I’d always heard about like Guarapo, but never tried. We also ate a lot of items that have become more popular as food has gotten scarce that are used to “matar el hambre” or to take the hunger away. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxXlproeXBCFP1DwBt6D_y8cfoGykgQp_ct8Ad9T-OSZ_w6M66zMcGIBs1FGy9G7OboAK4xtGM1ZnmHVwow3cunKICUs2j7iUdqiYKUpdrekqD7A7LMo2hj3uF9W2kMvARFwaeqPke3xzKu6Yw1fwKHIGZ4B-GWIqY6KPWKngitKfnc-dN9f9Op3BGjmNk/s4032/2023-12-01_11-45-21_237.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxXlproeXBCFP1DwBt6D_y8cfoGykgQp_ct8Ad9T-OSZ_w6M66zMcGIBs1FGy9G7OboAK4xtGM1ZnmHVwow3cunKICUs2j7iUdqiYKUpdrekqD7A7LMo2hj3uF9W2kMvARFwaeqPke3xzKu6Yw1fwKHIGZ4B-GWIqY6KPWKngitKfnc-dN9f9Op3BGjmNk/s320/2023-12-01_11-45-21_237.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXpaxOXEfBomD7sG919yye1PhrZ93oMWyvas-nrrFk1iErbZ3Wy-fIZeT9I0u0doS1xp8hBGp0OfLMypoDCu-OiLcLDk29ez2IU1p_595D1FmT4mGzNrIvsOS9OWHGDo5t7iy63RmnIPpDz7AZNUs-1qbH3dsmaXIxBOnsC0NwFei-XwRlWFTIs_foQLl/s4032/2023-12-01_12-55-58_287.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvXpaxOXEfBomD7sG919yye1PhrZ93oMWyvas-nrrFk1iErbZ3Wy-fIZeT9I0u0doS1xp8hBGp0OfLMypoDCu-OiLcLDk29ez2IU1p_595D1FmT4mGzNrIvsOS9OWHGDo5t7iy63RmnIPpDz7AZNUs-1qbH3dsmaXIxBOnsC0NwFei-XwRlWFTIs_foQLl/s320/2023-12-01_12-55-58_287.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxGyDZVBNzv1nx7uIBMDneqUUyaIlVlDsj3XQEy1BuqR3xpkD3ehkoqRiMfcX747fwxVBWcr030RJh0mnP8n48Hj9Ovlel0yV7ZmwPwEaYBq496tk6tL7Rh9KxWi3LhEYx68WiPXWhECMZPmaR9VOK6QnAXHSTyKEOyy_YgFIEOnBUowf1-Lx6eP2a5AB/s4032/2023-12-01_12-57-09_193.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigxGyDZVBNzv1nx7uIBMDneqUUyaIlVlDsj3XQEy1BuqR3xpkD3ehkoqRiMfcX747fwxVBWcr030RJh0mnP8n48Hj9Ovlel0yV7ZmwPwEaYBq496tk6tL7Rh9KxWi3LhEYx68WiPXWhECMZPmaR9VOK6QnAXHSTyKEOyy_YgFIEOnBUowf1-Lx6eP2a5AB/s320/2023-12-01_12-57-09_193.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2BYo8XRiWhAq91AZQhi0MsANqFOSXz1Lg4yiQYuFxCIo5W-bI5kSG1UF3xhfr1dLfcz9nVqgIft_QgevRMVwJyp0nhHkqMjdA-QvZfJBj3dGhRdgelqYwn20S4PLBXwneVKQN8Qnl2PqzVQxTj6KZJCyYUgy5dy9ZhLX4XsYZZ5GdW8pPIRwQoSzDcfow/s4032/20231201_113121.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2BYo8XRiWhAq91AZQhi0MsANqFOSXz1Lg4yiQYuFxCIo5W-bI5kSG1UF3xhfr1dLfcz9nVqgIft_QgevRMVwJyp0nhHkqMjdA-QvZfJBj3dGhRdgelqYwn20S4PLBXwneVKQN8Qnl2PqzVQxTj6KZJCyYUgy5dy9ZhLX4XsYZZ5GdW8pPIRwQoSzDcfow/s320/20231201_113121.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Right after that we arrived at the Cementerio de Colon, and a guide immediately spent an hour with us, took us to the grave and explained everything. It was a family grave site, so multiple people can be buried there and we were shocked to find out that someone was buried there recently. We did not know we had any family in Cuba still, but they explained that only someone who could prove family lineage would have been able to be buried and they are going to give us the contact information of whoever arranged the recent burial. We are continuing to investigate, but it looks like we might still have family in Cuba. We feel super grateful that all of our plans to connect with our family history went incredible. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FbTW7cuSLOtik8WzHnSCyoYOhA-f6SQxgGuk5OfEw3_G9J_LWAtYESQNazv5IiIAPdIX8xrq4x7RxpEIJHwMAQkKS2lAIM0dExdyrFR1QeRGzZQAd_ugIUnN4Io7kvGSwk4pV64WpGhOTFVTH8YlYybTZ_oDN6qLSv0eBzFGdBLBtt_WMqsoXmTeg1yv/s4032/IMG_5427.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5FbTW7cuSLOtik8WzHnSCyoYOhA-f6SQxgGuk5OfEw3_G9J_LWAtYESQNazv5IiIAPdIX8xrq4x7RxpEIJHwMAQkKS2lAIM0dExdyrFR1QeRGzZQAd_ugIUnN4Io7kvGSwk4pV64WpGhOTFVTH8YlYybTZ_oDN6qLSv0eBzFGdBLBtt_WMqsoXmTeg1yv/s320/IMG_5427.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHFXKitVdxiRI38gcLeNyor5Gvw3ArcoCChDlDm-0hz7OJHE4ZxptxlmQ-D4YCwXbhWe58ktv_kujnEbEtUv0qqOqdPrahdwM6MAtKrtgTzSt7wj6ISfHDC-SHpYMvHVEprB6jaOWTn2vAi7ZZ2aLaiyc9QVW4_jpa4MAH_LaPa0PXffx0D5I7N4jMxjun/s4032/2023-12-01_15-33-47_200.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHFXKitVdxiRI38gcLeNyor5Gvw3ArcoCChDlDm-0hz7OJHE4ZxptxlmQ-D4YCwXbhWe58ktv_kujnEbEtUv0qqOqdPrahdwM6MAtKrtgTzSt7wj6ISfHDC-SHpYMvHVEprB6jaOWTn2vAi7ZZ2aLaiyc9QVW4_jpa4MAH_LaPa0PXffx0D5I7N4jMxjun/s320/2023-12-01_15-33-47_200.heic" width="320" /></a></div>That night we went to a Cuban cooking class we had booked through Airbnb. We arrived pretty late unintentionally, but luckily our hosts were quick to forgive us. Almost all of us love to cook, so the cooking class was a real highlight. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGATIu94r4D6ynFHAvlXOwgSwBaJveReL_1gXTy6JxDoOj-2gyZKK-wH7ShqGVpu3OWMig9mYPExHuDd0Cq0dDz6LMqiW49_WJpiCwesnAPl6fnxxMKW9frQ0MudKhyyV1jJp2cvOfUeleuTlKS7ABDUNAmLyGf4K3wuzMtn-b8KKX6HJsn4mUpMjUCG4n/s4032/2023-12-01_19-44-12_016.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGATIu94r4D6ynFHAvlXOwgSwBaJveReL_1gXTy6JxDoOj-2gyZKK-wH7ShqGVpu3OWMig9mYPExHuDd0Cq0dDz6LMqiW49_WJpiCwesnAPl6fnxxMKW9frQ0MudKhyyV1jJp2cvOfUeleuTlKS7ABDUNAmLyGf4K3wuzMtn-b8KKX6HJsn4mUpMjUCG4n/s320/2023-12-01_19-44-12_016.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCvqJFuqKCFED_mH0dqciz_ZopjwHCJfs0qer3AhBh4HKJ-iGAEQ4L3e_iQXlIy64p-uK1GQHWC-QG4Y9QYDv43o4Q78lbWlhEg_5sIhHdbcbn_oPwRzKbdgsxgDa7ftdJx9fxRfMYkbCuPm7LsljxtQVe1FqpGOxJVmYMGdHLSWqC0e_TnDXzKx4CYq58/s4032/2023-12-01_19-53-35_563.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCvqJFuqKCFED_mH0dqciz_ZopjwHCJfs0qer3AhBh4HKJ-iGAEQ4L3e_iQXlIy64p-uK1GQHWC-QG4Y9QYDv43o4Q78lbWlhEg_5sIhHdbcbn_oPwRzKbdgsxgDa7ftdJx9fxRfMYkbCuPm7LsljxtQVe1FqpGOxJVmYMGdHLSWqC0e_TnDXzKx4CYq58/s320/2023-12-01_19-53-35_563.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi845eFV6-d9aNcbyw65T5swxzYF8LsdqtiyYl3OcVtPIgDEG8bpFDeBlCWy6QKyEAt_wuhR7hkalp6_8hU_QOnWrplrXttR3K4t0zSsHLNmIdomAt7NPz2B_Gd_IPXB1JdRcplPJ3srJY6XwTBKTTbzsHOI1JNGgS45hYvzu8AqqMMed3fUvKLNrLXeNCC/s4032/20231201_185413.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi845eFV6-d9aNcbyw65T5swxzYF8LsdqtiyYl3OcVtPIgDEG8bpFDeBlCWy6QKyEAt_wuhR7hkalp6_8hU_QOnWrplrXttR3K4t0zSsHLNmIdomAt7NPz2B_Gd_IPXB1JdRcplPJ3srJY6XwTBKTTbzsHOI1JNGgS45hYvzu8AqqMMed3fUvKLNrLXeNCC/s320/20231201_185413.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>The next day we went to explore a little bit of the coast so we booked an excursion that took us to some sites along the coast. I can tell you this, we did not see a lot or see the “best” beaches in Cuba, but what we saw was incredible. A really highlight was the lunch which was at someone’s house in a fishing village. It was a real fishing village and afterwards we went out to talk to fishman cleaning fish on the water's edge. A funny moment from the visit, I went inside to go to the restroom and got chatting with the two ladies that made us lunch and one of them was probably in her 80’s. She looks at me and says, “one of the other guys out there is a Dr, right?” She had not talked to the rest of the group yet, but she said she could tell by looking at him. She was right, my brother is a doctor. We all had a good laugh about that and I thought a lot about how my mom, who is not alive anymore, would have enjoyed that story as she was always very proud of her Doctor son. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwBpYTsvpNUcDFgH5rZ4fHbiCdm3-FNmYYv1daS-Cq48Es0epkRubUYptfXY_gbPSfy4OH_FpXUeSOzx6amI0r4zH8KK-GBKEiv-QEDtzp6qfC8PghKTMj4MCXitdLBH55_oW5BVatXI2cft9HNLKaAkj3NXm2lkKnYKxOmkBRly7nWERK4aD40cHE90Oh/s4032/20231202_135133.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwBpYTsvpNUcDFgH5rZ4fHbiCdm3-FNmYYv1daS-Cq48Es0epkRubUYptfXY_gbPSfy4OH_FpXUeSOzx6amI0r4zH8KK-GBKEiv-QEDtzp6qfC8PghKTMj4MCXitdLBH55_oW5BVatXI2cft9HNLKaAkj3NXm2lkKnYKxOmkBRly7nWERK4aD40cHE90Oh/s320/20231202_135133.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2_xYK_mJrbBe6j47ouGXcNLLq6AyU0My2WmQR5UiG3JUR8hPXkbLsg-hsLZgkGv8g2gjf_2FnaFLtzR4DJS52F7KJGypDukWQkenVg410cCWMm8N85dNGS0OTnpghCX9J82SvTK8SM6LL27ZJP-bS4ikO6UUluzE2AGDGJvm7QEd9X04wDVIXsZJLlq8/s4032/IMG_5450.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2_xYK_mJrbBe6j47ouGXcNLLq6AyU0My2WmQR5UiG3JUR8hPXkbLsg-hsLZgkGv8g2gjf_2FnaFLtzR4DJS52F7KJGypDukWQkenVg410cCWMm8N85dNGS0OTnpghCX9J82SvTK8SM6LL27ZJP-bS4ikO6UUluzE2AGDGJvm7QEd9X04wDVIXsZJLlq8/s320/IMG_5450.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_CDdrUylPkomrZg37ve5ElSG0jY3lFjxptfqmyJP7tRMpzqHEBwi3KMaxJkwe9GmNb4loaGGyr-fmHJNWD3LuEB3lyTxVMjkpasPLGAJkEO3drOTTZb75ly1LDZvYIuJvMUfJX2JIJ70_XPsoqF969KA67eqsUvXJfy4pe58wAus2hYeLtOBqCp3j3cUX/s4032/IMG_5456.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_CDdrUylPkomrZg37ve5ElSG0jY3lFjxptfqmyJP7tRMpzqHEBwi3KMaxJkwe9GmNb4loaGGyr-fmHJNWD3LuEB3lyTxVMjkpasPLGAJkEO3drOTTZb75ly1LDZvYIuJvMUfJX2JIJ70_XPsoqF969KA67eqsUvXJfy4pe58wAus2hYeLtOBqCp3j3cUX/s320/IMG_5456.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_9wKs4wWgz1K-_MkzvzfydprMFbvkj3_xmb3oA2_RHw0kCLfZKR0liFUfQubw-aEYMKCiEXiXTmdMsX7jg8jPJMnE6FNuyqdChtbVJMqDBkIcgv8dCpyN0kapWNMQyDJi-Bfkav8l46WD7JqIu4a1yRBW6ruOxhf5MBZtjx0rBJaH39TRvtv308u3fZu/s4032/IMG_5470.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD_9wKs4wWgz1K-_MkzvzfydprMFbvkj3_xmb3oA2_RHw0kCLfZKR0liFUfQubw-aEYMKCiEXiXTmdMsX7jg8jPJMnE6FNuyqdChtbVJMqDBkIcgv8dCpyN0kapWNMQyDJi-Bfkav8l46WD7JqIu4a1yRBW6ruOxhf5MBZtjx0rBJaH39TRvtv308u3fZu/s320/IMG_5470.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>We went home after that, got cleaned up then set out in a taxi to find the family home, which is about 30 minutes outside of Havana. It was surreal to see it and to retrace my father’s steps that he would have taken to school and his Aunt’s house who lived around the corner. We were not 100% sure it was the right house, but as we were looking at some video footage from the 60’s and compared it to the existing features of the house, things like the windows and the tile patterns were identical. We spent some time with the family that lived there. They were very gracious and welcoming and we were able to share gifts that my father had given us to take. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoP0dzBChuFe5bvT8UGMnHGc6SY86D9_CPn2T7KhYwF2V6pHmpTzhQuRU1rdxyVZZmeOF4V1qfDZC877E98U6h0cNtEtzFE10y0MnyVWv4Eu9GITPM0c02fQDuRdndUd2QoogKnrjv5azjEcgKG4wOTe0oTr2m9vO-Nv9vpCh4HLMhnWlaVr7ooA-DNV4S/s4032/IMG_5492.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoP0dzBChuFe5bvT8UGMnHGc6SY86D9_CPn2T7KhYwF2V6pHmpTzhQuRU1rdxyVZZmeOF4V1qfDZC877E98U6h0cNtEtzFE10y0MnyVWv4Eu9GITPM0c02fQDuRdndUd2QoogKnrjv5azjEcgKG4wOTe0oTr2m9vO-Nv9vpCh4HLMhnWlaVr7ooA-DNV4S/s320/IMG_5492.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>That night, we had another cooking class and did not realize it was at the same place. Luckily it was a different dish but we had just as good of a time as the first night. We might have made some life long friends after doing two big dinners with the same two ladies. We topped off the night with some more ice cream and hit the hay. <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpW3duklu7oa6rTO6U_3bteHTaEmfZeh6EsmUNP2dEPF5X_yfRgmgpKmsN2QxtmiE-dX8_TNlfh5ySXt_0sOuw-CKikV7KrPnjqgmq7H_3Y5LJmI-kakiAVT99H09kusmgeht4Vggpwq2GuuMULJ6XWbYPSd7r_vLmc0dYlj1MflOXF06Djqn44m82CCe/s4032/2023-12-02_19-11-10_785.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpW3duklu7oa6rTO6U_3bteHTaEmfZeh6EsmUNP2dEPF5X_yfRgmgpKmsN2QxtmiE-dX8_TNlfh5ySXt_0sOuw-CKikV7KrPnjqgmq7H_3Y5LJmI-kakiAVT99H09kusmgeht4Vggpwq2GuuMULJ6XWbYPSd7r_vLmc0dYlj1MflOXF06Djqn44m82CCe/s320/2023-12-02_19-11-10_785.heic" width="240" /></a></div><p>The next day, Alex and I set off early to go to the University of Havana. He had a picture of his Abuela on the steps from when she went there and he wanted to recreate the picture. Unfortunately, the steps were roped off on Sundays, but after a little convincing the guard let us run up quickly to take a few pics. We then went to the local branch of our church. It happened to be a regional meeting of many congregations across Havana. We could not stay for the whole time, but we were touched by the warmth and welcome we received. Also, the meeting was held on the roof of the building in Havana, so hands down it was the coolest location of the church I have ever attended. It was fascinating to hear about their experiences, I was inspired by their faith and dedication. We got to learn a lot about how our church is operating in Cuba. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFdxLza4CARhM00WFn36016QX_Yh4comYY89bbu9RueGLPp8Rrg2vdVvo6cg6HbI7VUpsdss-I1A7zurvHUNxj-47m7rGoEjNZSpIlol4YflXGlyEhc8Hk09duWBvKFSTdXL26s4Upt_uhZiq7IZZcsjMIXRLJz_xnrrRRnZjCRHJsnhtge_f0a9v0-6n/s4032/2023-12-03_09-02-36_808.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDFdxLza4CARhM00WFn36016QX_Yh4comYY89bbu9RueGLPp8Rrg2vdVvo6cg6HbI7VUpsdss-I1A7zurvHUNxj-47m7rGoEjNZSpIlol4YflXGlyEhc8Hk09duWBvKFSTdXL26s4Upt_uhZiq7IZZcsjMIXRLJz_xnrrRRnZjCRHJsnhtge_f0a9v0-6n/s320/2023-12-03_09-02-36_808.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii1pJCowERmgxecjgyawjW61nKPiLIKrVBd-F9W31kh0Iz4unvoQvXHxycf-8Fr9IPNNamzosMDat-KgzPPzTzKLCq0YMEJwDzoA0JrOMD_-UBc6fdbULcN-peNum7JPhZyrLTwa7H-KWMNgRzc30atblZy1ZQKFJknsZW_xSWRCxmkm-Uf4A7Kuu5IQhG/s4032/2023-12-03_09-02-48_276.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii1pJCowERmgxecjgyawjW61nKPiLIKrVBd-F9W31kh0Iz4unvoQvXHxycf-8Fr9IPNNamzosMDat-KgzPPzTzKLCq0YMEJwDzoA0JrOMD_-UBc6fdbULcN-peNum7JPhZyrLTwa7H-KWMNgRzc30atblZy1ZQKFJknsZW_xSWRCxmkm-Uf4A7Kuu5IQhG/s320/2023-12-03_09-02-48_276.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPO53Twpw420Ae-pMhOGLlOMc_5uW9y1FCrzQqnSAsX4pECPUKCu749QOGGCGMUtDJAiNuyhVIPkQLmExds57rJ4rCTuJcC0btjz8l9lrH98ofzUgjpZSAzDoFNWUdF6jO_tlvpyc-ioMFZtEdWNnblU2FIiIE4FpROF8AwV1nMd-3v816zRaOQm6_7y-J/s3648/20231203_080854.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPO53Twpw420Ae-pMhOGLlOMc_5uW9y1FCrzQqnSAsX4pECPUKCu749QOGGCGMUtDJAiNuyhVIPkQLmExds57rJ4rCTuJcC0btjz8l9lrH98ofzUgjpZSAzDoFNWUdF6jO_tlvpyc-ioMFZtEdWNnblU2FIiIE4FpROF8AwV1nMd-3v816zRaOQm6_7y-J/s320/20231203_080854.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Since it was our last day, we decided we had to see some of the sites in old havana. We asked the professor to join us and he took us around for a few hours and took us shopping for some souvenirs for our kids. It was really awesome and interesting, but that definitely felt like a more tourist experience, compared to the rest of the trip, but I’m glad we got to see a lot of those famous sites. We then rushed back to our apartment, packed up and headed home. We were only there for three and a half days, but had an incredible time. Cuba has always felt a world away, but the reality is it’s only 90 miles off the coast of Florida. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_G-dzFBngPhr5Lf0uPRg8ADCOb693P3XRb6qQibAB4vPlh_wKe2oFfhY8LH9TKyY1IlZYZzFb2QRROnpKzPgfL-h6D4_gPwyBjvuf6X7QCMHcnhxHjSrNJThCpqj-PYEKp4o2EAMtyrsFyFQfRx-5mxIbyuEZj129owp7ExsrUPzLvyzuwpqrhTkwIBD/s4032/2023-12-03_13-44-41_127.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_G-dzFBngPhr5Lf0uPRg8ADCOb693P3XRb6qQibAB4vPlh_wKe2oFfhY8LH9TKyY1IlZYZzFb2QRROnpKzPgfL-h6D4_gPwyBjvuf6X7QCMHcnhxHjSrNJThCpqj-PYEKp4o2EAMtyrsFyFQfRx-5mxIbyuEZj129owp7ExsrUPzLvyzuwpqrhTkwIBD/s320/2023-12-03_13-44-41_127.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1wV8_YAWHS50NQGCRCaTT9_kIq4bS1EMn3WaNkxpF01HrvjwtolInZTnHvuVRcPFH7M2HNQbkfMjnTCCjfJwcNrcoNsxu5D9SLZ0f1SOqPTBQ8k_pv8fnHd4xRbdMsofztAhU8KQWRiViJdLHJk2ZLP0tvwOB8fPfD8fT5zClwu7LGh29B5yIXLunvoJ/s4000/20231203_105021.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_1wV8_YAWHS50NQGCRCaTT9_kIq4bS1EMn3WaNkxpF01HrvjwtolInZTnHvuVRcPFH7M2HNQbkfMjnTCCjfJwcNrcoNsxu5D9SLZ0f1SOqPTBQ8k_pv8fnHd4xRbdMsofztAhU8KQWRiViJdLHJk2ZLP0tvwOB8fPfD8fT5zClwu7LGh29B5yIXLunvoJ/s320/20231203_105021.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ikWPUuOEBq5rtiVaBsElb-F_hYBd4sA2PrOVR7VRuAwBFZ7sv5aIsLyMm_3FajZYbHAxbaA7RWi0gK3yP1UNF6d-cz_DB2AnhI7il2cpssPim9jsFLBJmXWUsNDIjMyfXRJM4Ttt4mpiBLm8Y5WY8-0tzek3qd_Wp1cIfzkDD5f6anpPf8cLKpY3fhxc/s4032/IMG_5511.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ikWPUuOEBq5rtiVaBsElb-F_hYBd4sA2PrOVR7VRuAwBFZ7sv5aIsLyMm_3FajZYbHAxbaA7RWi0gK3yP1UNF6d-cz_DB2AnhI7il2cpssPim9jsFLBJmXWUsNDIjMyfXRJM4Ttt4mpiBLm8Y5WY8-0tzek3qd_Wp1cIfzkDD5f6anpPf8cLKpY3fhxc/s320/IMG_5511.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>The trip could really not have gone much better, it exceeded expectations. I think our deep personal reasons for going and our intense planning helped make it a success. <br /><br /><b>What tips do I have if you want to travel to Cuba?</b><br /><br />1. Go with an open mind. Do not compare anything to another country or trip, be ready to experience it for what it is. <br /><br />2. Be flexible. Cuba has shortages, blackouts and sometimes there were places that seemed closed unpredictably. <br /><br />3. Do your research. The rules, guidelines are constantly changing. Be OVER prepared. Understanding some about Cuba’s history and current relationship with the US is a good idea to fully absorb Cuba. <br /><br />4. Try to do some good. We brought lots of supplies and gifts, but you don’t want to just dump them on people in the street, try to be thoughtful about how you do it. <br /><br />5. Be aware of the difficulties of the Cuban people. Be gracious, flexible and TIP. On our food tour, one of the planned stops was closed, the guide seemed very worried about how we’d react, but we just rolled with the punches and had a great time. <br /><br /><b>How has this changed my view of US and Cuba relations? </b><br /><br />I think for me it confirmed that most of the animosity between Cuba and the US lies in small groups of leaders that are following their own interests. The embargo to me has seemed pretty ridiculous for a long time and a double standard in how we work with a LOT of countries that we disagree with. I don’t believe that something that has not been working for 60 years should continue. That does not mean that I don’t think there should be some things that the US can negotiate that are in its interests if it were to fully lift the embargo, but I think it mostly stays in place because of political inertia and florida’s historical position as a swing state, not because it’s the most effective way for us to nurture democracy in Cuba. It was clear that in Cuba so much of their challenges are blamed on the embargo and it’s an easy out for many other deficiencies in their form of government. The reality is that the Cuban people have suffered much more than the leaders from these policies and they have not been effective. <p></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-42418280853755299112022-11-05T18:07:00.000-07:002022-11-05T18:07:16.306-07:00Thoughts on Taking the Leap To Be an EntrepreneurAs with a lot of my blog posts, it’s half diary for me, half wanting to share with anyone who is interested, the why behind career moves, insights into some of my experiences and just generally things I’m learning. As of August of this year, for the first time since college I have taken the entrepreneurial leap and started my own company, <a href="https://beeloo.com/">Beeloo</a>. If you're interested in what it is and where the inspiration for it came, <a href="https://company.beeloo.com/our-story">you can check it out here</a>. <br /><br />In this blog post, I’d like to share more about how I came to decide to take this leap, which some consider to be drastic since I’ve worked my whole career for tech companies with at the smallest 500 employees, but usually large public companies with several thousand employees. <br /><br />To fully understand current decisions, we got to go back to my first job ever. In high school, I had a moderately successful lawn mowing business in my town in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. I had a trailer, employees, commercial equipment and even a few commercial contracts. I earned more cash than a teenager should have, a lot of fun and learned many valuable lessons (like don’t take calls from a customer during a nap because you won’t remember what they said or who said it when you wake up). After that positive experience, it was only natural I wanted to continue being an entrepreneur for my career.<br /><br />Once I got to college I focused my extracurricular activities on the goal of being an entrepreneur. I was the President of the undergraduate Entrepreneur’s club for my junior and senior year. As I got closer to graduation, the economy started to have a complete meltdown. (I graduated in 2009). I think I have a decent tolerance for risk but watching the housing crisis and everything else meltdown around me had me reassessing my plan. I accurately assessed that I had no money, no real skills and barely a professional network. It started to feel too risky to bet everything right after graduation. Ultimately, I decided I’d have to take the leap at a later stage in my career and I got my first entry level marketing job a few months after graduation at Salesforce, moved to San Francisco and started flying down the technology marketing career path. I remember a few friends and mentors being shocked because I had seemed so determined to start my own company. In fact, I remember talking through whether I should take the entrepreneurial leap with one of my professors and he told me “if you don’t become an entrepreneur now, you never will.”<br /><br />The entrepreneurial itch was always there as my career progressed. I got more experience, built my network and was saving my money. I got an MBA and a few years later I made a riskier career move by joining a late stage high growth company that most people at the time had never heard of, Zoom. After four extremely intense years at Zoom, I felt my time at Zoom was coming to an end and it was time to scratch an itch, but the entrepreneurial itch was not the only career “itch” I had. I’m also interested in the public sector and public service. I had a goal for a long time to apply for a 1 year MPA program, which I explained in <a href="http://www.derekpando.com/2021/05/my-next-play-im-going-back-to-school.html">more detail in a blog</a> post. After leaving Zoom in 2021 I went back to school full time. I loved my experience during my MPA program but of all the career paths and jobs I explored only one public sector job really stood out to me, which I pursued unsuccessfully. The timing did not feel right to go all in the public sector and public service, though my interest only increased during grad school.<br /><br />During my year in grad school, I talked to a lot of friends and mentors to get their take on whether I should take the entrepreneurial leap after graduation. I constantly got two very different pieces of advice. One was “go follow your dreams, you're a go getter, I believe in you, if you want to start a company, go do it.” The other advice was “this is a bad idea, you're throwing your career away, go join another late stage company like Zoom, but at a more senior level pre-IPO and make a bunch of money. As an entrepreneur you could throw away the prime years of your career”. I fully acknowledge that if I was optimizing for corporate career growth or money, joining another high growth late stage company for someone like me is a no brainer. Part of me really wished that was something that I was excited about, but I just could not get excited about going down that path again. <br /><br />My family situation and where we wanted to live also factored heavily into the decision. We have moved 4 times in the last 4 years across 3 states and with my oldest being 7 years old, we were feeling the need to settle down geographically. Before moving to Boston for grad school, we had bought a home in a suburb of Raleigh North Carolina, and really felt like that was a place that we could call home. Part of the appeal of North Carolina too was that our family “burn rate” could be so much lower than if we would have stayed in the Bay Area or settled in another large city. The tech scene in the Research Triangle is vibrant and growing quickly, making me want to be an active contributor to the community. Lastly, you work like a dog as an entrepreneur, but you get to decide where your company is based and you have ultimate flexibility, which is very appealing for my family given the age of our kids. <br /><br />Years ago, after my MBA I worked at LinkedIn and I remember grabbing lunch with a colleague. Her and her husband sold their company to LinkedIn. I shared with her my entrepreneurial ambitions and she very bluntly said, “if you want to be an entrepreneur, just go do it, you don’t need any more notches in your belt.” That advice really stuck with me. <br /><br />Overall, whether it be money, career or life decisions I try to think really hard about how much I will regret not taking a certain path and how irreversible the decision is. This all led me to taking the leap at this stage of my career. It might seem riskier, but it feels A LOT less risky than when I graduated from college. I have marketable skills and a deep professional network. This will help me with my current start up but also if I decide to return to a corporate job. I think one thing people worry about the most about taking the leap at this stage of life is money. You have to think about your bills, mortgage, paying for college for kids and healthcare. Since this is something that has been in my career plans for a long time, we’ve prepared financially, we can’t do this forever but given our low family burn rate we can give it a good shot. <br /><br />Sometimes I envy people who have careers with a singular path, purpose and goal, but I have come to terms I’m not one of those people. I have a lot of things that interest me and if that means my career zigs and zags, that’s ok with me. Most startups fail, but I’m confident that regardless of the outcome of Beeloo this was the right path and decision for me at this time. If there are any aspiring entrepreneurs out there reading this, I hope this gives you the courage to take the leap and be comfortable with some intelligent risks. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-13644632298345042322022-05-09T19:47:00.000-07:002022-05-09T19:47:20.274-07:00What It Was Like To Do a Mid-Career Year MPA Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School <p></p><p>If you're wondering why I did this program to begin with, I explained it in another <a href="http://www.derekpando.com/2021/05/my-next-play-im-going-back-to-school.html">blog post that you can find here</a>. I’m writing this post as a bit of a journal for me and to help anyone interested in a deeper view of what a program like this is really like. Going into the program I had three main goals that I had written down during orientation that I used to focus my time and energy. Here is what they were. <br /><br />1. Make sure this is a positive experience for my family<br />2. Build relationships<br />3. Focus my time/energy in exploring new areas <br /><br />For the first goal, this one happened way more organically than I ever thought. My wife and I have three kids under 7 and this would be our third move in three years, so we were pretty worried about what this experience would be like for the whole family. Luckily, I had got connected with some Harvard Business School students that also had kids and they gave us the best advice, which was to live at Soldier Field Park (SFP). SFP is Harvard campus family housing that is basically part of the business school, but only a 9 minute walk across the Charles river to my campus too. This ended up being an incredible decision. Graduate housing is done through lottery, but we were lucky enough to get a 3 bed, 2 bath apartment. It’s pricey, but it was worth it. We had instant community because our building was full of 2 and 3 bedroom apartments so there were kids everywhere. Not only that, but there was a playground basically right outside our door. When half of your neighbors also moved in at once too, it’s easy to make friends. It also meant we had access to all the amenities on campus and could walk into Harvard square to hang out or to eat. There was almost always something fun going on close by. After a pandemic year of being recluses, we made up for lost time with a vengeance. I’ll share more about Boston/Cambridge later in the post, but my Bay Area born wife, who is a tough judge of cities, absolutely fell in love with Boston. </p><p>Our oldest was going into first grade and ultimately decided to put him in a private catholic school in Cambridge. We had never considered private school, but we home schooled him for kindergarten because of COVID and the lottery system for the Boston public schools created a lot of uncertainty, so we decided to do it. It turns out, most of the school aged kids that lived on campus went to private schools. He had a positive experience and we were even able to carpool with other kids in the neighborhood. Overall, we were really quickly able to make friends and build community through our church, classmates and neighbors. The business school in particular has an incredibly well organized and fun parents club called Crimson Parents that we participated in.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLcEtrzWtEtDjhJzTJvQuklb3oQ4AM1f-GBC4NEtSAGvv4dTOsTLOhQtcOdH4yHS27CtEl9id9Fr2jNn8fEqdcdyIb3UCgVyraUe7YRayYD7gwpMejncIAVzHnWjSk79LON7NlA7oC86_yjGetPoz2xDJrdjw4_MwJQ3XF5Uwgcn6MR0YSiq9Yv7xRg/s4032/famboston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoLcEtrzWtEtDjhJzTJvQuklb3oQ4AM1f-GBC4NEtSAGvv4dTOsTLOhQtcOdH4yHS27CtEl9id9Fr2jNn8fEqdcdyIb3UCgVyraUe7YRayYD7gwpMejncIAVzHnWjSk79LON7NlA7oC86_yjGetPoz2xDJrdjw4_MwJQ3XF5Uwgcn6MR0YSiq9Yv7xRg/s320/famboston.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I had gotten the advice to really prioritize relationships with my classmates to maximize my experience. As soon as I met my classmates, I was in awe. It was such an incredibly talented, kind and diverse group of individuals. My program was geared towards “Mid-careers” so the average age of my classmates was probably ~40. About half of the 200 students in my program came from outside the US. In my class we had a Nobel Prize winner, a winner of multiple Emmy's, a professional dancer, musicians, doctors, diplomats, soldiers, lawyers, and the list could go on and on. The most inspiring thing to me though was that everyone was committed and wanted to be an active participant in the world around them, for good. No one talked about salaries, few talked about reaching career milestones, it was all about the issues or causes they cared about. Coming from a pretty capitalistic Silicon Valley career so far, it was a breath of fresh air and very inspiring to be so surrounded by those kinds of people. Being around those kinds of people made me want to do more for the public good, which is exactly what I had hoped for. I must admit that at times it was easy to get down as we studied some of the world’s most challenging problems. There were issues that I became much more acutely aware of, like climate change or I’d found out about a group of people that have been systematically oppressed that I had never even heard of like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people">Rohingya people</a>. That part was so different from my MBA. An MBA is all about the potential of businesses and growth, but in the end, this is the world we live in and seeing such passionate people tackle some of these problems gave me hope that we’ll figure much of it out. <br /><br />I’m a pretty social guy, but trying to balance the incredible social opportunities and home life is always challenging. I tackled this by setting some boundaries (things like, almost no evening classes) and being proactive about organizing social events that worked on my terms. I did a lot of “coffee” chats and lunches during the week and had to pass on a lot of week night 6pm dinners/happy hours. I also organized two class trips with classmates that were a mix of fun and meeting with alumni and organizations of interest. One trip was to DC in the Fall and another to NYC in the Spring. All and all, I feel like I was able to make many lifelong friends. One of the things I appreciated the most was how quickly our class became cheerleaders for each other. In our class Whatsapp group, almost every day someone is highlighting a classmate's work, or achievement and the whole group is full of positive encouragement for one another. </p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWxhylvhLZaGujQwAelzydtXTa6VDMvTZIGdNVCBB_q3F1ZK_SIImniAik3K9Cn3CRNIquCm0jsMp4IM00a6MngvQ0GMIdQcxCH3x5jauIh3GFBbeYQRl9CtKcKSul2PSjOI3YVr5y9yDPFpIhMXLArNjzcMxpRBu_jY3MEjCiZuZCr0F_eVDm_EnUGg/s2048/bostonclass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1463" data-original-width="2048" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWxhylvhLZaGujQwAelzydtXTa6VDMvTZIGdNVCBB_q3F1ZK_SIImniAik3K9Cn3CRNIquCm0jsMp4IM00a6MngvQ0GMIdQcxCH3x5jauIh3GFBbeYQRl9CtKcKSul2PSjOI3YVr5y9yDPFpIhMXLArNjzcMxpRBu_jY3MEjCiZuZCr0F_eVDm_EnUGg/s320/bostonclass.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>A big part of coming back to grad school was to explore the public sector, public service and a variety of other interests. In a one year program you really don’t get to take that many classes, so it was a struggle to decide which ones to take each semester. There were only three required classes in three different buckets, but each bucket had like 20 classes in it, so in reality you could take just about any classes you wanted and still meet the graduation requirements for my program. There were almost twice as many classes as I was interested in, than actually fit in my schedule. There were a lot of interesting classes particularly around leadership that I did not take because they were similar to classes I took during my MBA. I wanted to focus on new topics that I was not exposed to during business school. Below you can find the classes I took, which ones were my favorites (highlighted in yellow) and a little bit about each one. Some of these were half semester classes, which is why I have so many classes in only two semesters. </p><p><style type="text/css">td {border: 1px solid #ccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}</style></p><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" dir="ltr" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; table-layout: fixed; width: 0px;"><colgroup><col width="91"></col><col width="166"></col><col width="92"></col><col width="237"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Course"}" style="font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Course</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Title"}" style="font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">Title</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Professor"}" style="font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">Professor</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Explanation"}" style="font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">Explanation</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"API 205"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">API 205</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Politics and Policies: What Can Data Tell Us?"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Politics and Policies: What Can Data Tell Us?</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Hughes Hallett"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Hughes Hallett</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"I had to choose one required quant course and this is what I choose. It was a great refresher on stats and analysis all in the context of really interesting policy or political case studies. "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">I had to choose one required quant course and this is what I choose. It was a great refresher on stats and analysis all in the context of really interesting policy or political case studies. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"IGA 505"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">IGA 505</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Solving Tech's Public Dilemmas"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Solving Tech's Public Dilemmas</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Carter"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Carter</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Secretary Carter is a former US Secretary of Defense, it was nothing short of incredible to sit in his class each week and look at the tech industry through his eyes and experience. "}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Secretary Carter is a former US Secretary of Defense, it was nothing short of incredible to sit in his class each week and look at the tech industry through his eyes and experience. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"IGA 355M"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">IGA 355M</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Migration and Human Rights"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Migration and Human Rights</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Bhabha"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Bhabha</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"I've also been interested in the refugee crisis for a long time, it has been my issue and charitable cause of choice, but I did not know much about it. I really enjoyed just being in a class I did not know a lot about and soaking everything in. Learned a ton and more commited than before to doing what I can to help refugees of all kinds around the world. "}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">I've also been interested in the refugee crisis for a long time, it has been my issue and charitable cause of choice, but I did not know much about it. I really enjoyed just being in a class I did not know a lot about and soaking everything in. Learned a ton and more committed than before to doing what I can to help refugees of all kinds around the world. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"DPI 640"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">DPI 640</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Technology and the Public Interest: From Democracy to Technocracy and Back"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Technology and the Public Interest: From Democracy to Technocracy and Back</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Sweeney"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Sweeney</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"This class studies technology and society clashes, it was very interesting to look at technology development in terms of its impact on society, especially after spending most of my career in Silicon Valley. "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">This class studies technology and society clashes, it was very interesting to look at technology development in terms of its impact on society, especially after spending most of my career in Silicon Valley. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"MLD 342"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">MLD 342</td><td data-sheets-hyperlink="https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/93578" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Persuasion: The Science and Art of Effective Influence"}" style="color: #1155cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;"><a class="in-cell-link" href="https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/93578" target="_blank">Persuasion: The Science and Art of Effective Influence</a></td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Orren"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Orren</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"In between fall and spring you can take a two week accelerated class where you meet every day for two weeks. I took this class and enjoyed it a lot, it was a great refesher on the soft skills of leadership."}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">In between fall and spring you can take a two week accelerated class where you meet every day for two weeks. I took this class and enjoyed it a lot, it was a great refresher on the soft skills of leadership.</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"IGA 236"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">IGA 236</td><td data-sheets-hyperlink="https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/97822" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Cybersecurity: Technology, Policy, and Law"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #1155cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;"><a class="in-cell-link" href="https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/97822" target="_blank">Cybersecurity: Technology, Policy, and Law</a></td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Schneier"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Schneier</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"One of my favorite classes, Bruce Schneier is world renowned and just a knowledable and funny professor. I had always wanted to dive deeper into cyber and this was a great class to do it. "}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">One of my favorite classes, Bruce Schneier is world renowned and just a knowledgeable and funny professor. I had always wanted to dive deeper into cyber and this was a great class to do it. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"MLD 831"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">MLD 831</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Entrepreneurship and Innovation"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Entrepreneurship and Innovation</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Cavanagh"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Cavanagh</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"In this class we workshopped social innovation business ideas, it was a small class. Really enjoyed seeing all the different types of businesses you can create for the social good. There are so many ways to use entreprenuership to do good and we got to study a lot of different models in this class. I built out a business plan for a specific idea that I had during this class. "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">In this class we work-shopped social innovation business ideas, it was a small class. Really enjoyed seeing all the different types of businesses you can create for the social good. There are so many ways to use entrepreneurship to do good and we got to study a lot of different models in this class. I built out a business plan for a specific idea that I had during this class. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"DPI 896M"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">DPI 896M</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Crisis Communications"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Crisis Communications</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Haber"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Haber</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Really enjoyed this class, got a bit of PTSD as I relived my time at Zoom during the pandemic, but really good still to have if you're ever going to be in a leadership position. "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Really enjoyed this class, got a bit of PTSD as I relived my time at Zoom during the pandemic, but really good still to have if you're ever going to be in a leadership position. </td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"DPI 831M"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">DPI 831M</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Op-Ed Writing"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">Op-Ed Writing</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Green"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Green</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"This was a half semester small class writing workshop where we learned how to write op-eds, the structure, pitching and refined several op-eds we all wrote in the process. Only writing class I had every taken like that and LOVED IT!"}" style="background-color: #fff2cc; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">This was a half semester small class writing workshop where we learned how to write op-eds, the structure, pitching and refined several op-eds we all wrote in the process. Only writing class I had every taken like that and LOVED IT!</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"HBSMBA7475"}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">HBSMBA7475</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"CS50 for MBAs "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">CS50 for MBAs </td><td style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;"><br /></td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"In any graduate school at Harvard you can cross register. This was the only class I did not take at the Kennedy School. This was a entry level computer science class geared towards managers. I had always wanted to take a computer science class. Really enjoyed it and learned a lot. "}" style="overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: normal; word-wrap: break-word; wrap-strategy: 4;">In any graduate school at Harvard you can cross register. This was the only class I did not take at the Kennedy School. This was a entry level computer science class geared towards managers. I had always wanted to take a computer science class. Really enjoyed it and learned a lot. </td></tr></tbody></table><p>Between my classes, classmates, attending random lectures and events across campus I got to dive into so many topics I have been interested in, but had not had the time to go deeper. A few favorite moments, hearing from US Cyber Command, a discussion about the Israeli-Palistenian conflict, hearing from elected officials and listening to lectures on current event topics like the war in Ukraine. <br /><br />A few words about the Harvard community in general. The first day we moved in, I met a next door neighbor. We got talking and I asked him all the standard questions, what were you doing before and what are you hoping to do after school. In that short intro conversation, I found that he was a former Navy Seal hoping to one day build a hotel in space. In a lot of ways, that sums up what it is like to be in this environment. Surrounded by incredibly accomplished people with some big goals. <br /><br />In terms of academics, there is some truth to what they say about places like Harvard that “the hardest part is getting in”. I was a pretty average student in high school, better in college and even better during my MBA, but I was never the stereotypical straight A student that aced standardized tests. For me, believing that I could attend a school like Harvard only started to creep into my mind once I moved to the Bay Area after my undergrad and worked with a lot of folks from Ivy league institutions. Working with them took away a lot of the mystique around what it takes to succeed at those schools. I thought my colleagues were smart, but I realized I could keep up. As I did well professionally I think I just generally had more confidence in my capabilities, even if I totally sucked at taking standardized tests. In fact, my GMAT score was so low that BYU grilled me about it during my MBA admission interview. I found that my time at BYU prepared me well academically to do well in my classes at Harvard. There were classes where it took a lot of effort and work and some classes where it did not take that much effort. I also selected the classes I was most excited about and interested in, which were rarely subjects that I would not have excelled in. I think as an older student you are able to focus better and not stress out as much, so the academic side of it was not a stressful experience for me. I’m sure I would have completely drowned in an advanced econ class at Harvard. I felt like my best Professors at BYU were just as good as my best Professors at Harvard teaching wise, but I think the biggest differences comes from the professional renown and experience of the Professor. At Harvard it’s just often at a different level, same with my classmates. <br /><br />Harvard was pretty serious about their COVID restrictions. Luckily we had an in person class for just about the entire year. We did not ditch the masks until the end of Spring semester. There was a pretty formal testing program where you usually had to do a COVID test twice a week. There were some limits to different kinds of gatherings and canceled programs, but overall I’m guessing I got 85-90% of the pre-COVID experience. I’m glad that I decided to go this year. <br /><br />There are some funny quirks about Harvard. One of them is that once you're in, it’s really easy to complain about Harvard. I think people have such high expectations going into it that a lot of folks are shocked to find out that not everything is perfect, but no organization is good at everything so sometimes we all had to remind ourselves of that. <br /><br />Politically, I’m pretty moderate. I did my undergrad and MBA at BYU, which is generally pretty conservative leaning so I was bracing myself for whiplash going to a place like Harvard which I expected to be pretty liberal. It is in general, but not as much as I would have thought. I was pleasantly surprised, especially in the Kennedy School to hear some diversity in thought. Don’t get me wrong, there is a strong liberal under current and there were some discussion topics that seemed to be avoided because any disagreement with the general current would unfortunately not result in a productive dialogue, but the majority of my classmates I personally found to be very open minded, diplomatic and thoughtful. As a 2nd generation Cuban immigrant, who’s Dad fled communism, I tend to be in the “Pro-US, with all of its imperfections camp” and there was much more of that than I thought there would be, especially on the national security side of things. Many of my classmates were from different branches of the military which I think helped to create that feeling. Also, as a person of faith and this being my first experience in higher education that was not faith based, I was pleasantly surprised how all faiths were embraced. I felt like I could be my true self and appreciated so many of my classmates being open about their beliefs. I did not expect faith based motivations or experiences to be as welcome and celebrated as they were in a place like Harvard. <br /><br />A few words about Boston/Cambridge. This area had a lot of the same characteristics that we loved about Silicon Valley, the people are similar in a lot of ways. I have always loved meeting interesting people doing interesting things and boy this town is full of them. Especially coming from the Bay Area we were shocked at how clean and safe much of the city was. Having the Charles river run out into the ocean, passing Boston’s beautiful skyline just really makes it one of the most beautiful cities in America. We loved the history, architecture and quirks about Boston. I never had class on Fridays during my whole program and we went on so many weekend trips to Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island and NYC. As New England newbies we loved our crash course in the culture, food and all this area had to offer. Even with our aggressive weekender schedule, it feels like we only scratched the surface. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmg0P8iVl7odoEz2j7mQf8a6sWdte2_SAyIWVRIjrISajaKUHZ0cVqtr6wZN9CXJoZLdXxchAbQxjzcYCtejqVHGDLSR_hKmrFzotVfcL5Q4SfY3mDxtKnOu6cQidtYBpmxNrgt8pvaGjZaiBQqOSFjK67xI7jmKPi2-pxr3NTZVR6Sea-_enGjm67Tw/s4032/pandomaine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmg0P8iVl7odoEz2j7mQf8a6sWdte2_SAyIWVRIjrISajaKUHZ0cVqtr6wZN9CXJoZLdXxchAbQxjzcYCtejqVHGDLSR_hKmrFzotVfcL5Q4SfY3mDxtKnOu6cQidtYBpmxNrgt8pvaGjZaiBQqOSFjK67xI7jmKPi2-pxr3NTZVR6Sea-_enGjm67Tw/s320/pandomaine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>The cold is no joke and we are not cold weather people. I think the best thing we did was have covered parking and geared up. We spent a small fortune at the local Patagonia store, but it was worth it. We had never experienced a winter like that, but between the gear and a few well planned vacations to warmer destinations it really was not that bad. In some ways this past year felt like a gap year for the whole family. We are not staying in Boston, but I think Boston will probably forever be a very special city for our family because of this experience. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0W4-P4jhltoQhwwJXClHCWBBSuT8cQwYeCajffVelm0bR41PDY24z3t6YM4dscuFcR1AAjCPQCuM0x7M-gbpIxaWrGUdhyJ_nJ-tgZ4OPffrpAQbbYv0PaWxVVA34EztghTzl5MUH5BxAFqzCy2UnJEmaVde8VP4ob0hUUpXTW81G2vV5eJ9QskYVw/s2048/aidensnow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0W4-P4jhltoQhwwJXClHCWBBSuT8cQwYeCajffVelm0bR41PDY24z3t6YM4dscuFcR1AAjCPQCuM0x7M-gbpIxaWrGUdhyJ_nJ-tgZ4OPffrpAQbbYv0PaWxVVA34EztghTzl5MUH5BxAFqzCy2UnJEmaVde8VP4ob0hUUpXTW81G2vV5eJ9QskYVw/s320/aidensnow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>I’ve always highly valued new experiences, travel, adventures and learning. In that way, this program was tailor made for me. I think the value of graduate school often comes down to what you were expecting, which can vary widely between folks, but for me, this program met and exceeded my expectations. I felt like I was able to meet all of the goals that I had outlined at the beginning of the year. Going back to school was not only a career based decision for me, it was a mix of career, personal interests, my belief in life long learning and for fun. <br /><br />If you're reading this and thinking of going back to school, I have a bit of advice. The first is to really think about what you would want to get out of graduate school. Especially later in your career, the opportunity cost can be very high but your ability to focus and make the most of the experience is in some ways more optimal a bit further down the career road. I also think you should shoot for the stars. I’m grateful for some friends and mentors that always encouraged me to shoot higher than maybe I thought was possible. If there is no one in your life like that, give me a call and I’ll be happy to pay it forward and give you a pep talk. <br /><br />If you're thinking about this program, the best advice that I’d have for you is to tell a strong and compelling story about why you, why now and what this program will enable you to do. If you look at each class you can see the admission’s committee’s methodical approach to make a diverse (in many dimensions) class. Almost no one is that similar, so be your authentic self and tell your story clearly. <br /><br />If you actually read this whole blog post, at this point you might be very disappointed to realize that I’m not going to talk about what is next for me career wise. At the time of writing this post, some things are still in process, but once they are finalized I’m definitely going to share in another way too long of a blog post about how the past year has evolved my career thinking and why I’m doing what I’m doing next, so stay tuned!</p><br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-47108227141700611882021-12-19T19:26:00.001-08:002021-12-19T19:30:13.238-08:00The Christian Case for Supporting Immigration in the US<p><i>I wrote this paper in a class I took in the Fall of 2021 called <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/academics/curriculum/catalog/default.aspx?o=75687">Migration and Human Rights</a>. If you feel so compelled,<a href="https://help.rescue.org/donate/tax-deductible-gift"> please donate </a>to the International Rescue Committee. <br /></i><br />At the age of 19, I paused my university experience and went on a two-year, full-time volunteer mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Members of my church are often referred to by the unofficial nickname of “Mormons''. Missions for young people are a customary aspect of my religion and at any given time there are more than 50,000 (1) men and women serving as missionaries around the globe. You do not get to pick where you are assigned for your missionary service or the language you might have to learn. I was assigned to serve my mission in Orange County California attached to Spanish speaking congregations. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgK8pZCp1omK5pH3Ds_pQMTUC99Hp0pD6WaN-SB4LBFkE7s4cvMzqIcNrwGGGesvAMvi6_EjEJWPcHePy-kWJWTHgi06zjTUcQ1WAx1e_kB8Ep4v9H88-zPXpv4C2Z0Zl1tyoOLi_741ahXIGV4mXI7mRv2i4BdBlPgob6of9qcTx9hem8Or-Anqh6erg=s600" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="600" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgK8pZCp1omK5pH3Ds_pQMTUC99Hp0pD6WaN-SB4LBFkE7s4cvMzqIcNrwGGGesvAMvi6_EjEJWPcHePy-kWJWTHgi06zjTUcQ1WAx1e_kB8Ep4v9H88-zPXpv4C2Z0Zl1tyoOLi_741ahXIGV4mXI7mRv2i4BdBlPgob6of9qcTx9hem8Or-Anqh6erg=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p><br />Most people I met and interacted with during my time as a missionary were immigrants from Mexico and Central America, most of them came into the US illegally. Prior to being a missionary, my views on immigration were generally a reflection growing up in Republican dominated Texas and being the son of a Cuban refugee. My father came to the US with his siblings and parents at the age of six in the 1960’s. Cubans have enjoyed preferred immigration status in the US and tend to be less aligned with other Spanish speaking immigrants based in the US in terms of their views on immigration. (2) Simply put, they are often not as pro-immigration politically as you might expect from an immigrant community in the US. I don’t remember giving a lot of thought to immigration as a teenager, but likely would have disapproved of people crossing the border illegally. <br /><br />Spending two years inside the homes of these immigrants, developing friendships with them and hearing about their hopes and dreams significantly changed how I viewed immigration in the US. I found that most of the time these immigrants were seeking safety, freedom and economic opportunity. Some of the strongest motivations they expressed for coming to the US focused on the quality of life for their children or future children. Overtime I came to realize that I would have potentially made similar decisions as they did if I had been in similar circumstances. I also realized how their stories were not that different to the story of my own family. As the second generation of an immigrant family, I’m seeing all those hopes, and dreams of my Cuban grandparents play out as they imagined. Their grandkids are living productive, free, and safe lives in the United States. Most of the difference in experience between my family's experience and those of the Mexican and Central American immigrants today are because of differences in the US immigration policies. <br /><br /> Religious study was daily and significant part of my experience as a missionary. As I studied my church’s doctrine and reflected on the people and experiences, I was having every day, I personally and naturally saw clear alignment between the principles Christianity and a pro-immigration political view. The principles that were most impactful in driving my change of view were not unique to my religion but were basic and widely accepted principles of Christianity <br /><br /> For me, it was not just my experience getting to know so many immigrants, but a deeper understanding of the tenants of my faith and Christianity overall that drove me to have a more compassionate view of immigration politically. <br /><br /> In the many years since being a missionary, it has been clear that there are many who do not see the same alignment between tenets of Christianity and pro-immigration political views. This contrast became even more clear during the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and subsequent presidency. Though this paper focuses on Christianity, Harvard Professor Jacqueline Bhabha pointed out in her book “Can We Solve the Migration Crisis?” that “all the major religions also evidence a dramatic disjunction between scriptural text and quotidian practice”(3) when it comes to immigration. <br /><br />Republicans tend to be much more religious than Democrats in the US(4). The Republican party is dominated by Christian denominations with about 82% of Republicans identifying as Christian(5). Mormons, Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants are the most Republican dominated Christian denominations(6). This religious (mostly Christian) base helped Trump get elected and on the platform of instituting some of the harshest immigration policies in recent years. <br /><br />As the 2016 election unfolded in the United States, I could not help but be surprised by the level of anti-immigration rhetoric from Trump and his campaign, especially knowing how many of his supporters were of the Christian faith. The way he discussed and framed immigrants was shocking. The most memorable was in his formal announcement of running for president, he referred to those coming from Mexico into the US as “not their best” and went so far to generalize many of them as “rapists”(7). It was extremely unsettling for me personally to see so many Christians align with Trump’s policies and rhetoric, especially when my faith pushed me in the opposite direction in terms of my views on immigration. <br /><br /> Shortly after being elected, he started to make good on his campaign promises and began to roll out his immigration agenda, which included ending The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program(8) and eventually led to 400 executive(9) orders on immigration. The most visible of these policies was separating children at the border(10), which received a lot a massive amount of criticism and was eventually reversed to some degree. While President Trump took a much harder stance on immigration, tougher immigration has been a part of the Republican platform for a while. There is no doubt that after four years of the Trump presidency legal and illegal immigration is much more restrictive than it has been in a long time. <br /><br />I do not expect the members of any faith to be completely aligned to a political party or any specific policy among the many a political party will push forward. How different Christian groups prioritize and view immigration as an issue varies widely. In a 2019 PRRI survey(11), immigration was a top issue in the 9 different religious groups surveyed, but it was not the number one issue for any of the groups. It did not even make the top 3 for more than half of the groups. This leads me to believe that while immigration is an important issue for many Christian faiths, it seems unlikely to be the most critical issue driving voter behavior. <br /><br /> Who you vote for is very complex and few candidates perfectly reflect the views of the individuals they represent. Individuals must make tradeoffs and prioritize the different policies to be able to support specific candidates. The number of Christian voters was clearly influential in getting Trump elected but I think it would be short sighted to blame a religion for specific policies of a political party. Though, the commonality of faith creates opportunities for faith-based influence to impact policy. A closer look at some well-known biblical examples of immigration can serve to help those who look to the Bible as a source of faith to be motivated to support not just a more empathetic view of immigration, but candidates and policies that will reflect that view. My goal in writing this paper is that an understanding of Biblical and modern-day migration within existing frameworks of how to approach immigration challenges could be a cause for reflection among Christian readers of this paper. The biblical examples throughout this paper could be used in many religious settings to teach, inspire, and advocate for immigrants. It is also my goal that these parallels could be used by advocates, refugee supporting NGOs, experts, and policy makers to more effectively appeal to people of the Christian faith to drive more support and an empathetic view for migrants of all kinds. The high percentage of Christians in the Republican party creates a group of voters that believe many of the same things, speak a common language, have often heard the same scriptural stories, and potentially have some of the same faith-based motivations. In this paper I’m primarily focused on the US, but it’s worth noting that Christians are the largest religious group in the world. Christians make up 31.2% of the world’s population at around 2.3B people(12). Christians are an influential group in many democracies around the world, just as they are in the US. The arguments in this paper could be extrapolated to Christians in other nations as well. <br /><br /> In the book, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, leading thinkers in the study of migrants, highlight two core guiding principles in the world’s response to immigration. The principles are rescue and autonomy, which are also core principles of Christianity. The book goes on to say that “The duty of rescue entails ensuring that people in distress have rapid access to their most fundamental needs.”(13) <br /><br /> Few biblical verses capture the Christian principles of rescue as clearly as the book of Matthew in the New Testament. In the book of Matthew, the Apostle Matthew is recounting the parables Jesus taught and captured the following words of Jesus in Chapter 25:35-40 of the King James Version of the Bible. <br /><br /><i>35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. </i><br /><br /> These verses make clear what is the duty of a follower of Christ, which is aligned with the immigration principle of rescue “ensuring that people in distress have rapid access to their fundamental needs.”13 It is worth noting that there are no “qualifications” in these verses on who should be helped or deserves it, but rather focuses on if there is a need, the Christian duty is to act. One might argue that your duty to help others is more focused on those around you in your immediate sphere of influence, but this scripture explicitly mentions “strangers”. “Strangers” comes from the world “extraneous” which means “exterior” or “from the outside.”(14) This could mean Jesus was referring to someone that was an outsider in several ways. Just as modern-day immigrants can have different countries of origin, religion, and culture. <br /><br />Later in the New Testament the Apostle John in the book of 1 John was addressing a fragile new church trying to stay aligned with the teachings of Jesus.(15) In that environment, you can imagine how important it would have been for him to focus the attention of his readers on the most basic and fundamental aspects of Christ’s teachings. He was more explicit and direct about the responsibility of Christians to help those in need, even going so far as to say that if you don’t, the love of God is not within you. 1 John Chapter 3:17, “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” <br /><br /> The Bible extols true believers to rescue those in need and is full of examples of the principle of rescue in action. One of the most important was Jesus himself as a refugee in need of rescue. In the Book of Matthew in Chapter 2 we learn that King Herod, feeling threatened by the birth of Jesus, intended to kill the Child. Shortly after the birth, Jesus’s father Joseph was warned in a dream by God and was commanded to “and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word” (verse 13). Jesus’s father took drastic action to protect the physical safety of his child, which involved fleeing to another country. The same rationale for fleeing to another country, often illegally, is used by many modern-day migrants with children. <br /><br /> The story of Exodus is one of the most well-known stories in the Bible. The dramatic story of the Israelites fleeing persecution in Egypt is repeated often in the Christian and the Jewish traditions. In this story we have a group of people being oppressed that flee looking for freedom and better opportunities. One aspect of the story that is often overlooked is why the Israelites were in Egypt. Earlier in the Bible in Genesis Chapter 47, we find out that Joseph and his family were driven by famine to settle in Egypt.(16) The parallels to modern day reasons driving immigration are clear. Searching for economic opportunities and escaping conflicts are still major drivers of immigration today.(17) <br /><br /> In these well-known Biblical stories, you explicitly see the principles of rescue, but throughout the Bible you also see autonomy. On the topic of autonomy Alexander Betts and Paul Collier go on to say “But as soon as this is achieved - the child is pulled out of the pond - our purpose becomes to restore autonomy. A satisfactory refugee regime should enable people to help themselves and their communities, particularly through jobs and education.”13 <br /><br /> Returning to the story of Jesus fleeing to Egypt, eventually after the danger had passed, they returned. Not much is said about Jesus’s formative years in Nazareth, but in Luke 2:40 it says “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” Many Christian faiths assume he became a carpenter like his father. The story shows the need for rescue, but also implies a return to autonomy once the danger has passed. <br /><br /> In the New Testament you see the virtues of autonomy espoused in the epistle that the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy(18), who at the time was a young church leader in Ephesus. Paul wrote in 1Timothy 5:8 “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” The Apostle Paul also wrote to the Thessalonians espousing the importance of work and providing for yourself in 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.” He did again in 2 Thessalonians Chapter 3:12 “Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.” <br /><br /> The message is clear, working and providing for yourself is a good thing and a virtue of Christianity. Enabling others to obtain those virtues, such as immigrants who are unable during a time of difficulty, would be an honorable thing to do as a Christian. <br /><br /> Two of the most important guiding principles for addressing the challenges of migration are clearly supported throughout the Bible with many powerful stories of those principles in action. <br /><br />In Joseph Carens, book The Ethics of Immigration. He drew a powerful framing for how we should think about immigration ethically. He wrote “Whatever principles or approaches we propose, we should always ask ourselves at some point, "What would this have meant if we had applied it to Jews fleeing Hitler?" And no answer will be acceptable if, when applied to the past, it would lead to the conclusion that it was justifiable to deny safe haven to Jews trying to escape the Nazis. This approach will not settle every question about refugees that we have to consider, but it will give us a minimum standard, one fixed point on our moral compass.”(19) <br /><br /> The same comparison can be made to some of the most famous refugees in Christianity, Jesus himself and the Israelites fleeing Egypt. While I personally believe Joseph Carens’ analogy to be sufficiently persuasive as is, his framework could also be used to focus specifically on Christianity. As modern-day Christians, we should also ask ourselves when looking at immigration policies “What would this have meant if we had applied it to Christ fleeing Herod, or Moses fleeing Egypt?" The current plight of immigrants today is no less dramatic than those faced in the time of the Bible. In our modern day we have more than one million(20) Rohingya people that are stateless, abused and persecuted looking to flee their situation, not unlike Moses and the Israelites. In Venezuela we have parents that fear for the physical safety of their children because of not only an oppressive government but a dangerous lack of food, medicine and other necessities needed to sustain life. The dire situation has led to over four million Venezuelans leaving which is an 8,000% increase since 2014.(21) <br /><br /> Harvard Professor Jacqueline Bhabha was right when she wrote “despite the prominence of hospitality toward strangers as a core obligation in all major schools of religious thought, clear religious edicts collide with the practical operations of state sovereignty and personal and national self-interest.”3. I’m not naive enough to think that a simple understanding of Christian principles related to rescue would be enough to convince voters, but I do fundamentally believe that the Christian experience can be a greater force for good in supporting the 84 million people forcibly displaced throughout the world.(22) <br /><br /> The reality is that the Christian faith already drives many people to participate in helping immigrants around the world. There are many faith-based organizations that embody the principles of rescue and autonomy towards migrants like the Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS), the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and many others. <br /><br /> There are bright spots out there that many Christians are even willing to break away from their political party for this issue, driven by religious beliefs. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the reduction of the maximum number of refugees to 30,000, many religious organizations came out in opposition, including the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT).(23) I saw this in my own faith, which is headquartered in Utah and the state that has the highest concentration of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In December of 2019 President Trump gave states the authority to veto refugee settlements.(24) Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a deeply conservative and religious state, wrote an open letter to President Trump asking for more refugees based on the religious history of the state. He said “Our state was founded by religious refugees fleeing persecution in the Eastern United States. Those experiences and hardships of our pioneer ancestors 170 years ago are still fresh in the minds of many Utahns. As a result, we empathize deeply with individuals and groups who have been forced from their homes and we love giving them a new home and a new life.”(25) In coverage from The Washington Post of the unusual announcement from a conservative state in the height of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, they speculated the reasons Utah was taking such a dramatically different stance than other red states. One of the journalist's conclusions was that “The high percentage of young Mormons who perform missionary work abroad plays a role, as well. Utah may be landlocked, far from any international border. But its population has a comfort and familiarity with foreign cultures.”(24) <br /><br /> It seems as if my experience as a missionary and how it has shaped my views of immigration might not be unique, which leads me to believe that experiences, education, and messages rooted in Christian principles can convert more of the believers to believe in a United States that is more welcoming to immigrants. </p><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Notes</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
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Exodus from Egypt.” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 2018. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/pinpointing-the-exodus-from-egypt/.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Francesco Castelli, Drivers of
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of Travel Medicine</i>, Volume 25, Issue 1, 2018, tay040,</span><span lang="EN"><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/tay040"><span color="windowtext" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></a><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/tay040"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/tay040</span></a></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Introduction to 1 Timothy.
Accessed October 21, 2021.
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/new-testament-study-guide-for-home-study-seminary-students/introduction-to-1-timothy?lang=eng.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Carens, Joseph H. “10.” Essay.
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ethics of Immigration</i>.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chickera, Amal de. “Stateless
and Persecuted: What next for the Rohingya?” migrationpolicy.org, March
18, 2021. </span><span lang="EN"><a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted-rohingya"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted-rohingya</span></a></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees. “Venezuela Situation.” UNHCR. Accessed October
21, 2021. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/venezuela-emergency.html.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fleming, Sean. “This Is the
Global Refugee Situation, in Numbers.” World Economic Forum, June 18,
2021. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/unhcr-how-many-refugees/.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jackson, Griffin Paul.
“Evangelicals Argue against US Reducing Refugees to 30,000.” News &
Reporting. Christianity Today, September 20, 2018. </span><span lang="EN"><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/september/refugee-resettlement-trump-pompeo-asylum-immigration.html"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/september/refugee-resettlement-trump-pompeo-asylum-immigration.html</span></a></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Witte, Griff. “Trump Gave
States the Power to Ban Refugees. Conservative Utah Wants More of Them.”
The Washington Post. WP Company, December 4, 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-gave-states-the-power-to-ban-refugees-conservative-utah-wants-more-of-them/2019/12/02/d8de7b00-1085-11ea-a533-90a7becf7713_story.html?request-id=66d323ad-61e9-42c9-81fb-5651894301ba&pml=1.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Arent, Patrice. “Thank You
@Govherbert Pic.twitter.com/sb6yi0tZJq.” Twitter. Twitter, October 31,
2019. </span><span lang="EN"><a href="https://twitter.com/PatriceArent/status/1190041160183619584"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">https://twitter.com/PatriceArent/status/1190041160183619584</span></a></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.</span></li></ol>
Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-28624344785617132262021-12-05T19:23:00.000-08:002021-12-05T19:23:18.903-08:00Takeaways from a Tech Marketer’s First Semester of Policy SchoolI just wrapped up the first semester of my MPA program. This fall, I purposefully chose several tech focused classes. After spending my whole career in Silicon Valley working as a marketer, a big reason I came back to school was because I wanted to see technology from a policy and public good lens and boy was it eye opening. If you want a quick crash course on what I learned, here are a few key takeaways that I thought were most eye opening in no particular order. My two classes that helped shape these thoughts were <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/courses/solving-techs-public-dilemmas">“Solving Tech’s Public Dilemmas”</a> with Ash Carter (Former US Secretary of Defense). <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/courses/technology-and-public-interest-democracy-technocracy-and-back">Technology and the Public Interest</a> with Latanya Sweeney (Former CTO of the FTC). <br /><br /><b>1. The glory days of border less technology are ending.</b> The internet is segmenting and it will become harder and harder to do business across borders as countries move to regulate the internet more aggressively. Some of this is driven by privacy and security concerns but there is a whole lot of nationalism in the mix as well. The internet in each country is becoming a stronger reflection of the political system of each country, especially in authoritarian countries. The costs of going global are increasing dramatically. <br /><br /><b>2. Technology is neutral, but at its best has unintended consequences and at worst is a weapon.</b> Overall we were taught to look at technology to see the balance of the good it brings and the bad. There are many sectors like social media where society is starting to feel like there is too much bad for the good it creates. On the unintended side you see bias, discrimination in algorithms and unintended mental health consequences. As a weapon you're seeing state sponsored misinformation attacks, cyber attacks on infrastructure and more effective ways of making war. <br /><br /><b>3. Facebook is public enemy number one.</b> The one company that got brought up the most in my classes was definitely Facebook. Facebook has lost control of the narrative in public sector discussion circles, they are everyone’s favorite punching bag. Interestingly enough even those most adamantly against Facebook do not seem to be quitting their products, especially Instagram and Whatsapp (The de facto messenger of choice at Harvard’s Kennedy School). I think as employees in technology you have to look at the company you work for and ask yourself if you believe the impact of your work will be a net positive. I have many friends I respect at Facebook, but in policy circles it is viewed more and more like big tobacco. <br /><br /><b>4. Regulation for Social Media is extremely difficult in a Democracy.</b> We had several projects where we had to write policy memos about how to regulate aspects of social media and it was extremely difficult. I most often toiled on the assignment until I had no choice but to pick an argument not because I thought it was the solution, but because it was a decent idea and the assignment was due, but hey, maybe that’s politics? :) This dilemma is extremely obvious in American politics where you see how Democrats want to fight misinformation and Republicans want to fight censorship. Both parties have social media in their cross hairs, but for different reasons. Political gridlock will likely keep the status quo for a while so I won’t hold my breath for big changes anytime soon. <br /><br /><b>5. The government has been WAY more involved in making great technology than I understood before.</b> One of the most eye opening things was learning about how the US government has systematically invested in different technologies, especially post World War II. Seeing this chart below really puts things in perspective. If we want to maintain our technological edge as a nation we need to continue to invest. Governments can invest in ways and time frames that the private sector will not. Silicon Valley likes to take a “we built this” attitude, but under the hood you see the fingerprints of government dollars and research. <br /><br /><img height="300" src="https://nintil.com/old_assets/2015/08/19-1.png" width="400" /> <br /><br /><b>6. When it comes to Cybersecurity, no one and nothing is safe.</b> Frankly, the internet was designed for sharing and collaborating and it’s foundation does not make security easy. There are battles actively being fought in Cyberspace, but it’s extremely messy. It’s hard to know who your enemy is and the red lines are less clear. I attended a lecture with one of the US’s Cybersecurity agencies and you could sense that it’s the wild west of warfare right now. As more of our lives goes online, the more potential reward there is for people to hack you. After learning about all the scary stuff in Cyber security I’ve made lots of changes to how I use the internet. <br /><br /><b>7. If you think social media can mess up society, wait until you see what’s happening in biotechnology.</b> This is an area I knew nothing about coming into grad school. When we covered this section I was shocked at how close we are to doing some things in bio tech that could have an incredible impact and grave consequences. Designer babies are right around the corner as well as germ line editing, which means making changes to human DNA that are HERITABLE. Future generations could be biologically impacted by decisions that are made now. So many moral and ethical questions facing our society in this rapidly expanding field. <br /><br /><b>8. Large tech companies and employees will have to choose sides.</b> During my time working in Silicon Valley it seemed like everyone wanted to stay neutral to sell into as many markets around the globe as possible. My perspective was that many in Silicon Valley saw themselves as “global citizens” and above any allegiance to one specific country. Personally, I still believe in the institution of the United States as an imperfect force for good in the world. It is going to get harder and harder to stay neutral. Frankly, for America to maintain its technological edge, we need those in the valley to be on team America or at least team democracy. <br /><br /><b>9. Crypto lacks a killer use case and has a government hammer hanging over it.</b> I did not fully understand the importance of a monetary system to a country until we dove into crypto. Specifically for the United States, we’ve used our status as reserve currency in many ways to benefit us when it comes to foreign policy. I don’t believe the United States or any world power will give up that power. It does not matter if it’s decentralized, if you live in a country that has borders, laws and a tax man there are a thousand ways that can make sure they maintain control. I think there is a place for crypto, but don’t believe it will be the decentralized utopia many crypto fanatics paint. <br /><br /><b>10. China China China.</b> I could write 10 blog posts about China. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are extremely important to me. That tends to be the case when you are the son of a Cuban immigrant that fled communism under Castro. Overall, if there is one country that is working the hardest to surpass America when it comes to technological superiority, it’s China. They are making insane investments in automation, A.I., Cyber and every other up and coming field of science. It is admirable how they’ve tamed social media to reflect their system of government. China’s ability to monitor, surveil and control their citizens is the scary stuff of 1984. I believe that a stronger and a technologically superior China will make the world a less free place and that is cause for major concern. The US cannot take its technological superiority for granted. China seems to be hoping we do. <br /><br />There was so much more, but these are just a few things fresh on my mind. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-79211497671284883052021-11-18T18:28:00.002-08:002021-11-18T18:29:41.397-08:003 Books to Read to Get You Through a Career Crisis<p>If you've been following <a href="http://www.derekpando.com/2021/05/my-next-play-im-going-back-to-school.html">my blog posts</a>, you know that I've recently gone back to grad school to explore some career interests in a much different direction than my tech marketing career. This may seem strange to people I've worked with because if you know me, it's clear that I have really enjoyed my career so far. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhywb2sc137mwymWt2D2BejSg8cPcWUH-WTaOXK8T5Wl_hKRrGhqhCHf0zLca9NaGvdq1gCaMR8xpNaqGRkmTtxZwsZzLkfKhM4kOD7HCjhltafD23HCw7mS9lq6eKanmTd0zAu9AKts9i1/s960/crossroads.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="960" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhywb2sc137mwymWt2D2BejSg8cPcWUH-WTaOXK8T5Wl_hKRrGhqhCHf0zLca9NaGvdq1gCaMR8xpNaqGRkmTtxZwsZzLkfKhM4kOD7HCjhltafD23HCw7mS9lq6eKanmTd0zAu9AKts9i1/s320/crossroads.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> I'm not changing things up because I'm unhappy, it really comes down to having a lot of interests and a sense of adventure. My personal philosophy is that you have to spend a massive amount of your life working, your career should be an adventure and involve a lot of experimentation. I understand that it's a massive privilege to be able to view my career this way. Career changes, breaks and exploration can require sacrifices. It can be time consuming, emotionally draining and financially difficult, but ultimately if you feel the need to continue to explore, I believe it's worth it. <p></p><p></p><p>I was extremely sure of my decision to go to grad school again, but arriving here has not provided instant clarity on the exact career paths I should take after graduation next year, so I've been doing a lot of introspection. It's not really a "crisis" like the title suggests as I figured I'd find myself in this situation, but still has me doing a lot of searching. I've encountered a lot of folks that at different stages of their career also face a period where they really want to think deeply about their career. I've been reading a lot and asking for book recommendation, so I wanted to share the three books that have been the most helpful. <br /></p><p> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Will-You-Measure-Your-Life-audiobook/dp/B0083EG3A6/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1J1CZ5LHTVU4U&keywords=how+to+measure+your+life&qid=1637245276&qsid=145-9087851-4349826&sprefix=How+to+measure%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-2&sres=0062102419%2C1633692566%2CB08XLLF3PG%2C0978440749%2C1538719967%2C1101875321%2C0143125516%2CB078FZ9SYB%2CB08SGWNLV9%2C1733395741%2C0553386778%2C0578740583%2CB08NMMPCS1%2C1594743061%2C1625315104%2CB01DWSZ5U6&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">How to Measure Your Life</a> by Clayton Christensen. I've read this book probably more than any other business book when I start thinking deeply about career stuff. It has always been a great reminder to not abandon the other important parts of your life in pursuit of your career. <br /></p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Angela-Duckworth-audiobook/dp/B01D3AC5VU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FBEN5J9WHPUS&keywords=grit+angela+duckworth&qid=1637288405&qsid=145-9087851-4349826&sprefix=Grit+%2Caps%2C192&sr=8-1&sres=1501111116%2C1535437758%2C841662268X%2CB08JF5K2TS%2CB01K92NVEK%2CB07SMB6XQ7%2C1717436390%2CB07G4JFZ19%2C1785040189%2C0374533555%2C1521109435%2C1847941834%2C1250223180%2CB08XLLF3PG%2C0316017930%2CB08KPFPSNS&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">Grit </a>by Angela Duckworth. I avoided this book for a long time because the topic did not just seem that interesting but after hearing Angela speak, I had to dive in and was surprised how many career lessons were packed in this book as she dives into grit. <br /><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/So-Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You-audiobook/dp/B009CMO8JQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=R3ZBBDOGHLE2&keywords=so+good+they+cant+ignore+you&qid=1637288430&qsid=145-9087851-4349826&s=audible&sprefix=so+good%2Caudible%2C157&sr=1-1&sres=B009CMO8JQ%2CB09KZHNGYP%2CB075G3BDH6%2CB07RFSSYBH%2CB01I29Y344%2CB074B2CZJG%2CB015TM0RM4%2CB0189PVAWY%2CB00FPVS27W%2CB07LGDY5PC%2CB07FYD7GF1%2CB00J0DZQXO&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">So Good They Can't Ignore You </a>by Cal Newport. I must admit, I just got recommended this book this week, but I'm already almost done with it. Provides a really compelling alternative to "follow your passion". Also, it really stuck me how important autonomy is in career happiness. </p><p>These books have helped me a lot and I hope they help you too.</p>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-52171954812060014752021-09-07T19:19:00.001-07:002021-09-08T15:33:57.829-07:00What It Was Like To Work at Zoom During the Pandemic<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Before I get too far
into this, there are a few things you need to know about Zoom and me. First, I
no longer work for Zoom. After 4+ wonderful years, I left to go back to grad
school. Everything I am writing here is from my personal experience and opinions,
not Zoom, the company’s opinions. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Also, a few things you
should know about Zoom. In Feb of 2020, when the pandemic hit, according to
LinkedIn, there were only around 2,300 employees globally. I joined Zoom in
2017 when there were about 500 employees. At the beginning of 2020, Zoom was
also barely starting to get attention outside of Silicon Valley. We were very
below the radar until we IPO’d in April of 2019, and people got to really
understand our business and see our numbers for the first time. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">To fully understand
what happened in the pandemic at Zoom, you have to understand Zoom’s culture.
It’s extremely positive. A lot of this comes from the top, from Eric, the CEO.
He’s a true servant leader, customer-obsessed, extremely smart, and just overall
a good guy. That being said, Zoom was still a very intense place to work. We
moved incredibly quickly, expectations were always high, and we were very
scrappy. I’d meet with peers at other companies, and they’d be shocked at how
small our teams were. We always punched above our weight class, and we were
proud of it. For most of my time at Zoom, my responsibilities were leading our
international marketing, partner marketing, and localization teams. While that
was my day job, I reported to our CMO and took on different projects for the
executive team throughout the years (ran the first Zoomtopia user conference,
was a member of the IPO deal team, etc.). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">My first indication
that the pandemic would impact our business drastically was seeing what was
happening to some of our standard marketing metrics in APAC in February. Sign-ups
for our free product across the region were starting to accelerate to levels
we’d never seen. Pretty soon, inbound leads followed. Our biggest office in the
region was in Sydney at the time, but it was still pretty small, so they were
overwhelmed quickly. I was asked to put a cross-functional task force together
to monitor the virus situation and shift resources to support the APAC teams.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I think many people assumed, myself included,
that it would be contained in Asia like SARS had been, so while it was starting
to get some attention, no one was freaking out yet. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">We started to have
daily stand-ups with the leadership in Asia and started reviewing the metrics daily
to shift resources accordingly. Outbound sales teams starting only doing
inbound. Our sales reps were instructed to only work high intent leads. We’d
have sales reps from Europe and the US help during overlapping hours. Day by
day, every metric just kept going up. Then we started to see massive waves of
interest as lockdowns began to be imposed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">I remember one day
waking up and checking the free sign-ups by country dashboard and seeing a
massive increase in Vietnam. We only had one sales rep in the entire company who
spoke Vietnamese, and we did not even have Zoom, the product, or any content in
Vietnamese. I quickly checked the news and confirmed a lockdown had just been
imposed in Vietnam. At that point, it dawned on me that if we became the app of
choice for a place like Vietnam, we would be the application of choice in a
worldwide pandemic. Also, as I watched our numbers show the spread across APAC,
it appeared nothing was stopping it. I started to raise the alarm internally
that this would quickly overwhelm our business if it hit Europe and the US. At
this time, this was still sort of an international project, and people in the
US were not in panic mode yet. I remember calling a meeting to lay out some bigger
plans on how this would impact our marketing with some of the other direct
reports to our CMO, and I found out through the grapevine one person did not
show up because they thought it was “a waste of time to talk about a virus in
Asia.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">From that point, the
worry and headlines got a little worse every day. My boss, our CMO, wisely
decided it was time to make a public statement. At that point, we also
activated our crisis comms firm. We worked on a blog post which would be the
first time we would address publicly the virus and the role we were
playing/would play. I remember the crisis comms agency suggesting we do not say
anything, but overall, I think it ended up being a good idea. We were the first
of all of our competitors to make a statement, and within two weeks, every one
of our competitors had also launched a similar copycat statement. About a month
or two later, everyone started, myself included, getting statements on COVID
from every company, from your lawn guy to toothpaste brand. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">My role leading the
virus task force shifted a bit as this became a whole company issue and not
just an APAC issue. The entire company started to be mobilized. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Before we got sent to
work from home, I remember coming out of a yearly planning meeting and overhear
someone say that our online purchase system was down for a few hours overnight.
That was pretty unusual, so I asked them what happened. They said we got so
many online purchase orders we hit the fraud limit for our billing system. In
other words, we hit whatever the limit was that people thought would never be
possible with legitimate orders. That is how quickly things were accelerating.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Another thing I
remember clearly doing around this time is working on a statement we could
provide to customers about our infrastructure. CIOs in the US and Europe were
starting to get nervous and seriously ask themselves if everyone could work
from home and if Zoom would work for them. Our sales reps were basically
getting asked all day long, “Can you guys handle what might happen?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">It was only a week or
two later that those CIOs and the rest of the US would find out. Things went to
a whole new level of crazy as lockdowns were imposed in the US and Europe. I
remember during our IPO roadshow, we would talk about how Zoom always built out
its infrastructure at the time to 2x peak capacity, which at the time, to me,
seemed aggressive. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">I had been a Zoomie
long enough to know that our ability to scale and provide a high-quality
experience was basically why we existed in the first place. Still, seeing how
fast things were moving, this was a black swan event that no one could have
prepared for. The first Friday night of lockdown in the bay area, Netflix and
Google Play were not working because, presumably, everyone decided to get on simultaneously.
If Google and Netflix were down, that made me pretty nervous for Zoom. Every
Monday morning at the beginning of the lockdowns in the US, I would wake up
extremely anxious that we’d have an outage. Zoom’s engineering team and SREs do
not get enough credit because while there were some minor issues, they kept the
lights on and scaled them. This is also a testament to how the product was
built; you could not re-engineer your product to scale overnight, so while no
one could be ready for this, the foundation was in place for us to scale at an
incredible pace. It's even more incredible when you consider many other large
corporations with many more resources and infrastructure had more outages and
instability than Zoom did during the pandemic. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">At this point, my
focus shifted to helping provide Zoom for free for K-12 schools. Eric has
always been passionate about education. Very early on in the pandemic, he was
keen on helping K-12 schools. We had many of the largest universities around
the world already on Zoom, so we knew that for them, the transition to virtual
would be less painful, but there were overwhelming needs in K-12. Giving away
free accounts to tens of thousands of schools overnight was not as simple as it
sounds. It took an immense amount of coordination. Our systems were not built
to give away so many free accounts, so the engineering team was figuring out
how to do it at scale, while at the same time, in marketing, we were trying to
find a way to vet the schools. The program was not worldwide at first; we were
trying to be careful not to overwhelm our systems by adding too much fuel to
the fire. We were adding as many additional countries to the program as
possible, but we were constantly worried about capacity. Every night the teams
were doing capacity planning to see what more countries we could add. Since
India imposed one of the first nationwide lockdowns, I remember we wanted to
offer the free service for schools in India early on. Still, it being such a
populous country, we wanted to ensure we could do it. Finally, we got the
message from Eric, “Expand the program to India.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Apart from trying to
keep the lights on, this was really a honeymoon phase of sorts in hindsight. I
remember being in shock when Jimmy Fallon was interviewing Alec Baldwin about
the pandemic, and he asked him if he zooms. I could not believe they were
talking about our company. I wore my Zoom shirt to the grocery store for a
quick pandemic run, and someone stopped me to tell me about their experience of
their classes going virtual on Zoom. My mom talked to me as if I was on the
front lines, saving the world by working at Zoom. I thought that was hilarious
because one of my brothers is a doctor, and he was treating COVID patients, but
she was proud of both of us. She would text me every time her local news
station in Utah would mention Zoom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">As a marketer, your
job is to make your product and brand known, and it was like the brand just
took a life of its own and started running wild all over the world. We became
the number one app in the app stores. We were getting celebrities, news, social
and all types of media talk about us non-stop. We were getting the type of
exposure you cannot buy. My inbox and LinkedIn were full of messages from
agents of A-list celebrities saying, “X wants to promote your brand.” I
remember the day Ellen’s team reached out about a collaboration, and I almost
fell out of my chair. It was an incredible feeling. We were getting so much
organic exposure that we turned off all of our paid ads, and it did not change
a thing. All charts continued up and to the right. We were the technology
darling and savior of the pandemic, but soon we would learn the hard lesson
that the pendulum swings both ways.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Before COVID, while we
had a free version of the product, we were mostly a B2B software company. Most
of our users were in companies, higher education, financial services, or
governments. Users at those organizations are typically sophisticated, have IT
teams, and a good grasp of technology. It was to our horror to start seeing
more and more “Zoom bombing” incidents. New users to Zoom would post their
links to Zoom meetings without a password publicly on Twitter or other social
media sites, and the internet’s worst quickly saw an opportunity to be
terrible. It was an awful feeling inside of Zoom to see incidents of racism,
hate, and all sorts of horrible things happen across our platform. It also
created a perception that we had been hacked in many cases that were often user
errors. I remember talking to an engineer, brainstorming what we could do, and
I could tell he was getting emotional. The stress of knowing our platform was
being used in such a way was a terrible feeling for Zoom employees. While it’s
popular to demonize tech companies, I can tell you that as employees, we really
did care. As a marketing team, we started scrambling to do a mass education
campaign about our security features, how to use them, and just general online
safety advice. Our events marketing team was deputized and started making daily
YouTube how-to videos and coordinating to make them in other languages with our
new global reach. It was all hands on deck, and we had people take on
completely different roles overnight. Our product teams were scrambling to
change default security features, make them more intuitive to use and add more
enhancements to protect users.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Many people don’t
realize that there were armies of people actively trying to zoom boom. It truly
felt like we were under attack. In particular, students were organizing over
Instagram, sharing meeting IDs and passwords, and asking people to disrupt
their classes so they would not have to do virtual school. Being mostly B2B, we
did not even have a presence on Instagram as a company, but we had to start one
to defend ourselves. I called a good friend at Facebook and asked a favor to
expedite the Zoom Instagram page to get verified, so we could start controlling
our message on that platform.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">There was even a
coordinated rating campaign to sink our app store rating in the Android
marketplace. If your rating gets low enough, they pull your app from the Google
Play store, so students were trying to get us kicked out of the store to mess
with their classes by giving us thousands of one-star reviews. Luckily, Google
eventually caught on and kept us from getting kicked out. There were also
famous teenage YouTubers making coordinated Zoom bombing attacks, some of which
were harmless interruptions, but some which again brought out the worst of the
internet.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">While the Zoom bombing
picked up, every security and privacy researcher in the world turned their
attention to us. We started being scrutinized like Facebook, Apple, or Google,
but we were still a relatively small company. The FAANG companies have armies
of lawyers, privacy experts, and security people. We had been building out those
teams, but we were not near the scale we needed. In December 2019, our peak
daily meeting participants was ten million. By April of 2020, it was 300 million.
We scaled 30x in just a few months. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">This was a dark time
for Zoom. I think for many of us who had worked at Zoom for a while, this
whiplash was a lot to handle. Going from being the darling of the pandemic to “some
evil tech corporation” was too much. Also, it did not help that basically
everyone at Zoom was working 24/7. If you ask most Zoomies about that time, it
felt like much more than a job. We were now a critical infrastructure that was
keeping schools open, businesses operating, and loved ones connected. Since I
worked internationally, I’d be working from 6 am or so until 11 pm. I’d take a
few hours in the evening for dinner and to put the kids to bed. I don’t think
I’ve ever worked so hard in my life. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">One memory that stuck
with me is that early in the pandemic, while our social media team was scaling
up, I started answering social media questions on my own in the evening on
Twitter. One tweet caught my eye. It was someone criticizing us for being
insensitive to the COVID crisis in Italy. It took me a while to figure out what
they were talking about, but if you look closely at the screenshot below,
someone had used as filler text in that product screenshot a joke that went,
“How did the Italian chef die? He pasta away. The doctors cannoli do so much
about it.” The criticism was gaining some traction on social media, so I
scrambled at midnight to get that screenshot down before it created another
crisis for us. It was such an emotionally charged time for the world that even
something as innocent as that set people off. Also, it was clear people were
scouring our website for every tiny thing. As I was working with a member of
the web team to take it down, I remember her saying to me in frustration, “This
is what people are worried about?! We are trying to keep the world afloat, and
this is what they want to criticize us about!” I felt the same frustration. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6NXhb8YoUa9qYbVekbt1LlCpbtCPeYLfeyWdaQx60MuQpQupqvPJd3sskF-4ZUDgNZiXAVmFiU0Pu9OYgGDVCHfpnrEzrBPkddyHqGTbMW55t-a0FilQK6c6KyvF_J_m2LzWWju_AgKgl/s624/italy1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="624" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6NXhb8YoUa9qYbVekbt1LlCpbtCPeYLfeyWdaQx60MuQpQupqvPJd3sskF-4ZUDgNZiXAVmFiU0Pu9OYgGDVCHfpnrEzrBPkddyHqGTbMW55t-a0FilQK6c6KyvF_J_m2LzWWju_AgKgl/w400-h246/italy1.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Zoom still felt like a
small, tight-knit company, so for me, it was an emotional roller coaster, and it
was hard not to take a lot of the criticism personally. I had been part of Zoom
early enough that I felt a deep connection to the company and did not just feel
like a cog. It was impossible to compartmentalize what was happening. I
remember once having a really bad day. It just felt like we’d never get through
everything that was coming at us. It was overwhelming. I sadly walked out of my
makeshift office and told my wife that I was not sure our company would survive
all the criticism.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Also, we were just not
adequately equipped to respond and defend ourselves in the press at first. Our
in-house PR team at the time of the crisis was two people. The lead was on
maternity leave, and while we had some contractor and agency help, a lot fell
on the shoulders of an incredibly talented 24-year-old recent college grad as
we scrambled to hire. We were getting 100+ press inquiries a day. We had the
same sort of negative press internationally, but we had no way to respond at
scale. We did not have a voice, making it feel like we were not in a fair
fight. Before the pandemic, we had international PR agencies in 5 of our key
markets, but now we were making headlines in most countries worldwide. For
those unfamiliar with PR, it's very country/language-based, so if you don’t
have people in the country speaking the language, you likely won’t get a chance
to speak to your side of the story.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Zoom sales reps from
all over the world started sending us links to negative articles in many
languages, begging us to do something to correct or address the criticism in
the most prominent publications of their markets. We started to collect them in
a Google Doc in hopes of responding, but eventually, there were hundreds, and
there was no way we could respond. We had to take the Google Doc down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Earlier in the year,
we had hired a new PR agency based out of London called Hotwire for the UK. They
were managing some of our other international markets as well. They had
worldwide coverage, so I teamed up with our solo PR guy, and we asked Hotwire
what they could do to help us internationally. We worked together on a plan to
have Hotwire act as a central hub to manage additional PR agencies, and in a
week or two, we had spun up PR agencies in 14 additional countries. I’d never
have gotten so much budget approved so fast in my life. At the same time, we
needed spokespeople to tell our side of the story, and our normal media spokespeople,
like our key executives, were already tapped out. We only had a handful of
trained media spokespeople when the pandemic hit. We went country by country
and figured out the best/most senior person to represent Zoom who spoke that
language. It meant we had some sales reps, also moonlighting as Zoom’s official
media spokesperson because of language skills. Hotwire helped us train and prep
all these new spokespeople (over 20) in record time. It took a bit to get
everything humming, but we started to have a unified global PR engine. This
helped a lot as we began making announcements and changes to turn the tide. We
now had the infrastructure in place for our message to circle the globe. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Prior to the pandemic,
Zoom preferred to do almost everything in-house. However, during the pandemic, we
learned to rely on some key partners to help us scale in PR and other areas, making
a massive difference. In our situation, you have to get outside help; you can
not hire fast enough. I’ll forever be grateful to some of our partners and
agencies who rolled up their sleeves, walked straight into the chaos, and
became Zoomies with us overnight. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">I was also deputized
as a media spokesperson. I had gone through a pretty rigorous media training
when I worked at Salesforce, which I’m pretty sure they only let me do to be
nice since I was just out of college. I was behind in line like 50 spokespeople
at Salesforce but never did any interviews there and only a bit at LinkedIn.
Almost immediately, I was doing 3-4 interviews a week all over the world. I did
written, radio, and TV interviews.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">One of my first
interviews was a BBC Asia radio interview. The first question the reporter
asked me was, “On a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you give your executive
team on responding to this crisis?” Luckily, my training kicked in, and I did
not walk into that trap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Another memorable one,
I had just completed an interview when our PR guy called my cell phone saying
they can’t get a hold of our CIO, and he was five minutes from doing a live TV
interview on the BBC. He asked if I could step in. I said yes, ran to my closet
to throw on a shirt and jacket, and got ready. Luckily, they found our CIO at
the last second, but my adrenaline was flowing for the rest of that day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">We got an inbound
request for a CNN TV interview in Spanish. Our main Spanish media spokesperson
was out of town, so they asked if I would do it. I speak Spanish, but not
natively. It was a big stretch for me, but I felt like it was too good of an
opportunity for Zoom to pass up; we were still trying to turn public
perception, especially in our international markets. I practiced with my mother-in-law
and Dad, both of whom speak Spanish natively, in the evenings and had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9hKIhomElo">a really fun interview</a>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U9hKIhomElo" width="320" youtube-src-id="U9hKIhomElo"></iframe></span></div><span lang="EN"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">All the negative media
attention caught the attention of companies, governments, and lawmakers worldwide.
We began to get headlines about organizations or governments banning Zoom over
security concerns. Many of these bans were highly sensationalized. The bans
were often just companies telling employees to use their approved apps for
video conferencing. Sometimes they were legitimate bans, many of which would
later be walked back, but this posed a real threat to our business. This was
amplified because of the nature of our company. Our CEO Eric is Chinese
American, and we had many engineers in China. While there were legitimate
concerns about Zoom, I have no doubt that racism and xenophobia were working
against us. There was just also a ton of confusion. My favorite was when Nancy
Pelosi called <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/nancy-pelosi-calls-zoom-a-chinese-entity.html"><span style="color: #1155cc;">us a Chinese company,</span></a> which we are not. We had
to fight a persistent rumor that we were a Chinese company. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Similar to our PR
challenges, we did not have a government relations program at the time of the
pandemic either. To most governments around the world before the pandemic, we
were unknown and irrelevant, but overnight we became a critical infrastructure
for a meaningful percentage of their population. Most of the information they
were getting about us was coming from headlines and our competitors. The
international head of sales and I were extremely worried about the potential
long-lasting negative impact on our international business. The little
resources we had focusing on government affairs at Zoom were already swamped
just focusing on the US. My responsibilities shifted again as our COO asked me
to hire a firm to help us with international government affairs and run with
it. I had zero experience in government affairs, but it was all hands on deck,
and I had done several other high-profile projects for the exec team before.
This became my number one priority. We got a warm introduction to a firm, met
with them on a Saturday morning, and by Monday, we hit the ground running. Our
goal was simple, stop or slow down the runaway train of organizations and
governments banning us. This usually happened through meetings with appropriate
government officials, explaining who we are and doing our best to resolve their
concerns. In some ways, it was a surprisingly simple process. This was not a
fast process, but country by country, we were able to clarify who we were and
resolve concerns. As a newcomer to international affairs, it was incredible to
see the change. Once these governments had a face to the company name, a person
to call, they seemed much less likely to shoot from the hip and ban us as some
of them had. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">I remember being in
one of these introductory meetings with several government agencies
(Cybersecurity, Defense Dept, etc.) of a large European country and being
surprised by their questions and demeanor. Based on the statements they had
made, you would have thought we were public enemy number one and would be
hostile, but they just did not know us. Once we walked them through who we were
and what we were doing, they seemed even friendly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">This is slow,
complicated, and politically sensitive work. I was also shocked how often
governments were making decisions without bothering to contact us or seem to do
any investigating of their own. Governments were already so skittish with all
the virus stuff and often seemed to be reacting to the headlines. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">One bright spot around
this time was our first pandemic earnings call. The phones had been ringing off
the hook all quarter, so it was no surprise that we had a massive blowout
quarter. People knew it would be good, but it far exceeded even the highest
expectations. Some called it the “Greatest quarter in software history.” Most
people still don’t understand just how unique Zoom’s business model is. The
only reason why we could have a quarter as we did and grow at that speed is that
we have highly effective and diversified sales channels. This includes our
online business (including our freemium), direct sales business, and channel
business. Very few software companies are strong in all of those areas, and we
were. That means we could absorb a huge amount of business quickly. This shot
our stock price to levels most of us did not think would be possible for a long
time. It was a weird feeling to have your company stock appreciating so quickly
while so many others seemed to be worried about their jobs. My job had never
felt more secure. It also added this weird pressure because as the company was
being attacked, it made you feel like this windfall could all disappear
overnight. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Heading into May, we
were still in the thick of things, especially with the international government
relations stuff. My third child was due the first of May, and I had planned to
take a month of my paternity leave as soon as he arrived. As we got close to
the due date, I was dying for a break, even if that meant waking up every three
hours with a newborn. Leading up to it, my wife had to gently remind me that I
should be excited about our child and not just for the chance to step away from
work after I made one too many comments about how excited I was to take a break
from work. Our healthy boy finally arrived, and I got a much-needed break from
work and, more importantly, was able to focus 100% on my family after months of
non-stop work. Going through what we were going through at Zoom, it was hard
not to think that my job was the most important thing in the world, but going
on leave reminded me that if I woke up and Zoom no longer existed, my life was
still pretty great. That reminder helped me maintain a positive attitude,
especially with my team as the crisis and intensity dragged on. I was not the
only Zoomie who had personal stuff going on while we were trying to keep the
world afloat. Everyone across the world had their own struggles with the
pandemic. Zoomies were no exception; I saw incredible grit across the company.
I saw fellow employees deal with mental health issues, losing family members,
domestic violence, and many other challenges. One of my closest colleagues was
so stressed out that he started having intense stomach pains. I remember
telling him and several people when they seemed to be having tough moments, “No
matter what happens to Zoom, your life will be good, and you’ll be successful.”
Every time I told someone that, in a way, I felt like I was also saying it to
myself. It was challenging to maintain the bigger picture when you're in the
trenches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">I returned from my paternity
leave, hoping things would start getting back to normal. Things were still
pretty intense throughout the summer, but they did start to normalize. It
helped a ton that we were hiring like crazy across the company, especially in
areas where we really needed deep experts. We always ran lean. Eric was known
for scrutinizing each headcount during our yearly planning, but we could hire
just about anything we needed during the pandemic. I remember sending our CMO a
paragraph over chat about needing a second localization headcount, and all she
wrote back was “Approved.” The head of sales and I started going back to our
day jobs mostly as we hired a real head of government relations that could
formalize the program and take it out of emergency mode and to the next level. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">Something I’m proud of
when I look back is how Zoom changed the industry. We saw major competitors
follow us in giving products away for free. Not only that, as all of those
companies scrambled to catch up with us, the pace of innovation increased for
our entire industry. Eric was big on continuous learning through reading books.
He would often recommend books to the whole company. Early in my time at Zoom,
pre-pandemic, he recommended that we read the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella’s
book. I read it and remember being shocked at how little collaboration
technologies got mentioned. He spent a lot of time talking about his new areas
of focus for the company, but video conferencing or even collaboration was not
on his radar. That boosted my confidence that Zoom could be successful, knowing
they were not focused on our space. There was a similar story at Google. Early
during my time at Zoom, I was doing competitive research. I searched how many
employees at Google mention Google Meet or Hangouts in their LinkedIn profile;
it was around 20 people in all. It was clearly not a focus for them, and everyone
was confused by the massive mess of different video products they had at the
time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">This is how innovation
works. Big companies ignore a market and stop innovating; smaller companies
make something better, and eventually, the big companies have to start moving
again. In the end, the consumers win with better technology and more options.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; margin: 12pt 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN">In 2020, I had the
best and worst moments of my career. Every two weeks, we had a company-wide
all-hands. I remember after a few very terrible weeks of criticism of our
company, Eric got up and acknowledged that this was a really tough moment for
the company, but he said something that stuck with me. He said something to the
effect of, ”Everything we are doing right now and all the decisions we are
making, we are doing it in a way so that 20 years from now, we’ll look back and
be proud of the role we played in this pandemic.” Zoom was not a perfect
company or had perfect leadership, but the hill I will die on is that Zoom
stepped up in good faith and played a critical role in supporting the world
during the pandemic. Any company would have had a lot go wrong experiencing
something we did, but I’m convinced that much more went right than should have.
I feel proud of my small contributions to Zoom over the years and especially
during the pandemic. Still, there are countless unsung heroes and stories from
Zoom that might never see the light of day, so I hope you enjoyed reading about
my experience. </span></p>
Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-50238237166047859232021-05-03T18:42:00.000-07:002021-05-03T18:42:06.441-07:00 My next play: I’m going back to school, again.<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I was getting my MBA I met a few MBA students from other schools who were doing joint MBA/MPA’s through Harvard’s Kennedy School. I had no idea such joint programs existed and was bummed that I did not try to do a program like that at the time. I looked more into Harvard’s MPA programs and saw they had a full time Mid-Career 1 Year MPA. This program is designed for people later in their careers that often already have advanced degrees. Before I graduated with my MBA 8 years ago, I made the goal to attend this program.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-NP_uw4B7eV7Tt6E_dfOEYhRgzwsGXzKsaq7G91aTAMScfJ1Yiipj5P_Mt0tbK2D4b6bWEnvDeJxq_Gcht88Qj3vaWj5untWRZrmSuXasPk7ybqvjAeEhlqrlLBzCaXKj3P65RDrk3pzz/s784/HKSacceptance.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="784" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-NP_uw4B7eV7Tt6E_dfOEYhRgzwsGXzKsaq7G91aTAMScfJ1Yiipj5P_Mt0tbK2D4b6bWEnvDeJxq_Gcht88Qj3vaWj5untWRZrmSuXasPk7ybqvjAeEhlqrlLBzCaXKj3P65RDrk3pzz/w400-h209/HKSacceptance.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-7754c8f0-7fff-a68d-553c-9b69a9e81892"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even before the pandemic, my wife and I decided that if I was going to apply to Harvard’s MPA program, 2020 was the year to do it for our family (which now includes 3 kids under 6). She has been extremely supportive even though this means moving our family again after only having moved to Raleigh from the Bay Area in September of last year. She has been an incredible partner on my career adventures. I like to tease her about how lucky she is that I don’t like to golf or watch sports but I do have one hobby that is really expensive and time consuming: grad school. Few things sound more fun to me than being a student again so I can sit in interesting classes and get to know interesting people.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was interested in this program for a lot of reasons. Interest in the public sector/public service has been brewing in me for a long time. As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I have always felt a deep gratitude, respect and love for the United States from a young age. I saw how my family was able to leave a dangerous political situation and build successful lives in the US with the personal freedoms that were disappearing in Cuba when they fled. I believe the US has a net positive impact on the world and helping the standing/influence of the US on the world stage motivates me.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the age of 19, I served a two-year, full time volunteer mission for my church working with Spanish speaking congregations in Southern California. That was an incredible experience for a lot of reasons, but it definitely helped to bust open my world view on many different levels. One of my most memorable experiences was trying to provide some comfort to an alcoholic around Christmas time. He lived in a junky trailer behind a house in the worst part of town. Listening to him describe how he was driven to alcohol after losing his wife and daughter tragically as he illegally crossed into the US seeking a better life was a life changing moment for me. I really saw, recognized and felt the suffering of someone from a different culture, religion and country. That moment has helped drive the need for my life to have a positive impact outside of my immediate sphere of influence. I also at that time was able to recognize how fortunate I had been in many aspects of my life.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As an undergrad I was initially drawn more to studying business, but after being rejected from BYU’s competitive undergraduate business program, I decided to study Political Science. I absolutely loved my classes but continued to nurture the business side of me with club affiliations and internships. I graduated in 2009 during the peak of the recession. I did not have a job at graduation but was fortunate enough to get another marketing internship at a software company where I continued to build marketable skills. As that summer was starting to wrap up, I felt that marketing in a software company was a really good fit for me. I’m naturally an evangelist for the things I care about so promoting a product or service that I believed in felt good. As the son of a software engineer, I always had an interest in technology and I liked the pace and excitement of the industry. Unfortunately, I was not having much success trying to get a full time job where I was interning because of a hiring freeze. I continued to look for jobs in tech all over the country. My plan was if I was not able to get a job in tech by the end of the summer, I would move to DC to pursue more public sector interests. This was a significant career fork in the road for me.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a long story for another blog post, but I was fortunate to land my first job at Salesforce in San Francisco. When I got that job, I had never even visited San Francisco before. I was ready for that adventure and eagerly packed everything into the back of my truck and moved to SF. At that point I started flying down the tech career path. Being in SF provided a ton of new experiences and greatly expanded what I thought was possible for me professionally. You are going to laugh, but I had never even had Indian food before I moved to San Francisco. During that time, I also met my amazing wife and we got married. Working in marketing was still feeling like a great fit, but after 3 years at Salesforce I decided to return to BYU to do an MBA. An MBA had also been a goal of mine since my undergrad. My goal in getting an MBA was to prep myself for future leadership, have fun, learn and expand my horizon and that’s exactly what I did. After exploring different cities, industries and jobs during my MBA program, tech marketing still seemed like the best place for me, so after my MBA I returned to Silicon Valley to work at LinkedIn in marketing. That was a great experience, but after a few years, I was itching for another adventure and specifically something that would accelerate my career experiences.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My thought process was that if I am going to be living in Silicon Valley, the pedal needs to be to the metal. I joined Zoom in April of 2017 when there was about 100M in revenue and 500 employees. Zoom was a rocketship. Immediately after joining I had more responsibility and experiences that I had ever had before. I was fortunate enough to run the first two Zoomtopia’s, be on the IPO deal team and build out our international, partner marketing and localization programs. I built a talented team of around 20 marketers in 5 different countries.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The pandemic had a profound impact on our business at Zoom that I will definitely describe in more detail in a later blog post someday. I will say though that working at Zoom in 2020 during the pandemic and all the challenges we faced as a company, gave me chance to work on a lot of things outside of my day job that started to scratch the public service/public sector itch, including launching Zoom’s International Government relations program. Zoom overnight had become center stage on critical issues like the future of work, security, relations with China, privacy and many others. I had a front row seat on the biggest collision of policy, technology, international relations and public health that we have had as a nation in a very long time. This has helped me recognize areas where I think there needs to be some changes for the US to continue to expand our leadership position in technology.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My experiences the last year and a half at Zoom during the pandemic have really brought together my professional experiences and some of my long-standing interests in ways I could have never predicted. It stirred some passions that have been taking a back seat the first ~10 years of my career. Adding fuel to the fire has been seeing the political turmoil in the US over the last four years. Personally, I value diversity of thought, peace, diplomacy and respect in the political process. As I angrily watched protestors storm the US capitol, it solidified my desire to pursue this path. I have felt very strongly for the last 8 years that I have wanted to pursue this path, but like it often does, how this might all work only became clearer towards the end of my 8-year journey to apply to this program.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel grateful and privileged to be able to take this detour. Very quickly in my career I was able to provide enough for myself and my family to even be able to think about pursuing my interests and passions, even when that has meant stepping out of the workforce or taking what some might consider riskier moves. I view my career as an adventure, not just a way to make a living. Most people are not able to do that, so I feel the weight of making it count and using this experience for good.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel lucky to have had so many people in my corner (parents, family, mentors, bosses, friends) throughout my whole life that always encouraged me, nudged me and helped me see what was possible, even when I did not. If you were to tell me in high school that I would go to grad school at Harvard, I would have laughed you out of the room. Below is the video of when I found out I had been accepted.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ebSNEvanYBA" width="320" youtube-src-id="ebSNEvanYBA"></iframe></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">At this point you are probably thinking, “well…what the heck are you going to do after you graduate?”. My response to that is “ask me in a year”.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been so focused on my tech career, that now I will take this year to re-tool, learn and explore the public sector. I am interested in tech policy, local government, international relations and the refugee crisis. This could mean I pursue one of those areas after graduation, or I find other ways to apply it to my business career or incorporate public service later into my life.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As always, let’s keep in touch and if you roll through Boston in the next 12 months and want to say hi, please reach out.</span></p></span>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-69103311606121154432021-04-08T19:07:00.003-07:002021-04-09T03:24:52.126-07:004 Career Lessons from 4 Years at Zoom<p>Four years ago I remember leaving LinkedIn's swanky offices to go interview at Zoom. As I sat in the lobby waiting for my interviews at Zoom HQ in downtown San Jose, I remember looking around at the very scrappy/modest start up office and really questioning whether this was a good idea. </p><p>Turns out, it was the right thing for me and I've learned so much from my experience so far at Zoom. I'm on paternity leave right now so I've had some time to reflect on the last four years and wanted to share <i>4 lessons from 4 years at Zoom</i>. Now, I must admit I stole this format from my friend at DoorDash, Nathan Tanner. His 4 year post is great if you <a href="https://nathantanner.net/2020/12/31/4-lessons-from-4-years-at-doordash/">want to check it out</a>. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw5_sCXW4eTqlKidjJrnjNskYds_dx5DH59UgjiBWOaaXz3XEI6ycTPxdfsV2McPMh551APmc6BdUEyUATwH9KUOaj_9PD3CPCgW_6vfNQy5Q8-sjIbUiHnZh9LLRASiZ9STX4bt95IxLe/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="937" data-original-width="1250" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw5_sCXW4eTqlKidjJrnjNskYds_dx5DH59UgjiBWOaaXz3XEI6ycTPxdfsV2McPMh551APmc6BdUEyUATwH9KUOaj_9PD3CPCgW_6vfNQy5Q8-sjIbUiHnZh9LLRASiZ9STX4bt95IxLe/w400-h300/image.png" title="Entrance to the first Zoomtopia in Oct 2017" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><b>1. Personal growth is almost always uncomfortable.</b> I joined Zoom because I wanted to push myself. I figured if I was going to be in Silicon Valley I wanted my career to accelerate as quickly as possible. Joining a small, fast growing software company like Zoom was my way of trying to kick things up a notch. It really has been a career accelerator, but I always joke around with other Zoomies that even pre-pandemic Zoom felt like a brand new company every 1-2 quarters and during the pandemic it has felt like a new company every 60 days. This means there were countless times I felt completely in over my head, overworked, outside of my comfort zone, unprepared or frustrated that a process that worked 6 months ago no longer works. Over time, I'm come to learn that those uncomfortable feelings are signs that you're growing and being stretched, it's the price you pay for growth. </p><p><b>2. Anything worth doing will have naysayers</b>. When I joined Zoom, no one really tried to talk me out of it, but some people definitely seemed less enthusiastic or impressed when I shared the news. As Zoom has become more well know and grown, I've had several people reach out and say to me something like "wow...when you joined Zoom I thought you were really making a bad career move but looks like it has worked out!". It does not always work out, but as I look back on that decision and have watched other people make different career moves, I've come to the conclusion that if everyone thinks everything you're doing is 100% the right thing to do and the perfect path, you are probably not doing anything too interesting or your friends/network is too homogenous. I have found immense value is talking career moves over with a variety of people I trust and respect, but at the end of the day you have to decide what your path is and not let a consensus or worries about the perceptions of others drive big decisions. </p><p><b>3. You're in the drivers seat of your career. </b>Even in companies with sophisticated career programs, you have to decide what you want to pursue, have goals and share them with your manager. If your company does not have good career programs not only do you have to do those things, but also drive it to action, whether that be a promotion, a role change or additional responsibility. I see a lot of people that seem to be waiting around for someone to give them an opportunity, or point out to them their next best career move. Chances are you are surrounded by people that can do that, but often you need to ask or initiate those conversations. Waiting for a formal evaluation once a year is usually not enough. Also, be wary of stagnation, deciding to things slow down a bit career wise is often the right call, but it should be a <span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75); font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">conscious</span> decision. </p><p><b>4. Raise your hand. </b>I feel like the luckiest guy in the world with the variety and amount of cool experiences I've had the last four years at Zoom. I got to run our first Zoomtopia (I hired my favorite band, Weezer to be the entertainment), be on the IPO deal team and help launch our International Government Relations program. All of these things were never my day job, but most of them happened because I volunteered or just started doing it. Now, I must admit there were almost always moments I regretted signing up for a big project on top of my existing demanding job, but looking back on the last four years, some of the most interesting, fulfilling and memorable experiences came from my willingness to raise my hand. </p><p>The last four years has been the most rewarding and challenging time of my career. As I reflect on this journey so far, I'm filled with gratitude to all the Zoomies that have helped make this such a incredible place to work and hope these hard earned lessons can help or inspire anyone reading. </p><p><br /></p>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-6200478627482820072020-09-02T21:45:00.000-07:002020-09-02T21:45:08.857-07:00A Cliché Bay Area Farewell and the Future of Work<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>If there is one thing that is more cliche in Silicon Valley than wearing a Patagonia vest, sporting Allbirds, discussing the latest S-1's dropping or planning a future trip to burning man, it's writing a blog post about moving away from the Bay Area. <div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LnM9z-zHoCut6hZp8Lbkv4fKBpNo4jW4lfIz5UNZmZ-2ZHglfUPt2Ew3cqLCTS405Mqzsot9XHPhPiqiNGT2l-5WtGjJNo4GrcGqPaqLwcjL334hJtsHP8Z6jtVUv9PjrjnKmR4H14LK/s259/SF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_LnM9z-zHoCut6hZp8Lbkv4fKBpNo4jW4lfIz5UNZmZ-2ZHglfUPt2Ew3cqLCTS405Mqzsot9XHPhPiqiNGT2l-5WtGjJNo4GrcGqPaqLwcjL334hJtsHP8Z6jtVUv9PjrjnKmR4H14LK/s0/SF.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div><br />I fought the urge, but once a blog post is swimming around in my head, I have to write it. Actually, what I want to talk about the most are the trends that got us here, how the world is different now and what the future of the Bay Area could look like. Yes, my family and I are moving to the Raleigh area in North Carolina, but more about that later. <br /><br />A bit of background: I've spent my entire career working in tech in the Bay Area. I moved here during the last recession in 2009 and have basically been here ever since. I've lived in San Francisco, Mountain View and Palo Alto. My wife has lived here her whole life and now we've got three kids, all under 5 years old. I've gotten to work for what I believe are some of the best companies in the Bay Area: Salesforce, LinkedIn and now Zoom.<br /><br />I'm not going to rehash the great things about the Bay Area in detail because those are well known: the weather, mountains, coast, incredible food, amazing schools, incredible intellectual capital and the best career/life changing companies in the world to work for. In my eyes, there is really just one main downside to overcome… the cost. On one side of the equation are all the amazing things about the Bay Area and on the other side is the cost. <br /><br />There is no doubt that COVID has drastically changed that equation for many. Suddenly the dynamics of the situation have changed. You have a really small house or apartment because of the cost, but now your job is not tied to a physical location. Is the Bay Area still worth it? For many, the scales get tipped and the answer will be no. <br /><br />I've read so many articles about whether working remotely will stick once this terrible virus goes away and I think that while many people will return to the office, many people will decide to stay remote or find in office tech jobs outside the Bay Area. Here are my reasons for why this will be a lasting trend that will result in a new normal far beyond where we were pre-COVID. <br /><br />1. Some of the most well known and largest tech employers are embracing long term remote work to a level that has never been seen before. These companies are leaders and have set expectations for the industry. Every week more companies are added to the list. The ability to work from home is going to become as expected and iconic of a tech company as having a ping pong table. <br /><br />2. Long before COVID, large tech companies in high cost areas like the Bay Area had started to invest heavily in “2nd HQ’s” in low cost areas. The majority of hiring in a lot of these Bay Area tech companies, even pre-COVID was focused on the lower cost areas. Now, it will become even easier and more attractive to transfer roles to the other HQ office in Salt Lake, Chicago, Denver or Austin. <br /><br />3. COVID has forced a massive WFH experiment. Some will like it, some won't, but millions more have tried it that might not have ever tried it without COVID. It has accelerated exposure and adoption. <br /><br />4. The tech scenes in other lower cost states have really matured over the last few years, better companies, more options and stronger startup ecosystems. (I'm looking at you Texas, Utah and North Carolina)<br /><br />5. The tools to work from home are better. Companies like Zoom and Slack exist today because previous chat and video software products (which we have relied on heavily when working remotely) did not live up to their potential. Identity management tools like OKTA and a variety of other cloud applications have made it so you can truly be anywhere to run many, complex applications. <br /><br />6. Hardware is more accessible to enable video connections. That means every laptop and phone has a camera, which was not the case 10 years ago. Not only that, but the cost of building video enabled rooms into conference rooms has fallen off a cliff. Now that you'll be able to plug your work video conferencing into a Google Nest Hub, Facebook Portal or Amazon Echo Show will enable you to create video conferencing experiences as smooth as your high priced video enabled boardroom with the hardware already sitting in your house. <br /><br />7. A new generation of companies even before the pandemic were proving out that larger firms can go fully remote. InVision, Gitlab and Zapier are great examples. <br /><br /><b>So what is my prediction about the future of the Bay Area? </b><br /><br />I'm still pretty bullish on the Bay Area. While a lot has changed, some things have not changed. It still has world class schools, companies and weather. Those with a lot of the power and money in tech are less likely to leave in the wake of COVID because they are not worried as much about the cost and likely living in a space they are comfortable with (or hiding out in their 2nd homes in Napa, Tahoe or Carmel). Working in office with those leaders and executives will have some advantages post COVID. However, one of the Bay Area's competitive advantages as the tech center of the world is the in-person connections where networking and deal making happen. Those in person events will return, but will it be to the same extent? How long will it take? Will virtual happy hours stick? Maybe Silicon Valley VC's will have gotten used to making deals over Zoom and invest in companies that are further away from their offices? I think there will be a new normal that will weaken the Bay Area's grip to some degree. <br /><br />In general, I think the concentration of talent, money and other resources has been good for Silicon Valley and have enabled it to become the worldwide leader in technology. However, too much concentration for too long has led to some of the highest costs in the country. And that is not a good thing in my opinion for a lot of reasons. It was never going to be sustainable, especially without bold efforts by the local government and the community to change that. <br /><br />I do not see any area in the US surpassing the Bay Area as the strongest US tech hub anytime soon, but I do think what we are experiencing with COVID will greatly strengthen and accelerate the already blossoming tech hubs throughout the US. Lower cost tech ecosystems have much to gain in this environment and if I were them, I'd be welcoming any talent leaving the Bay Area with open arms. <br /><br />In the meantime, the Bay Area will still be strong and traffic will be better. And while I don't think housing costs will fall off a cliff any time soon, it might cool off the growth rate we've seen over the last few decades. <br /><br />The Bay Area is still a place where dreams come true. Spending the first 10 years of my career here was probably the best professional decision I ever made. I do not wish for the demise of the Bay Area as a worldwide tech leader, but I do hope for a stronger, nationwide tech ecosystem in many states that brings innovation, high paying jobs and taps into talent that would never be able to come to the Bay Area. <br /><br /><b>Why now and why did we choose the Raleigh area?</b><br /><br />When I was in grad school, I had a case competition at UNC. My wife tagged along for the weekend and we really liked it. Three strong Universities in the Research Triangle creates a ton of intellectual capital. It also has a growing tech scene, a relatively temperate climate, it’s a few hours from the beach and has extremely affordable housing. We've also had a few more family members make their way to the east coast recently. <br /><br />COVID really did become the straw that broke the camel's back. Luckily at the beginning of the year, after living several years in a 800 square foot cottage with 2 kids, we rented a 3 bed 2 bath place in Palo Alto for an amount that made me cringe every time I paid the rent. We felt lucky to have a bit more space when COVID hit, but in May we had our 3rd kid. Combine this with me working from home, we were bursting at the seams. Since I'm not going back to the office anytime soon, the kids need space and I need a dedicated workspace. We figured that now is as good a time as any to try an adventure in a place we've been talking about living in for years. Being able to move to a lower cost area without changing jobs made the leap even more attractive. <br /><br />To my friends and colleagues in the Bay Area, I'll miss seeing you all in person and will surely be out to visit frequently once this terrible virus goes away, but until then, I'll see you on Zoom. :)<br /></div>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-86494473095129006862020-06-22T21:48:00.007-07:002020-09-10T10:29:05.215-07:00Recent Media InterviewsGiven Zoom's sudden popularity, it has become part of my job to be a media spokesperson for Zoom in our markets outside the US. I've learned a whole lot about speaking with the media over the last few months and overall it has been a very positive experience to tell Zoom's story at this crazy time. I'm going to use this post to track the interviews I've been doing. More to come!<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/4242461/0/entrevista-derek-pando-el-mercado-de-las-plataformas-de-videollamadas-es-muy-grande-y-hay-espacio-para-todos/">20minutos - Spanish Publication</a> (my first media interview in Spanish)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/technology/coronavirus-working-from-home-internet.html">New York Times</a> - This was a random one, did not have anything to do with work, but a journalist from the NYT saw a tweet I wrote complaining about the internet and reached out. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://globoplay.globo.com/v/8636500/">Empregos.com</a> - Brazilian TV interview. <a href="https://globoplay.globo.com/v/8627867">2nd one here.</a> </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x18prz8t7cl">BBC Radio Interview I</a> did on the Business Matters show. </div><div><br /></div><div><a class="navbar-brand" href="https://www.lejdd.fr/Economie/le-grand-boom-de-zoom-3981657" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: "open sans", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; height: 50px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 12px 10px; text-align: right; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="Logo leJDD.fr" src="https://www.lejdd.fr/bundles/jddintegration/images/main/logo-lejdd.svg?108-346547d58ee19780fb4e73da77fbf867e385ff2b" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 231px;" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/hr-in-a-pandemic-how-three-companies-dealt-with-a-surge-in-demand/">Personnel Today </a> HR publication</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://epocanegocios.globo.com/Empresa/noticia/2020/07/como-o-zoom-mudou-para-ganhar-o-mundo-durante-pandemia.html">Epoca Negocios</a> Brazilian Business Publication</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.marketing-interactive.com/analysis-zooms-silent-but-unexpected-love-affair-with-gen-z">https://www.marketing-interactive.com/analysis-zooms-silent-but-unexpected-love-affair-with-gen-z</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/01/boris-johnson-zoom-call-world-favourite-video-app?">The Guardian</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/09/10/it-felt-war-room-inside-the-meteoric-rise-zoom-and-its-post-lockdown-growth-plans">The Drum</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://empresariosdesucessolive.tv/entrevistas%23gallery-4-6&source=gmail&ust=1599844083832000&usg=AFQjCNEFfXJ7FieJL87PGksvyoUW4mnnxg" href="https://empresariosdesucessolive.tv/entrevistas#gallery-4-6" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" target="_blank">https://<wbr></wbr>empresariosdesucessolive.tv/<wbr></wbr>entrevistas#gallery-4-6</a></div>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-62299038316541015282020-04-24T16:43:00.000-07:002020-04-24T16:43:13.637-07:00Post MBA Career Decisions: Big Tech or Late Stage Startup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A friend of mine invited me recently to talk to the Duke MBA tech club about career paths in tech for MBA's post business school. In this 5 minute clip I shared my experience and some of the pros and cons of going to one of the big tech companies or pursuing a late stage startup, as well as the potential career implications. <br />
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<br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-77465603481453245062020-04-17T14:28:00.002-07:002020-04-18T00:24:52.008-07:00A Guide to Running LDS Church Service (or really any church service) Virtually Over ZoomHi all,<br />
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I've been getting a ton of questions about having church meetings over Zoom. I've worked at Zoom for the last 3+ years. Here is crash course.<br />
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First, Zoom has a very robust free product that can have meetings with 100 people at a time. To sign up for free just go to Zoom.com. The main limitation is that there is a 40 minute time limit if you are meeting with 3 or more people. This can be used for all sorts of meetings, large and small. You can even do <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Video-Breakout-Rooms">breakout rooms</a> and divide people up into smaller classes. If you are going to have church meetings virtually,<b> I strongly recommend you use some of the security features outlined here. </b>Please use passwords. <b><br /></b><br />
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You're better off posting meeting invite details into email lists and not publicly on social media. If you share a Zoom meeting invite on social media and don't have a password or enable waiting rooms, anyone and I mean ANYONE can join your meeting.<br />
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If you want to meet for over 40 minutes, you can buy one license for $14.99 here. <a href="https://zoom.us/pricing">https://zoom.us/pricing</a><br />
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If you are going to have consistent ward wide or congregation wide meetings over Zoom. I recommend you run this as a Zoom Webinar. <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/209743263-Meeting-and-Webinar-Best-Practices-and-Resources">Check this article out for a how to</a>. This means you'll only see video and audio from the speakers. In a normal Zoom meeting everyone can be on video and audio. A webinar will make it easier to manage a large group, you can also stream it to Facebook or YouTube. Webinar licenses start at $40/a month depending on how many people you are expecting.<br />
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A few other quick tips.<br />
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1. You can broadcast video and audio so for the music you can share YouTube clips, PPT or visual aid. <br />
2. You can <a href="https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203435537-Mute-All-And-Unmute-All">mute everyone a</a>ll at once.<br />
3. You can make a meeting setting so people will be automatically muted upon entry. A really good idea.<br />
4. For the paid versions of Zoom it also includes a dial in number which can be helpful for people w/o computer access or have difficulty with technology.<br />
5. It generally does not work well to have everyone singing at once. Best to have one person sing and others sing at home, or just broadcast it.<br />
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Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions.<br />
<br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-18629807662671047842020-01-21T22:12:00.001-08:002020-01-21T22:12:14.485-08:00My Recent Post on Nathan Tanner's BlogRecently, an author and good friend of mine, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathantanner/">Nathan Tanner</a> asked if I'd answer a few career related questions for<a href="https://nathantanner.net/2020/01/20/career-qa-with-derek-pando-head-of-international-and-partner-marketing-at-zoom-2/"> his blog</a>. I was flattered because he has been the guy I call the last few years when I had a tricky career or HR situation. As I answered the questions, I really enjoyed reflecting on a few lessons, failures and critical moments. Check it out if you are interested.<br />
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I highly recommend you check out the rest of <a href="https://nathantanner.net/2020/01/20/career-qa-with-derek-pando-head-of-international-and-partner-marketing-at-zoom-2/">his blog</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Not-Your-Parents-Workplace-Professionals/dp/150788737X/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=nathan+tanner&qid=1579673301&sr=8-4">book</a> for great career related content. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-65321908268374504872019-10-29T22:41:00.002-07:002019-10-29T22:41:29.081-07:00My LinkedIn Learning Course: Social Selling Foundations launches today!Earlier this year, my old employer (LinkedIn) approached me to see if I'd be interested in creating a course for LinkedIn Learning on Social Selling.<br />
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LinkedIn Learning is the online learning platform from the Lynda.com acquisition. I've always enjoyed learning from their content and when I worked there, I was able to help create a course, but I had never been an author.<br />
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Long story short, it went live today! I had a lot of fun working on it over the summer as a side project. If you want to check it out, please click on the link below.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-selling-foundations-2/common-mistakes-in-growing-your-network?trk=embed_lil" title="Common mistakes in growing your network">Common mistakes in growing your network</a></b> from <b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-selling-foundations-2?trk=embed_lil" title="Learn the fundamentals of social selling. Discover how to grow your network and set up your social media accounts to build meaningful relationships.">Social Selling Foundations</a></b> by <b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/derek-pando?trk=embed_lil">Derek Pando</a></b>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com148tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-4467296364359229932019-09-11T22:44:00.002-07:002019-09-11T22:44:40.785-07:0010 Career Lessons from 10 Years in Silicon Valley<i><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-career-lessons-from-years-silicon-valley-derek-pando/?trackingId=Yh6hUXEUREyabS52TZtjKw%3D%3D">I published this first on LinkedIn.</a></i> <br />
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Ten years ago this month I drove across the bay bridge in a full-size truck with everything I owned in the back, to start my first post college full-time job. I was a bright eyed, recent BYU grad, that did not know hardly anything about San Francisco.<br />
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<br />Fast forward to the present and I feel extremely fortunate to have spent my whole career thus far in the bay area, working with many wonderful people at some pretty amazing companies. I recognize that it has been a privilege to have a career that I've enjoyed immensely.<br /><br />There are a few lessons I've learned over the last 10 years that have really stuck with me and I wanted to share them here. Some are unique to Silicon Valley, some are not, but I hope you can enjoy what I've learned. <br /><br /><b>You're smarter than you think.</b> I remember the first time I was in a meeting with a fellow marketer that went to Stanford. I was extremely nervous, to me, he might as well have been able to read my mind. I'd never met anyone that went to Stanford. I was extremely intimidated. A few months later I realized that he was of course very smart, but I realized I could keep up. I think that is so often the case, we think others are smarter or have some talent we don't have, but it's often not the case.<br /><br /><b>Work is important, but not THE most important.</b> It may seem strange that I learned this in a place that is known for promoting the "hustle". People here do work hard, but I've also seen so many examples of people that can have a ambitious career and still take care of the things in their lives that are most important. It's not easy, but I'm grateful for mentors that have shown me it can be done.<br /><b><br />Find managers who believe in you. </b>Looking back, almost all my managers have encouraged me, believed in me and given me opportunities to grow. If you are not in that situation, my only advice would be to find a way out as soon as possible.Your career will be greatly limited under a manager that does not believe in you.<br /><br /><b>Dream big</b>. I think the biggest advantage of Silicon Valley is people here believe they can do crazy things and they just do it.<br /><br /><b>Find managers who tell you the truth.</b> The most rapid personal career growth that has happened to me is when I've had managers who have told me the truth. At first it was uncomfortable and hard, the millennial inside of me would sometimes prefer constant praise, but with constant feedback you can learn so fast. If you're manager is never correcting you, you're not growing as fast as you could.<br /><br /><b>Manage your reputation like your career depended on it.</b> The world is small, especially in Silicon Valley. Back channel reference checks are happening constantly, word gets around. Your reputation is either helping you behind the scenes or working against you. Work hard, treat everyone with respect and build those up around you and you should be fine.<br /><br /><b>Trust your gut.</b> The first few years of my career I'd see a decision be made or something happening that deep down in my gut, I thought it was the wrong decision or disagreed with. I rationalized that they were more experienced or smarter, but hindsight is 20/20. In those situations, I now know to trust my gut and bet on myself. I remember getting that advice from the CEO of a start up I worked for in college, but did not have the confidence to follow it for the first few years of my career. <br /><br /><b>Be a missionary not a mercenary.</b> If you are lucky enough to have the choice, I've found that I've felt much more fulfilled when I really believe in the product, the mission and the leaders of the companies I've worked for. <br /><br /><b>Leaving good in pursuit of great. </b>In terms of roles and companies, I've seen that the people that push themselves when they get comfortable and leave a good job or role in pursuit of greater opportunities are happier. Companies in Silicon Valley have become masters of helping you feel comfortable and fulfilled in jobs that maybe don't push you to your full potential.<br /><br /><b>There is power in diversity.</b> I truly believe that I've learned more being surrounded by a variety of people, ideas and background. <br /><br />Thank you for reading and humoring my walk down memory lane. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-23954432628768260142019-09-07T22:09:00.000-07:002019-09-09T21:22:26.582-07:00When to Sell Your Company Stock<br />
For the last 2.5 years I've been working for Zoom, which before April 18th of this year was a privately held company. Before Zoom, I had always worked for large public companies. Now that we are public I've been doing a lot of research about when to sell company stock. Prior to my current gig, anytime I had company stock I was using it to pay for grad school, pay off debt or build an emergency fund. This is the first time that I have company stock and all those things are behind me. <br />
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I'm fortunate to have many friends and mentors who have gone through this before and I've been relentlessly bugging them and getting their advice. I've also been doing my own research linked out below to some of the best resouces I've found on the topic. I've always felt the best financial advice is not easy to find so I wanted to share what I've learned about when to sell your company stock.<br />
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FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT I'M NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR, PLEASE CONSULT ONE AND AN ACCOUNTANT AND MAYBE A LAWYER. ANY SPECIFIC NUMBERS OR PERCENTAGES OF HOW MUCH TO SELL ARE JUST EXAMPLES, EVERY SITUATION IS DIFFERENT. <br />
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But....here are some guiding principles about when to sell your company stock.<br />
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<b>If you have debt, sell baby sell.</b> Earlier in my career I primarily used any stock I had to do two things, pay off debt and to build an emergency fund. The general conservative financial wisdom would seem to agree that this makes the most sense not just for stock but any sort of windfall or extra income. <br />
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Assuming you have no debt and a solid 3-6 month expenses in an emergency fund. Here are some other ways you should think about your stock ranked in order of most conservative to risky. <br />
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<b>Sell everything as soon as you can and diversify.</b> Even with no debt, there is solid data to back this one up, check out <a href="https://blog.wealthfront.com/sell-employee-stock/">this article</a> from Wealthfront. <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/does-your-company-give-you-stock-great-sell-it-1477518421">Another article</a> walking through why this could be a good idea. <br />
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<b>Make a plan and put it on autopilot.</b> This takes the emotion out of when and how to sell. Emotion seems to be the biggest enemy to wise stock selling decisions. There are so many variations, but the key is to decide in advance how much stock you want to sell in what time period. For example you can have a plan to say that 4 years from now I want to have left 25% of a specific stock grant, so you would schedule regular amount of shares to sell each month to sell 75% of your shares. You could also say you'll sell everything over 12 months. The possibilities are endless, but should be influenced by your networth, what your financial needs are in the near and long terms as well as your risk tolerance.<br />
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<b>You don't get rich by diversifying.</b> I had a mentor and someone I really respect tell me this. I think I would modify it a little to say "you don't get REALLY rich by diversifying". Think about the employees who followed all the previous advice at Apple, Google, Facebook and all the other stock super stars. They got rich, but not nearly as rich as the would have had they held on for a long time. Most companies are not going to be in that category...but some will be. <b>General conventional financial wisdom suggests you should almost never have more than 10-15% of your network tied up in your company stock.</b> Personally, I think the key is being able to be realistic about the risk and comfortable with it. Can you take on that much risk? Are you more worried about winning big or losing big? Do you have enough money outside of the stock position to do what you want to do for the next 5-7 years? <b>Any big purchases you need to make in the near future?</b> How are you tracking for retirement, kids college savings etc? If you are in a solid position to have a concentrated position in your company stock and want that to be a high risk/high reward part of your portfolio, then that makes sense.<br />
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As I've been talking to experts on this topic and reading up on my own, I keep coming back to one important thing to consider. No matter what you decide to do you need to make a thorough enough and smart decision that no matter what happens with the stock price you can look back and maybe not be happy with the outcome, but be happy with your decision.<br />
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In my opinion, what it takes to get to that place is to have a solid plan, get good advice, be realistic about your risk level and have a solid financial foundational. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-41570705867409696232019-05-12T21:18:00.001-07:002019-05-12T21:18:34.168-07:00Podcast Interview: Why Marketing Podcast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A few months ago Rusty Pepper asked if I'd join the <a href="https://www.whymarketingpodcast.com/podcast-1/2019/5/7/episode-14-derek-pando-the-future-of-video">Why Marketing Podcast</a> to talk about how I became a marketer, what I'm working on and much more. It was a fun experience. You can listen to the whole thing below on YouTube.<br />
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<br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-41648198694964851852019-04-30T20:56:00.000-07:002019-04-30T20:56:03.255-07:00Beyond an Emergency Fund: Making More Money with a Financial CushionAs I was considering leaving my last job, which had a very generous 401k match, I realized that it was unlikely that my next company would have as generous of a match. As soon as I decided I was serious about finding a new employer, I cranked up my contribution to 50% of my salary until I got the full match in a few short months before I quit. We lived off some extra savings we had set aside to be able to pay the bills. That extra savings we lived off of, essentially made us $1,000's of dollars.<br />
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Over the past few months, I've noticed even more places that if you have some extra financial cushion, you can use it to make even more money. This is good motivation for having a cushion beyond an emergency fund. I'm talking about money set aside not for emergencies...but opportunities. This principle reminds me of this quote from the Richest Man in Babylon.<br />
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<i>“The man who became of his understanding of the laws of wealth,
acquireth a growing surplus, should give thought to those future days.
He should plan certain investments or provisions that may endure safely
for many years, yet will be available when the time arrives which he has
so wisely anticipated.”
</i><br />
<i>―
<span class="authorOrTitle">
George S. Clason,
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<span id="quote_book_link_5197712">
<a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/5265">The Richest Man in Babylon</a>
</span></i><br />
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Here are a few ways I've seen this in action. <br />
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1. <b>ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan). </b>If you work at a publicly traded company and they offer this is a perk, if you can do without 20% of your salary for 6 months, you'll get a >15% guaranteed return on that money you set aside.<a href="https://adamnash.blog/2006/11/22/your-employee-stock-purchase-plan-espp-is-worth-a-lot-more-than-15/"> Read this link for the details on how it works.</a><br />
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2. <b>Exercise early options.</b> A very tech example, I know, but if you believe an IPO is eminent at your company you can exercise early and lock in long term capital gains and save a lot of money in taxes. <a href="https://blog.wealthfront.com/when-to-exercise-stock-options/">Read more here. </a><br />
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3. <b>Pay in advance discounts.</b> There are many products, like car insurance, where if you pay in advance they give you a discount. <br />
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4. <b>Strategic charitable contributions.</b> Consult a tax professional, but especially if you give a regular percentage of your salary, there might be some tax advantages to paying for the next year in December of the previous year depending on how near you are to exceeding the standard deduction. <br />
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5. <b>A great deal.</b> This is a very dangerous one, but if used with constraint and it's legitimately something would have bought eventually, the financial cushion an let you pounce on a great deal. <br />
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6. <b>Tax moves.</b> The most common way is making a contribution to a traditional IRA or pre-tax 401k, but you might be surprised at the answer if you have an accountant and ask them the question. "How could I move some money around to lower my tax bill?".<br />
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Bottom line, if you can set aside some money apart from your emergency fund for opportunities, I'm confident each year you'll find more ways to have even more cash in your pocket that year. <br />
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<i>Disclaimer...these are just some ideas, consult a professional</i>Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-91495864551125303632018-12-31T14:00:00.002-08:002018-12-31T14:07:59.463-08:00Supercharge Your Networking in 2019 With These Tools and TacticsAs 2018 comes to a close, I'm guessing more than a few of you are thinking that working on your networking skills would be a good new years resolution. Networking is something I enjoy and I'm always working on improving, so I thought I'd share with you all a few applications that will help you take your networking to a new level.<br />
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<b>Postable.</b> A thank you card is one of the most powerful ways to show appreciation when someone in your network does you a solid, like refer you for a job or give you some advice. Finding an envelope, stamps etc is a huge pain. Postable makes it so you can type it out online and in a few clicks and a few dollars later they mail very unique, seemingly handwritten cards. (even fooled my mother-in-law). Yes of course, doing it the old fashioned way is better, but this is a great alternative. Use my code "MRMKNB7Y" on Postable for some free credit. <br />
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<b>Calendly</b>. I'm a big fan of Calendly, it makes it extremely easy to find a time for a chat. It syncs with your calendar to only show people you want to schedule meetings with the times that you're available. Send them a link and people pick a time that works for them. Two pro tips. First, if you have a commute, set up a link dedicated to your commute. There is no excuse for not nurturing your network when you have a >20 minute commute, that's twice a day you can catch up with old colleagues or connect with new folks. Second tip, link Zoom and Calendly together to automatically create a Zoom link in the invite. <br />
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<b>Amazon.</b> Do not underestimate the power of a small thoughtful gift to someone in your network as a thank you or just to help someone out. You can't go wrong with one of your favorite books. If you have prime, you get free two day shipping for even low priced items. I often do this with students who reach out to me, I send them the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Start-up-You-Future-Yourself-Transform/dp/0307888908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546293052&sr=8-1&keywords=The+start+up+of+you">Start up of You</a>.<br />
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<b>LinkedIn.</b> Of course, the no brainer, but let me challenge you to think and use LinkedIn in two very specific ways when networking. First, on LinkedIn you get tons of updates from people on promotions, new jobs, being mentioned in the news. These are amazing opportunities to reach out, compliment, congratulate and touch based with someone who you may not have spoken to in awhile. Second, if you encounter a tough problem at work, chances are you're not alone, do deep searches and try to connect with someone in your industry who has faced the same problem. I've made lasting friendships by cold contacting people on LinkedIn and asking them if they are willing to share a few ideas one professional to another.<br />
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Best of luck in improving your networking in 2019, don't forget to give more than you receive when it comes to professional networking and you'll find an army of people around you helping you succeed.<br />
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<br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-43190984859825719482018-12-05T20:21:00.000-08:002018-12-05T20:21:08.277-08:00How to Get a Job at ZoomI joined Zoom in April 2017. At that time, Zoom was still flying pretty below the radar as a great place to work. In fact, I only found out about it because of a friend who encouraged me to take a close look at them. Those days are over though, the secret is out. <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm">Today Glassdoor released it's top companies to work for</a> and Zoom is #2 for large companies on a list among many other great well known companies. If seeing the Glassdoor report makes you think you'd like to explore working at Zoom, here are a few tips to help you get a job at Zoom.<br />
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1. <b>Do your homework on the culture. </b>Zoom has a very strong culture that Eric, our CEO and the whole executive team works to cultivate it. Watch his interviews on YouTube, his keynote from Zoomtopia and read articles he's written to get a sense of our culture. This will help you in the interview process.<br />
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2. <b>If you know a Zoomer, ask them to refer you.</b> Zoom has a robust internal referral process, so if you know someone at Zoom who will vouch for you, make sure to ask them to refer you. That will help make sure you get a good look. <br />
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3. <b>Use the product. </b>If you're not already super familiar with Zoom, you can download a free full featured version on Zoom.us and experience it yourself.<br />
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4. <b>Video interview like a pro.</b> Most interviews will be over Zoom, make sure you use computer audio or VoIP, turn your camera on and for bonus points use a virtual background.<br />
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Hope this helps and I get to see you around Zoom HQ soon. :)Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-44500886923116173422018-08-28T21:40:00.001-07:002018-08-28T21:40:48.437-07:00My Favorite Productivity Hack for Working Smarter I'm always look for ways to work smarter. I've got two kids under three, a demanding job and just a lot of other stuff going on outside of work. I really want to excel at work, but reality is I will not be able to out work everyone hours wise.<br />
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<img alt="Image result for working smarter funny" class="irc_mi" height="353" src="https://pics.me.me/work-smarter-not-harder-6122710.png" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="377" /> </div>
I've recently stumbled across a productivity hack that has helped me be extremely responsive at work to senior executives without constantly checking my email or working 24/7. I recently set up my work email to send me a text every time I get email for a very select group of executives. <a href="https://www.cnet.com/how-to/auto-forward-important-email-to-your-phone-as-a-text-message/">(article with a how-to)</a> Here is an example of how it works in a real life example.<br />
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<i>I'm working out at 8am on a Saturday morning, I get a text that my CEO just emailed me. I jump on chat to discuss it with him quickly, resolve it and he tells me "thanks...now go and have a great weekend". </i><br />
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I got him what he needed almost immediately at an odd hour. He seemed grateful and I was happy to get him what he needed fast. <br />
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I'm confident that these executives see me as someone who is very responsive and I don't have to be addicted to my phone or work non stop to be able to make that happen.<br />
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This has been a good thing for me, but it could go south very easily. A few reasons why I think this works for me.<br />
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1. Everyone that I have set up to send me a text does not email me frequently.<br />
2. I only have 4 people whose emails will trigger a text message<br />
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If you have a ton of people and you get multiple text messages a day, I don't think this is going to help you. I probably get 1-2 a week.<br />
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Try it out and let me know what you think!Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-67607683148816966832018-07-26T16:36:00.002-07:002018-07-26T16:36:38.643-07:00How to Make an Awesome Breakout Session at Your User ConferenceAs our team gears up for Zoomtopia 2018, I've been thinking a lot about what makes a great breakout session. I made a quick video of a condensed version of a training I did for our breakout speakers this year. This short video (7 min) should give you a few ideas to help you make a awesome breakout session from working on breakouts sessions at Salesforce, LinkedIn and now Zoom. Enjoy!<br />
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<br />Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-4845781574601021522018-05-02T22:00:00.001-07:002018-05-02T22:00:29.072-07:00Negotiation Tactics from A Negotiation MasterEvery now and then you meet a master of a skill and the urge to breakdown what makes them great and share it with the world, is too strong to resist. I must shout this from the social media mountain tops. After analyzing my many lost negotiations with the master, here are negotiation tips you can apply to your personal or professional life for certain success. <br />
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<b>Drastically increase demands with each offer.</b> Let's say you are selling your car for 10k. If someone makes you an offer for 8k, let them know the car is now for sale for 12k. If they come back with 10k, the car is now 14k. Keep a straight face the whole time and even appear agitated if they push back on your increased price.<br />
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<b>Repeat demands.</b> Every chance you get, repeat your demands, especially if they've been shot down. Do not take into consideration things like feasibility or if something actually exists in the modern world. For example, demand someone from another country attend the next meeting, even if it's physically impossible for them to get there in time.<br />
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<b>Always immediately pull the nuclear option.</b> Do not show any weakness. If they threaten to not meet your demands do whatever you can to make their life miserable. The more public the better. For example, if you're negotiating your salary and the hiring managers pushes back, go to a social gathering you know the hiring manger will be at and scream, kick and hurl insults at them in front of their friends and family until they concede. <br />
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<b>Wear them down.</b> This is probably the most important one. Keep an eagle eye out for the times they are tired, hungry, stressed, or extremely busy and this is when you pounce. Bother them so frequently that they'll give you what you want just to have some peace in their life. Let's say you try to to sign a deal with a customer. Call their cell phone every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day until they sign.<br />
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Best of luck in your negotiations and a special thanks to the negotiation master, my son Aiden (2 years old) for teaching me so much about the art of negotiation. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3555979418711362264.post-53174258124999105732018-04-19T21:45:00.002-07:002018-04-19T21:45:51.817-07:00How to Mess with Former Management Consultants That Work in Silicon ValleyEarlier this week, I wrote a<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6391794449583869953"> LinkedIn post</a> poking fun at the many former management consultants that work in Silicon Valley. To my surprise, it is probably the most popular post I've ever written with 600+ likes and 80,000 views. <br />
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So I thought I'd share it here on the blog and add one more. <br />
<br />1. After they just explained a strategy say….”I get it, I do, but are we being strategic enough? I need you to think about this strategically” <br /><br /> 2. Every time they say Mckinsey, Bain or BCG, ask “who is Mckinsey?” as if it’s a person. Pretend to have never heard of any of those firms.<br />
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3. After seeing their 2x2 ask "Would this be clearer in a 2x4?" Try to keep a straight face.<br />
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4. When they send you PPT decks...subtly change the fonts/formatting before sending it back to them.<br />
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5. Ask them to run a big meeting without a PPT. :)<br />
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6. Casually ask them to defend the superiority of the Mckinsey vs. Bain PPT formats. Ask probing questions and see how long you can keep the discussion going. <br />
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Don't worry folks, I have really enjoyed working with former management consultants and have learned a lot from them, but I make fun of people I like too. Derek Pandohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14551796423166049552noreply@blogger.com7