Strengths I Bring to a Study Team

In my life, I have lived and done business in a country with 200,000,000% inflation, 800% interest rates and another under the system of apartheid. I have called a refugee camp home and interacted with subsistence farmers, orphans, Fortune 500 CEO’s and 3rd generation heirs as they developed their visions. While cliché, the most significant strength I would bring to a learning team is the ability to facilitate discussion and maximize input from every member of the group - independently of their background, opinion, education and expertise.

While playing college soccer, I got injured and was sent to the world renowned Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic model of integrating teams of multidisciplinary physicians and scientists to solve problems intrigued me. Its success from a cost and outcomes basis is well documented, as I have witnessed firsthand. When I joined BET’s Customer Management and I heard their concept of coordinating advice for clients, I immediately thought this process could significantly improve from implementing the Mayo Model. Over the last 9 years I have been employing the ‘Mayo’ approach to wealth management, solving internal and external conflicts and supporting idea generation. When a discussion between a trust officer and an estate planning attorney regarding the termination clause of the trust became heated and reached an impasse, I proposed that we take a step back and focus on the desired outcomes and evaluate each proposal based on how well it achieved the outcomes. This led to more meaningful participation of each member, which resulted in the advice committee agreeing on an optimal solution that had components of the initial ideas.

At The African Child, we have built a diverse team of 45 volunteers in 4 countries representing 12 nationalities. Once in a team meeting I noticed that the African women volunteers were not contributing. I was hoping the traditional cultural norms would not apply to our setting, and that