New York Minutes, Vol. 5: Big Oil Don’t Cry

Here’s an email I recently sent to about 300 former and current colleagues (names of company, projects and people deleted for less Google-ability):

______________________________________________
From: me
Sent: 21 September 2008 18:30
Subject: from a shaky start...

B- colleagues past & present:

I don't believe I've ever told any of you this, but I began my first day at B- in 1999 with a mixture of excitement, skepticism, jetlag, and some sort of stomach bug; a few hours into my B- career, I threw up in the executive floor bathroom.

It got better from there.

Since then, I've had the opportunity to take part in our groundbreaking management of social impacts around T- & S-; help our company realize its supermajor size as part of the first Group Planning team; and bring colleagues together from all over the world to develop our human rights guidance note.

For the past two years, I've been on secondment to the U.N. mandate on business & human rights led by Harvard professor John R-. In June, the Human Rights Council welcomed his work to date and renewed his mandate for three years – specifically requesting that he develop practical recommendations for companies, governments and others to protect human rights in the context of corporate activity.

At the end of this year, I'll move from B- to Harvard to continue supporting Professor R-‘s work, still based in New York City.

It's been a great honor to work with all of you over the years. May your most inauspicious beginnings prove fruitful beyond your imagination.

Sincerely,
Christine

______________________________________________

End of an era. I’ll miss being part of one of the world’s greatest companies – it’s been a terrific ride, as all of you can attest. But I sensed it might be time to go when our new CEO ordered the art off the walls in our offices worldwide, to be replaced with photos of oil rigs and hard-hatted workers. (I’m not making this up.)

It will be interesting to see how much changes, given that I’ve been working on this U.N. project for over two years now. I’ll keep in touch with the colleagues working on human rights, but I may miss the broader community that I enjoyed being part of but will likely never see again: the old guard secretaries who really ran the company; the security guards and printroom staff; the people I worked with during my brief forays into the quantitative world. And I will certainly miss turning left upon boarding the aircraft.

Speaking of aircraft, since Adrian planned our honeymoon in secret, I get to wreak revenge for our first anniversary trip in December. The problem is that I’m terrible at keeping secrets (my own, that is – all of yours are safe and sound). See, like I shouldn’t even said “Speaking of aircraft” at the beginning of this paragraph. I mean, maybe we’re not even flying. I should have said, “Speaking of travel.” Although given the current balance of my mutual funds, maybe it will be a stay-cation. In any case, I’d better get planning.

Speaking of planning, our landlord has just informed us that our lease will not be renewed when it expires 9 January: Apparently the apartments above and next to ours that she and her family currently inhabit don’t add up to enough space, so she needs ours as well.

So here we go back into the Manhattan New York real estate market, which thus far has been immunized against the national slowdown by Europeans who come over for the weekend and buy iPods and condos. They say the market may be softening, but “they” don’t have to move, and anyway that feels like assuring someone diving into a shark pit that the sharks’ teeth have dulled a bit. Do feel free to pass along any two-bedroom apartments in Tribeca that come your way.

To make myself feel even worse about our cost of living, I’ve just arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, to eat cheddar and speak at the UW-Oshkosh’s Earth Charter Summit on the invitation of my fellow Amherst rugby captain. The taxi driver who took me into town from the airport was extremely tired, having worked both the Dairy Expo and the night Badgers game in the past week, but still impressively verbose.

Hope you all are weathering the financial storm. Stay the course, read my college classmate Ron Lieber’s “Your Money” column in the New York Times, and for God’s sake don’t touch your 401k.

Much love,
cb

New York Minutes, Vol. 4: ow

I’m a bit achy today. This past weekend I went to my undergrad alma mater to celebrate fifty years of (men’s) rugby at the college. I’d planned to skip around the field for a few minutes in order to have participated in the women’s alumni game, but there were few substitutes so I ended up playing most of the game in the depths of the scrum.

For the first few minutes I felt great, fitter than I thought I would, enjoying the cheering and heckling from the sidelines by the men warming up for their game, entertaining thoughts of seeking out the NYC women’s club… But then someone stepped on my foot, which kind of hurt. Then I got tackled and dumped on my head, which also smarted a bit. Then we drank a lot of bad beer and woke up early the next day, which wasn’t too pretty either. So the gym downstairs from my apartment remains the most appealing option.

But it was a terrific weekend, different from the family affair that my 15th reunion in one month’s time is expected to be. I was reminded of the strength and sisterhood that our team provided, and how formative the whole experience was in developing physical and psychological confidence.

As we were going down for a scrum at one point during the game, the hooker suggested I adjust my posture to be a stronger second row, which I did to good effect. It occurred to me what a great example that was of effective and constructive feedback, well-delivered and received – such an essential part of what we hope to achieve with our colleagues. And in fact, how team sports are a physical manifestation of our workplaces…

Later it occurred to me that, duh, I’m not the first one to think of these parallels. But I was pleasantly surprised to realize how valuable and relevant such a major part of my undergrad experience is to what I do today, since in recent years I’ve been far more engaged with my grad school than my college, which has come as a surprise given that my blood ran purple for so long.

None of this elevates hanging out in a totally gross dormitory basement (the furniture hasn’t changed since I was there, and it was pretty nasty then), drinking American beer out of cans (when we’re not racing to drink out of plastic cups and turn them upside down on our heads), and singing rude songs – but all that sure was fun.

On a more adult note, the sixth month of married life is going swimmingly, thank you very much. (Not least because I did not subject my husband to this rugbypalooza, although I will drag him up to reunion next month.) With a great deal of practice, I’ve become accustomed to calling him “my husband”, although being referred to as his “wife” is still kinda funny.

We wondered what we would talk about after planning our wedding for nine months; turns out we talk about how great the wedding was and occasionally wonder what to do with our 1400 photos.

Work is going fabulously: Our latest report to the UN Human Rights Council has been received well (even got a bit of play in the Economist), and I’m enjoying participating in a number of initiatives outside of the extractives industry to gain a broader perspective on business and human rights, as well as doing a bit of speaking and writing.

Although one recent speaking engagement demonstrated just how long it’s been since I was in school: I was on a panel in an internet law class, during which the teaching assistant googled items as we mentioned them, the results appearing on the screen behind us. The students do that anyway, the professor explained. Too much for my brain to process.

One initiative enabled my first trip to India, to Bangalore. I knew it was going to be a good week when I received a proper head waggle at immigration – and indeed it was. Some elements reminded me of Jakarta: Women in beautiful saris on motorbikes, often riding with an improbably large number of family members; traffic anarchy (cows in the street!); broken sidewalks packed with vendors in front of open storefronts. The Hindu temples stunned me with their rainbows of color, wedged between nondescript commercial buildings; and I survived some dozen consecutive delicious Indian meals, happy if a little bloated.

One final work-related note: I finally tired of digging through my deleted e-mails whenever someone tells me that he or she is looking for a job just like the one I deleted sometime in the previous month or two, so I set up a blog to post listings and other resources.

Best movie of the year so far: “Man on Wire”, a documentary about Philippe Petit plotting his 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers. (And it wasn’t just because Sting was in the audience with us.) We saw the film’s New York premiere last week as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, and yesterday caught Petit doing his street performer act in Washington Square Park, complete with a brief tightrope walk between a tree and a lamppost.

In one week’s time we’re off to Japan to celebrate the wedding of a dear Jakarta friend. This will be my husband’s first time east of Istanbul, so we’re very excited. This will be the first long-haul flight in awhile for which I’ll have to turn right upon boarding. Could be painful, but at least I probably won’t get tackled and dumped on my head.

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.

Much love,
cb