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