ADAMS LEADERSHIP AWARD--Great achievement requires great teams and leaders. Yesterday I was presented with the honor of the Adams Leadership Award from the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs - CIPA for exemplary scholarship (GPA and academic performance) and service in the field of public affairs along with a female fellow Elena Bussiere. This award will never be possible without the support, guidance, work and mentorship of many scholars, leaders, family members and peers. This award has two components, the first is the academic component who thanks to the support from two years ago of faculty at INCAE such as Juan Carlos Barahona, Carlos Quintanilla and Alberto Trejos, and my friends Juan Pablo Gómez Miguel Ramírez Carlos Rius and Oscar Salas (my MCP peers) and the rest my CAE 14 classmates; I learned economic, financial and operation managerial skills at the highest level as possible in an intense and brutally savage system that brought the best and the worst in us. Those skills and experiences made the Cornell core courses and some but not all of the group dynamics more friendly. That gave me the opportunity to focus more in the substance of public policy and e-government, researching, publishing and creating strategic partnerships rather than expend several hours reading papers or trying to understand complex economic models, since I already understand them or at least had the frameworks to quickly learn new ones. Upon my arrival to Cornell, I encounter a great academic advisor Tom OToole who supported me since the beginning to learn more about public and private partnerships e and the role of technology, particularly e- government, in Public Administration and democracy. He sotted my academic flaws and immediately point me the direction to work on them. Parallel to that, I had the opportunity to work as a research assistant and teaching assistant of Dr. Rick Geddes, Joe Grasso and Dr. Lourdes Casanova ( in a case for the World Economic Forum as co-author with Tom on the role of Global University Engagement) and those opportunities gave me the frameworks and skills to leverage my previous experiences in law, foreign affairs and business to shape them in to the policy arena in a strategic way. My team members in different classes Ivi Demi Jake Lopez Gregory Jette Kenichi Nishikawa Eithel Manrique Renee Botelho Karan Kalhan Shun Sugiura Matt Fisher-Post Enrico Bon and many more were excellent students. Making the process easier, flexible and pleasant. For our final graduation project the leadership of Luis Javier Castro, his time, commitment and strategic advise to the team was crucial. Benjamin Rene Garcia Luke Ackerknecht and Will Nielsen worked with all they had and put their hearts in to the project to present a solid deliverable as a premise for a fund that has promising potential. I faced a knee surgery during those days but the team was always there to stop the bullets no questions asked and they have a very important weight in this award. They were the ones that make this happen and I wanted to recognize this . For the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress as a Presidential Fellow, without the academic and research guidance of my mentor for that project (Kent Shreeve) and the support in the research scope and legwork of Luis Ferreira that paper will not be a reality. The second component of the award is exemplary service, and to achieve that component dozens of people took part in different process. The alliance with the government of Panama was spearheaded by Tom, Greg Jette, Wesley Parish Hunt and the CIPA staff, CPAS board (Matt Matthew Williger Olinda T. Hassan Valeria Farinaro Abhinav Pandya Laure Pouchelon Wasiq Ismail Rao Shaily Gupta ) and the Colloquium Chairs. All the members of the CIPA office work extra hours to make that official head of state visit a success Judy Metzgar Lisa Jervey Lennox Cheryl Miller and Jennifer Evangelista took many for the team. Thanks to them several civil servants from Panama (mostly middles class hard working females) hopefully will be part of our program soon. Kenichi Nikishawa MPA 2014 and Maida Martinez from the Minister of Economy and Finance did their parts working in the whole admission processes with the pipeline of candidates. For the potential alliance with the Costa Rica government and the ones we already have with different NGOs and the ones that are in process; they are so many stakeholders involved that it will take more than a page to recognize them, from the previous administration to friends such as Gaby Saborio Gaby Saborio Ricardo Villalobos Flores Alejandro Egea Alejandro Pignataro Pedro Muñoz Giancarlo Mazzali Paul Brenner Roman Andres Valenciano Emma Lizano Alexander Villalobos Morsink playing a leading role. My main supporters such as friends, family and allies that had being with us since the very beginning of this journey back in 2010 and my new friends from all around the world Rafael Ortiz Fabrega Víctor Umaña Alberto Cubero Santana Carlos Agüero Tití Uribe Daniela Silva Felipe Castro Truque Norma Mita Arrea Santiago Murillo Eduardo Matos Heleno Gouvêa Alejandro Fernandez Sanabria Nuria Marín Roberto Sáenz Flores Roberto Artavia Cuadra Rafi Sherzad Chris Hunt Santosh Ninan Tom Serres @Jose Aguilar Berrocal Benjamín Vargas Catalina Brenes Orfebre Mariamalia Jimenez Coto Priscilla Hernandez and many many others that I will recognize their support soon. They had being there in the good ones and the bad ones. Not tolerating gossip and serruchadera de pisos, stopping bullets with their chests and despising the BS that is so common when you are trying to make things happen. They lived in a motto of surrounding themselves with people that add value rather than destroying it, people that fight and do things with joy and selflessness. Last but not least, I want to thank the inspiration and leadership of Roberto Artavia Loría who has being a great friend since I had the bold idea of applying to an Ivy League school. I remember it like if was yesterday when I approached him after a lecture at INCAE. Before calling me crazy when I had the wild idea of crowd-fund my education a few years back, he first asked me: How can I help?. I want to dedicate this award to don Roberto and specially to don Daniel Robert and his boundless energy and commitment to a better world. In my last meeting with don Daniel he told me: Necesitamos mucha más gente joven como ustedes que quieran cambiar este mundo tan loco. Thank you all for your leadership. This award is thanks to all of you.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 21:37:55 +0000
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