"Putting Education to Work"

Nicholas Kristof led a diverse panel for the Clinton Global Initiative's 2014 Annual Meeting titled “Putting Education to Work.” The plenary focused on the idea of learning skills that would be adaptable and useful in the workforce in light of the high amount of qualified and unemployed graduates. The panel ranged from one of these once-frustrated graduates to a CEO of a company who trains over a billion students. Below are short descriptions of the moderator and panelists:

Nicholas Kristof (Moderator): A well-known columnist for The New York Times, Kristof mainly specializes in education issues.

John Chambers (Panelist): The Chairman and CEO of the company Cisco, an IT-driven company stationed out of California.

Reem Al Hasimy (Panelist): The Minister of State for the United Arab Emirates

Nisreen Mitwally (Panelist): A West Bank area alumni of one of the Clinton Foundation-partnered programs, Education for Employment, which works to match college graduates with jobs.

Ashish Thakkar (Panelist): The non-college graduate who is the Founder of the Mara Group and Foundation, an organization that empowers rising African entrepreneurs.

The panel kicked off with Kristof asking Mitwally about her experiences with Education for Employment, which just started at the Clinton Global Initiative conference last year. Mitwally began by discussing the high unemployment rate of college graduates in the West Bank area and how frustrated she felt by this. She then went into the programs Education for Employment offered. Mitwally learned how to “attractively” write her resume and gain an understanding for what the workplace would be like. After a month in the program, she was placed in a job with a huge insurance company that she is seemingly very passionate about.

The conversation transitioned into criticism for the style of education that is in place right now. Chambers repeatedly stated that education is training students for where the jobs used to be, but not where they are now. This sounded good, but he never explained what he meant by this or how the education system should be changed. Al Hasimy had different criticism for the education system, saying that we cannot use a cookie-cutter approach or purely analyze education by numbers. She said that we must look beyond this because education cannot be standardized.

Thakkar has a very different outlook on what education means based on his history. He quit school and then started a very successful company. He mediated that education is important, but so is informal education, such as knowing how to network, soft skills, computer skills, and mentorship. Mitwally also shared that the best part of the Education for Employment program was the untraditional education She recounted one particular activity in which they were split into groups, given pasta and marshmallows, and instructed to build the tallest tower in a short matter of time. This is an activity that even I did in a group interview for a student organization and the results were the same: after failing miserably, you realize you were supposed to communicate with the other groups and all work together to build the tallest tower to show that in teamwork, everyone wins.

A standout portion of the panel in my opinion was the discussion of women in business. Al Hasimy brought up that the United Arab Emirates is a pioneer in integrating women in business through technology, which is a “massive enabler” for women. She said “…empowering women is not because it’s a nice thing to do, if you don’t have that, you are not going to have prosperity.” Al Hasimy connected a topic that often causes controversy to something everyone cares about: economic prosperity and stability. She and Kristof discussed that poverty will never improve if women do not work.

To conclude, I found this plenary to be extremely fascinating and it really hit home as a current college student. This really highlighted to me the importance of not only academic experiences in college but also the interactive and hands-on ones. And for the future, I think we should take Nicholas Kristof’s advice— we need to support an education that will make a difference.

 The "Putting Education to Work" Panel: L to R: Nicholas Kristof, Nisreen Mitwally, 

Ashish Thakkar, John Chambers, Reem Al Hasimy

From http://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2014/09/23/cgi-10th-annual-meeting-tuesday-highlights

Two students impressively tackling the pasta and marshmallow tower challenge.

From http://acementor.wordpress.com