Loyola Rambles into The Final Four

Sister Jean - Chicago Sun Times

     March Madness is a wonderful and crazy time. This year, in Chicago we are excited and a bit electrified by the Loyola Men’s Basketball Team and the incredible run they are having in the NCAA Championship Tournament. There is 1:16 left in the game. They are leading Kansas State 73 – 59. If they win this game, which appears a certainty, the will go to the Final Four. This, in essence, is a real time blog post. Their fans are all decked out in maroon and gold scarves cheering like crazy and enjoying the ride.
     Loyola, while not a perennial power, has had a history of basketball excellence. In 1963, Loyola actually won the NCAA Tournament. The announcers just announced that the 1963 team is the only Illinois basketball team to win a national championship.
     I am waiting for the second game in which Michigan squares off against Florida State. Michigan is my team. Of course, I want them to win. But, honestly, I was equally if not more excited to see what Loyola would do against a very good Kansas State team. The game just ended. The final score is 78 – 62. They were an 11th seed in the South Region and now they are in the Final Four. Their next game will be against the winner of the Michigan – Florida State game. If Michigan wins, as I hope they will, I will want Michigan to win the next game versus Loyola but I will not be so disappointed if they don’t.
     Loyola has won fourteen games in a row since February 2. They were ecstatic to have made the tournament. Their first game was against the 6th seed University of Miami. Everyone expected them to lose. They didn’t. They won it 64 – 62 with a winning shot as time ran out. Their second game was against Tennessee, the 3rd seed in the South region. Everyone expected them to lose. They didn’t. They upset the volunteers 63 – 62 with another game ending basket. It was getting crazy. Their third game, this past Thursday, was against the 7th seed Nevada. Folks were not so quick to favor Nevada. Loyola did win that game and did it again with a last-minute bucket to secure a 69 – 68 victory. They got to the Elite Eight by winning three games by a net margin of 4 points. Indeed it was crazy!
     The Ramblers took it up a few notches in today’s game. They dominated Kansas State by securing a double digit lead early in the second half and never relinquished it. Here I am writing about them and I cannot name their coach or any of their players without resorting to Google. They are a true Cinderella story. They are even more loveable, story bookish, and special with the sudden celebrity of their 98-year-old chaplain, Sister Jean, who has been a fixture on the sidelines the entire tournament. 98 years old! She loves the team and the team adores her. At this point, the entire country enjoys this lovely lady and her amazing team.
     The Michigan – Florida State game just started. The talking heads on TBS all think that Florida State is about to school Michigan. We shall see…

Facebook Analytica

     It was all over the news yesterday and today. Facebook was being severely criticized for allowing Cambridge Analytica to surreptitiously mine the personal data of Facebook users and using that data to support the likes of the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Cambridge Analytica is a UK based big data analytics firm that consults with election campaigns around the world. The huge unanswered question in my book is if Facebook sold them the data.
     People are upset to the point where they are deleting their Facebook accounts. Yesterday morning, NPR commented that folks were waiting to hear from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and were surprised he had not as yet addressed this issue. I guess his team was still crafting his statement as he did not say anything until this afternoon.  Even when he spoke and apologized, it sounded like blah-blah written by a PR firm.  I am sure that if Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins were involved in the company, Facebook would have never come to this.
     I believe that the only way to fight something like this is to bury companies like Cambridge Analytica in a tsunami of disinformation. How would they process it? What would they do with it? They would be stymied and neutered and we could all go back to enjoyed what Facebook is really meant for: cheering us up with cute kitten and baby goat videos.
     Whatever am I talking about? Disinformation? Here is a long rambling sample of posts in the spirit of what I am talking about.

• I am gay, I am not gay, but gay is OK, when I am not anti-gay. 
• Trump? I love the guy. Don’t like his hair. Where does he get those long ties? Pretty wife, Marla, right? I don’t like it when he tweets. Actually, I am not a huge fan. 
• Alexander Nix is the president of Cambridge Analytica. Nix? Nixon? Coindcidence? (cue the Twilight Zone theme.) 
• We should invite Kim Jong-un for Trump’s army parade thing. At that time, we can either negotiate a reconciliation with his country or brainwash him. I am OK with either. 
• Hilary? Poor dear. Bless her heart, what made her think she could beat a man. Actually, she is as good as any man, maybe better. I love her policy on taxes but most definitely against raising them. 
• Speaking of Hilary and Kim Jong-un, do they buy their pantsuits at the same place? 
• Putin? I know the boy. Good man. Loves his country. Loves to be in charge. I kinda have a man crush on him. Hate what he has done in the Ukraine. When I next see him, I will most def ask him to consider term limits. 
• I sure hope President Nixon puts J. Edgar Hoover on the job to investigate Russian influence pedaling in our last election. 
• And then, of course, there is global warming. What a crock of science. Where do these guys get off analyzing data? Where do they even find this so-called data? It was probably hacked from Instabook or Facegram. It was probably Snipchatted or Twhatted. It has to be bogus except for on those days in February when it is 70-degree days. Then it kinda makes sense. 
• The New York Yankees? Love it when they lose. Hate em when they win. But, I still want them to win the world series. 
• Native Americans? Never cared for the Cleveland Indians, but love the Redksins, and the Stanford… what are they again? Ah yes, Indians that live in pine trees and get magically transformed into cardinals. I sure wish Fidel Castro would explain that in his next four-hour long speech. 
• As for marriages? They should all be arranged. Let’s rev up the heat on the melting pot, let's enact a law that requires everyone to marry someone from a different race and religion. 
• Gun control? All against it, except that teachers should be armed to the teeth with both guns and grenades. As Mike Royko once wrote, the teachers should not put themselves or their students in harm’s way. They should use the grenades to clear out the hallways before venturing out of their classrooms 

     If I posted stuff like this, what would Cambridge Analytica’s algorithms do with me. What would they send me? I would love to see how this would play out. In fact, I would love to see how it would play out on a larger scale. That is, what would happen, if we all posted dichotomous political and social views on a massive scale? What if there were an app for that? The app would randomly generate posts so companies like Cambridge Analytica would have a pile of stinky information that they really could not do anything with.  What shall we call the app?  Perhaps something along the lines of FaceSlap or FaceSmash.

The First Day of Spring

      Today was the first day of Spring. While the there are bits of new green sprouting out of the earth, it did not feel like Spring at all. But, it was not winter either. March, in these parts, is kind of an in between month. The flora is thinking about coming back to life but for the most part things are dull and dormant. The air is not as cold as winter, but there is still a rawness to it. It is in between.

     The transition from Summer to Fall to Winter seems to be a more natural and continuous progression to me. The world is in full bloom and gradually dies or goes dormant. The transition for Winter to Spring somehow seems more abrupt and a bigger change. I am not sure why I even view things this way.
     This is not to say that Spring is not a gradual blooming and not a gradual change from colder days to warmer days. Perhaps, I am looking at birth and rebirth as being more of an abrupt change than the growing and eventually withering away.
     I tried to see if there was anything close to my odd view of things in a web search. Needless to say, there is nothing close. Most of the quotes, poems, and other bits I found in the transition from Winter to Spring were welcoming the rebirth and warmth that is the promise of the season. In my comments here, I am not disparaging the arrival of spring. I do indeed look forward to the Summer that it brings and am quite content to leave Winter behind. As a schoolboy, Spring was the promise of the beginning of the baseball season and the end of the school year. Both were good things.
     Maybe, I am grappling with the same sentiment that T. S. Eliot opened The Waste Land with:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

     I remember how these lines resonated with me when I first read them. The rest of the famous poem was a let down by comparison. The breeding of lilacs and the spring rains stirring the dead roots is a good thing. That is the view most have… if and when they think about such.
     Perhaps, there is something very Armenian in my genetic coding. Of course, I like and embrace this notion. In days of old, March was a time of scarcity. All the reserves of the harvest were running low. It was a time of austerity, a time to persevere until things could be planted and trees would blossom. It is no small coincidence that Lent is such a heavy, somber, reflective time in the Armenian Church. We tend to lament more than others, and March is peak season for such. And I try to do my part…

Igreja Armenia Sao Jorge - São Paulo

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kassapian/4144201321

     There are a lot of pluses and minuses of business travel. The major plus for me was to get to see many parts of the world especially Latin America. I got to travel business or first class, we stayed in great hotels, and frequented fabulous restaurants. I visited the richest, poorest, and certainly most industrial parts of the major cities in Latin America. I made many friends and learned about the unique cultures of these countries that we Americans sometimes tend to lump into one large south of the Rio Grande category. The major minus was that I was travelling for business and not tourism. Therefore, in most places, I did much less tourism than I would have liked.
     I have done very little tourism in Brazil. All of my trips were to Sao Paulo, for example, were fly in and out, with most of my time spent in factories, warehouses, and offices. I did make friends with an Armenian fellow, Artur Der Haroutunian, who took me to an Armenian Restaurant and had me over his house for his son’s birthday. I had not been to a soccer game, Rio, the Amazon, the beaches, and any place tourists might want to go and see in this vast country.
     In my many trips to Sao Paulo, I always would pass by an Armenian Church on the way into the city for the airport. I recognized it immediately as an Armenian Church the first

Foursquare.com

time I say it. On each successive trip, in passing by it again and again, I wanted to visit the church… just because it is Armenian. As I always say, being Armenian is closer to being a large club or fraternity than a small nationality. Because of this, we stop and engage when we hear the language or see an Armenian church that is not in Armenia or Los Angeles. This being said, I never did visit the church. Mostly, it was because I was never here on a Sunday which would have been the logical and most convenient day to visit a church.
     On this trip, with the School of Business of North Park University, I am here for ten days, as a tourist, and over a Sunday. Perfect. I would finally have my chance to visit the Armenian Church that I had passed by so often. As the trip neared, I went online to try to find the address and email of the church and clergy. I did find a website for Sao Jorge (St. George) and the photo was of the church the one I wanted. They had an inquiry email address that I sent an email to… and never got an answer.
      I asked our priest in Chicago, Very Reverend Ghevont Pentezian, to see he could get

me better contact information for the clergy. He, obviously being younger and more resourceful than I, found Bishop Nareg Berberian on Facebook. We both wrote him, he graciously responded, and I found myself getting into an Uber at 10 am to get to the mass which started at 10:30.
     What a beautiful church! The stained glass windows were both vibrant and exquisite, the paintings that adorned the church were very well done and quite special, the ceiling was elegantly frescoed. As it was Lent and the curtain was closed, only the Etchmiadzinesque top of the altar was showing. It is an impressive sanctuary and well worth the wait.

     The service was a typical Armenian mass or badarak meaning beautiful, ceremonial, and on the long side.  The sermon and announcements were, not surprisingly, in Portuguese while everything else was in Armenian.  The choir was in the loft in the back of the sanctuary and did a wonderful job with the Ekmalian hymns.
     The church was full as well which was a delight to see. I got to meet the Bishop after the mass and also met some other lovely Paulista Armenians. It was a real pleasure to be here as a tourist and finally get Sao Jorge.

The Pelé Museum in Santos

     I am inspired by sport movies. If I like one, I tend to watch it multiple times. In divulging this, I myself am kind of surprised that I am not a paragon of fitness. To explain that, however, would require several blogs and probably years of psychotherapy.
     My favorites include the Pride of the Yankees, Jim Thorpe – All American, Knute Rockne All American (and yes, Rudy as well), Remember the Titans, Miracle, Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, The Express, and, lately, Pelé: Birth of a Legend. I have probably watched the Pelé movie a dozen times in total or part in the past year. This movie is the story of the great Brazilian soccer player Edson Arantes do Nascimento who from a young age was simple known as Pelé. He was born on October 23, 1945 and is generally considered the greatest soccer player of all time. In 1999, the International Olympic Committee named him the Athlete of the Century.
     The film covers his childhood, recruitment by the Santos Futebol Clube (SFC) at the age of 15, and ended with his pivotal role helping Brazil win its first World Cup in 1958 when he was just 17. Pelé grew up in the town of Bauru living in poverty. He honed his soccer skills on the streets and dirt fields of Bauru using a ball fashioned of a sock stuffed with rags. His skills in Bauru got him noticed by Waldemir de Brito, a famous soccer player in his right who became a scout in retirement, who brought him to the SFC.
     Pelé was an immediate sensation in Santos.  He was named to the Brazilian National Team that was to go to the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Pelé became an international star and sensation leading to Brazil’s first World Cup. He broke out in the final two games scoring three goals in Brazil’s 5-2 semifinal win over France. He scored two more goals in their 5-2 win in the championship game against the heavily favored host team of Sweden.
     Per biography.com:

The young superstar received hefty offers to play for European clubs, and Brazilian President Jânio Quadros eventually had Pelé declared a national treasure, making it legally difficult for him to play in another country. Regardless, Santos club ownership ensured its star attraction was well paid by scheduling lucrative exhibition matches with teams around the world.

     Pelé was known for his unbelievable footwork with the ball, his incredible acceleration, and accuracy in making amazingly difficult shots. It is safe, even for a soccer neophyte like me, to say that he revolutionized the game. He is known for his bicycle kick that seemed to define both gravity and possibility.

Pelé Bicycle Kick - sportskeeda.com 

     Pelé was a member of the Brazilian National Team in 1962, 1966, and 1970. Brazil with Pelé won two more World Cups in 1962 and 1970. He retired from soccer in 1974 but was enticed out of retirement to play for the New York Cosmos of the fledgling North American Soccer League giving the league immediate credibility.  Over all, Pelé played in 1,363 and is the leading scorer, ever, with 1,261 goals.
     Today, we visited the port town of Santos. We visited the Pelé Museum which was full of memorabilia and dozens of film clips showing Pelé’s most famous goals. It was amazing to be there. Not everyone in our tour group knew who Pelé was and were surprised that he and not Michael Jordon or Muhammad Ali was named Athlete of the Century. For the Brazilians visiting the museum, there was no question how they much they revered their National Treasure.

Diana Der Hovanessian (1934 – 2018)

      I learned yesterday that my friend, my fellow Armenian, daughter of Kharpert, and a beloved poetic voice, Diana Der Hovanessian passed away on March 1. She was approaching her 84th birthday. It was sad to hear this news. I am forever thankful for her voice and for the kindness she showed me as a young aspiring poet. She was generous with her time and constructive criticism.
     We were in correspondence in the 1980s and early 90s. Then, as is prone to happen and I do mean prone to happen to me, I let the correspondence lag and gradually become nonexistent. We exchanged letters. I sent her my poetry. We spoke several times on the phone. I visited her once at her home in Cambridge. It was the afternoon tea of great memory. I cannot recall what we talked about, but talk we did.
      I wrote a poem for her about visiting her. She wrote a significantly better one right back at me. I have not read either of those for way too long.
     With each passing year and each of her poems read and re-read, I appreciate her talent more than ever. I appreciate the care and craftsmanship of her work. I appreciate the lens and reflection through which she viewed the same world I see. As an Armenian, I appreciate that I can relate to her view while simultaneously not. I am provided with a richness that is hard to describe when I read her work.
     She was a gifted poet for sure. Her body of work, books, and favorable reviews is testimony to this. She was also a gifted translator of poetry. Poetry is ridiculously hard to translate. The essence of good poetry, the imagery and nuances, are tied to the language, cadence, double meanings of words, and that je ne sais quoi of the language in which the poetry is written. Translators often go for a literal translation that results in a translation that looks like a poem visually but is not poetic, only one dimensional, and thus tedious to read. Diana took a different tack based on her unique talent. She translated the poetry into poetry. She reflected the original through her poetic lens. She would create a new poem, a high-quality poem, closely modeled on the original. But, for her to make her translation a stand-alone poem, she had to trade off some of the literal parts of the translation. Some critics dinged her for this. I thought she had basically created a new art form. I loved to read the original and her translation, perhaps a few times each. It enriched both for me. The best example of this for me her book Come Sit Beside Me and Listen to Kouchag: Medieval Poems of Nahabed Kouchag. She has the Armenian on the left-hand page and her translation on the right. I never tire of reading this gem of a book. Her translations have to be read with the original.
     I am sorry that she passed. That sorrow is magnified that I had let our correspondence lag… but I have her poems.

On Not Meeting Mark Gavoor

On the dock at Camp Hayastan
the summer I had gone to teach
the English course on Armenian
poets, I saw you sprawled
on the gray wooden pier. It was
noon and hot. I sighed at
the sight of so many water lilies
blanketing the skin of Uncus Pond.
"You can't pick them. They are
protected," you warned.
Unlike us, I thought. Anyone
who picks these lilies drowns.

But no need to worry. I am not
one who picks anything. Unfortunately
things pick me.

Suddenly you leaped up saying
"Oh, I know you. I hope
you will have a chance to look
at my poems. My name is Mark."

You moved like all the summer
boys I had known in my youth.
You spoke with the voice of all
the mountain poets I had never
heard in our own tongue.

You smiled with the eyes of the son
I would never have. "Mark?
Mark Gavoor?"

"No," you answered and faded into
the noon light. The lilies shrivelled.
Ice formed on Uncus Pond.

Men from Franklin in rough coats cut
it into blocks to pack into straw
on sleighs. Uncus Indians peered
through the trees.

You and I left to cross two continents.
I to say old poems, you to cut them
into new shapes.


Visitation: for Diana Der Hovanessian
to the poet's home
across harvard yard
anticipation meeting
with the daughter of
my grandfather's friend,
a pilgrimage to see
to learn, absorb the
aura of her way

to the poet's home
a tea august afternoon
of melon and madeleines
(bought just for me)
discussing words
and ironies of
working in our
new native tongue

to the poet's home
that ordered clutter
of books and words
in stacks and shelves
a stark and rich
canonical equilibrium
of perfect entropy
balance and awe

to the poet's home...

Day 3: Our Second Day of Site Visits

Ruben Delfini of NexisLexis addressing our team

     Today was our second day out of four for visiting business and nonprofit organization sites.
     Thanks to one of our adjunct professors, Dr. Henry Balani, we were able to visit the RELX Group of companies in Sao Paulo today. Per their website, “RELX Group is a global provider of information and analytics for professional and business customers across industries.” RELX is made up of Elsevier, Accuity & Fircosoft, LexisNexis, and Reed Exhibitions. Elsevier focuses on scientific, medical, and technical global analytics through their journals and databases. Accuity & Fircosoft and part of LexisNexis provide risk, compliance, and business analytics to government, corporate, and banking entities around the world. The other part of LexisNexis is a purveyor of legal analytics. Finally, Reed Exhibition is the world’s leading event management business. 

     Henry is the Global Head of Strategic Affairs, Accuity & Fircosoft. He graciously arranged a visit with his colleague Gilberto Pecheco who leads Accuity and Fircosoft’s business development for all of Latin America out of the Sao Paulo office. Gilberto arranged for Ruben Delfini, Business Development Manager, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Michelle Zreik, Reed Exhibitions Alcantara Machado, Procurement Manager to join us and provide overviews of their business sectors. We learned about how Accuity, Fircosoft, and NexisLexis work to provide intelligence on insights to help minimize expose to and thus control corruption, money laundering, and other illegal monetary activities around the world. It was like an addendum to the Global Macroeconomics for Managers course that all of our MBA students take. We certainly appreciated the excellent presentations in general and the specific insights into the recent corruption scandals that have rocked Brazil.
     In the afternoon, we spent time with our newest and bestest friends in Brazil: Ader e Lang. Thiago Masagardi and Flavia Lang hosted us for a wonderful afternoon in their offices. Thiago took us through their business development and client engagement model.

Thiago Masagardi

We learned that the issues in both Brazil and the US can be very much alike in the nonprofit consulting world. Actually, based on my consulting experience in the for-profit world, I had no problem relating as well. First, potential clients take a long time to decide before bringing on a consultant. Seond, they prefer free services. Lastly, if a for pay consulting engagement is agreed to, the clients will often try to expand the scope during the consulting process with the intention of keeping the price the same.
     We learned Ader e Lang is perhaps the only nonprofit consulting company in Brazil that offers the full breadth of consulting services. That being said, a lot of their presentation and our discussion focused around fundraising. There seemed to have been a long-standing belief in the nonprofit world in Brazil that their problems were all in execution. In Ader e Lang’s experience, they have found that the problems are more rooted in the lack of proper planning. They have focused a lot of their activities in the planning phase and have achieved some great success with their clients.
     In the evening, we split our group with our two alums. Eight of us went with Felipe to a rodizio which is a Brazilian barbecue similar to but, in our case tonight, not Fago de Chao. The remainder of the group returned to Symphony Hall to hear Deborah and the

On the Ader e Lang Terrace

rest of the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 in E-minor.
     Another fabulous day in Sao Paulo!

Day 2: Sao Paulo Symphony, World Vision Brazil, and Dr. Marcos Kisil

Sao Paulo Symphony Hall

      Today was our first day of site visits. We began in the morning with a visit to the Symphonic Orchestra of the State of Sao Paulo. An alumna of North Park’s School of Music who also took courses in Nonprofit Management, Deborah Wanderley dos Santos, is violinist in the orchestra and arranged for a full morning of activities. Our bus dropped off at the Symphony Hall which was originally the Sao Paulo train station and later housed the trading floor for the Brazilian coffee brokers. 
     Our first meeting was with the Executive Director, Marcelo Lopes. We were very impressed with the dynamic and yet humble leader. He began with the orchestra as a trumpet player at the age of 19. He was simultaneously a university student majoring in Economics. He continued to play in the orchestra while going on for masters’ degrees in both administration and law. This placed the young trumpet player in an ideal position to assume management roles within the symphony organization. He rose quickly in the ranks to become executive director. Marcelo has stewarded this public orchestra

Marcelo Lopes

from hard times, when he took over, to a thriving position as the premier symphony orchestra in South America. They have 108 full time musicians and offer 90 concerts a year. The have recorded all of Prokofiev’s Symphonies the full orchestral works of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 – 1959), the premier Brazilian composer. These recordings have achieved excellent reviews around the world. Marcel Lopes is dedicated to growing the prestige of this orchestra through excellent training and recruiting. He has sought and built partnerships with orchestras throughout the region in Argentina and Uruguay to name just two. Under his deft leadership, they have a youth symphony, three choral groups, and an educational program for the youth that blew us away. Over 900,000 young people have attended and been exposed to the various concerts and events provided the Sao Paulo Symphony which Marcelo Lopes modeled after the youth events the Leonard Bernstein began with the New

Stained Glass in what was the coffee trading floor

York Philharmonic.
     After a quick lunch, we headed over to World Vision Brazil. We were not really sure what to expect there. The office was hard to find and quite humble when we walked in. There was a bullpen full of multiple big screen computers and slew of young people working away. Ana Beatriz, Raniere Pontes, and Stella Vaz presented their story to us. Their presentation started kind of slow and was a bit confusing. They talked about their old model and losing funding from the global organization for a variety of reasons and thus a need to create a new model. And create a new model they did. Necessity was truly the mother of invention for them. We were impressed and invigorated as how this intrepid team took their old model that appealed to the baby boomer and older generations for decades and created a modern social media model that was aimed to engaged millennials. In turns out that the bullpen of computers and activity we saw when we walked in was where it was all happening. They have made an amazing transformation in just six months and are putting their office on firm financial footing. Furthermore, they are becoming a model of excellence within World Vision worldwide. We were blown away as evidenced by the engaging discussion we had with them that lasted an hour beyond our scheduled time.
     Our Dean, Wes Lindahl, was at a fundraising conference in 2017. While there, he met Ader Assis of Assis e Lang a consulting firm based in Sao Paulo specializing in the Nonprofit sector based in Sao Paulo. When Dean Lindahl told Ader that we were thinking of visiting Sao Paulo for our 2018 International Experience, Ader immediately offered to help set up some visits. Ader and Thiago Masagardi of the firm set us up for half of our visits on this trip including World Vision and a visit to the Ader e Lang offices which will take place on Day 2 of our site visits.
     As a topper to our day, Ader and Thiago arranged a dinner with Dr. Marcos Kisil. There is no better way to introduce Dr. Kisil than to include the biography that Thiago and Ader

Dr. Marcos Kisil

sent us:

Dr. Kisil is a medical doctor, currently serving as consultant and Professor of University of São Paulo. Dr. Kisil has made a major contribution to the Nonprofit sector in Latin America and lately to the Brazilian market. He was the former Kellogg Foundation representative for the region. With the support of the Kellogg Foundation and his own family resources, he started a new organization, Instituto de Desenvolvimento do Investimento Social - www.idis.org.br, in 1999. The goal of IDIS is to promote philanthropy endeavors in Brazil. His first initiatives were to support philanthropists and social investors to form an organizational structure and governance that would align their ‘family office’ goals with the goals of the community interested in the Private Social Investment and Philanthropic efforts.

     Dr. Kisil regaled us the story of how he went from a doctor of internal medicine to a world renown leader and expert on social responsibility, philanthropy, nonprofit management, and NGO management. He further shared with us the history of social responsibility and social entrepreneurship Brazil and where he sees it heading.
     What a great way to start our site visits!

Day 1: Sao Paulo

culturetrip.com

     The good news about flying from the US to the Southern Cone which consists of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile is that the time zone is almost the same: plus or minus a few hours depending on the time of the year. The bad news is that most flights are red eyes i.e. overnight flights. Yesterday, we flew from Chicago to Sao Paulo. We had to stop and change planes in Miami. We caught a flight that left Miami at 8:05 pm (7:05 pm Chicago Time) and landed this morning at 6:40 am (3:40 am Chicago time) at Guarulhos International Airport.
     We were not jet lagged as much as we were simply tired from not having slept very much. I did sleep for about four hours, but it was it was not very restful. The temperature in the plane kept changing. I got cold, woke up, and had to put a jacket on. Thirty to forty minutes later, I woke up in a sweat as it was too hot and had to take the jacket off. The best sleep I had was just before the plane landed. Sadly, I had to wake up. Needless to say, I was groggy and listless.
     I slept in the bus from the airport to the city center which took a good hour and a half. In Sao Paulo, the fifth largest city in the world, the traffic is always heavy and congested. It takes an hour to two hours to go almost anywhere. I was still groggy when we stopped. The good news was that we stopped at a coffee shop and bakery. I ordered a double espresso. It was one of the best cups of coffee and most needed cups of coffee I have ever had.
      The coffee shop was on the ground floor of the Copan building which was designed by the renown Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907 – 2212). It is one of the tallest buildings in Sao Paulo and had an observation deck. As was no charge to go to the observation which fit our travel budget perfectly, we decided to venture up. As it was free, and sometimes you get what you pay for, we ended up wandering around the building, which had a maze of what might loosely be called a lobby. We went from elevator bank to elevator bank asking anyone that looked official how to get to the observation deck. Finally, we were directed to an office where we had to sign in. We were instructed to wait in a small, windowless, and not air-conditioned foyer. It was a like a

www.uauexpress.com.br

sauna and we were there until the benefits of the recently consumed double espresso were negated. At that time, we instructed to go to a much cooler space by the elevator which would take us to the 35th floor observation deck. It was well worth the wait.
     The rest of the day we did a coach tour of the city where our excellent guide Maisa pointed out various sites and parts of the city where we might want to return and visit in

depth on our three free days.
      We checked into the hotel, the Blue Tree Premium Faria Lima, which is where I stayed a few times I stayed on previous visits to Sao Paulo. I got to take a much needed shower and a two hour nap. I then met up with our two North Park Alums, Felipe Mattar and Deborah Wanderley Dos Santos. Deborah is a violinist in the Sao Paulo and has arranged for us to visit the Symphony Hall tomorrow to meet with the executive director, tour the historical building, and hear a symphony rehearsal. While Felipe could not go to dinner with us, Wes Lindahl, our dean, Leonardo Gilbert, an alum, Lauren Johnson, a graduate student, and myself took Deborah out to dinner to thank her for all she has done.
     

We ended up going to Eataly. I laughed because I always wanted to go the Eataly in Chicago but never did. I had to go to another country in another hemisphere to experience this most excellent restaurant and marketplace. I was just glad that when we went for coffee earlier, we went to a local coffee shop and not Starbucks which seems to be on every other corner in Sao Paulo.

Six Miles Above the Amazon

 

https://wikitravel.org/en/Brazil 

   There is something special about writing 35,000 feet in the air and then posting it in my blog. Up until recently, that just wasn’t possible. Of course, it was always possible to write on an airplane, but I always had to wait until I landed to be able to post anything on my blog. This all changed when the airlines began offering Wi-Fi in the sky. So, for $17 I bought 4 hours of Wi-Fi and am writing this post and texting with a few folks at the same time. It is very cool.
     I always expect to write something more intense or profound at high altitudes. Maybe it is just the fact that I am aloft that gives me lofty ambitions. When I used to travel a lot for business, I often got to sit in Business or First Class. That gave me a feeling of being a bit more special. Probably, I was also that since I felt a bit more special whatever I wrote should be a bit more special as well. The bottomless glass of whisky available in the premium seating might have also contributed to the belief that I was capable of being more profound than my sea level self.
     These days I am in coach. Thanks to my lifetime status with American, I am usually able to sit in the extended leg room section. I greatly appreciate that as it does make flights to China the past two summers and now this overnight flight to Brazil much more comfortable. It also allows for more room for my laptop. This time is even more comfortable as the middle seat in my row is empty. So, all in all, it is relatively civilized, and I barely miss the whisky. The warm mixed nuts? That is another matter altogether.
     I am travelling to Sao Paulo. It is a trip of twelve professors, students, and alumni of the School of Business and Nonprofit Management of North Park University. Every year, we organize an International Experience trip where we pick a country or city to visit. We spend time visiting businesses and nonprofit organizations. We also get two to three days for pure tourism. Several of the students take a for credit course tied into the trip. They are required to keep a journal and write a paper about their experience. I keep a journal and write blog posts just because it is what I do.
     I tend to be involved on these excursions when the destination city or country is in Latin America: basically, my old stomping grounds. This was the case when we went to Costa Rica two years ago and also this year where Sao Paulo is our destination. I have not been in Sao Paulo for eleven years and it will be good to be there again. I will get to visit with old friends and even tour a factory in which I spent a lot of time.
     In Costa Rica, my connections were really valuable in setting our itinerary. For this trip, my connections are only responsible for two of the eight site visits. We have two North Park alums in Sao Paulo, Felipe and Deborah. Felipe was a student in two of my classes and has arranged for us to visiting his father’s text book distribution business. Deborah graduated from our Music School and, while I never knew her at North Park, she has graciously arranged a trip to Sao Paulo Symphony for a behind the scenes tour, seeing a rehearsal, and meeting with the executive director!
     Look for a few more not for credit blogs.