Final Project

Final Project

Here is the YouTube link to my final project.

 

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11/9/15 UPDATE: I'm rewriting everything, and using the drawing function on goanimate.com.  It's so cool, but it requires that I completely revise the story to tell it visually.  Also, it is more difficult than I first thought, but I am pleased with how the project looks so far.

11/8/15 Writing Into the Circle

As a young management trainee with a multinational corporation, I had little going for me. I was a newly minted MBA, too young, too female, and too naïve. I thought I had earned my fancy new job. In reality, the company needed a second management trainee on staff because they had agreed to hire the big boss's son as a trainee, created the job for him, and brought him over from Switzerland on their nickel. They were afraid of someone crying "nepotism!," so hiring a young American female was their way to justify the position and look fair. I was offered and accepted half the salary they were paying the big boss's son, but I didn't know that then. I just knew that I wasn't part of the boys club and didn't get good job assignments. However, I wasn't one to be easily discouraged.

One winter day the boss and all "the boys" were outside in the smoking area moaning and complaining over some Chinese deal. I had taken up smoking so I could hang with the big boys, so I jumped right in and joined their gang, awkwardly, because no one budged to make room for me in their huddle. The smoke circled and blew out noses and over moustaches, and I leaned in from the outside of the circle, trying to jockey for position without actually making physical contact with anyone. They were beating their cold, chapped hands and stamping their leather wing-tips, bobbing cigarettes hanging precariously on lips as they spoke.

"This deal in Guangzhou. We're in trouble."
"How can they be so stupid?"
"The Chinese are the smart ones."
"And lying."
"One and a half billion."
"Who's in charge?"
"Do we have anyone on the ground over there?"
"It's gonna be bad."
"What's gonna be bad?" I interjected.
Silence.
All eyes on me as if I had appeared magically out of the thin icy air.
"Just some deal in China," someone muttered.
And the smoky conversation continued without me.

Later that week the issue came up again in a departmental meeting. As usual, I was out of the loop and had to piece together information that flew over my head. I understood that there was a factory in China that was ramping up to compete with our CTC business, a chemical additive that  goes into animal feed worldwide. We made over 1/2 the world's supply. If this factory started producing, it would take a big chunk of our Asian business and hurt our market share and our profits. Badly. The loan was somehow secret inside information. Competitive intelligence they called it. We knew the Chinese's plans only because they had applied for a loan at the World Bank. I'm still not sure how that information came to us, but I do know that our division only a year or so later hit the front page of the Wall Street Journal, exposed in an international price fixing ring. A number of folks at headquarters went to jail, and almost all of us in the US, me included, had our computers and files confiscated by Janet Reno and her team at the Attorney General's Office. But that's not what this story is about...

If the factory got the loan, we were going to suffer. Decreased profits and production. Maybe even layoffs. If the Chinese didn't get the loan, they would be looking for joint ventures, and we would probably be on top of their list of likely partners. I looked around the circular meeting table and piped up, "How do we stop the loan, then?"

The response was sarcastic, "Are you on the loan review board at the World Bank? If not, then you can't stop the loan." And the unpleasant conversation continued without me.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I went home that night and composed a letter to the World Bank. I researched; I wrote; I used my best persuasive language. I revised; I researched some more; I checked my grammar and spelling. I rewrote; I proofread; I included relevant charts and graphs. I checked my research. Then, I slept on it and checked it again in the morning. The crux of the letter involved showing the loan officers that the loan would be used for purposes that the World Bank does not specifically promote and did not align with the World Bank's stated mission. I appealed to the officers to consider their purpose and determine if the loan was fair and justified. Looking back, the letter was likely very puerile and ingenuous. But I was proud of it.

I tiptoed to boss's door with my letter in hand, addressed to the loan review board at the World Bank, and knocked. I handed him the letter. He read it to himself, then invited me to sit and asked about some of the facts and statistics I had cited. He seemed almost impressed. He instructed me to sign the letter as a recent MBA graduate, not as a member of our organization, and leave the letter with him. A day or two later, passing me in the hallway, he told me he had mailed it. And there was no further conversation.

One bright spring day a few months later, the secretaries were in an uproar. Plans! tickets! Cars and hotels! The boss was leaving on short notice to Switzerland to meet our big boss and then travel to China to talk about a joint venture in Guangzhou!

On his return. a meeting was called, and catered, to celebrate the beginning of talks of a joint venture. The head of the Guangzhou factory didn't disclose that he had applied for a loan and been denied. Why would he--we shouldn't have known about the loan anyway. And then something magic happened. The boss said, in front of everyone, that in the office of the head of the Guangzhou factory, he spotted, mixed in with reports and other documents in Chinese, a faxed copy of a very familiar letter, written in English, with charts, graphs, and my signature on it. I received a round of golf-applause.

I had influenced the movement of more money than I will ever have in my lifetime, over a billion. And even though none of that money was mine, somehow, everything changed, as though I had hit the lottery. Because after that day, the conversations always had room for me in the circle.