Charles de Segundo

MA Economics and Politics, 2001

I'm currently at Harvard Business School studying for an MBA and much enjoying it.

2005 began in Point Reyes National Park, just outside San Francisco, in the company of the excellent Rebecca, who I have been lucky enough to have ‘dated’ (in the local parlance) for just over a year. It was a holiday of long walks on long beaches, which were graced here and there by sleepy elephant seals. Five months of my rotation in the San Francisco office of the consulting firm remained. They passed quickly. I had moved to California to work for the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s in-house economics think tank, on a research project on offshoring. It was a lot of fun, not least because my team included a Brazilian, a German, and a Mexico-based American who found it as hard as I did to master the finer points of chopsticks etiquette from another member of the team, a charming and patient Japanese.

I celebrated my freedom by cycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles on AIDS/LifeCycle 4, a fundraising ride with around 1600 (largely gay) riders and 400 other volunteers. It was a remarkable experience. Many were dressed up (as fairies, NASCAR mechanics or opera singers); many more had stories of courage and sadness; and all were struck by the energy volunteered to ensure the event’s success. My own highlights: receiving a chocolate from the Chicken Lady (a rider called Ken); being embraced by two wizards in a strawberry field; and making into camp only slightly ahead of a 77-year old on tricycle.

In July a friend and I went kayaking on the Danube. The river is not terribly blue. We started in Ulm, on the western edge of Bavaria, and paddled through Austria and Slovakia to Budapest. 23 days and 900 kilometers later, my paddle buddy and I were still on speaking terms, despite his attempts to take 51% of the tent space and mine to get us lost (hard to do on a river flowing unambiguously to the Black Sea, but not impossible).

Thereafter, a small trip around Scotland with Rebecca remained before business school started at the end of August. So far, it has been a great experience. I have met fascinating people, including a woman from Benin, a Navy Seal, and someone who can tapdance really well