I'm not sure if I've mentioned this or not, but when I started at ATA I was on the new Special Projects team. The Special Projects team is in charge of Public-Private Partnerships and other projects that don't fit anywhere else (cooperative storage, home grown school feeding, etc.). About a month and a half ago, I started transitioning to another team, and I am now pretty much 100% on the Input/Output Systems team. What is Input/Output Systems you ask? The team focuses on smallholder financing, input distribution, and output aggregation and marketing. In other words, how do you get credit to smallholder farmers (SHFs), how do you get fertilizer/improved seed/chemicals to SHFs, and how do you enable SHFs to aggregate their production and sell it. The team's doing some really cool stuff. For example, this year the team is piloting a new input credit model that should allow more farmers to purchase high-quality inputs and significantly reduce loan defaults. For the last few years, there has been no or very limited input credit available for SHFs. Given the dynamics of wholesale input purchase and distribution here (long story for another time), when fewer SHFs purchase inputs, they just sit in the cooperatives' warehouses, which causes the cooperatives to default on their wholesale loans. By increasing SHFs access to credit (and therefore the amount of inputs purchased) and decreasing the amount of cash in the system (which surprisingly enough always seems to get "lost") by instituting a voucher system, the hope is to significantly improve on the current state.
Anyway, two more SPAs have bid adieu to the ATA. Thursday was the last day at ATA for two of my roommates: Stephane and Hayoung. Both were former McKinsey BAs (Stephane in Europe and Hayoung in South Korea). Hayoung is going to the MBA/MPA-ID program at Harvard, and Stephane is going to Wharton for his MBA. Stephane was the SPA for the Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation (MLE) team, and Hayoung was the SPA for Core Analytics. It's weird to have your roommates leave, and to make it even stranger, these are the first SPAs leaving who came after me...a bit of a surreal experience.
Since Hayoung, Stephane, and Fabio (my other roommate) were going on a safari to Kenya after lunch on Thursday, we had the farewell Wednesday afternoon. As the senior director for Analytics (which contains Core Analytics and MLE) is currently getting medical treatment in the US, Yohannes (the senior director for Special Projects) spoke for senior leadership at the farewell. Yohannes said some really nice things about Hayoung. She stepped up and helped out the Special Projects team in April when we were drowning a bit. While Yohannes hasn't had the opportunity to work with Stephane, he mentioned the fantastic reputation Stephane has at ATA. After Yohannes, Zegeye, one of the Core Analytics Analysts, and Nigist, the Senior Technical Expert for MLE, spoke about Hayoung and Stephane, respectively, and their contributions.
Following this, Hayoung and Stephane were presented with gifts. Amongst other things, they both got an instrument. Hayoung got a lyre-type instrument, and Stephane got a one-stringed violin-type instrument that kind of looks like a crossbow (good luck getting through airport security with that).
Then Hayoung and Stephane spoke about their experiences and how much they would miss ATA.
Picture of the Analytics crew.
Strangely enough, I was just realizing that the four recent farewells (Caitlin, Sid, Hayoung, and Stephane) were all at McKinsey before. We're losing our numbers advantage! Now, it's just Nadia (Program Manager for Systems), Javier (intern from Stanford MBA), Bobby (Senior Director for Analytics), and me. Pretty soon, the Bainees are going to outnumber us.
While losing two great roommates is sad, on the plus side, their replacements are pretty cool, too. Both are ATA...I know, keeping it in the family so to speak. Max is from DC, was working at a smaller consulting firm before, and is the SPA for the Maize team. Jenn is Canadian, worked at Accenture and the World Economic Forum previously, and is the SPA working with the Administration team. Our apartment has become slightly less representative of the world (before: South Korea, Luxembourg, Brazil, US; now: Brazil, US, Canada) but should still be fun.
Anyway, two more SPAs have bid adieu to the ATA. Thursday was the last day at ATA for two of my roommates: Stephane and Hayoung. Both were former McKinsey BAs (Stephane in Europe and Hayoung in South Korea). Hayoung is going to the MBA/MPA-ID program at Harvard, and Stephane is going to Wharton for his MBA. Stephane was the SPA for the Monitoring, Learning, and Evaluation (MLE) team, and Hayoung was the SPA for Core Analytics. It's weird to have your roommates leave, and to make it even stranger, these are the first SPAs leaving who came after me...a bit of a surreal experience.
Since Hayoung, Stephane, and Fabio (my other roommate) were going on a safari to Kenya after lunch on Thursday, we had the farewell Wednesday afternoon. As the senior director for Analytics (which contains Core Analytics and MLE) is currently getting medical treatment in the US, Yohannes (the senior director for Special Projects) spoke for senior leadership at the farewell. Yohannes said some really nice things about Hayoung. She stepped up and helped out the Special Projects team in April when we were drowning a bit. While Yohannes hasn't had the opportunity to work with Stephane, he mentioned the fantastic reputation Stephane has at ATA. After Yohannes, Zegeye, one of the Core Analytics Analysts, and Nigist, the Senior Technical Expert for MLE, spoke about Hayoung and Stephane, respectively, and their contributions.
Following this, Hayoung and Stephane were presented with gifts. Amongst other things, they both got an instrument. Hayoung got a lyre-type instrument, and Stephane got a one-stringed violin-type instrument that kind of looks like a crossbow (good luck getting through airport security with that).
Then Hayoung and Stephane spoke about their experiences and how much they would miss ATA.
Picture of the Analytics crew.
Strangely enough, I was just realizing that the four recent farewells (Caitlin, Sid, Hayoung, and Stephane) were all at McKinsey before. We're losing our numbers advantage! Now, it's just Nadia (Program Manager for Systems), Javier (intern from Stanford MBA), Bobby (Senior Director for Analytics), and me. Pretty soon, the Bainees are going to outnumber us.
While losing two great roommates is sad, on the plus side, their replacements are pretty cool, too. Both are ATA...I know, keeping it in the family so to speak. Max is from DC, was working at a smaller consulting firm before, and is the SPA for the Maize team. Jenn is Canadian, worked at Accenture and the World Economic Forum previously, and is the SPA working with the Administration team. Our apartment has become slightly less representative of the world (before: South Korea, Luxembourg, Brazil, US; now: Brazil, US, Canada) but should still be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment