2020 Week 42: Success part 2

Last week I was reflecting (incoherently) on success, and I continue this week with some more examples of what I think success could look like as I try and understand what it should mean for me.

Zanny Minton Beddoes

Editor in chief of The Economist since February 2015, Beddoes is an established economist and one of the most influential voices in financial journalism. In the video above Beddoes describes that at The Economist she leads “some of the smartest people in the world who could almost all be either more famous or a lot richer if they work somewhere else, but yet they choose to work at The Economist.”. Success for me includes a workplace with such a “collegiate spirt” and getting “to think about the most important issues at the moment.”

Angela Merkel

Diagram from Merkel’s Doctoral Thesis on the Quantum Chemistry of Decay Reactions depicting energies of intramolecular conversion for unimolecular reactions.

As Chancellor of Germany for the last 15 years, leading Europe’s largest economy has occasionally made Merkel the de facto leader of the European Union. Along with her political success, Merkel is also a published scientist, receiving a doctorate for work on quantum chemistry.

Catherine Hamlin

File:Dr Catherine Hamlin at the Hamlin Fistula Hospital, Ethiopia 2009. Photo- Lucy Horodny, AusAID (10693376835).jpg
Dr Catherine Hamlin at the Hamlin Fistula Hospital, Ethiopia 2009. Photo- Lucy Horodny, AusAID

Hamlin’s hometown newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald provides an insight into her incredible life of service. Her death was covered by The Lancet, but reading her obituary in The Economist is the last time I remember crying.

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

SGP is a pilot and physicist with an incredible list of achievements, including that her first book is on the moon.

Cathy Freeman

Australia is a sport loving nation with a dark history of abusing its indigenous people. Cathy Freeman not only won an Olympic gold medal, but helped change the way Australians saw the traditional custodians of the land.

Some other things to share

Ryan Caldbeck with some radical transparency on his transition stepping down as CEO of CircleUp. It covers mental health, physical health, board politics, and generally the stress of founding and running a startup.

Yesterday I attended GDG UK and Ireland DevParty, and listened to some great talks on cloud engineering and web development.

Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund created an award winning deepfake based on the alternative speech prepared by Nixon in the event of moon disaster.

Startmate celebrated its 10th birthday and first Demo Day featuring a New Zealand cohort.

Photos from the Week