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Continued from previous page
Davin MacKenzie, Betting on the Yuan
Davin MacKenzie, WG'89, G'89, feels the same bubbling
sense of possibility in Beijing as Bourron has found in Moscow.
"What I enjoy about it is that the place is so dynamic.
There's a tangible sense of growth and change and it's just really
exhilarating to be a part of," MacKenzie says. "You feel like
you are an actor—a very small actor—in this great human
drama. When you look back at the 21st century, whatever
happens to China is going to be an important part of it."
Canadian-born MacKenzie and his Chinese-born wife,
Leslie, considered moving to the states a few years ago when
he was preparing to leave his Beijing-based job with the
International Finance Corporation, a member of the World
Bank Group that promotes private sector investment in development
countries.
The couple knew they could return to the picturesque
Bethesda, MD, house on the leafy suburban street where
they had lived after MacKenzie graduated from Wharton and
the Lauder Institute. They knew it would be a very comfortable
place to raise their two children.
Ultimately, however, they thought they would simply not
be as happy as they are in the bustle of Beijing, where it sometimes
seem a new skyscraper can rise almost as quickly as a
foreigner can learn to correctly pronounce "ni hao" (hello).
They decided to stay put. MacKenzie partnered with fellow
Wharton alum John Ying, WG'89, G'89, to launch a
boutique merchant bank they called iVentures (recently renamed
Peak Capital).
The family has since made their home in a large contemporary
house in a gated community some distance from
Beijing's polluted, overcrowded
center. MacKenzie
says he believes his children,
a daughter, 14, and son,
12, will benefit from the
family's cross-cultural lifestyle.
They converse easily
in English with their father and just as smoothly in Chinese
with their mother. They attend one of Beijing's international
schools, spend summers in the states and enjoy the kind of
vacations Indiana Jones might envy. A recent Friday morning,
for example, found the family on the edge of the Gobi
Desert poised to mount camels as they visited century's old
Buddhist grottos.
"I think they will be the better for it, for having grown up
in this kind of culture," MacKenzie says.
Both he and his wife know firsthand the joys and growth
that come from living outside one's own culture. Although
MacKenzie was born in Canada, he moved to Princeton,
NJ, at the age of 12, when his father was transferred there
by Johnson & Johnson. He studied French in high school
and college and spent a semester in France before taking up
Chinese at Dartmouth College.
MacKenzie doesn't seem to give his cross-cultural life a
second thought. Even learning the language came relatively
easily. Once a person has mastered the tones, he says, the
grammar is very simple. "Go store," for example, is a transliteration
of perfect Chinese for the sentence: "I am going to
the store."
"I don't think Chinese is as difficult a language as most
people think," MacKenzie says. "It's certainly not as difficult
as the Chinese like to think."
Barb Coffin Spurling, WG'90,
Mom on the Move
Barb Coffin Spurling, WG'90, G'90, says there are a few simple
things she misses about living in her native United States:
The Today Show on NBC, Super Wal-Mart, wide parking
spaces, and of course being closer to her extended family.
But when she married her British-born husband Martin,
an international manager with HSBC who is part of a permanently
mobile group of senior executives, the two decided
his career would be their primary professional commitment.
So far, that has meant pulling up stakes and moving to a new
foreign city roughly every three years.
The couple met in Tokyo when Barb Coffin, as she was
known then, was working for The Mac Group, a management
consulting firm that has since morphed into Cap
Gemini Ernst & Young. It was her second international position,
the first being a short stint in London with Mac right
after she graduated from Lauder's Japanese program. Her position
in Tokyo included projects in Japan, the Philippines,
Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Pakistan.
Then HSBC moved her husband to Hong Kong. Now
known as Barb Coffin Spurling, she went with him, but
continued to commute to Tokyo while managing an onsite
project in the Philippines.
Not surprisingly, the international commute ultimately
proved untenable. She took a position with Merrill Lynch in
Hong Kong, working for the next four years as their business
manager for Asia Pacific Corporate Finance, then as manager
of training and recruiting for the Asia Pacific region.
It was while living in Hong Kong that Spurling gave birth
to Carter, her first son. With the family's next move—this
time to Karachi, Pakistan—Spurling decided the position
of full-time CEO of the Spurling household was the job she
wanted most.
"When I left Wharton, I was very career minded, and I
found the jobs I was doing to be very rewarding. However, after
we started a family I wanted to be able to give my best time
to my children and to be available for them as my first priority.
I sometimes miss the corporate world, but I also think I'm
very lucky to have the opportunity that I have," she says.
"Since we move on average every three years, I spend a
great deal of time either closing down or setting up house,"
she says. After two years in Karachi, it was off to Jersey,
Channel Islands, for four years, then to Taipei, Taiwan, in
January of 2004.
It all means learning about new communities and new
cultures and making new friends on a regular basis. As soon
as the Spurlings find out where they are slated to go next,
they start researching it, which includes talking to as many
people as they can find who have had experience in the
country. The Internet, of course, makes such research much
easier than it was 15 years ago.
Once they arrive, Spurling tries to get involved in the
community as quickly as possible. In Karachi she immersed
herself in the British Women's Association, including chairing
the Christmas Bazaar Committee, the association's biggest
annual fund-raiser. In Jersey, she served first as secretary,
then chairperson of a local privately run mother and toddler
group. And after less than a year in Taipei, she was elected
to the school board for the British Section of the Taipei
European School. She serves as the board's treasurer, and also
runs a Saturday soccer group for about 100 kids.
"I'm very happy with my choice to be a full-time mom,
but I still like being able to do analysis and manage projects,"
she says. "Community and volunteer roles are great because I
can usually do them on my own time and feel like I'm making
a real contribution."
It's not all fun and games, however. Spurling says she
sometimes finds volunteering frustrating because of the lack
of accountability among unpaid workers. There is really no recourse
if someone in a critical role doesn't pull his own weight
or proves unqualified. And then there are the cultural challenges
specific to each location. In Karachi, for example, she
never knew from day to day whether she would have electricity,
water or telephone service.
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