Posted: Thursday 22 September 2011
The McGowan Lecture: Joe Levin of Goldman Sachs
Lara Gilmour and Lawrie Carlaw of S6 continue their Talking Points coverage reporting on the McGowan Lecture with Joe Levin, an Executive Director Goldman Sachs, on his experiences in business, fundraising and polar exploration:
We were treated to an informative and inspiring tale from a successful businessman and part-time adventurer. Joe Levin was the speaker at last week’s Talking Points.
Mr Levin began by giving us a brief insight into business. He had worked his way up through 12-hours-a-day full-time employment and general hard work in the family business to Executive Director of Client Services for Goldman Sachs International. The former part of his career sounded to us to be far more stressful than our previous 6-hour-a-day Higher year in school. Levin’s lecture highlighted the main points in a typical successful businessman’s career: working many hours for average pay with generally hard work; to working under command in a medium sized company; to being in a managerial role in a large company. It was a truly inspiring story of discipline, commitment and hard work leading to a good life. This is exactly what people our age need at this point, as we are heading into further education, or not, and his experience is a welcome piece of advice.
I asked the question of whether or not he felt that people in our situation would be better going on to study business management etc. or to go straight into work in a small business and gain experience. Levin answered carefully, trying to keep the peace with the teachers, and gave a balanced response; further education will undoubtedly help you further down the line and he recommended it, but experience is something that should never be ignored, as it teaches you the true way of life in a way that lessons cannot.
After this Mr Levin changed the subject totally, and told us of his journey to the North Pole. Although not quite as dramatic and unfortunate as Jamie Andrew’s ice-cold incident, the story of how Joe and his friends travelled through plummeting temperatures and buffeting snow storms was quite amazing. It is hard to imagine lying motionless for three days whilst waiting for a snow storm to end; having only a random mix of food (to provide sufficient nutrients) to keep you going. Levin admitted that they were at one point close to radioing in for an escape when one of his friends took ill, but it was insisted by the man that they kept going, which was brave, if a little rash. The sight of Mr Levin and his friends with their eyebrows frosted over was comical, yet there was an underlying feeling of respect for them - they had tackled the all that the weather had to give and gone on to finish their expedition.
Joseph Levin inspired many of the audience to have a good life in business, as well as showing that you can do anything, however bizarre it may seem to you, if you set your mind to it.