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E29: "Time happens"
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When Pierre Lusato wrote in our group chat “Milena, we want the podcast back!” I almost instantly received a private message from someone else, who practically said “I am ready to talk.” And so here we are. Ready to talk.
I have been hoping to have this conversation for a while now, but did not know if he will ever want to have this conversation with me (or anyone else for that matter). As he said at the end of our preliminary chat “Time happens” and so here we are – about to have this conversation in all its beauty and love, all its pain, loss and sorrow and all its hope, luck and gratefulness.
A warning in the beginning – this conversation will touch raw nerves and emotions buried deep down inside many of us. It will surely make more than one of us cry and is not to be taken lightly. Ultimately though, I believe that it will not only provoke many of us into thinking, but will also bring the best out of many of us, mobilise us for action and ultimately bring us yet again closer together. Do listen to the end, to find out all about light at the end of a tunnel.
And so – let’s go...
To make a gift to The MBA Partners Scholarship in memory of Denise Kaplan follow the link: https://www.insead.edu/alumni/classes/mba-partners-scholarship
Together we are stronger.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Host's Return
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Republic of Insead in a new 2026 O3D limited podcast edition. I am still Milena Ivanova and will be your host yet again. For how long? God only knows.
00:00:13
Speaker
The 2026 edition is about life that happens while we make plans for it. I am back on air because bunch of you asked for it. Truth says I love doing these conversations, but another truth is to do them properly takes time. And I don't know about you, but I'm always short on time. In any case, it is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to have these conversations and to be able to share them with all 432 you,
00:00:43
Speaker
the c class of all three d Life happens and time happens. We are hopefully still all the wiser, naturally smarter, and as charming as ever.
00:00:54
Speaker
Welcome to the Republic of Inciad 2026 limited podcast edition and enjoy the show.
Themes of the Episode: Beauty, Love, Pain, and Hope
00:01:01
Speaker
All right. When Pierre Lusato wrote in our group chat, Milena, we want the podcast back, I almost instantly received a private message from someone else who practically said, I am ready to talk.
00:01:18
Speaker
And so here we are, ready to talk. I have been hoping to have this conversation for a while now, but did not know if he will ever want to have this conversation with me or anyone else for that matter.
00:01:34
Speaker
As he said at the end of our preliminary chat, time happens. And so here we are, about to have this conversation in all its beauty and love, all its pain, loss and sorrow, and all its hope, luck and gratefulness.
00:01:53
Speaker
A warning in the beginning. This conversation will touch raw nerves and emotions buried deep down inside many of us. It will surely make more than one of us cry and is not to be taken lightly.
00:02:07
Speaker
Ultimately though, I believe that it will not only provoke many of us into thinking, but will also bring the best out of many of us, mobilize us for action, and ultimately ultimately bring us yet again closer together.
Mike's Personal Journey after Loss
00:02:24
Speaker
Do listen to the end to find out all about light at the end of a tunnel. And so, let's go.
00:02:34
Speaker
Everyone knows Mike. Almost everyone knew Denise, Mike's wife and INSEAD partner during our year of life on campus in and around the forest of Fontainebleau.
00:02:46
Speaker
Denise sadly, very suddenly and absolutely unexpectedly passed away in September 2024. Mike is here to share his journey of the past 18 months and the solving he has been doing ever since.
00:03:04
Speaker
Welcome back to the podcast, Mike, and thank you for offering to do this. um Thank you for having me. huh So let's rewind to some time before that tragic day. You started telling me the story from the passing of your dad. Shall we start there?
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. Mm-hmm. You start really soft and easily. i appreciate this. I was thinking maybe we could talk about the weather or paddle. It's all the love, Mike. You really just dive straight in um I guess maybe before that, ah thank you for having me again. Thank you for doing all you do for our class. Thank you for holding our WhatsApp group together in spite of whatever challenges you face there. um I know that um
00:03:58
Speaker
I know that most of us who don't talk in those groups ah um feel the same way, which is a huge amount of appreciation for all that you do for us. So thank you very much for for the last 20-something years keeping our class together.
00:04:12
Speaker
um Right. ah Last, I guess it's going to be last two and a half years if we're going to start with my dad. In fact, a little bit further.
00:04:23
Speaker
So my dad was in... born in tel aviv in tel aviv in 1931 he lived in israel he lived in the states he lived all over and when he was in his late 80s this is a year after the pandemic started he decided he wanted to spend his last days so to speak in israel and so in 2021, 2022, me and my brother moved him back to Israel where he had his sisters and nephews and nieces and family ah because, as he said, he wanted to speak Hebrew in his last years um and I think be around his family and his nephew who's a musician and he's a musician as well.
00:05:11
Speaker
And he was, and it was great.
Health Scare and Coping with Denise's Death
00:05:13
Speaker
um we It was not easy to move a 90-something-year-old who wasn't very mobile back to Israel during a pandemic, but we made it happen, and I think he was very happy for it.
00:05:24
Speaker
And in September, two and half years ago, he ah quite quickly his health deteriorated and he sadly passed away and I had a you know like everybody had a positive but complicated and times bad and sometimes great relationship with my father and he was 90 something and you you don't I didn't expect to be quite as emotional as I was when he passed but um But as one of my cousins said to me, it's not just your father passing or the loss of life of someone who's 90 something, it's it's the 48 years or 47 years of memory that I had i with him that passed as well.
00:06:07
Speaker
So that's what, you know, causes all of the emotion. It's the memories and things that you think about and the good and the bad and and kind of everything.
00:06:18
Speaker
um So fast forward nine months, I was playing Paddle, which I ah assume we're going to come back to many times in this podcast, given my current obsession. Oh, yeah, we will.
00:06:31
Speaker
But I was playing Paddle, a pretty easy game with some friends, nothing that should have been that strenuous. and I got a pain in my lower back on one side and it just felt weird it felt like a sort of back pain I haven't had in years and I couldn't quite tell it almost felt like it was coming from inside in a way that it turns out it was didn't have a doctor ah like a GP that I liked and no GP at all really at the kids GP and um
00:07:03
Speaker
Some friends in Philly helped me find a kind of excellent GP within the Penn Medicine System, and Denise encouraged me to go and see someone, one and so after a few weeks of sort of getting a little bit better before it was going back and forth. I went to see someone and he said, well, let's just, you know, make sure it's not what it might be, which turned out to be an incredibly helpful thing to do.
00:07:29
Speaker
ah When I got a scan, they found a tumor that was about six centimeters in my, um in my colon, my descending colon. um And everybody seemed pretty relaxed about it. I'd say more relaxed than I was.
00:07:44
Speaker
um I did a follow-up colonoscopy to verify that the tumor was there, which it was. um And the process at that point is a pretty invasive colon surgery where they ah sort of cut you open and take a big chunk your colon out along with the tumor. And they take enough out on both sides to hope that um that it gets all of the bad cells out along with it.
00:08:10
Speaker
So i had that's surgery scheduled for kind of a few months out because they didn't think I was a particular risk candidate for anything. ah Many months later, i found out from my brother that my father had exactly the same thing. um And I just didn't know about it because I was too young when had happened it happened. turns out I was a super high risk candidate.
00:08:33
Speaker
um ah But all of it came to a couple of friends who were at the Penn Medicine System who saw how stressed I was, who saw what was going on, who saw the size of the tumor, and found when there was a cancellation in the surgery schedule a chance to squeeze me in.
00:08:49
Speaker
And so 10 weeks after my initial pain, maybe, maybe even a little less, in the beginning, middle of August, I had my surgery. um For anyone who's had it or or had family who had it, it's a pretty difficult thing. You have to... There are things that can go wrong in the surgery. There is...
00:09:10
Speaker
the risk of cancer spreading throughout your body beforehand, but then there's also just the mechanical part of the surgery, which is that they're cutting out part of your digestive tract and then stapling it back together and hoping it all works.
00:09:23
Speaker
um And so this recovery was challenging and it was difficult. ah Denise came to visit me every day in the hospital, obviously. didn't want to see anybody else.
00:09:35
Speaker
A tip for anybody who's visiting anyone in that sort of hospital, she brought me tons of things like, you know, magazines and slippers and whatever, and that was all great. But the one thing she brought was a massive IKEA duvet, like a big fluffy IKEA comforter, which compared to hospital blankets,
00:09:55
Speaker
made my made my week so much more comfortable. So small tip for anyone who's got someone in the hospital they need to visit, duvet that you can throw away at the end of the week, which we obviously did.
00:10:08
Speaker
Anyhow, so went through that, ah recovery went well, all went incredibly well. I'm super lucky, but we still waited for the biopsy because they take this out. and they want to know what happened essentially within your body after that. I didn't have any bad markers in my blood test, but you're still waiting and seeing.
00:10:28
Speaker
They tested... um They tested the tumor and found out it had high dysplasia, which basically means it's it's sort of filled, for doctors out there, apologies, I'm sure I'm going to mess this up, but it's sort of filled with cancerous cells ah which haven't spread outside of the tumor, which means that I didn't have any follow-up procedures.
00:10:50
Speaker
And so, as the oncologist told me at the time, I was um essentially living with a bomb inside of my body that was going to go off. Maybe three months, maybe six months, maybe 12 months, unclear.
00:11:04
Speaker
um But by acting quickly, we got it out before it exploded. And so, and in September, i was about as lucky as could be.
00:11:17
Speaker
And so... Yeah, no, exactly. that In so many ways. So many ways. um So that end of September, end of August, excuse me, we dropped my daughter off for college. She was starting college
Support and Healing Process
00:11:31
Speaker
ah in New York. um I wasn't quite sure I was going to be able to go. was actually my first big outing was dropping her off at college.
00:11:40
Speaker
ah We had bought a place in Brooklyn Heights that we were sort of starting to think about moving to, that we were going to split our time between Philadelphia and New York. um And on the twenty
00:11:56
Speaker
21st in September, in fact, the 20th, the night of the 20th, we went out for um dinner with my brother and sister-in-law at a very fancy restaurant called Stone Barns up in Tarrytown, which I'm sure the New Yorkers will know.
00:12:10
Speaker
ah to celebrate our 25th anniversary, which we had missed because of my surgery, and Denise's birthday, which we missed because of my surgery, um and obviously my good health.
00:12:23
Speaker
And so we went Went to this restaurant, had an amazing five-hour, you know, farm-to-table spectacular dinner, celebrated with my brother and sister-in-law, who we loved so much.
00:12:36
Speaker
Drove back to the apartment. um And that night, in the middle of the night, Denise passed away.
00:13:00
Speaker
um ah I'm not going to talk about the the details of how it happened because I can't. Um... um
00:13:25
Speaker
In the morning... um
00:13:31
Speaker
called my daughter who was across town. um my brother drove me there and I had to tell her.
00:13:46
Speaker
then I called, my son Dylan, who was still in Philadelphia and I told him and then my daughter and got in the car and my brother drove us back to Philadelphia for two hours while my son was alone.
00:14:08
Speaker
That's alright, Mike. um And we saw him and started the, you know, sort of worst 24 hours in my life, followed by the worst week of my life.
00:14:19
Speaker
um We had family that surrounded us. Probably too much family. All of Denise's family came and sort of stayed with us and they were also in shock. And me and my kids kind of just glommed onto each other and kind of didn't let go. My brother stayed, my family came out, it was kind of, in fact, it was all too much. All I wanted to be was with my kids.
00:14:44
Speaker
um I don't even, actually, i don't even know happened that week. I was um kind of in a daze all week. So
00:14:54
Speaker
I was pretty much in a daze until the memorial, which was a month later. um Felt like I got hit by a truck.
00:15:06
Speaker
My brother and my sister-in-law stayed with us. they are
00:15:13
Speaker
They... My brother's a professor at John Hopkins in Baltimore, which is a couple hours away. he kind of managed his schedule so that he could be... He could be... um kind of four or five days a week with me, his sister-in-law stayed with us to just kind of helped just manage stuff like, um, just paying, like paying the gas bill, like, and it's just stuff that Denise was doing for years that I wasn't and
00:15:44
Speaker
I just wasn't doing like, I think I said this to you before, we had these agreements that like she does stuff and I do stuff and they weren't written down. Like we didn't have a contract for it. It's just kind of how things played out. But I found myself over those three months, just swimming, just totally lost. My daughter somehow went back to college. She managed her through that first semester. I don't really know how my son had to apply for college. He was a senior in high school.
00:16:11
Speaker
Um, and he did, he managed to get it in.
00:16:17
Speaker
And we we pushed through those ah those three months in kind of the chaos and and awfulness that it was. The turn of the year came and things were a little bit more stable and a little bit better.
00:16:32
Speaker
went on a family holiday over Christmas, New Year's, which was good but hard. Spring came around, my daughter probably had a slightly later hit of sadness and exhaustion than the rest of us. she She ended up kind of doing most of her second semester as a commuter student. So she would spend a couple nights in New York and then I would drive her up and down to Philadelphia or take the train up and down so that she could be at home.
00:16:57
Speaker
um My son finished out his his senior year He got into Trinity College Dublin, which was his his sort of first choice. it Just again, amazing that he made it through. and And kind of as the year passed on, we we um we settled into the new reality and managed to get our ourself to more stable place.
00:17:22
Speaker
You told me this first vacation was really tough for you, so not so much for the kids as for you. What was the dynamic?
00:17:34
Speaker
First vacation was in Japan. Japan and Korea, in fact. We went to Tokyo and then we went skiing in Hokkaido and then we went to Korea. um I booked it.
00:17:46
Speaker
I remember I booked it as a non-refundable hotel. um and This beautiful hotel and in Niseko from my hospital bed while I was recovering from surgery.
00:17:59
Speaker
Oh, wow. And I did it because like, I want something to look forward to. Like I'm going book a knot. I had no idea if going be able to make it. had no idea if I was well, I no idea what the world was going to look like.
00:18:13
Speaker
um This was obviously before we knew anything was going to happen to Denise. um But I thought if I have something to look forward to, it'll be a you know fun way to drive out of hospital, so to speak.
00:18:28
Speaker
And so in November, December, We talked and the kids still wanted to go. i was like, it seems like a healthy thing for us to do to get away. um and we did and had a great time, except that kind of for the kids, it wasn't hugely different than all of our previous holidays. i mean, it was obviously different without Denise there, but um the dynamic of what we did in the day, sort of dinners at night,
00:18:55
Speaker
then going off to the room bed was similar and for me it was mostly similar until around 8 pm when 8 or 9 pm the kids would disappear and that's when denise and i would sit around and you know have a drink in the bar or you know just hang out and talk or and just got hit with a wave loneliness um And up to that point, I hadn't spent a lot of time alone because my brother and sister-in-law had been around, or family had been around, too much family had been around.
00:19:32
Speaker
And so it was it was the first feeling of what has been the last year of my life.
00:19:40
Speaker
But it's the beginning of a new phase, so to speak. and So it was an important part of it.
00:19:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm. isn So just to finish off the last yeah nine months or whatever it is since then. so we got to the summer last year. Casey went back to university in the autumn in New York. My son Dylan went, I dropped him off in Dublin at the beginning of September.
00:20:12
Speaker
and I started what is going to be a year sabbatical. um And as we talked about, I'm using the word sabbatical because people understand what that means, but it's really just a year to to spend some time and heal and
Paddle as Therapy and Family Grieving
00:20:25
Speaker
rethink things. And and for that sabbatical,
00:20:29
Speaker
I have very little agenda, but it seems to be oriented around traveling to a lot of new places, catching up with old friends and playing as much paddle as possible in as many different places in the world as I can.
00:20:40
Speaker
And so I'm a little over halfway through that. I'm having a great time. um And yeah, I've got a few months left of this.
00:20:51
Speaker
So, um let's see. On the topic of loneliness,
00:21:00
Speaker
Do you still feel lonely? Or how is Parel helping you? or i Yes, I probably feel increasingly lonely, I would describe it as. um Denise and i were together for 29 years.
00:21:19
Speaker
the like The hard parts, that holiday, but the sort of months afterwards, um I discovered that that those hours, that 7 to 10 p.m., 9 to 8 to 10 p.m., those were the hardest by far.
00:21:36
Speaker
Like, not that Denise and I would have, you know, sort of deep philosophical conversations every night. But, you know, sometimes we chat about nothing. Sometimes we chat about something real. Sometimes we don't chat about anything. You just sit and watch a movie together or TV show or just in the presence of someone.
00:21:56
Speaker
those hours I just struggled dramatically with and still do. um Has it affected your sleep as well or?
00:22:11
Speaker
ah I'm always, always working on my sleep. No, I think. um No, it's much more of my waking hours.
00:22:23
Speaker
um But. But you asked this sort of loneliness social thing. I mean, I think I told you this story about the recovery process. like When I got home that week,
00:22:39
Speaker
maybe that first week but definitely the within two weeks of of when Denise passed it's probably the first week I just wanted to get out of the house because I had so many family members in the house um I I texted my um messaged my um pedal uh a teacher and i said i want to hit balls and i didn't want to talk to him at all and can we just do that for an hour and so i went out and he brought a bucket of balls you know hugged him at the beginning didn't say anything else uh and spent just an hour practicing drilling hitting shots and then left didn't say goodbye just
00:23:21
Speaker
and texting him and saying we do that again tomorrow and and i did it a couple times and it just kind of got me out in the land of the living i remember that second day we were doing it like friends saw me in the court and they were walking over and he was on pretty strict instructions to not let that happen and he kind of stopped everyone from walking and talking walking up to me and talking to me um And then I you know did it a few more times and I would talk to him a little bit more at the beginning and a little bit more at the end. And then I had a friend schedule my first match.
00:23:55
Speaker
And I remember saying, I'm not going to talk to anybody. And i walked on the court, immediately started playing, didn't, or warming up and and playing, didn't didn't have any chit chat with anyone.
00:24:07
Speaker
And then a few weeks later when I was doing, and I did that a bunch more times, but I would go and I would chat for five minutes ahead of time and chat for five minutes after. and then a couple months later, i would go and I could stick around and hang out with friends and maybe have a beer afterwards.
00:24:22
Speaker
Still not talk about anything consequential. Nothing about how I was feeling or how I was doing. It was just chat. But it meant that I was seeing people. And I was, you know, there was a danger how real it was, but it felt like a real danger to me of just crawling in a hole and not wanting to get out.
00:24:41
Speaker
o
00:24:44
Speaker
it was, for me, that's what paddle provided. and It was like a chance to get you know to move my body and feel energetic and and get energy out, but also a chance, that just a chance, at a way to force me to spend time with people.
00:24:58
Speaker
And so it's been a ah sort of vehicle for socializing since then. And I use it to go out and make sure that I I don't get more lonely, so to speak, yeah and drift further into into a hole.
00:25:15
Speaker
And you told me you basically play every day and you play... Once or twice a day. Once so twice or twice, so it's a few hours of the Two or three hours day.
00:25:25
Speaker
And so that's... It's amazing. You would think at this point, given how much I play, that I would be good, but it's not the case. Oh, I heard your...
00:25:36
Speaker
I'm okay. I'm okay. Right. so um No, but but i but I like everyone who played rugby at Insead or everyone who's ever been skiing with me will tell you I am an incredibly untalented sportsman who is very enthusiastic at everything I do. So um that's ah the case. Which compensates for enough, unless you want to be number one in the Olympics. no, no risk of any of that.
00:26:05
Speaker
um But so, Perel, how did you get into this game? And again, like you you are using it. It's your therapy, basically, the way it's been going so far.
00:26:18
Speaker
It's, ah yeah, I got into it. um i had started to play squash um maybe eight, ten years ago when my son started playing. um We played together. it was super fun. But squash is, you know, if you learn squash in your 40s, it's not a recipe to get better at anything. It's just hard on your body. It beats you up. And I was playing a bunch. I was playing again like five or six days a week.
00:26:40
Speaker
um But it was, you know, it was crushing my joints. And I loved it because I would play with Dylan, my son. And it was such a wonderful way to be together. And even during the pandemic, we would play because we were in the same household and you could, something we could do together.
00:26:55
Speaker
um but you know, I started when he was, don't know, 10. And I was much better than him. And then he got to be like 13 and I was a little bit better than him. And then he was 14 and he was a little bit better than me. And then he was 15 and then he was way better than me. And at some point he um he said to me that um playing squash with me makes him a worse squash player.
00:27:20
Speaker
At which point I was like, I think I should probably it up at this point. And I had been playing a little bit of pedal at that point. and paddle is just much less hard on the body, much less hard on the joints. And so I loved it and I found I was getting better at it. And now plays a lot as well and he's very good, but thankfully he's not much better than me yet.
00:27:40
Speaker
So so we we can still play it together. um But it is, it is my therapy. it Sorry, it's that's it's not a very useful way to describe um what is therapy, I'm sure, to other people. But um but for me, it's, like i said, it guarantees that I'm social. it means that I'm out there talking to people, being with people, engaging in things. It has real physical benefit, which is just, you keeps me active, which gets me to sleep better, which gets me
00:28:11
Speaker
um feeling healthier um and it allows me to do things that you know travel as a ah now recently turned 50 year old um and instead of just hanging out in my hotel i go out and i meet people and i play paddle all over the world and i engage socially so um not just that first week where it really provided the initial ticket to get out. It's it's provided a ah path to to be social and and and grow my friend group. It should be great.
00:28:49
Speaker
And so you mentioned the kids a few times. How have they progressed through this? And I say this, I've shared this with you, that when when this whole thing happened, I kind of, for me, because I lost my father when I was 19, for me, I went back into that place. So I was totally into the shoes of your kids. So I'm asking it from the... So how have they fared?
00:29:26
Speaker
Um...
00:29:31
Speaker
generally incredibly well like like say they they were both are both sad still and we but we all went through the same cycle where think in the first week we we didn't stop crying
00:29:51
Speaker
pretty much at all And then the next you know few weeks it would be crying frequently, and the next few months it would be crying every day, and then it was crying every once in a while, and now it's you know when think something when you think about something mean trigger So it doesn't go away. but um It's not as overwhelming and unbearable as ah as it is at the beginning. The nature of time.
00:30:16
Speaker
that i'm That as time passes, these things don't don'tum disappear, but they but they become easier to live with. And that's the case for the kids. they They went through the same thing. I said, Casey had a little bit of a ah blip in the second semester. She... can't even begin to describe how crazy the coincidence is. her Her best friend at college, who was her freshman year roommate, her mother died in August of this year.
00:30:49
Speaker
now her and her best friend are going through kind of the exact same thing. um They, I don't know if they would describe it this way just because they're teenagers or 20 year olds.
00:31:06
Speaker
um but I certainly know this is how they feel based on the conversations we have. i mean, they know that they were lucky to have two parents that loved them for so long.
00:31:18
Speaker
And they had an incredible relationship with their mother and um they loved her very much and they had an amazing childhood, you know, large part because of her. So I know that there's a gratefulness and... and and i think because of that,
00:31:34
Speaker
um or at least in part because of that. You know, there's strong, resilient kids that are doing well.
00:31:44
Speaker
It's probably something that makes, would make them more resilient and would make them probably push harder. They often say, and if you look at, you know, people who really...
00:32:02
Speaker
Thrive to achieve things very often. They have this history of having lost a parent when they were young. um But it's ah it's a strange one because I tell you another thing. I didn't tell you this, but when my father died, um a month or two after that, i was the the crime pattern pattern is very similar to what you described, but I fell in love.
00:32:30
Speaker
And it's this it's this it's this strike it's this fight. but It's the sense of guilt inside of you that you are totally sad and totally lost on one hand. And on the other hand, I mean, falling in love. And this is 19. So it's... the you know 19 year old love 19 year old love and and it's this conflict and you stop and you think and you're like how can I feel both of these things I am so sad and it's the end of the world on one hand and then I'm on top of the world on the other and it's happening at the same time so it's
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah, kids or 20-year-olds processing is the first story. I'm sure you can talk about this more than and more than I know. that i I mean, like with my daughter in the spring after it happened, I know that this isn't going to be a linear recovery. Yeah.
00:33:32
Speaker
It's not that they were doing badly and they were doing better and now they're doing fine. I mean, they're going through waves. We're all going through waves of motion. And sometimes it's really hard and sometimes it's easier.
Reflections on Life's Unpredictability
00:33:46
Speaker
um And I also, like, I feel like one of my core jobs is watching out for that. Yeah. Being aware that that just because my son is doing fine and has been doing fine for a while doesn't mean he's always going to be doing fine. Yeah.
00:34:05
Speaker
Eventually... And you've mentioned this. Eventually, I think with loss, you learn to live with it. It's not that it disappears.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's just over time, you learn that there's this gap or this hole or whatever you want to call it. And it will always be there, but you learn to live with it and at some point appreciate it, if you can say that. But it doesn't go away as in anyone who's lost a loved one, I'm sure say something similar.
00:34:42
Speaker
it's It's there. You learn to live with it. And we all can experience happiness again, but it's a process and it takes time.
00:34:52
Speaker
and i mean, and it's... yeah There's two things I want to try to remember to say. um One is... um
00:35:05
Speaker
There's a secondary loss, which I'm feeling
00:35:10
Speaker
the the more time passes, the more i I realize is one of the things I'm feeling, which feels very selfish. um But it is what it is, which is that, you know, yeah feel I feel the loss of Denise, I feel the loss of life, of our time together, all of those things.
00:35:30
Speaker
And as time passes, i realize i also feel an identity loss. That, you know, Denise and I were together for 29 since was 19 years 18 years, 18 19 years
00:35:44
Speaker
years eighteen years old nineteen years old um That's all of my life, all of my identity. And so, you know, having just turned 50 now, there's a whole new set of questions as to what that means. Who am I?
00:36:03
Speaker
What am I going to This is a secondary wave of loss that I'm experiencing. But i i wanted you were saying something that made me remember that I wanted to talk about in those weeks and months after Denise passed, um how unbelievably appreciative I was of everybody who reached out.
00:36:29
Speaker
sort Everybody who came to the memorial, which i I, for us, for my kids, and also for Denise, the knowing that she was so loved, you know, hundreds of people came dozens from all over the world was an amazing thing.
00:36:51
Speaker
And everyone who couldn't come and who sent a message and ah we felt i felt incredibly loved, just unbelievably supported by such a huge and amazing group of people.
00:37:07
Speaker
and And the time, I don't know if I would have described it, but it didn't take me long to realize how lucky I was.
00:37:15
Speaker
unbelievably thankful i was for all of the people that were there and trying to support me and and you and i talked about this maybe it was about your father as well but like people would write messages and like say i'm you know say i'm sorry and some people like nailed it and just said the perfect thing and lots of people didn't because guess like how do you what do you say it's impossible like what do you it's impossible i mean some people as i gotta write but mostly you just People just said things. And the truth is I read tons and tons of messages.
00:37:48
Speaker
And what people said doesn't stick out specifically. ah The fact that people reached out is what sticks out. And so my my sort of... i mean, I recently had a friend who had a loss as well. And I found you'd think I would be really good at it at this point.
00:38:05
Speaker
And I'm also... I struggled with it. its thought It's just not easy to know what to say. my my kind of tip, I guess, if there is one, is just say something. You're going to get it wrong. It's not going be perfect.
00:38:17
Speaker
It's the the act of reaching out that that um I remember. i remember so many people reaching out. And I'm so thankful to this class as well, as well as other classes and other people in my life to for being there.
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah. So... You told me, so we've spoken about the sabbatical, which is not a sabbatical, but we call it a sabbatical. It's like my retirement.
00:38:47
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. But i don't want to call it a retirement, which is why it's called a sabbatical. so and you told me that you were used to...
00:38:59
Speaker
planning 10-year chunks and you have this way of thinking and you call them career planning habits. So how far have you gotten now on your journey of from healing, moving into planning, or are you still mostly in healing or where are you on that continuum of healing?
00:39:25
Speaker
um You just turned 50, as you said. Welcome to the club. Thank you very much. I did it to two months before you. Then I feel honored to be joining a club that you are a member of. There you go. We all are.
00:39:43
Speaker
So just the tenure thing, i actually think I might have even talked about this the last time. um ah But it's just worth saying again that i for a long time, i i had thought about my my career as kind of 10 years out.
00:40:00
Speaker
And i don't know where I got this or how it developed, but my... family all it No, I don't really read career books. um ah Sorry.
00:40:11
Speaker
i yeah i never really got into those. No, this was... I don't know what it was. The analogy I always had was driving. but When you teach someone to drive, their instinct is to like look at the lines right in front of the car and they just like stare down at the road and inevitably when you look at the line in front of the car you drive on towards the line and then you smash it on the side of the road. And the only way to learn how to drive is to learn not to look at the lines in front of you, but to look you know off in the distance and then the car magically goes the direction that you're looking.
00:40:40
Speaker
And I always think about career planning as the same thing, which is if you look at you know your next step, you're going to veer off in some crazy direction. But if you keep your eyes sort of 10 years down the road, um you have a much easier time of of heading where you want to go.
Career Planning and Flexibility
00:40:59
Speaker
and in fact, if you make small changes and small turns, it's easy to either veer back in the right direction or rethink where the 10 years are going to go. So it's not a 10 year plan like I do a 10 year plan and then I get to the end of it and then I do another 10 year plan. It's that I'm always trying to think what's off in the distance, what do want to be headed towards?
00:41:20
Speaker
um And I was at a point in my career where i was probably thinking about that. That anyhow, I was probably revising my 10 year plan and And I've actually, it mean thinking about this conversation made me think about um four or five years ago, um i was on a ski trip with some INSEAD classmates of ours. And one of those classmates... No names will be named?
00:41:47
Speaker
I was trying to decide if I should name it it's It's sort of giving him credit, but it's also... but I'll let people work it out. ah One of my classmates ah um who was going through a particularly hard time, sort of divorce and just challenging career and and was struggling ah through quite a lot, was on the ski trip with us in Colorado. I'll narrow it down for some people.
00:42:14
Speaker
um And we were talking about this 10-year career path and I was... I had a very clear vision for 10 years and i I had this sort of ah infrastructure incubator, I would call it, that's not really relevant anymore, of of what I thought I was going to do and how I was going to transition the existing company that but I was at into something that was a bit more structured. And anyhow, I went through this plan, talked about 10 years and the path to it.
00:42:42
Speaker
And he said something to the effect of, this isn't going to be his words, but I'll paraphrase what I heard, which was basically, why would you bother planning 10 years in advance? Because life can throw curveballs at you at all times. And he had just been hit by a few pretty bad curveballs.
00:43:01
Speaker
um And so basically, it's not worth planning 10 years in advance. That's what I heard. i know that's not what he said, but that's what I heard.
00:43:10
Speaker
um In retrospect, giving him a lot more credit for what he was saying, I think what he meant, or at least what he might have even said at the time, was that don't have fixed tenure plans.
00:43:27
Speaker
If you fixate on some version of the future, um and then you get thrown a curveball, it can all collapse in front of you. So recognize that there needs to be a flexibility in that I'm not saying he portended all that happened to me, but it sure for a moment felt like he did predict all the things that were going to happen to me. So if you did do that and you know who you are, I don't know how you did that, but that was impressive.
00:43:55
Speaker
um It's like an LLM. It's probabilistic. Right? it's Well, probabilities and the longer you are in a...
00:44:10
Speaker
on an up curve, the bigger the chance that, so it's, you know, so there he, he, he was of AI before the rest of us. That's exactly right.
00:44:23
Speaker
ah But, um, so, so how far are you, because you mentioned someone else who gave you advice of what to do next and what you are planning to start in September.
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, so how far am I? I'm not very far. I... i So I think about it like I discovered over the last number of years, holding sort of board seats and chairmanships, that a lot of my job, and even just my my day-to-day executive job, a lot of my job was just helping ah my coworkers solve problems.
00:45:03
Speaker
sort of solve strategic issues. And and often when people were coming to me with things, it was because they had worked on something for a while and they couldn't get to a solution. So I was there to help them get to a solution. um And i discovered over many, many years that the best way for me to do that was weirdly not doing a ton of pre-reading and a ton of pre-work and you know embedding myself in the details of what was going on because ah colleague was already in that position and what they tended to need was perspective and someone who could come a bit more fresh to the situation. Better all their head.
00:45:40
Speaker
the best way for me to do that was playing paddle. or working out or sleeping well or just being healthy and present when the meetings came around. and In fact, I was much better off you know going out and exercising or taking a long shower and clearing my head and just getting to the meeting fresh than I was trying to read everything ahead of time and make myself ready.
00:46:06
Speaker
um And so i I sort of compare what's going on with me now to the to the paddle game or the the long shower, which is I'm just clearing my head. This year is is um is is a process of getting a clear head. and And I used to get frustrated when I would try to solve these problems that I would exercise and I wouldn't know the answer.
00:46:29
Speaker
like I'd finish my my workout and I would get to... at the end and I'd be like, I'm not closer to the answer to this problem. But I realized that the exercise isn't about creating the answer. It's about creating the space in your mind to be able to come to the answer.
00:46:44
Speaker
So I feel like I'm getting there. You know, my mind is clearing. I'm not certainly where I was a year ago. um But I'm also conscious that at the end of this period, I'm not going to have an answer.
00:46:55
Speaker
I'm not going to get to the end and magically appear with, I know what I'm going to do next. So a different one of our colleagues on a different ski trip, in fact, this one was um um just last month, recurring themes, paddle and skiing. um ah This classmate said, why don't you...
00:47:12
Speaker
Do a second part of the sabbatical, which is go around and see a bunch of friends who ah you think um are doing interesting things and just go talk to them at that point. So you do a second set of trips where you're instead of being focused on clearing your head, you're focused on building towards a solution.
00:47:32
Speaker
So my plan is to get through this year, which ends in August, and then come September, sort of actively start exploring what the next phase for me and doing that by going out and having conversations with as many people as possible and about what they're doing um but they're doing with their life. And so...
00:47:50
Speaker
and so
00:47:53
Speaker
You mentioned a number of times now and when we start when we had the preliminary conversation, you started by saying, appreciate, I am extremely lucky and also grateful. So can we expand a bit on why at the end of the day, despite everything, you feel lucky and grateful and where is this coming from and and what is it that...
00:48:20
Speaker
Because there are two ways people take the situation. Some say that's the end of the world and I'm the most miserable person. And how could that happen to me? Why me? And then there's the way you are going about it. So can you expand a little bit here?
00:48:37
Speaker
i don't i don't know that it's... ah I don't know how other people take it. I i do. i feel incredibly lucky. Like I sort of can paint. I mean, on the most basic level, um, I could have had, you know, this tumor could have spread cancer throughout my body. i could have been going through chemotherapy.
00:49:00
Speaker
Um, when Denise passed away, i could have passed away. My kids could have lost both their parents. They didn't. um
00:49:11
Speaker
I've had so many people supporting us. I didn't do this, you know, I didn't have to recover on my own. family was there, countless friends. I mean, all the INSEAD people you know, but I have Philly friends, Philadelphia friends who who just swooped. I mean, Dylan got his college application done, not because i was, you know, on top of things. I was not, but because one of my friends um She made sure Dylan had an advisor who was you know helping him manage the application process for Ireland, which none of us knew how to do at the time.
00:49:46
Speaker
and People stepped in and stepped up and helped in ways that I i can't even remember. It was so much. um And I was in a position in work where you know I could take time off.
00:50:00
Speaker
I could just disappear and focus on my kids and reconstructing our you know ah life and the house and all the things they needed to do and not have to rush. I wasn't in a situation where if I didn't show up for work the next day, i wasn't going to be able to pay bills. you know right There's so many things that could have been so much worse and in fact showed me were so much better.
00:50:24
Speaker
and and and And most important, um
00:50:30
Speaker
i had 29 amazing years with Denise. and So, you know, it's a a good part of a lifetime. um And all of those things make me make me feel unbelievably lucky.
00:50:46
Speaker
Like, people go through loss. I mean, I don't need to talk about the world and what's going on in the world right now, but people are going through loss every day, everywhere. And and even... mean, that is big and dramatic loss that we can see on the news.
00:51:03
Speaker
um People go through loss every day, all the time that doesn't make the news. mean, you know, there's just stuff happening to all of us all of the time. And stuff that makes us sad, stuff that creates grief,
00:51:17
Speaker
And I'm not, I know while mine maybe seems dramatic and it is, and maybe I've done something I haven't done in a while, which is come on podcasts and describe it and live it a little bit more out loud than I otherwise normally would have.
00:51:34
Speaker
um I know that lots of us have gone through lots of horrible things. And I hope that everybody
00:51:44
Speaker
feels the same support and gratitude that I get to feel in this situation. So do you think that when you are going through the cancer scare and basically app i assume at some level you you had a moment of facing your own mortality, it was a scare. Do you think that this this had an effect on how you experienced the loss of Denise or are they totally unrelated? They are definitely not unrelated.
00:52:29
Speaker
um but I don't think it is as interesting how I appreciated it because
00:52:38
Speaker
No, it's what it made you... Well, no, I was going to say, it turns out I'm... One of the things I discovered was I wasn't particularly scared of death. That was one of the things that the the cancer scare.
Scholarship in Memory of Denise
00:52:49
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:52:52
Speaker
But again, I was appreciative for life. I had a great life. felt like I had actually lived a pretty long life despite being 48 years old. um And I kind of took a laissez-faire attitude towards it. It kind of was what it was.
00:53:08
Speaker
um
00:53:13
Speaker
For my kids, it was jarring because I think they knew that you they had they didn't just have or sorry i didn't just have ah a mortality scare. They had a mortal mortality scare about me.
00:53:26
Speaker
So they were preparing themselves for the chance that I might not get better.
00:53:33
Speaker
And then three weeks later, they lost their mom.
00:53:37
Speaker
So I think for them it was,
00:53:43
Speaker
don't know, a better word than jarring. It was ah hard to comprehend. My daughter even said, ah because my daughter not very good on subtlety, ah she said, we just assumed that you were going to die, not mom.
00:54:02
Speaker
um And totally, I did too. So the biggest change now is i was 48 when Denise passed. My dad passed the year before, was 93 when he passed away.
00:54:20
Speaker
If for some, and he had the same, you know, tumor surgery, all that i that i had. um And if by some crazy coincidence, I lived to the same age as my father, that means have a 45 life after Denise.
00:54:37
Speaker
And that is almost incomprehensible at the moment. I can't even begin to think what 45 more years looks like.
00:54:50
Speaker
Terrifying, mostly.
00:54:54
Speaker
But back to the sort of 10-year plan and thinking about the future and where we're going, you know, it's a long time. So I know what I don't want to do.
00:55:05
Speaker
which is they don't want to keep stumbling, stumbling through the next steps. and Why do you say keep? You haven't been stumbling until that point. So why do you say keep? No, I mean, keep like, because of what's happened the last nine to 18 months. Cause at the moment I feel like I'm stumbling.
00:55:25
Speaker
Um, uh, and I, I, I know that this isn't how I want be. Um, but I also think it's understandable that I'm not ready to be on top of things yet.
00:55:40
Speaker
So it's the process I'm going through. Yeah. It's a process. Well, listen, I hope I would be very interested to see what comes out after the next phase of meeting people and figuring out what you want to pick. Because again, you have the luck and the privilege to be in a position to pick. You don't have go and build a career, look for a job.
00:56:10
Speaker
provide for the kids etc etc in that sense in that survival sense so so i would be very curious and i'm secretly hoping for something but i'm not gonna i'll just project into the future but in the meantime I have no intentions of moving to Bulgaria, if that's what you're saying. Oh, no, no, no, But please do come visit. i will. I do. I would love to visit. When you're in Europe, you can come with Jeff. Jeff i love it can tell you. Well, both Jeffs, but here I mean Jeff Clay from Texas. who came a year ago. and i love it. Well, he's been here a few times because he was here also for Plummer's wedding. so i was That's when I was there as well. yeah There you go. Oh, there you go. So you can revisit.
00:56:56
Speaker
But where I was going with this is while you're still figuring your your While you're still healing and you know getting into the next phase, e etc., etc., you've actually started something which you will talk about shortly.
00:57:21
Speaker
or maybe you should talk about now. And then I'll tell my part of the story. So why don't you talk about the MBA partner scholarship in memory of Denise, which we've already announced, you announced in the WhatsApp group. And then I've been chatting to more people or more people have been coming at me and it's evolving. But tell me how that process came about in your mind and and what is this about?
00:57:52
Speaker
um yeah i don't know what i can't say what the specific moment or the trigger that did it there wasn't one thing um but i i will talk about sort of where it landed which is um I'm a huge fan of the work you've done. i as i said, I feel fortunate for so much of my life. One of the things I feel most fortunate about is the fact that I got to go to INSEAD and meet all of you wonderful people.
00:58:26
Speaker
um It changed my life in ah in a way that i I know it did for lots of other people on this call and changed the trajectory of what was going to happen with my life, but also who I was as a person. And I'm so thankful for all of that.
00:58:41
Speaker
And i think this is the point where people usually say, and I'm thankful for my partner for being there. And I am thankful for my partner for being there. Of course, I'm thankful for Denise that she was there.
00:58:53
Speaker
But I think there's a second point, which is Denise would say exactly the same thing. She wasn't a student at INSEAD, but she would say she's thankful for the time she spent at INSEAD. She's thankful for all the friends she met there. She's thankful for,
00:59:08
Speaker
ah for Yeah, all of it and And as a partner at INSEAD, her INSEAD experience was no less you know core to her person than it was for us.
00:59:27
Speaker
And I think for everyone who came over to dinner at our house, one of our dinner parties or Thanksgiving dinner, or, you know, who we went and hung out with at their houses. Were you in Buron? No, were you in Barbizon? Where were you? Montigny. We were in Montigny. We had a little cottage in Montigny just for the two of us.
00:59:45
Speaker
um
00:59:48
Speaker
But, you know, she was as much a part of all that stuff as all the rest of us. And i think maybe unlike some partners, Denise, when she got there, knew that the year was just gonna be about living in the French countryside and having a great time.
01:00:05
Speaker
She she you know took dance classes a few days a week in Paris, she took French classes, she took wine appreciation classes, partners led cooking classes. She she had such a good time and she loved every moment. And you know some of her best friends in the world are from that year. Partners like Johanna and students like Isabel.
01:00:28
Speaker
yeah um And that ah that year was so significant to her that I always felt like it was an underappreciated point for INSEAD.
01:00:44
Speaker
That they kind of
01:00:48
Speaker
gonna sound really mean, but I mean it. that I felt like INSEAD sometimes treated partners as appendages as opposed to people. And that so seemed so wrong to me.
01:01:01
Speaker
I loved Denise's approach to our year at INSEAD. And part of the reason i had such a great experience is that she had such a great experience.
01:01:10
Speaker
And I wanted to help partners who were coming to INSEAD have that sort of experience. And so when I was talking to the development office, we talked about um whether or not there was any support for partners. And I found or I heard about the existing structure and it was funded horribly and there really wasn't much there. Not surprising, it hadn't changed since since we were there.
01:01:37
Speaker
But in fairness, I think it's an innovation for universities. I don't think anyone... know I don't know. wish We can ask chat GPT, but I think it's an innovation. So instead, Mike, instead, Denise are leading the way, but should be talking. it's it No, very clearly...
01:01:57
Speaker
Not there. but But to INSEAD's credit, as I started talking about it, they jumped on it and they were super excited about the chance to support partners. And so um so i contributed a a um bunch of funds to help establish a scholarship, not for INSEAD students, but fundamentally for their partners.
01:02:23
Speaker
to allow partners to come with INSEAD students who want to be there really just to do something interesting. And I don't, I didn't really care if it was to, you know, write a book or to, you know, take cooking classes in Paris or didn't really matter.
01:02:43
Speaker
ah I just wanted to find a way to relieve the financial burden so that, and I mean, remember a lot of partners came that year and they thought, I'm going to get a job. And they're living in the French countryside for one year. And the hiring process in the French countryside is at least one year long. So it was just torturing themselves.
01:03:02
Speaker
And if this was a way to to get partners to come and enjoy themselves and feel licensed to just do what they felt was the best way to grow as a person during that year, felt like no better legacy to to what Denise did when she was there.
01:03:21
Speaker
It's a really, I didn't have that experience, but it's a really, really, um and I'm sure a lot of people would agree. It's a really nice one, and I'm really happy. It's a great putting another flag on a new territory. So um I love this, and maybe that's where I tell our part of the story, which is...
01:03:46
Speaker
Again, we've been fundraising our little team, Jeff, myself and Rutger since almost, well, since graduation. And I got an email from the INSEAD development team and they said, well, we are working with Mike on this and would you consider supporting the effort? um And so for Giving Day together with your pushing out the O3D endowed scholarship, would you consider supporting this as well?
01:04:20
Speaker
And um I must say that what followed was probably one of the quickest decisions that Jeff, Rutger and myself ever made as a team in the 20 years of working together. And we decided, well, it was my instant reaction. And then I shared with them and it was, yes, we do it. And so we said, okay, instead of splitting our attention,
01:04:45
Speaker
What we will do this year for Giving Day is we decided to focus our collective energy fully behind this effort and make the MBA partner scholarship in memory of Denise, yet another O3D success.
01:05:03
Speaker
And the logic for me and Brutger and Jeff agree on this is is very simple. It's about sticking together, which has been what we've been fighting for and also fighting for in our WhatsApp chats um ever since it it was created in 2018.
01:05:22
Speaker
And it's another way for for us, for the class, to to to contribute to legacy um and and for us to stand behind.
01:05:35
Speaker
So um we have, I mean, the logic is we have the O3D Endowed Scoreship Fund and everyone knows by now. I think it's 1.3, 1.4 million euro in in in the fund. So we are in a position to award one or two scholarships per year to students from ah emerging markets.
01:05:58
Speaker
um And on top of that, now our class can say that we are going to help and contribute to one or scholarships. scholarships per year for partners. And I just think that's that's absolutely beautiful. And what I love about all of this is that when we had our prep conversation 10 days ago, we get online and I'm like, so Mike, I'm sure they've told you. And then it turned out the INSEAD development team had not told you. So it was a surprise, which was amazing.
01:06:32
Speaker
So I delivered a nice surprise, but there you go.
Conclusion and Community Support
01:06:35
Speaker
We are going to be, uh, to be, ah only talking about the partnership fund during Giving Day. And that's our joint effort. And so the way I take it is that the scholarship, the MBA partners' scholarship in memory of Denise, I take it it's not about tragedy. I take it it's about recognition, recognition of the partners in our life.
01:07:07
Speaker
And the for those of us who knew Denise, contributing isn't charity, it's participation. That's how I take it. And in doing that, we honor Denise and we stand beside you.
01:07:24
Speaker
So, um, I, I, yeah, I mean, i want to just, um, just add a couple of things. I know, people are in different financial situations and, and, and I know people have different feelings about giving and and all of the rest.
01:07:43
Speaker
Um, And I feel like no one should feel any pressure to do something that they don't feel like they can do. And at the same time, um a couple people have called me and told me they are contributing. And a couple of people have told me they're contributing quite large sums.
01:08:02
Speaker
and yeah And I'm not going to name names, at least one of them I know is anonymous. um ah This is my chance to say how thankful I am for
01:08:15
Speaker
can't think of any better way to honor what Denise added to our INSEAD community than this scholarship. I mean, her I told her sisters who, you know, completely lost it. They were um so thankful and so appreciative.
01:08:32
Speaker
And it's, it's
01:08:37
Speaker
you know, it's exactly what...
01:08:42
Speaker
What I think was missing from recognition of partners is that having a scholarship named after one of the partners wasn't an INSEAD student is kind of the core point.
01:08:54
Speaker
You know, people are making life sacrifices or making life decisions and moving to the middle of the forest in France for a year, cut off from whatever life they had previously.
01:09:08
Speaker
It's a about time, which the least we could do to to support and help that that group. um So thank you to the people who have already contributed and thank you in advance to anyone who thinks about doing it. by From a personal perspective, it means a tremendous amount to me.
01:09:27
Speaker
Yeah. So what we say always and with giving Giving Day even more so is it's about participation. It's not about the amount. So what we'd love to see is as many of our class give you a hug in that way. I'd say that. Walk with you. um As a housekeeping item, I would say giving day runs from the 19th to the 26th of March, 2026. And it's very important that we manage to give in that period. So everyone who can, who is in position, and again, as you said, the world is a mess and we fully appreciate that quite a few people are under a lot of different...
01:10:13
Speaker
ah stress situations. So we fully appreciate that. But even if you, even a ah euro is a hack. So I'd say
01:10:27
Speaker
symbolically as well. um We will be posting a link to the and MBA Partnership Scholarship in the comments below the podcast. And of course, you will be hearing buy me ah from me and Rutger and Jeff via email and WhatsApp as well. so you know the drill in that in sense. So um um there will be further announcements, so stay tuned. um I will also remind you, did mention, but we do have and and and ah someone who wants to be anonymous, but who is...
01:11:05
Speaker
gonna match the first 80,000. Um, and that will, so he will donate, he and his wife will donate another 80,000, um, euro, uh, and we will have another surprise. So stay tuned. And, um, I will end it here with, um, just a little bit more, which probably is going to make us cry, but, um,
01:11:32
Speaker
Mike, you've described unimaginable loss and yet what stands out is not bitterness, it's gratitude, it's luck, it's community and it's intention.
01:11:43
Speaker
Thank you very much for opening your heart so generously with all of us today. I know from a very personal experience that sharing something this painful is one of the hardest thing a person can do.
01:11:56
Speaker
And please know this, you don't carry it alone. We walk with you because together we are stronger. Thank you for bringing us closer together again.
01:12:08
Speaker
And to Pierre Lusato, thank you for the nudge. I did need it. So that's what i wanted to say.
01:12:18
Speaker
ah Thank you, Milena. Thank you for having me. um Thank you for doing this podcast and for all that you do for our INSEAD community. And to everybody who made it this far in the podcast,
01:12:32
Speaker
um thank you for all the support and friendship you've given me over the years.
01:12:40
Speaker
Thank you. And thank you, Mike. See you, Mike.
01:12:52
Speaker
You were listening to The Republic of INSEAD now in its 2026 O3D Limited Podcast Edition. It is my hope to remind everyone what an interesting and dare I say colorful bunch of people we are and how much we can contribute to each other, be it through life experiences, ideas, knowledge or mere inspiration.
01:13:15
Speaker
The podcast is inspired by the original Republic of Insead yearbook produced on paper now 23 years ago by Oliver, Bradley and team. Thank you, Oli and team for this contribution to our class's memory and for letting me continue in the tradition, title and inspiration included.
01:13:33
Speaker
Creator and author of The Republic of Insead 2026-03D Limited Podcast Edition MI, Milena Ivanova. Original music by Peter Dundakov with help from Dare Film Productions. Stay tuned for more as and when it comes.
01:13:48
Speaker
Thank you for listening.