Personal Statement

There are several requirements for participants in the Fellowship Program. At the end, each is required to write a professional report on a topic related to his/her career, and a personal statement. The personal statement can include impressions, recommendations - in short, anything that a Fellow thinks is worth saying. Here's how mine came out.

Personal Statement for the Alfa Fellowship

It’s been difficult for me to come up with an overall reflection that encompasses my experiences with the Fellowship. After all, the program started with stateside language tutoring and ended with a cab ride to Sheremetyevo airport more than a year later. In between, I worked and lived and learned and played for more than 9 months in one of the world’s greatest cities.

It’s also been difficult to sum up that experience since many points of reference have changed over that period of time. The Fellowship was an experience that enriched my professional knowledge, increased my curiosity about Russia, and generally - it’s no exaggeration to say – changed a lot of how I look at the world and myself.

So how, then, to put into words that which spans time and emotion and experience? Well, I’ll try to sum it up in the broad categories of how I define my time there.

Language
My Russian language tutoring while still in the US was an absolutely critical ingredient in my full participation on the Russian side of the program. I credit a fear of having inadequate language skills on the streets of Moscow, as well as having an excellent tutor (Nadia), for the success I had in preparing. Regardless of the motivating factors, the stateside language program transformed me from a rusty and hesitant speaker to a much more confident and intelligible communicator.

The Language program in Moscow served several important purposes. First, it was a continuation of formal training. Second, the overall language experience broadened considerably. Local issues of language that we were confronted with could now be examined in a classroom. And third, it put us in a situation with a local teacher who could offer advice and assistance during our initial transition period.

Our occasional “field trips” to cultural sites around Moscow were the highlight. It allowed unscripted, fluid conversation outside a formal classroom setting.

From my perspective, the language training was very worthwhile. It was difficult, at times, to maintain interest for several people of generally varying skill levels lumped together in a group. The end result, of course, is really the measure of a language class and by that yardstick I felt that the instruction dramatically improved my ability to understand and communicate.

I was fortunate enough to start my work assignment early (in August). That gave me 2 months to study for a half day and then work for a half day. I got to put into practice immediately our classroom lessons in a local work environment. The combination was absolutely invaluable. So much so, that I would strongly encourage the Fellowship Program to explore the option of combining the language study with a part-time work assignment “start-up” phase.

Work
Connecting to my professional assignment was a stable, predictable process that did not hold any surprises for me. In that regard, I seem to be rather fortunate compared to some of my colleagues.

It isn’t surprising that the smoothest assignment process was for a finance professional to be placed within Alfa. While the Fellowship is indeed a multi-disciplinary program, the reality is that Svetlana Smirnova can personally arrange any finance-related professional assignment in very short order. In my case, that involved an early invitation to meet with Svetlana and an Alfa division chief to discuss my employment.

My professional assignment at Alfa Capital was fascinating, engaging, and highly tailored to my interests and skills. The company gave me the opportunity and time to learn through my own research projects, as well as pitch in on their projects. So while my understanding of the local market increased, I felt that I made some contributions to the firm.

I’m not sure that I could envision a more suitable or productive posting.

The Fellowship Program
The formal parts of the Fellowship program were very rewarding experiences. The schedules were well designed, thorough, and comprehensive. Every possible need of the Fellows seemed to be considered ahead of time – especially food!

For as well-planned as our regional trips were, however, it was a bit surprising the extent to which the plan came together at the last minute; dates and even destinations weren’t known much ahead of time. Of course, flexibility is always a necessity in Russia. But that’s not a trivial distinction – more advance notice allows more advance preparation. Our schedule of events in Cheboksary, for example, included a visit to the PromTraktor factory. I was able to do extensive research on PromTraktor at work prior to the trip, and get a good sense of the financial situation of the company and asked a lot of questions during our meeting with management. I didn’t have the time, however, to do any more research than that.

The highlights of our regional trips, for me, were the opportunities to interact with local folk. Our trip to Chuvashia, however, was so tightly scheduled that we didn’t really have the time to do that. Nor did we have any flexibility in extending more interesting meetings. I have one particular episode in mind: a discussion with members of the local media. Just as the group was starting to open up and really share opinions, we had to rush off to a meeting with local government members where – as bad luck would have it – the exact same thing happened again.

In addition, most meals were looked at as some sort of opportunity to fete the visiting Americans. That made each meal a very long affair. The hospitality was certainly welcome at dinner, and very much appreciated. But a very long lunch in Novorossisk meant a shortened meeting with a professional and visionary director of a local chamber of commerce.

The Fellowship was also good at organizing meetings during our regular work period in Moscow. We were more often than not included in events at Arkady’s Center, as well as having an open invitation to events at the American Chamber of Commerce. Again, advance preparation would have made some of the meetings even more available. A short bio page would have gone a long way.

Life and Living
The Fellowship program provided me with an excellent, well-situated apartment very close to the CIF offices. It was a brand-new renovation, a fact announced by the presence of workmen in the apartment when I first arrived! Although they never did return to finish the work that they promised to accomplish the very next day, I have no complaints about the physical status of the apartment; it was a beautiful place to live.

And while I have no complaints about the other elements of the apartment (the kitchen and bathroom had been fitted out nicely by the CIF staff), I would point out the distinction between a new apartment and the older ones that had been secured. As the first tenant, it was my place to discover that there were a minimum of creature comforts. I wasn’t very put out when I discovered that my apartment lacked an espresso maker that another apartment did not. In particular, though, I wasn’t happy that it took several months for a phone line to be installed. Relying on my (fellowship-provided) cell phone was an expensive and inconvenient workaround that excluded the possibility of home internet service.

The phone/internet situation was remedied finally, but only when the second group of fellows arrived some 3 months later. While the CIF staff was generally very responsive to my needs, there were occasions where they didn’t seem to share the same sense of urgency. Or indeed, any sense of urgency.

That being said, I didn’t actually rely on the CIF staff for very much outside of the formal Fellowship functions. I lived across the street from their office, but I decided early on that a good Moscow experience would be one rooted in as much self-sufficiency as I could muster. I limited my contact with them to visa issues and other more formal program communications – very happy in the knowledge that the competent local staff was available to me at my discretion.

Post Fellowship
I enjoyed the cosmopolitan buzz of Moscow very much. After a few months, I formed a hypothesis that Moscow and New York were actually very similar places – at least in the abstract elements of life in a metropolis. But for all the reveling in big city excitement, a sneaking curiosity crept into my mind: what was the rest of Russia really like? A growing interest to find out was propelled into something like a burning passion by all the times I heard someone say that “Moscow isn’t Russia.” Indeed, even during our meeting with Mikhail Freedman, he mentioned Vladivostok and stated that “No one knows what’s going on out there.”
So, on the last day of our Fellowship I took an Aeroflot flight to Vladivostok on the Pacific Coast. I had no schedule, no tickets, and no accommodations – just a vague sense of what I wanted to find out about Russia. I spent the next 6 weeks traveling across most of the Eurasian land mass in search of the real Russia.

I’m not sure I ever really found it. It certainly doesn’t exist all in one place – elements of what makes Russia were evident everywhere. At the end, I knew I had seen the real Russia. Except that I had seen it over 6 weeks in a dozen cities and countless hours on the Trans-Siberian rail.

For as much as the Fellowship meant to me, the trip across Russia will always be the defining experience of my time in that country.

Conclusion
This fellowship was a wonderful journey – a career-enriching move that became an intellectual challenge and exercise, eventually inspiring me to push myself emotionally and physically while on the road across Russia. The work phase helped me tune my analytical capabilities to the realities of the country and its emerging equity market; skills that I hope to use to my advantage in business over the coming years. But what I saw of life in the Far East, in Siberia, and in a handful of cities practically unknown to the West, was a trove of complementary research material. That’s where I learned more about post-Soviet reality – how the country really works, how people really live, and – when all is said and done after a year in Russia – what I really think about it all.