meaningful work

“Better to sleep all day on a park bench than do work you don't believe in.” ― Marty Rubin

If I can sum up all of my professional aspirations, or my definition of meaningful work, it would be to pursue work that enables me to help organizations build products for sustainability and impact. . There is many ways that can look, and I hope this blog will be a platform to reflect through some of those ways. Let my curious spirit lead the way!

After a year of not updating this blog, I am excited to return. For the foreseeable future, I plan to write a bunch of Product Reviews as a way of improving my Product Sense as a junior Product Manager. 

Fibre Internet Pricing Problem 

Published 20 March 2021

Phane Pricing Problem 

Published 28 January 2021

Personal Key Takeaways From My Covid-19 Project

Published on 14 August 2020

I still remember when I received the email announcing Professor Ashish Goel's newly added project class on Covid-19 in Developing Countries. The premise of the class was to get a group of students who were interested in applying their "data-sciencey" skills towards epidemic and socioeconomic modeling efforts in parts of the world where there was a deficiency of modeling efforts. It sounded like something I would be interested in. One need only look at my non-traditional profile to see that my curiosity almost always leads me towards social impact oriented projects. But I was not going to apply to the class. For one I am woke and use the term "Global South" instead of "Developing Countries". Of course that was just an excuse. The true fear was my insecurity over my "data-sciencey" skills. I ended up applying in spite of that insecurity. Perhaps because my ongoing reflections in my personal life have afforded me the clarity to understand the extent to which fear informs my actions. I was accepted into the class - with my insecurity whispering in my ear that I was added on diversity grounds - and what a fulfilling journey it has been. I am not sure how useful or meaningful the work we have produced will be, but I cannot emphasize enough how enriching this journey has been. This is what my friends at Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka mean when they say, "When we build the road, the road builds us." I offer a few reflections on that journey.

A wise person I know recently said, "An individual's unique value proposition is not in what they know but who they are." As I reflect on my journey throughout this project, I see the truth of those words - at least in my case. The first lesson from the journey is that I should wear my diversity badge with honor not guilt. It is a privilege to bring this wealth of experiences to a team and project. As an example, in April when we started, neither my team nor the professor had any idea where we can be most helpful. I leveraged my connections in Botswana and other African countries to solicit project ideas. As the only student of African origin in the class, I was the unofficial leader of the Africa Team (which was later renamed the Botswana Team after finding a problem sponsor in Botswana). After spending weeks of doing smaller - but still meaningful - tasks, we learned that the Presidential Task Force on Covid-19 in Botswana was battling with a surge in cases from transnational truck drivers. The passion that I brought to the project was in part driven by my desire to make a difference more generally, but to a large extent it was rooted in my gratitude and patriotism towards my home nation.  So more than the skills and knowledge I brought to the project, the value I contributed was in how I - at my core - related to the problem. 

The next point is more a reminder than a new insight: I have an insatiable curiosity. I am surprised the project was completed because my curiosity kept taking me in different directions. To evaluate and compare possible intervention strategies that Botswana - and other countries in a similar position - could employ to keep essential goods flowing into the country and the virus out, we adapted some theoretical concepts on the spread of sexually transmitted infections and used them to extend the canonical SIR model. We then had to be creative in using ideas from the macroeconomics of pandemics to model the cost of implementation for the policies we considered. There is nothing more gratifying than learning new things and applying them to solve problems. I realize now why in my undergraduate program they emphasized a well rounded education. Because I have some basic training in economic analysis, epidemiological modeling, and data analysis, I was able to dive deeper into these fields and learn what I needed to understand for this project to succeed. Even then, there was still a lot that I was dying to learn. For example, to estimate most of our model parameters we struggled to find reliable and context specific data. So we had to make best guesses, but I was left wondering how we can build high fidelity models in data scarce contexts as quickly as possible. I guess it is a good thing I have decided to give in to my soul's yearning for a doctoral education. 

This project demonstrated the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and feedback mechanisms. During the spring quarter class, we met weekly and shared our work with other teams. This was often an opportunity to share best practices and expertise. In the beginning, we modeled the disease dynamics using Vensim. No one on my team had used it before, but our colleague in the larger community was more competent. Instead of wasting valuable time trying to figure out Vensim, we took him up on his offer to implement our model on Vensim. I was able to learn some Vensim when he presented the model back to us. Eventually, I decided to use Python for our simulation because that way there would be no rabbits jumping out of any hats and Python provided us with more flexibility for the type of analyses we were doing. Nonetheless, the experience revealed to me that I enjoy coming up with mathematical equations to describe a model more than I do the actual coding up of it - although I am fairly competent at programming the models and feel really smart when they work as intended.  Of course at this stage in my career, I do not have the luxury to pick and choose. But these insights will come in handy when I do. I enjoyed the ability to share our models with individuals who were more knowledgeable than us in these fields and get their reactions. The feedback they gave to us strengthened our work. 

My co-author and I are exploring opportunities to publish our work. It feels good to work on a project that has the slight potential to assist countries in building resilient responses to epidemics like covid-19. As I look forward to submitting my applications to do my doctoral studies in Decision Science, I am more convinced that I want to dedicate my professional endeavors towards understanding ways and methods through which we can build sustainable and resilient ecosystems. Despite deciding to pursue a doctoral education, my end goal is still industry. Based on my truth today, I do not see academia in my future. But I also know myself enough to know that changing my mind is never out of the question.

- But "Ah," [Curiosity] still cries, "Give me some food!" -

Some Thoughts on Pricing

Published on 29 June 2020

It warms my heart to see young people getting into agriculture in my country. Our national security depends on it. We are all nation builders. With the rise of youth-owned businesses, I find the need to comment on the counterintuitive pricing strategies they sometimes employ. Here is one such example, and my recommendation. This entrepreneur posted the eggs and pricing as follows:

For reference, as of today, US$1 = BWP 11.75.

My feedback on pricing is as follows. Pricing should always incentivize the customer to buy the larger quantity items than the smaller quantity items. In other words, the more eggs the customer buys, the less they should pay per egg.

As currently priced,  the per egg price in each of the sizes is:

The bottom line is the half dozen pack is cheaper. So if I want to 12 eggs, instead of buying 12 eggs for P19, I am incentivized to buy 2 x 6 eggs for 2 x P9.00 = P18.00 (saving P1), or instead of 24 eggs for P39, I am incentivized to buy 4 x 6 eggs for 4 x P9 = P36 (saving P3), or instead of 48 eggs for P79, I am incentivized to buy 8 x 6 eggs for 8 x P9 = P72 (saving P7). These are nontrivial savings, especially in the local economy where people do not have that much money to spend, to begin with. 

Perhaps in increasing the price each time the size increases, it is an attempt to capture the idea that the cost of packaging the eggs is increasing. But I think that is a cost that can be absorb by the business.

If the goal is to sell each egg at P1.50 per egg, I recommend selling for the following prices:

If the goal is to incentivize people to buy the larger quantities, I would add P1.50 to all those other prices. P1.50 was chosen arbitrarily, so an entrepreneur can choose whatever amount to add that yields the target per egg cost distribution of their preference. So:

This pricing strategy effectively gives the customers a quantity discount. If business is slow and people are buying only the smaller quantities, the bigger margin on those smaller quantities compensates for the low sales. If business is good and they are buying the larger quantities, even though there is a slightly smaller margin this is compensated for by the increased sales volume.

Of course this is just my opinion on it, they are welcome to price their goods however way they please. But the original pricing is inconsistent with microeconomic principles, and the half zone price dominates all other prices for the different values a typical customer can have - price and quantity. (A customer who is assumed to act rationally).

My Vision for Catalyzing Impact

Published on 30 April 2020

Steve Jobs once said we can only connect the dots looking backwards. The dots have connected for me and now I can sum up what I believe to be meaningful work as catalyzing impact. This is the third version of my life's purpose in recent time. At first I thought my life's purpose could be summed up as enabling the creation and sharing of African Stories. The idea was to highlight my belief in Africa and its long history of innovative solutions to local problems. In a world that often exports western solutions to African problems, I wanted to do my part in allowing African innovation to shine. How was I to do that? I started looking at my skillset and academic training, and given my training in decision and risk analysis, I updated my mission to supporting rational and intelligent decision-making within high-impact institutions. This mission proved quite a mouthful, and it was too narrow. It captured my aspirations to start off my career in data-sciencey jobs, but did not capture what I hoped to achieve across my - hopefully - long life. What do I want to achieve over my lifetime? I want to be a catalyst for impact, especially in Africa. Each time I say I aspire to be the President of Botswana someday or to be a Venture Capitalist in Africa, that is a metaphor for my desire to contribute towards building systems that allow us Africans to drive the solutions to some of our most pressing problems.

With the pillars of my current Life Plan - Personal Development, Meaningful Communities, Professional Excellence, and Financial Sustainability - and my core values - Creativity, Curiosity, Excellence, Growth, and Ubuntu - in mind, I plan to evaluate professional opportunities using the following criteria:

Having laid out what I am looking for in projects and job opportunities, it is only fair that I also list out what I think my value proposition is. To projects and jobs, I believe I bring:

If my value proposition has a place on your team or project, and if you believe your team or project meets my criteria for an opportunity where I can catalyze impact, feel free to get in touch. Let us create the world we wish for. 

And There Was Light!

Published on 16 February 2020

I have known the Bayes' Theorem for a while now. But it was not until the past few weeks that I truly understood the genius of the Reverend Thomas Bayes. This seemingly simple equation is the heart of Bayesian Statistical Inference. It is part of what drives Machine Learning as a field. I have always understood that bit. But just this past few weeks it dawned on me what the Bayes' Theorem means for you and for me, non-machines. If we are not using it in our daily lives we should. In plain English, Bayes' Theorem says the probability of some uncertain phenomena of relevance to you given some evidence you have observed is proportional to the likelihood of seeing that evidence given the phenomena multiplied by your prior belief on the probability of the said phenomena. Okay, that was not plain English. If I were to describe this to my grandmother, I would tell her Bayes Theorem tells us that we can and should learn about our beliefs over uncertain events from the evidence we observe. If you understand the philosophy of a growth mindset (as opposed to a fixed mindset), you are one step closer to understanding how profound this result is. It is for this reason, that I have decided to update the statement and focus of my life's purpose. I have found the light. The statement of my life purpose has updated from:

"Helping enable the creation and sharing of collective value within my communities"

and it is now:

"Supporting rational and intelligent decision-making within high-impact businesses institutions."

If you look into the two statements, you notice they are not different from one another. I still want to help enable the creation and sharing of collective value, but I want to do it by supporting rational and intelligent decision-making. I am reminded now of Steve Jobs' quote about connecting the dots looking backwards. It feels like the dots have connected. Bayes' Theorem pretty much sums up what I study in my Masters Degree at Stanford. This simple looking equation is anything but simple. It is for this reason, that I want to dedicate the rest of my life to helping people and organizations make evidence-based and logical decisions. Let us begin to unpack this statement. The verb support implies that I do not want to be the decision-maker. My role is to serve as an analyst, an advisor, and a consultant. This means I am very less likely to fulfill my destiny as the 7th or 8th President of the Republic of Botswana. But my doors shall remain permanently open to the leadership of that great republic, if they should ever require my expertise and knowledge. In choosing to gain depth in Decision and Risk Analysis, I accept with pleasure the responsibility to maintain enough breadth of knowledge in all fields because who knows what kinds of problems my clients will throw at me? This is one of the places where the dots are connecting: curiosity is one of my 5 core values. What can beat work that requires one to learn about everything from organic farming methods to aircraft design, and everything in between? 

The Oxford Dictionary defines rational as: "based on or in accordance with reason or logic." They go on to define intelligent as: "(of a device, machine, or building) able to vary its state or action in response to varying situations, varying requirements, and past experience." This is the application of Bayes' Theorem. This means I want to support entities to use logical frameworks and data available to allocate resources such that they optimize for some objective value they care about. I hope my anti-capitalism friends do not judge me too harshly, but I want to focus my purpose on for-profit organizations that deliver significant impact to their primary stakeholders. I define primary stakeholders to be customers, shareholders, employees, and communities from which these organizations operate. Based on my experiences working with and for non-profit organizations in Botswana, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, and California, I am convinced non-profits are generally an inefficient form of value delivery. (Of course there are a few corner cases where the non-profit model makes sense, and I would be happy to support such organizations if necessary). One might wonder what I mean by impact and how I plan to measure it. These are important questions, and I think I will continue to iteratively reflect on how to best answer them. For now, let us assume impact is some positive benefit and is desirable. As I am on the job market, this is a really important piece in choosing the company I will join. I am measuring impact based on the primary product(s)/service(s) of the firm, as well as the ethos inferred from the organizational culture of the firm. 

As I wrap up my formal education journey, my heart is filled with gratitude that I have found my niche. The classes are still difficult, but there is a certain joy found in struggling with something you find breathtakingly beautiful. Bayes' Theorem takes my breath away. I am grateful to the Reverend Thomas Bayes for laying down the theoretical foundations for this religion, Decision Analysis/Risk Analysis, that I am choosing to evangelize. It is as though a light bulb has been turned on. Now I actually believe I can make a difference in the world, as has many evangelists before myself.

The Man and His Dreams

Published 2 January 2020

In 2012, an Indian man came to my Senior Secondary school in my village with a private school student. This man claimed that he had some secrets that could help anyone use their mind and become really smart. The students at my school were excited. They gave 20 random words to the private school student to memorize within a few minutes and repeat in any order on demand. The girl was impressive but I was very skeptical. It was my skepticism that inspired me to join the UCMAS Botswana Mindmapping class. I would end up working for this man and touring the country with him, memorizing words and numbers for multitudes of students. I took two things out of the experience: the power of mindmapping in boosting productivity and the magic of Vision Boards in keeping our dreams. This page is dedicated to showcasing all the iterations of my Vision Board and celebrating all the items on my Vision Board that have been realized. 

My first Vision Board was created in 2014. At the time, I was convinced I had a crush on MD and so it was natural to add to my board that I wanted to marry her. I wanted to live in a mansion with swimming pools and sport courts. I dreamed of being a global citizen, traveling the world and thinking of the whole world as my home. I wanted to go to Stanford, graduate, and go on to have a successful job in Finance. Lastly, since I was a kid, I wanted to own an Audi car. I neither married MD nor entered into any romantic friendship with her, and have long discontinued my pursuit of this goal. When I was applying to colleges, I had forgotten that I had put Stanford on my Vision Board. In fact Stanford was not on the list of schools I planned to apply to. I was afraid to fail, so I had omitted it. But in a last minute change of heart, I applied and got in. I have graduated with my first degree from there and am currently working on my second Stanford degree. Thanks to the opportunities I got while at Stanford, I have managed to live my dream of traveling the world: I have been to 14 countries and 10 US States. The rest of the dreams remain unfulfilled, but they have evolved in ways that will become clear as we continue down this timeline of Vision Boards. 

In 2016, having fulfilled most of the dreams on my Vision Board, it was time for an update. The evolution of my Vision Board from this point on is synchronized with the evolution of my Values and Guiding Pillars. As an alumnus of the United World Colleges and a MasterCard Foundation Scholar at Stanford, I found myself thinking a lot about the kind of life I wanted to lead. Especially since I felt that the opportunities UWC and MCF had given me were given in the hope that my life would impact many beyond myself. I considered myself a steward of the dreams of communities back home. I had a duty to make the best of the opportunity. I drew inspiration from the UWC Costa Rica list of competencies and defined my own list of priorities to put on my Vision Board: Academic Excellence, Leadership Development, Financial Sustainability, Healthy Lifestyle, Social Responsibility, and Meaningful Relationships. My primary role was a student, and so I put on my Vision Board that I was going to manage my learning time, make use of resources at my disposal (such as Office Hours), and have fun while  going through school. Stanford was hard, so Academic Excellence was not always easy to achieve. I aimed to attend conferences and consume content on a regular basis that would motivate my growth as a transformative leader. A good chunk of the travel I have been able to do was primarily to attend conferences of the kind that I dreamed of on this Vision Board. Financial Sustainability was inspired by my inability to help support my family back home while also advancing my other objectives. Since I could not cut down on the amount I was sending home, I had to prioritize my campus job as it was necessary to augment my MCF stipend. I chose to focus on Healthy Lifestyle because I knew my stressful lifestyle made it more likely that I would fail to take care of myself. When I graduated from UWC, I was bestowed the Social Responsibility Award for my dedication to a life of service when I was at the school. While I was conflicted about being rewarded for leading through service, I was unshaken on my resolve to continue to seek opportunities in the simplicity of the day-to-day to serve. I also wanted to make a notable impact, and hoped to affiliate myself with a larger cause. I found Tutoring For Community to be a worthwhile cause to dedicate some of my Saturdays to. Finally, being in a large school like Stanford it was necessary to be intentional about investing in a few meaningful relationships. My Stanford experience was rich for the people I shared it with. At this time, my new romantic interest was YM. I have never understood my obsession with romance. 

After identifying the original list of my core values, I consolidated the pillars of my Vision Board. The original list of core values was authenticity, community, creativity, curiosity, excellence, and growth. A later update of my core values collapsed authenticity and community into the even more powerful value of Ubuntu. Leadership and Healthy Lifestyle were combined to create the pillar of Personal Development. Personal Development is based on the idea that one cannot pour out of an empty tea pot, so it is a pillar of my Vision Board dedicated to keeping my tea pot filled. Social Responsibility and Meaningful Relationships were joined to create Meaningful Communities. Financial Sustainability was updated to reflect my desire to invest in stocks and also to commit to a savings plan. When it came to Academic Excellence, I felt putting things like managing time and attending office hours was too refined for a Vision Board. Furthermore, those were no-brainers. So I decided to set my eyes on an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. On top of that, I wanted to do that as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. This provided me an exciting target to aim for. 

This update was more an aesthetic change than anything. The only additions were the idea of journaling as part of my self-care practice and the reintroduction of romantic companionship as something I sought. The only difference is here the romantic companionship was as an abstract concept, rather than a specific person. I realized that when I put a specific person as a the targeted companion, then I am susceptible to staying in relationships that are otherwise suboptimal for the sake of fulfilling what is on my Vision Board. But if it is abstract, governed only by a set of ideals and standards, I would only commit to pursuing a given person only to the extent that they lived up to those ideals. Clearly love and engineering do not mix well. Around this time, I started the process to purchase my first piece of land. I decided one of the ways that I am going to remain connected to my native land of Botswana is through ownership of vast areas of land. But one has to start small. 

Stanford is one of those places where almost everyone who goes there is super ambitious. Especially on the career side of things. This update was to catch up to this career aspiration game. I added companies that I would love to work at. Google and Facebook were added because they are the staples. Everyone wants to work there. I would later realize that it is hypocritical of me to dream of working at Facebook when I was largely distrustful of their product to the extent of abstaining from their use. I added McKinsey and Bain because I felt I should be curious about consulting and they were considered the best consulting firms. Go big or go home, right? ATKearney I added because I knew someone who worked there and liked it by association. Southwest, JetBlue, and Emirates were added because of my general fascination with commercial aviation. Emirates being my most preferred of these, although it would mean saying goodbye to the American dream. But for an organization I like enough, I would relocate to anywhere. Southwest appealed to me because of the success of their business model and their reputation. JetBlue I liked because it was the most recent airline startup and I assumed the most innovative. I reverted to the previous model because I realized adding specific companies to the Vision Board was the same as adding specific girls to the Vision Board. At this time in my life, I was beginning to realize that there were some individuals who I could do without. So I added the "Keep Calm and Ditch Toxic Friends" sticker as a reminder to walk away from any relationship that drained me. I removed it before the next update as I felt it was too petty to be on my Vision Board. I was not denying my pettiness, but I did not want to nurture it as a trait. 

Following my research experience in my department in the summer of 2018, I was interested in pursuing a Masters in my program. If I still planned to do an MBA later in life, then I would have to apply to the MSc in MS&E program before I finished through the Stanford Coterminal degree program. So I added this to my Vision Board, including the need to ace the GRE exam. I also added sufficient sleep as one of the ways I planned to take care of myself. 

I was successfully admitted to the Masters Program. To replace its place on the Vision Board, I added my broad career aspiration: to master Finance, Operations, and Analytics, in preparation for my destiny as a Venture Capitalist in Africa. I also opened my mind about where I would want to pursue my MBA. I included MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School. This is in a desire to diversify my education experience, instead of getting all my degrees from one place. 

The current version of my Vision Board has had a slight aesthetic change. It also reinforces the idea that to master the skills I need to facilitate the entrepreneurial process in Africa post 2025, I have to put in the hours and clock in some actual work experience.  Furthermore, it incorporates my updated belief that friendships and relationships should exist on a tiered system with varying levels of love, reciprocity, and security. Finally, my Vision Board reflects that my end game is in Africa. I am sure there will be more iterations of this in time. I think of my Vision Board as my aspirational long term goals from which I draw my short term and medium term goals. The Vision Board is increasingly becoming populated with guiding principles that inform my life's decisions rather than actual goals. Feel free to share with me how you keep track of your longer term goals and how they evolve over time. (ramarea@live.com). 

Am I an Entrepreneur?

Published 2 April 2019

Here is a picture of a reflection I made on my journal about entrepreneurship and I on my flight back from the Midwest recently. I feel moved to share it here. The reflection was inspired by these 3 stickers I picked up from in front of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program office a few weeks ago. If you are curious about my entrepreneurial experiences, check out this page I have set up to reflect on them.