The Bar Napkin: Dina Consolini Dommett on Building Things That Last [012]

Ron Boire: Welcome everyone. I've got a really fun guest today. Dina Consolini. we go way back. Dina is an educator, but not. She's kind of in the space and her PhD's in Italian, which is ex extremely useful when you're a a business school. administrator, educator. but I met Dina, we'll talk about this. I met Dina over twenty years ago now. and she's a huge reason why I am where I am today and where many, many people are. so Dina, welcome. I'm really excited to have you on the on the program. We have s so much history kind of together and not together and so many different harmonics. I'm just excited to have you here. Welcome.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Thank you, Ron. It's an honor. And as you say, we go way back. It was
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: quite an iconic thing meeting you at a time at Columbia when we were doing something for us that was a big deal. and worked out for so many terrific leaders like yourself.
Ron Boire: Yeah, so for the audiences edification, Dina is an educator, but she is really focused and you'll you'll keep me on track and we'll t we'll I wanna tell your
Dina Consolini Dommett: Sure.
Ron Boire: story. We wanna talk about it kind of executive education and kind of the where the world of education's going. I've had a bunch of e educators on the show already. I had Rita McGrath was the our first show. And our our breakthrough show, of course, because it was Rita. we had Bill Clepper on recently and I know you know Bill and worked with him for for many years. and now we're making full circ circle to the you know, the the business side of a business school and how do you make things go. But so years ago I was working at Sony and I actually talked to Bill Clepper and Willie Peterson about getting my degree. Because as most people most people don't know, I don't have an undergraduate degree. So you know that. And I said, well, you know, I always felt kind of insecure about it because I'd gotten into the corporate world and just at Sony and it just exploded. And they were the kind of company that if you did good work, they didn't they don't care where you came from. It's like you're doing good stuff, like you're just keep doing more. And Bill Clepper was running a program for me, and we were You were teaching root cause analysis or something to the team and I was talking to Bill on a break and I You know, Bill, I'd like I really would love to talk to you about maybe getting into Columbia or maybe working on my degree and and he looked at me and he goes, Well, you don't You don't need a degree. Like why do why do you need a degree? I said, Well, mostly because I feel insecure about myself, right? I mean, that's basically it. He goes, No, you should you should go into our MBA program. And I looked at him as a bill, like, how does that happen? I go, That sounds insane. I don't have an undergrad degree. And he goes, No, we take in people. You know, and he probably said it like that, like I was a lost puppy or something. We take in people who have this life experience, like there's no sense you wasting time going getting a degree. So you should need you should talk to this woman, Dina. And I said, Listen, I'll talk to anybody, you know, that's that's just who I am. And so called you up or sent you an email and the next thing I know I'm sitting in your office in New York and I'm gonna flip the story over to you at this point, 'cause this is just such a cool story.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, 'cause I remember this. So of course Bill must have sold me something about you. And I was very excited because we your background was perfect to do our executive MBA exactly. As as Bill would have told you. You know, you didn't really need a degree, but we catered to people who wanted That experience. not usually so much to legitimize themselves. I think part of a community of other leaders and learners, but in some cases to legitimize. So yeah, we did have some people who didn't have a prior degree. But I was tasked at that time with designing a new program, a double degree with London Business School that was going to be taking place at at Columbia, so in New York and London. And we were just trying to think who would be the right kinds of people for this program. And I met you and I thought, this is the poster boy. This is the guy.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: CEO of Sony Europe. So, you know, footprint in Europe, an American global citizen taking on a big job with a big iconic brand. And we were excited. So I was excited and I couldn't wait to talk you up to my colleagues at London Business School. And I think you used to say that like I wrote it on the back of an envelope. I probably did, because it was just early days. We were thinking about houses.
Ron Boire: Well, I remember my my my memory of this is we were we were talking and I was like, you know, hoping to you know schmooze my way into something. I had no idea what was gonna happen. And I remember talking about the executive MBA program and you saying at one point you said, Well, I don't think that would be right for you. And I'm like, I remember thinking, my like really? She brought me all the way in here to tell me to to go for a walk? And you you pulled a napkin out it was a bar napkin. You pulled a bar napkin out of your desk drawer and she said you said, I'm working on this program with London Business School and this is the program for you and I'm looking at a napkin, I'm like, Well, when is this? Like you got a napkin. And you said, Well, it's gonna be a while 'cause it was I think we had to wait a year or so before.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. I think so. So it was really, you know, if I was writing it on a napkin, it was early. There wasn't a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint yet. Yeah.
Ron Boire: Yeah. And so anyhow you you said, Well, you know, you've gotta get you've gotta take your G Mat. I'm
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: like, Well, what the hell is that? And so I had to go figure out what a G Mat was. And then I think the I think you said you gotta get a five hundred on the G Mat, or there was some number. and I th by the way, I think Columbia's average G Mat's like a seven hundred. And perfect is perfect eight hundred.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Probably. Yes. Yeah.
Ron Boire: And I'm like, okay. So I went and got my G Mat and I did okay, not great, but good enough. And yeah,
Dina Consolini Dommett: You did fine. You did fine.
Ron Boire: and then so the whole process started to go. And so that's why we're here.
Dina Consolini Dommett: But and I don't think you realize it really was a big deal. For so for for us to attract I've realised star like you, I thought y you do a new program and it's really important who's in the room, not just the faculty. It really is important. Who is sitting in the room? When I was working at that time with London Business School, they had a terrific faculty member who ran their exec ed, Rob Goffey. he wrote a famous book, Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? And I kind of adapted that over the years to why should anyone be taught by you? When you get to the level you were at, you know, who whose authority would you accept? So you need, I mean, of course, we had great faculty like Reading McGrath. We had a terrific program, and yes, the New York-based program, it would have been fine. For you. Now, my I don't know if my sales pitch, if that was good or not, but if if you for a moment thought that I was doubting you, I suppose in some ways Ivy League schools like people to think that we're so exclusive. But I really was thinking you were the kind of person that we were targeting with this new program, and you don't know until you get it off the ground. And we did okay, didn't we? So then you did the things you needed to do. In the meantime, we started having those conversations with other folks, and then the program launched in London, right? So, what did it feel like for you?
Ron Boire: Yeah, I mean I I I so I didn't know what I had no idea what to expect. Like zero. And to me it was like literally the scariest thing I'd ever done and the most fun I've ever had and the hardest work I've ever done. Right. So like studying for my GMAT, I hadn't studied in years, like literally years. And I I I do remember one of the things you said is like, well you'll you'll probably have to go to math camp. And I remember thinking, like, what the hell is math camp? So
Dina Consolini Dommett: Ha ha ha.
Ron Boire: math camp is where you you send the the math idiots, which I was the king of. And the the instructor for math camp, you so you do math camp in August for a week. And the instructor was Paul Thurman. And you know Paul and Paul is this
Dina Consolini Dommett: Absolutely.
Ron Boire: very outgoing, you know, the last thing you'd ever think about as a math professor. and we start the first day and I'm like you know it's me and one or two other guys that you know maybe like late thirties or whatever, kind of the older people in the room and Paul starts on one side of the the chalkboard and he goes from addition all the way to integration and he doesn't stop. And you see the you know, all these eager people in the class and they're like eagerly like taking notes for about some of them for a couple of minutes and the pen goes down and some for a little bit longer and the pen goes. And about halfway through everybody's pens are down and they're just sitting there. And they're in shell shock. Like they're just terrified. And Then we get a break and it's maybe it's 9:30 or 10 o'clock. So this is when I became the elder statesman of the class. So I walk up to Paul and I go, he goes, he turns around, he's you know, he's always smiling. He turns around and he goes, How you doing? I go, hi. you just need to tell everybody it's gonna be okay. And he goes, What do you mean? I go, nobody in this room is coming back. If this is what we're gonna do, like this thing's over. We're like no way, we're not doing this. And he goes, you'll never see this again.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: He goes, I'm just telling you where all this stuff comes from. And he goes, you will never do this stuff again. You know, you're gonna become one with Excel. And so everybody comes back into class. And he did a lousy job of making people feel better. Because I think he really enjoyed kind of pushing us over the edge, right? And then we get to the last day of math camp and it's an over open book test, of course. You know, they just wanted to, you know, take us through that. but that was a like a great example of you know, you got all these executives, right? and like there was me and Doug Fig who was like running cancer research at the NIH and you had Munia who's at Yale Medical and you know people from all over Europe and like there's really, really I was by far not the smartest person in the room. You had a couple people in the room had 800 GMATs, you know, these people
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, sure.
Ron Boire: who just like were Dan Shoham, who like Paul begged him not to come to the stats class. Dan would constantly correct him.
Dina Consolini Dommett: What of course.
Ron Boire: you know, and but I remember on the first week of class, I mean people were really, really stressed out. You got all these executives. And the and the structure of the program was you would go to the school, you'd go to we started in London, you'd do a week in London. Three weeks off, week in Columbia, three weeks off, a week in London. And so you had to do your job in between. And I remember everybody stressed out about can I even get through this program? And I think it was Paul also in the first semester saying the thing you gotta understand is that the first semester is the hardest semester of the entire program until you get to the second semester. He was very sadistic about those things. But it was And absolute for me it was a wonderful journey and a great validator that I was like smart enough to do it and then validator that I wasn't smart enough to do a lot of things and needed to learn a lot of things. And and I did and and the the whole class did and to this day we're we had a reunion a couple years ago. Most of us showed
Dina Consolini Dommett: Because yeah.
Ron Boire: up in New York. we have a WhatsApp group. To this day I was looking at it today, one of the guys, Rennie, you remember you may you may remember Rennie. He's a very unique character and was doing something crazy again. He's still like he's twenty two years old, I don't know. but yeah, it it was life changing. And
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, and I think and it was for me it was too. Actually, I I was like Moses. I didn't reach the promised land because I got headhunted as a result of that job. It took the the c a company approached me I think two years before I ended up working for them. It was Marconi PLC, Marconi, Guglielmo Marconi's original wireless company, but they became a big telecom tech company. and I was in the middle of doing this setting up that program, that Columbia London Emba Global, and I said, I'm not leaving until this thing is born. I mean, I I you know, my dean'll kill me, Mayor Felberg. I loved working for Mayor Felberg, but also thought, you I I gotta deliver this. Thing I can't cut out. I was really I remember one time visiting a friend in Berlin and flying over the skies of Berlin thinking, how are we gonna make this program work? It really was consuming me. But then they they waited for me, and so then we launched the program I think in May 2001, and they they swooped down, they had been talking to me and they said you gotta start in June. So I Did I I took this job. It was vice president of leadership development for this tech company. and it ended up being my chance to be an expat, to go live abroad, again after having studied in Italy years before. So but I I kept in touch with Columbia and had the great good fortune of working a couple of times for London Business School. And then the last time I worked at London Business School, I got to have responsibility for that program again. So and it was funny because
Ron Boire: How did that how did that feel? What was that like?
Dina Consolini Dommett: That felt great. Again, it was it was going full circle because starting with the program, you know, when we were designing it, it was the still the nineteen nineties. It was a simpler time. You know, we
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: we it was not we were, you know, basically coming up with a joint venture like this. And at that time, England was not so regulated about how they do these kinds of partnerships. Over the decades that followed, they did become more regulated, and that's okay. I mean, it makes sense that they do that. Columbia and London Business Schools were excellent partners. There was no question but that the British government was happy to see us proceed. But when I came back decades later, they said, we just need you to tie this thing up with a little bow. But what
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I and I did, I don't remember doing that, but I did. But what I remembered out of the experience was the book ends us starting with you. you as you know a a great exemplar of that program and ending up at one of the graduation ceremonies we graduated an astronaut in I think it was the class of twenty might have been the class of twenty thirteen.
Ron Boire: Wow.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and how f how fly how how high that program flew that we had those kinds of people doing doing the program. So no it felt really good to come back and also to see a friendship, a partnership program like that continue into two decades. And it's still going strong. I keep expecting them to end it and no, it's it's still happening. So it's really
Ron Boire: Yeah, and it it spawned a few other programs which I don't think were as successful. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: I know there was one with was it Hong Kong? And I think there was one with with with Stanford
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes, yes, Hong Kong University. Yeah.
Ron Boire: as well that didn't necessarily fly. There was something about I want to talk to you a little bit about building because you've kind of been a builder. and I believe very strongly that we are kind of re-entering the age of the builder.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Hmm.
Ron Boire: globally even, but especially in the United States, where you know, we were talking to Eric Reese yesterday, which I mentioned, you know, before the podcast started. We had a great and for those of people listening and watching Eric's Eric's podcast will probably be on sometime in early September. and You know, he he did the lean lean startup and his latest book is incorruptible and it's really focused on the failure of kind of corporate governance and corporate leadership and what's gone wrong with in particular the US economy as as industries become financialized, right? And
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: so building something like this global MBA program. is quite a feat. And it was like, you know, and and I have to tell you when you pulled that napkin out of the drawer, I was like, hmm. Either really full of crap or inappropriately self-confident. Let's find out which it is here.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Well, that's it's I certainly hope it was the latter. nice to meet
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I like that you're saying builder. So I'm sitting in The dining room of the home that I grew up in. That my father, who was a builder, he was a a
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: union carpenter, plumber, electrician. He had been a private contractor, but he didn't like collecting people's money. He ended up as a a a union guy all his all the years that I knew him. And this is a dear old house that we live in, my hometown in Connecticut. And I moved back here about two years ago to live with my twin, Donna Consolini, who is my better half in so many ways. But
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Pa, Ma, and Pa built this place into what it is today. And this room has a lot of history for me. I had my Donna and I both had Fulbrights to study study in. I went to Rome in the 1980s and she went to Germany. She went to Tubingen, and she was already in Germany by the time I ended up wallpapering this room with my father and my mother. It was just a nice memory, and it's the last room in this old house that we still need to upgrade. Got to redo the ceiling. We should really do the Walls, but my sister is sentimental. She says, we can't paper over the wallpaper. So there are companies that can recapture it, redesign it if we can't find the actual stuff. So we're gonna investigate that. But I it it honors me, flatters me that you say I'm a builder. I think I have been that in my career, but I particularly like doing it alongside people who share the vision. and at Columbia, you know, I was fortunate. I got to launch that program, design it, it was it just came naturally and I I remember thinking just how well we fit with those colleagues at London Business School. They were they were sort of In in many respects I think we were two big finance schools who wanted to go bigger than that. You know, we did not want
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: to be just defined by that. And I I think that that Columbia London Emba Global Partnership, by bringing in people like yourself, we did go beyond what we had started. And so when I met you and thought, No, no, the executive MBA, you're bigger than that. I think you can do something bigger and help us do something bigger. And
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: it it just felt yeah, it felt right. But I was still pretty young doing that program and that's why when I ended up getting Recruited to work in England, to work in London for a global company that fell on hard times. I mean, they ended up being a victim of the dot com bus, but they certainly had big ambitions. And I learned a lot in their company as well. But over the years, too, I think it's nice of you to call me a builder and call me an educator, is probably right. I mean, I I did teach for several years, but I left that path. I am doing a degree in Italian language and literacy. Years later, when I interviewed for a job at Oxford University, which I got and I loved working for Oxford, but I joked with them and I said, yes, I did a degree in advanced snobbery. I you
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: know it'll come in handy here when I'm talking with other people coming to Oxford to study management and business who have eclectic backgrounds.
Ron Boire: So how's a girl from Connecticut end up studying Italian? First of all, full Fulbright, which is so you were kind of smart like so
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: I have this vision of the nerdy girl with the ponytails deciding to go to Italy to study Italian and dad's a carpenter. So dad must have
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes.
Ron Boire: like, hey, great, great career move. That'll that'll pay off. What was
Dina Consolini Dommett: it's even better than that. So my father, so Gino Consolini, he and my mother, they were that great generation. So he fought in World War Two. they got through the depression. Yeah.
Ron Boire: He had to, with a name like Gino Consolini he had to fight in World War Two.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, how to find World War II. His older brother, Gildo Consolini, was a hero from their town in Avon, Connecticut. And unfortunately, he was one of the first to join up, and he died in a suicide mission in the Philippines. So they've named the veterans of foreign war posts in his honor in Connecticut.
Ron Boire: wow.
Dina Consolini Dommett: So my father, I I wanted to study Italian and to go to Italy really to honor him. and it was my father He didn't so much say it to Donna and me in in his lifetime, but we found out after he passed, as he died young, age seventy. of a heart attack, although Dante would say that is the perfect age. Age 70 is actually was the the the perfect age. he lived a great life, but you know, gone too soon for us. But afterwards we found out that he had full bragging rights in going back home to see family and friends in
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Avon, talking about Dina and Donna at Yale and Harvard, because after we did the full bright yeah then I went to Yale and Donna went to Harvard. She studied German but she left before the PhD. So for me I I think we were at Boston College, you know, good Catholic girls. Yes, we were studious. Yes, all of that. Went to BC. and Jeff Flagg was a professor in the Romance Languages Department and he and several other faculty were very supportive and said, Girls, you guys should apply for Fulbrights. We had to look it up. I didn't really know what it was. I saw listen. Yes.
Ron Boire: Yeah, like what the heck is that? You're like me trying to look up a a a G Map. What the hell's a G Map?
Dina Consolini Dommett: So I thought, so you know, how do you get this? It was very competitive. You have to apply and you interview and you get past your school has to approve you, then you get sent on to the national level, and then you know, it's you know for the state and then the national. So we both got through. and that felt amazing. So I had never even been on a plane. So age twenty-two was I flew to Rome. and I was definitely not a a big city girl. So that was a big change. And we have So our grandparents all came from Italy, so we did have cousins in Rome and they're still there. So I I stayed with them for a few days and then had to get myself set up. But no, I was we were green. I always joke. We grew up kind of like the Waltons. I'm the youngest of six kids. and yeah, we from central Connecticut, not fancy Connecticut, but you know, practical Connecticut. So but my my parents were thrilled for us. and yeah so that that set me on my way. And A few years before then, though, there was a Columbia connection because my oldest brother Gildo, who's named for the uncle who died in World War II, he went to Colombia. He too, he was recruited by by the track coach from Colombia and went to Columbia College, studied psychology. He is now a psychologist. He did his doctorate at NYU. so Columbia was the first campus I ever saw, and I fell in love with that campus, even though I ended up there many years later.
Ron Boire: Yeah. I want to go back to Italy and you what in that journey like what what in that journey kind of set you up for for building? For like and and you are a builder, like everything you've done has been building something. What was this how in the world could Italian possibly set you up? Like what was the what was the win? What was the thing you
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, I think the win is When you study another language, and I because we didn't grow up speaking Italian, so I had to learn it in school. When you make that leap of faith and you go live in another country, in another culture, and especially what Italy was like in the 80s, it was very Italian, it was not very multicultural. and I do remember this was just in the 80s, so it was just about to be the rise of Berlusconi. He wasn't in public office yet, but he was starting to have his media empire. And I remember thinking at the time. Gee, I should have studied that. I probably should have studied politics or media, but whatever. I was taking the path that was going to get me, advance me in some way. But I I think what it helped was be very self-aware, understand your limitations, and understand where you maybe fit in in the world and what's happening in the world. So, you know, for that matter, I had started out as a history major, but as a practical consideration, Donna and I, we looked at the the the syllabi and the the course list and they were the books that you had to buy to be a history major were just so expensive. We said, you know what? I think I'm gonna switch to languages. And for for that, I don't think the the books that we were expected to study were so arcane that we were taking them out of the library. So we saved a lot of money on that. But and there was also something about I didn't want to study history at that time. There was something about the approach to the way they were interpreting history for whatever reason didn't didn't land with me. And I felt studying languages in some ways you could study statistics in the same way to understand how the world is constructed and how people what really happens. So When you go and live in another country and it it knocks you out of your comfort zone, and that's a good thing to do. So I it's and but I also thought at the time I remember thinking, I'd love to stay, but I don't know how you do that. So what kind how do you get a visa to stay? Along the years as I advanced in my career and I ended up in England. There's there was one other program that's dear to my heart, like that Columbia London one, and it's something called SEMS. And it's a it's a master's degree. It's it used to stand for the Community of European Management Schools, and it's one school per country, mainly in Europe, but they have picked up the US. And the LSE was part of the the conglomerate that launched this, and Bocconi, the school in Milan, was one of the original players. So so I think that year in Rome, getting To meet other people studying different things, just other and and Fulbrighters, the other full I was the youngest, the other Fulbrighters were all very impressive. Maybe like the way you felt with your cohort. These were people who were studying medicine, law, doing all kinds, a lot of artists and sculptors and painters. So, you know, it helped me. appreciate interdisciplinarity. When you're building something, don't go
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: too samey, you know? And you can see if you look around me, the house that I that we live in here, it is eclectic. It is the the style of it borrows from different times. And I think when I build things I like to do it that way.
Ron Boire: What'd you learn about you know, so you you wanted to study history but you couldn't afford the books, which is awesome. Like feels like a lot of things in my life. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Ha ha.
Ron Boire: what did you learn about history when you were learning Italian? Like it it was only thirty-five years after the end of World War Two, right? Italy was devastated thirty-five years before that.
Dina Consolini Dommett: It was. So and I visited, had the the the fun to visit my father's on the s father's side of the family, they lived in they came from Lake Garda, so that's up north between Verona and Milan. And so you know, they were occupied in World War II. And so I this was the nineteen eighties, so I was able to speak to family members who remember World War Two and were hiding out in the hills, and others who were partisans. So the war was very close. The the feeling I had traveling around Italy. And went to visit Donna in Germany and visited Switzerland and France. The feeling I had was that experience of the breakdown of society and civilization was still close in people's minds, more so in Europe than even here, I think. And I that never left me. And I feel like, you know, I I experienced history in a very practical way by being over there in that year. and but the plan was after that to go back to America and take up my studies doing the doctorate at Yale. And I was glad I did that because I had been accepted at a few other places, but going away and connecting with my parents' aunts and uncles and families in Italy and some in France made me want to stay close to them. And I'm glad I did, because that I I chose Yale above all others and I was very glad to come back after that year. But look in the district. Yeah, it's
Ron Boire: Yeah. And how how close is Yale to where you are now? Like
Dina Consolini Dommett: about a half hour drive, so it's very close. I lived down on campus, but I I ended up seeing my parents all of the time. and that proved to be a good move because my father passed away just a few short years after that. So I I really do believe in fate. I think things you make your choices for all kinds of reasons, and not all of them practical.
Ron Boire: all of them important in retrospect. so so you went to Yale to do the the PhD and this kind of like Yale would but would be like your local community college to you almost.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: So I had to throw that in being a Columbia guy. So
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, yeah.
Ron Boire: so you and you is that a two year two year or three year project?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Well, it's it was at least a four year program. I had funding for six years, so I took six years. I got some some Yes, I got good good
Ron Boire: Okay like a true educator.
Dina Consolini Dommett: funding for it. And I so you you you do two years of coursework and then you teach or do research and then you work on your dissertation. So I because I had funding, this was the years where Yale people still had to pay to do a PhD. They don't know. They've streamlined it and they make sure that all PhD students are can afford it. So in my I had a fellowship. So because I had that, they said, Well, we hate you to take the teaching from the mouths of your classmates. So so instead of teaching a I did a couple of I did teach some language courses there. I got to to be a teaching assistant on a fantastic class on Italian film and literature. I love that. That was and that was a formative experience for me. I love television and film. But I taught at Connecticut College because you did you to if you're gonna teach you need to apprentice somewhere. So
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I did teach a couple of senior seminars at Connecticut College down in New London by the the ocean and I that was cool so I did that but Mm. That was a time, so this was the early nineties, and the field of Italian language and literature, it was murky. They they were not really meeting the moment for what American or undergraduates of any nationality were doing at universities. And I remember thinking, I don't think this is a really this is the field is not well thought through. And my advisor always said to me, Yeah, you were always the w his word for it was you were always so commercial. And you know, and I thought, yes, and I'd take it as a compliment.
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: One of the things that I that I loved about Columbia was, and the same can be said of NYU, but the the New York schools especially. They know what the people want. They know how to build something that is needed, and that makes sense. It's not up in the sky doing something that nobody cares about. If you think about Rita McGrath, her career, what she teaches, what she knows, that's the gold standard for me. So and I look, Yale was a gold standard and is a gold standard for teaching the humanities, but applying that to the realities of today, we weren't great at it in the 90s. So instead, I pivoted. I ended up doing a free, an unpaid. Internship at a place that was then called the Museum of Television and Radio, but it's now called the Paley Museum for Media because it was founded by Money from William Paley, the founder of CBS, the network. And that was fun. So doing that, I did this internship. They just needed somebody, they needed somebody who spoke German because they had a grant from some foundation. To show television films about Germany after the wall. Now you were in Berlin. You were at Potsdammer Platz, where Sony Europe set up their fantastic
Ron Boire: Mm-hmm.
Dina Consolini Dommett: headquarters. I remember touring that space before it was completed and then after. So I it was I was doing this, going there, going to New York, Midtown Manhattan a couple of days a week. Most of the work I could do from here, just watching these television films and then summarizing them and doing the curatorial material for that. And and I Loved it. So I launched that. We did the screening series. I got a good review in the Times. And I didn't think I would end up working for these people. But then as my graduation date rolled around at Yale, David Bushman, the curator that I was working for in New York, he said, You wouldn't want to work for us, would you? And I said, Yes, of course I'll work for you. I didn't think it was possible. I didn't think they would want to hire me, and I thought I knew the pay would be low, but so we worked something out. So so instead Instead staying on the path of being a professor of Italian, I got some offers, but I said, Thank you, no, I don't want to do this. Instead, I I switched, switched it up and ended up moving to New York City, where Donna was already living and working at New York Hospital in fundraising. And so for three years, I was working at the Museum of Television and Radio, building stuff. And the stuff that I was building, little did I know, it was a precursor to what I ended up doing, you know, a career in executive education.
Ron Boire: Yeah. So so how did you what's the transition into exec ed? Where d where does that happen?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, so so there I was at the Paley Center, running 90-minute seminars for a range of groups. So they might be a lot of them were school kids, but some of them were university students studying media communication, some of them were citizens wanting civics, so did that for three years. And then sort of out of a blue out of the blue, contact well through Donna, through my sister. She knew somebody who had a friend at Columbia Business School and they wanted to rejuvenate the executive MBA program. So I met with this lady, Marilyn Cohn was her name. She was the person in charge. We clicked, and she described a little bit like you with the on the back of a napkin. She said, We have a great program, but it needs to be bigger and better. We need to make sure that the best faculty at Columbia teach on this program. It needs to be not a sideshow. It needs to be as important as the MBA and as the full-time MBA. And I don't know, Ron, by the time you came along, you were joining a program that Everybody at Columbia was jazzed about. But when I joined in 1995, I think it was, you know, the the building we were in, Euris Hall, it wasn't grades. and we the curriculum was a bit off. It just was clunky, you know. So it wasn't, it needed to be streamlined. It needed to be something that busy executives would wanna do, and not just that their companies would pay
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: for it, but it it needed to be practical. and I love stuff like that. So, you know, basically that was during the years of A lot of research and courses on turnarounds, corporate turnarounds. So in a way, what Marilyn described was we need to do a turnaround on the Columbia Executive MBA. Columbia was one of the leaders in that space. You know, in the late 60s, a handful of schools saw a path that was not a lesser-than approach to an MBA. you know, appealing to people like yourself who you didn't have time for it along the way, and some of you who didn't have undergraduate degrees. So I got it in one. I thought, I want to be here. Yeah, I'm in. I'm in. So I joined, and we got rid of some of the messy bits in the the executive MBA, the New York-based program. And then I don't remember. So I was in within the first couple of years, then the dean, Mayor Felberg, said to me, he had this grand ambition to do something with London. and so he sent me over there. I said, Okay, well, I imagine you're not going to hand me a building, and I'm sure there are cross-border issues, you can't just set up shop educationally. So So we identified London Business School as the perfect partner. So the transition
Ron Boire: Mm.
Dina Consolini Dommett: was I was always I was designing and teaching programs at at Yale and at Connecticut College and then at the Paley Center. where you need to you need to think first of all who's your audience? You know, I said earlier, why should anyone be led by you? Why should anyone be taught by you? It needs to be a worthwhile experience. So I loved doing that at Paley, but the idea to do that. For business leaders who were gonna change our society. If it it sort of something in that spoke to me for the younger kid riding around on the the bus in congested Rome, thinking there must be a way to make Rome and Italy better. You know, more I hate to say efficient. I Mussolini made Italy efficient. Italy is a great country and has so much going for it, but yeah, it was it was going through its difficult times in those years. So so it was not a hard sell to go to Columbia.
Ron Boire: When you when you
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: when you joined Columbia in kind of the mid nineties, it really was just this pipeline for Wall Street, right? I mean it was just
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Ron Boire: you know, it was you could fill the class with Morgan Stanley, you know Morgan
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. All the sacks, yeah.
Ron Boire: Stanley and Goldman would fill every class and the money just flowed and we'll we'll kinda get to today of eventually and kinda like what's going on with you know, not just just core MBA but also the executive space. But so it was it was kind of the golden age of the MBA, right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: It was. It was. But but short sighted and I th if if we just focused on that low hanging fruit, we just focused on finance,
Ron Boire: Okay, exactly.
Dina Consolini Dommett: then Columbia as a business school and as a university, we wouldn't feel proud of ourselves. So that and in that decade, in the nineties, that's
Ron Boire: So what was the articulated what was the articulated goal then? So for just going back to the so I didn't know see, I almost thought you were a grown-up. Like when I met you you still look like the you look just like you did when I when I met you. So I was like, I you know, you never you never kind of vision people on a on a journey through their career, right? You always when you meet people
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, I think that's probably right.
Ron Boire: you're like, this person's here and they're fully developed and fully functional. That's just always the my first assumption, right? And the the fact that you were building this thing with with London, when you when you the other napkin you had, not the one that said, you know, start this program in two years if Ron can get in, you You articulated some goals and what were the goals and how were they different from what the business school was at that point?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes. So the the goals were we we wanted to go beyond finance. So we felt that what we had been doing up to that point was you know bringing the executive MBA students abroad for a week in China for an international field study. Okay, great, everybody was doing that. That it's fun, you learn a lot, you have a good time, you open up the world. But we felt we needed to expand our footprint and really put some effort somewhere so that we could not only attract students who were interested in in the whole world, it would be a better experience for our own faculty. We really wanted to broaden our horizons. I I don't even think I don't recall it wasn't a commercial play. That that wasn't a financial play because to run a program like that with a partner school, you don't make as much money. but fortunately for us too, London Business School We came to them. I always joked with them and I said, We I I feel like we're doing a shotgun wedding to you. Like you will join us or else. We if you don't join us, we're gonna come into your market anyway and we're gonna do this. And I went there with my boss at the time, Safwan Masri. I don't know if do you remember Safwan?
Ron Boire: yeah, very, very well.
Dina Consolini Dommett: So amazing guy. We were both around the same age and we were sort of cocky, you know, we went out there. but I do remember going there and we were we we had to refine our pitch, but the notion was go beyond the school. That we are today. We need to be a school that is exciting and relevant into the next century, the next decade, and we think global is the way to do it. So when Safon and I went to London Business School to have these introductory meetings, and I knew some people there. I knew Inger Talviti is her name now, Inger Peterson, who was my counterpart running the executive MBA there. She's a brilliant Danish woman, speaks all kinds of languages. So we clicked, we liked each other, but we were proposing this thing that. that they their pricing was a lot different from ours, but They were open to it. They were open to the conversation. And so Safon and I went there and we ran into one of his friends from Jordan, Prince I think it was Prince Faisal, so the the brother to the current king. And he they started speaking in Arabic, and I said, you know, what what's going on? And he said, No, he's just asking, what are we doing here? And he ex my boss explained, we want to partner with London Business School. And Faisal said, Absolutely, they are like-minded to you. So what I think what the goals were was to better ourselves, but also in collaboration with the right kind of partners. I was listening to the BBC World News driving somewhere the other day, and I can't remember who's the author, but there's somebody who wrote has written a book saying that Darwin's line, survival of the fittest, that's not really what he said. In fact, what Darwin talked about was symbiosis, collaboration, partnership, adaptation. That is what makes you the fittest. And
Ron Boire: Mm-hmm.
Dina Consolini Dommett: when I was listening to that, I was thinking, that's how we approached it. So if if we just stayed doing the same thing we were doing forever, a little bit like you, if you had just continued without challenging yourself and stimulating yourself to this different mindset, different inputs, I don't think you would have gone as far. And we didn't think we would go as far. And that was our opening line, you know.
Ron Boire: Una unequivically, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, I want to hold that thought a little bit because I want to talk about a little bit about the future of education and I'm a I'm a obviously a big believer in learning, but I'm not that big a believer in education in terms of like how it's being done today, right? I wanna I th I I I think there's a lot of Room for growth and a lot of room for people like you to change the world again. so so here you are on this wet behind the ears kid running around. I I have this vision, by the way, I know Sofan a little bit because he taught our operations
Dina Consolini Dommett: Right. The operation management, right? Yeah.
Ron Boire: and which I have to say was maybe the most difficult class I took.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Mm-hmm.
Ron Boire: because conceptualizing queuing math. Like my just think about that whiteboard again. It just my head exploded.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Sure.
Ron Boire: But but any and plus him being as elegant and perfectly put together, teaching the class was just a wild experience. It was really, really interesting. so you're you're going there trying to really you're changing the business model too, right? So the business model So I remember the class costing $115,000 for teachers. It was the most expensive class, I think, in the world at that point.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. And that was that was a first. I think we were the first MBA to five. Yeah. Yeah.
Ron Boire: At least that's what my boss said. but you're splitting that money with London Business School. Well, they were charging actually they were charging less on their side of the pond. I remember people trying to apply through London instead of Columbia because your price was higher than London. Do you remember this?
Dina Consolini Dommett: I do and so that's again, as I said, so here we were approaching them and the model was all crazy because they were charging I think they were charging less for their executive MBA than either their regular MBA. It might have been something crazy like thirty thousand pounds. Something crazy. Yeah. It was really cheap.
Ron Boire: It was really cheap. It was ridiculously cheap. Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: And I over the years I've actually in there the business of education, because it is a business, there is there are a lot of angles like this. the SEMs, the other thing I mentioned, that you that was the kind of partnership where you could join through a school where education is free, say in Prague, and it isn't at the LSC. Then you you work those angles. But so we did have to reassure London Business School. We said, look, this is our big fat idea. So, you know, we're split the revenues evenly. We're not taking a a bigger share of the take. We know we're pushing you somewhere, and it's gonna do something to your price. and your competition. On the other hand, it it certainly must have helped put them on the map in a different way, just as they helped us get on the map in a different way.
Ron Boire: Yeah, I think it did. I think it I think over the years their rankings improved. you know, Columbia's always been kind of up and down in the top ten, top twenty kind of schools, but I think their rankings kind of improved over the years.
Dina Consolini Dommett: And and I do remember as I met them too. So this is also where so I I was doing executive degree education. Executive education also includes the stuff I'm doing now, which is non-degree. And like you, I am skeptical about education and degrees. So I love the non-degree space. I love I will have to get to the the end game has to get to talk about the program I'm doing for Ukrainian war veterans and heroes. That's is because that is
Ron Boire: No, no, that's that's definitely on my
Dina Consolini Dommett: that there's a through line to what I was doing at Columbia. I loved at Columbia when we would have CEOs like yourself, so real business leaders, when we would have medical doctors and we would have veterans. I always
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: like to you know build the class, do the admissions where we had a nice mix of those types and as as well as artists and entrepreneurs and all of that.
Ron Boire: Yeah, as long as you're talking about admissions, I do have a a question that came from some of my classmates. So I know how I got in. I kind of bullshit my way in. I know how Munia got in, she was super smart, and I know how Fig got in, but how did Callum get in? I mean everybody's really You're not gonna answer the question. I know you're not gonna answer the question.
Dina Consolini Dommett: well, okay. it's the so I I'm not gonna out anybody else, but no, it was well we had a committee, so I would have we would have somebody would have had to present him to our committee, which would have been it would
Ron Boire: Ha ha ha.
Dina Consolini Dommett: have been me, it would have been Dave Evers. Did you did you guys know Dave Evers was so he was a guy we hired to I said
Ron Boire: yeah, we might have. Yeah. Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: to him, you need to fill this program. I can I'm gonna give you a couple of feeders like Ron.
Ron Boire: So that's where Column came from. All right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: But it could have been that he might have come though from the England side of things. So Okay, so I think it was it was England.
Ron Boire: No, he came from he came from England. But he was he was an absolute delight to he was he was the the class when you talk about filling out the class, so first of all, it was the the one place I told many, many people where I knew I was not not the smartest person in the woman room, but clearly the least smart person in the room. And everybody in that room I I learned from and and whether it was you know, Dan Shoem who was clearly the smartest person in the room by an order of magnitude, on one end with, you know, how he thought about mathematics and statistics, or, you know, Fig and how he thought about, you know, the world and biology and how government fit into it, or Callum, how he thought about life and still does to this day. I was w looking at watching him on our WhatsApp group. Anyhow, so I just wanted to throw that in because I know the group's gonna watch this video and they're all curious too. So we'll
Dina Consolini Dommett: great. So I gotta give a call out to them. Look, you guys, you guys were pioneers because yes, I was I was young. I I but I I knew I knew what I was doing, but it for this to work, the group has to be they they really do need to be in on the fact that we're trying something new. So I I've Yeah.
Ron Boire: Well if you're gonna change if you're gonna change anything, you you need diversity, right? You need if you just had a whole bunch of people from Morgan Stanley and Goldman, you would have had exactly the same program. Right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, you know.
Ron Boire: But because you didn't, you had something different. And and in this program a c I mean, a couple of really seminal things happened in the middle of this program. First of all, we had nine eleven.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes, yes.
Ron Boire: Right in the middle of the program and a whole bunch of us were at JFK flying to about to get in the air to go to London when that happened. and then we had Enron. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes, yes.
Ron Boire: And Lauren Ioneron was working for Enron at the time. And I tell the story about her all the time because it there when you think about business and brands and and and your personal brand, I think she had been She'll she'll correct me when she watches this, but I think she'd been at Enron a couple of months.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Hm.
Ron Boire: And I believe she was working on something in Europe. but because it said Enron on her CV, I mean her life was just getting a job was like extremely difficult. and we also had Eric who was with Arthur Anderson.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes.
Ron Boire: And those guys got devastated by you know the bad behavior of a literally a handful of people, right? Destroying billions in valuation and thousands
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: and thousands of lives. So as a result of that, we got very interested in kind of the ethics of of business. And at the time, the business school didn't really have an ethics program. And if I remember saying to I don't forget who was running the program at the time, saying, you know, 'Cause it you know, a couple of us have become spokesmodels for the class. You know, we need an ethics class. They go, no, that's taught at the law school, you know. Like
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: we don't teach that in business. And we had a couple of people from Wall Street, I remember some seminal classes where we had some analysts come in from Wall Street and one of talking about you know, how the market moves and certain information being available to certain people and how people got paid and and just saying, well, you it's kind of buyer beware. And I I remember just going, I can't believe you're saying I honestly God can't believe you're and there was a lot of scandals at the time. and we ultimately picked a class in Brazil on corporate turnarounds, right? So we got I don't know if you you were you were gone by then, but you know, the class became v very, very interesting. And my my point is I think the diversity of the class
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: and the diversity of the group And you so I think about that a lot in kind of the work that I've done since then and the work I do now. And if you're trying to change an organization, and having conversations with an organization now that's looking at a huge multi billion dollar merger, right? And you're gonna take a eight, ten billion dollar company and merge a n nine or ten billion dollar company in together. Like
Dina Consolini Dommett: Mm.
Ron Boire: what's what's gonna happen? What's that collision look like? And how do you orchestrate
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes.
Ron Boire: that? And it's not materially different than how you orchestrated, you know, building this program, right? Having diversity of thought, diversity of experience and you had geographic diversity, which was pretty fantastic.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, and actually we originally we thought we were gonna just get people who were from New York and London. Remember the whole nylon craze, Cool
Ron Boire: Mm-hmm.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Britannia, Tony Blair was
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: in office. And we were delighted when it went broader than that, that you guys came from all over. and I think
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: so, and yes, and you're right, you you mentioned earlier there were some other related programs. There was a program with Berkeley, there was a program with Hong Kong University. That they they weren't organic. So I think when you build something, it it has to have a a real heart for it to stay together. but I was spoiled because by partnering with Berkeley I got to meet Laura Tyson. She ended up being the dean at London Business School. She hired me when I was already
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: in England. So the the thing about building anything is Pay attention who's around you and not in a transactional way. Just try to be very relational. That's something I needed to learn how to do. And going to Europe helped me do that, I think. So having
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: the early exposure to the international types at Columbia helped me. But I was still kind of doing things in a straight line. and I learned meandering to London and Europe to just kind of look around me a little bit more and I th I think that has helped me end up right back home where I started, but in a different context.
Ron Boire: So you get recruited into LBS, right, from from Columbia. What were you building? my Coney, right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: No, so I got recruited to Marconi actually. Marconi and they and talk about they they did a lot of Mergers and acquisitions work, and it didn't work out. So they overvalued certain companies. And but it it was going to happen anyway, I think that way. They ultimately got bought out by Ericsson. but and I, you know, they wanted me to stay, but I thought, no, no, I think I think that's fine. the plan was for me to come back to the US, but they didn't have that much of interest in the US, and I didn't want to stay where they were in England. So then an LBS turned up and said, I think I was visiting somebody at LBS and Chris Voss, who was Was the deputy dean at the time and one of the originators of Emba Global, lovely man, operations guy himself. So he said, don't go anywhere. He said, If if because he knew I was working for a Marconi and you know they were not doing great. And he must have had a word with somebody there, and they said, You know, we've got this new American dean, and maybe she will want to talk to you. And I said, I know her, she's great. So it was great to get to work for Laura. So I worked for LBS on and off over the years. I worked first for her, then I got. married and I I wanted to come back to America. I wanted to come back to New York. I didn't go back to Columbia. I ended up working for NYU saw as a place where my twin had worked. I was there for a year. My husband did not want to stay in did not want to come over so I went back home and we didn't speak of it again but I went back to England. I ended up at LBS the second time. And then that's when I the second time we set up A version of the Emba Global program in Dubai. We set up at a campus in Dubai, and it was a very similar model where you go to Dubai for modules and they take modular lectus, but that was fun. So I did that. and then it's it's it's a bit hazy. Worked at LBS a couple times, then I got recruited to work at the LSE by a visionary, by Saul Estran, a gentleman who was consolidating everything they had under the umbrella of management, basically. To create a management school within the LSE. And I loved working for him. So I don't know if you ever came across him when he was deputy dean at London
Ron Boire: Well.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Business School, but he was the kind of guy, he's an economist, that Laura Tyson loved working with him. We all did. You could always tell when Saul was coming to the office because you would hear laughter as we would approach people just enjoying speaking with him. He was just a there's a builder, I mean, just really a very supportive guy. So he recruited me over to the LSE. Department of Management. I think he said I was like employee number six. And he set out a vision in its way, it kind of reminded me of what we were doing, what Mayor Felberg did with Columbia, going global, because the LSE, great place, known for mainly for political science and economics, and they wanted to go further out and be known for management. They've done it. I mean, they've done some great things.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: So LSE, and then and then so yeah, I you know, I guess it's gonna sound like I just go where the wind takes me. Did you see the Odyssey? Have you seen the Odyssey?
Ron Boire: Not not not yet, but I'm f I was forced to read it in tenth grade, so
Dina Consolini Dommett: Okay. Well this take Christopher Nolan takes major liberties with the Odyssey. it is an Odyssey Okay.
Ron Boire: Yeah. I hope so because it was impossible to read.
Dina Consolini Dommett: He takes major liberties, but it is if you've had any kind of odyssey in your life, you'll think about how it relates. But so my Odyssey, like him, I had a 20-year odyssey. Mine took me back home to Connecticut, and he ends up back in Ithaca. His is a lot harder than mine was. So he had to to deal with some monsters and kill some people. But I no, so I I would go where I felt that I was needed. and I learned years later, so I I'm a certified coach for something called the Enneagram and I understand my personality type better now than I I I mean I I thought I knew what it was when I was in New York, but no, I think I was responding to the the market conditions working at a university in New York City. No, I'm I'm a different type of personality than I had realized. So I think I go where I'm needed is how I like to operate.
Ron Boire: I think I've had a very similar career, but and and you know when you when you're a you're a learner, I'm a you know, I if you do s I've done strengthfinder, I'm sure you've done all these other tests. My number one is my
Dina Consolini Dommett: Sure. Yeah.
Ron Boire: number one is learner. and which what that really means in the real world is you go down rabbit holes, right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Right.
Ron Boire: Yeah, like you it's easy to suck me into a if I click on YouTube I'm like, what is that? And what is this and what is and
Dina Consolini Dommett: Ha ha.
Ron Boire: the next thing you know, I'm watching, you know, you know, how to use a you know, four in hand rasp to make a hiking stick, you know, like how did that happen? Like where did that come from? So
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, that's true.
Ron Boire: I do wan
Dina Consolini Dommett: So I have been
Ron Boire: I do want to talk to you about coaching and personality types and and how that applies to some of the some of the work you've done over time and how that applies to these kind of diversity groups. And tell me a little bit about the process and you know how do you how do you use the tool? What first of all, tell the audience kind of like what is the tool?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, so it it's the Enneagram is a nine point personality typing system. That has its roots going back to the ancient worlds. and the best image for it is if you think about Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, you know the the the thing with the it's the it's nine points on that circle. and the what I like about it is there's no right answer. I mean, we we all have all the different nine types within us, but there is a way to hone in and understand what is your core type so that you can understand what triggers you and what motivates you. It's all and it's very Dantesque. So I had my I had studied Dante, I had studied medieval philosophy. So the the notion of everything is built around numerology. So everything is in in threes. So the in the Enneagram, you your core type is either a heart type, which is my type, a mind type, or a body type. But we all have I have the elements of mind, body, and heart, just to a slightly lesser degree. and the way it it it's runs is you're conscious of how your natural tendencies are. and you don't fight against them, you kind of lean into them, but you build on your strengths and you sort of compensate for your weaknesses or develop in those spaces. So I'm I'm not that into the coaching. I I did it because I admired the company. It's something called integrative Enneagram Solutions. They're based in South Africa. And remember I said before, why should anyone be led or taught by you? Renata Landman is the guru that I studied with. She's amazing. She is from, I think she's from Cape Town. And I did that training in London over a couple of workshops with other like-minded people. What I like about the Enneagram is I'm an identical twin, and Donna and I are impressed that it captures our similarities and our differences. We're actually quite similar. Our types are really close, but there are some significant differences. I use it actually. I have used it to unlock conflict and starting with Donna and me, with my twin moving home to live with my twin sister, and we haven't lived together since in New York for a couple of years in New York City, when we were very much like a Felix and Oscar fighting kind of
Ron Boire: Yeah, I think.
Dina Consolini Dommett: situation. Only imagine we kind of were both Felix. I wouldn't say we were both I'm
Ron Boire: I was gonna say w were you Felix?
Dina Consolini Dommett: I would be more like the Oscar than Than she would be, but no, we're we're both versus the Felix. So she credits it too. She she works at Dartmouth, and she wants me to do a workshop on the Enneagram and do the personality tests for her team because she agrees. It handles conflicts. With us, we are both heart types, but we see things in a slightly different way. So whether it's Enneagram or it's Myers-Briggs or it's any of the other systems you can use, I think what it helps is. You should have that self-awareness to know that there isn't just one way of behaving and one way of feeling. And what I with Donna and me, I noticed, so I'm the personality type, I'm the two and of the nine types, I'm the two. It's the helpful giver. and I remember when I was tested with that with the South African company, I thought, no, I I'm the wussy too. I thought I was the performer, the three. I have the performing type in my personality, but no, I'm the person who wants to be. useful, who wants to make a difference and and make people's lives better because I come from that heart orientation. And my twin, Donna, is a different type of heart type. She is the four. It is the idealistic, romantic dreamer. And that she is very much a truth teller type who can call BS when she sees it. So for for us, I we use the Enneagram lessons and the exercises that you can do to be aware of of how we are triggering each other. One of the things that I like about my personality type is I naturally Constantly reframe things to the positive, constantly. if if something bad happens, I always think, well, there's a good reason for it. I mean, I I had when I just before I went to Columbia, I had thyroid cancer, which is very easy to resolve. And my reaction to it was, hey, great that I got this young, it's fixable. I see it as a good thing. It it opened a path and an awareness to things in my health that I should have at a at a young age. So long-winded way to say that any the Enneagram, like any kind of personality typing system, if it helps you understand your differences and your similarities with other people, then it's a good thing. When we were building a class, and any kind of admissions, when you're building a class, at Columbia we took it very seriously, but I always felt that we struggled in terms of setting up the study groups. Did we set you up in a study group or did we let you choose? Okay. Did it work for you? Was it a good group? Did you click with
Ron Boire: Yeah, it w it worked. I think by and large it worked. There was a you know, there's always glitches. We we d there was a couple of groups that didn't work and we had people our group was very functional and we had people kind of sneaking into our group. but yeah, it worked. It worked it worked extremely generally extremely well. We'd have a few at the very end we had one glitch where somebody didn't participate. but generally it worked well.
Dina Consolini Dommett: But I'm impressed because I I was always
Ron Boire: With a tool like this would be very helpful for that.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I mean c you need I think I I came into this world as part of a two sum, so I believe in collaboration and partnership and teams. But it's hard to assign them. And where I've landed now, thirty years later, is I'd rather not force people together if it's not natural. I understand the need for it when you're doing a degree, but I think the folks at London Business School I can't remember now whether their approach they might set them up in teams, but I think they invested more than we were doing at the time in giving you a coach, having s have somebody work with you. But sooner or later you it's like in the work worlds, you know, do you get to pick your teams? If you're managing the team, you get to. But even then, and you know, you're coaching people, even then you might manage people and see that they're like this. So, you know,
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and I know you've had good experience in getting people to figure that stuff out. You know, get get your
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: act together.
Ron Boire: When in the in the I don't use a lot of these kind of tools when I coach it. I'm not like a behavioralist, right? I'm like my coaching is based on kind of experience and just getting people to understand themselves. But the one tool I do use with everyone is called the IDI, which is developed by a
Dina Consolini Dommett: I know it.
Ron Boire: group out of Dartmouth called the MRG group. And it's on seventeen dimensions and it I it's It's basically where you get energy and where you where it drains you, right? And I found it extremely useful because the first thing it does is kind of validate directionally with people kind of where they are, but there's always surprises in it, right? and and then using it with teams, I found really effective when you're trying to build a diverse team and done it a couple of times with entire leadership groups where the whole group goes to the program. And then what I've done very effectively is pair complete opposites. So I did this most recently with a a team of leaders where I I paired them with complete opposites and then put them into meetings once a week with 10-minute meeting on a topic. And of course, they both come in with completely different perspectives about how to think about the topic. and beyond that the perspective there you know one has a lot of like energy towards whatever that topic might be and the other would always have kind of almost negative energy. And it really works remarkably well, extremely well putting opposites together, as long as they know why you know, what happens in the real in the in the real world, in the business world is you'll have two leaders that are clashing. They actually don't know why they're clashing. Right? Beyond competition and you know the the natural kind of corporate kind of like we're all trying to fight to get you know, our thing, which is the default behavior. They don't know why they're reacting the way they're reacting. And but if you say like, you know, you're really not gonna like this and we're gonna go do something you just don't like doing. It doesn't mean you're not good at it, by the way. It just means you don't like it. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. Yeah.
Ron Boire: Or you're gonna love this. Right. So I have one person I'm coaching that is like extremely outgoing and wants to be in control. And she was talking about going to do a a a meeting with you know volunteer thing she does on the weekends with the kids. And she said, I'm gonna go to this meeting and I know I'm gonna want to tell everybody what to do, but I'm not gonna say a word. I go, you're gonna hate it. And the next time I talked to her, she's like, it was the hardest thing I ever did. But you know, knowing that you're going into a meeting with, you know, a group of parents, you know, doing a scouting thing, but and you're gonna wanna tell everybody what to do, and it's the wrong thing to do. Right? Like listening might be the right thing to do. it's just one example. So I I I do found I do find some of these tools very useful and I the tools I like are not the tools that are like you're good at this and bad at that,
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: but your your predisposition is to appreciate this, enjoy this more than you enjoy that. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I I would agree. And so I so the work I'm doing now at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, I'm doing the best thing I've ever done, I think, in my life and probably ever will do. And it's this leadership program for Ukrainian veterans and some of them are are currently
Ron Boire: Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to I wanted to hear about this because this is like your latest build and I just wanna where did the idea first of all where how does where'd it come from and and where do you want to end up with it? And then I want to see
Dina Consolini Dommett: Okay. Well
Ron Boire: the let's talk about the middle because I think this is a great example of building something that really makes a difference.
Dina Consolini Dommett: And I this one, it's like I felt like I I just had a a you know a flash of light and vision about exactly what I wanna do for this group. So last December, my boss, the the dean of the Jackson School of Global Affairs, Jim Levinson, called me up before Christmas and said, Okay, I just met with this gentleman, Victor Pinchuk. He runs the Pinchuk Foundation in Ukraine, in Kyiv, and they run rehabilitation centers for veterans across the country. And what he wants is for us at Yale, at the Jackson School, to run a leadership development program for a group of their veterans. And there are already people who have been rehabilitated physically, working on it mentally, and they're coming back to life, to civilian life. Some of them are staying in the military. So what can we do for a group of them at Yale? That's going to help them have the courage, well, continued courage to go back, either back to the front or back to civilian life. And I thought, this is great. This is exactly the kind of program I want to be involved in. and he said, make it happen fast. So this was December. He I it's gotta happen by the spring. We did launch the pilot in April. And he said, I've got the perfect guy for you, the perfect faculty member to help you lead this. His name is Jimmy Hatch. He's a bit of a celebrity on our Yale campus. He is himself a Gulf War veteran. He has a podcast. Jimmy's amazing. when I met him, I said, you know, who's gonna play you in the movie of your life? And he yeah, there will be a movie. And yes, we're talking. But Jimmy
Ron Boire: That's great.
Dina Consolini Dommett: but Jimmy so he's he is a practitioner faculty at the Jackson School. He only has his undergraduate degree because he did that after he came out of as you know, he couldn't be a Navy SEAL anymore because he had a very bad serious leg injury in Afghanistan and that really messed him up, changed his life. And buddies of his said, You should do your undergraduate degree and you should go to Yale and he didn't think he was good enough to do that. But he did, and he's, you know, a grown up like me. We're about the same age. and I thought, Great, I have the perfect person, but I went in too hot and I met with him and I kind of assumed he knew what I was talking about. Maybe that's I did that with you all those years
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: ago. It worked great. But with Jimmy, I think his own feelings of inadequacy that I couldn't see on the surface. I just saw this guy. I thought, he's perfect. He he's them. He's a veteran who's been through difficulties and come out the other side of it sharing his experience of war and the world. And he he is he was an excellent choice for this. But we hit a reef designing the program because for certain reasons. He he didn't think he wasn't sure I was doing this for the right reasons. And how I unlocked it was his wife knows the Enneagram and she I said, would you guys be willing to take it? So they did, but he took it and I found out why. So so the the why we were we were almost too alike for this to work out perfectly without understanding it. So he is the the Enneagram 4 type, thinks and feels deeply, but we are both quick to act. So our our personality styles is to act first, ask questions later. And that's it's why we click, it's why we got things done. But if we didn't resolve the conflict, we were gonna have a hard time. So we I bless him, he was great. He did and like you were, he's like, I don't know if I believe in these kinds of tests. This sounds like nonsense. He took the test and he called me and he said, Wow, this this is yes, we have to debrief this. I understand though. So and I said, and I understand, and and I am so sorry, I I pushed you too hard because I thought we were already where we needed to be. That in the Odyssey that we had of doing this program, that was the one challenge I had. The rest of it all fell in line. So the idea for it, I think, came from somewhere else. Last week, I hope so, because now that I've done this Ukrainian program, now all things Ukrainian flow to my desk. So,
Ron Boire: Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and also, you know, a veteran, American veteran self. So a terrific guy who is Ukrainian American and very supportive of Ukraine. Emailed me last month to say, I know it's the dog days of summer and nobody's at Yale, but Dina, would you host a group from the Ukrainian Catholic University? A couple of their veterans who work there, but you know, went are are gonna be doing a tour of Ivy League schools and some of the Catholic universities. They went to Boston College, you know, my school, and I think they've got a partnership with Fordham. And they went to Brown, maybe Harvard, also us, and I said, Sure, of course. So I hosted them last week and they said That if I believe in them, and I think I do, that the idea for this program that we're doing was that Victor Pinchuk was on their campus in 2024 when they were doing something for veterans in a similar way. So you bring a group of veterans together and talk about their personal journeys and you put whatever spin on it is appropriate. We are the School of Global Affairs, so of course we talk about leadership in the geopolitical context. And Yale has the right people to do that. So Tim Snyder, our famous. historian who's an expert on the the history of Ukraine and the Cold War and the Eastern Europe, he was great. I got Tim on the first day talking to them, to these veterans about how can Ukraine survive? What's it gonna take for them to survive? So, but the the the concept is of the program, similar to other things that I've done in my career, is building something that's gonna be meaningful for this group. I didn't have to pick them. I said, could you please pick them? But knowing you know what's gonna land well for that population.
Ron Boire: Yeah. And and How long is the how long's the program run? Kind of what
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, it's just a week. So they come to the Yale campus from basically a Sunday through a Friday and we're we're talking about what we're gonna do for the next group. They don't keep coming back because time is precious for them. So they do that one week and then another group will come in. We'll recruit another group. They I said, please let me do a small group. So we did fifteen. I imagine they'll make it a little bigger. I hope we don't go bigger than twenty because I want it to be an intimate experience for this group. Cause my vision for this was I thought, okay, fifteen of them, then I to give them a couple of core faculty so jimmy to be with them the whole week along me with me but you know you know what your experience was like with them at global give them exposure to a number of faculty and they were only there for a week so I thought I want to give them at least 15 faculty so that they almost
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: have a one-to-one ratio and we did it so we had and I got terrific faculty from the Jackson School who are experts in history, politics, international relations, the changing dynamics of war and peace. people who are experts on ethical leadership. I got my friend Brandon Mappy, who's at the Yale Divinity School, their Berkeley Center for Executive Education. He did a great session on ethical leadership values. Why are you fighting? You know, what matters to you. I got Professor Zoe Chance from the Yale School of Management, who's an expert on influence and power. So how influence is your superpower. And then I you know several other veterans as well. Chris Fussel himself also a veteran Navy SEAL. And he works out of Washington, D.C. for the Stan McCrystal group. He did an excellent session
Ron Boire: But now.
Dina Consolini Dommett: about, you know, historic leadership models and what are those paradigms, but how do you feel you fit into that? And it was just a powerful week. And the culmination of that was giving them these 90-minute inputs on leadership or politics or history. And giving them an assignment at the end of the week to give team presentations to a panel that I put together of veterans and faculty about why should America care about Ukraine? Why should American people, voters, and funders care about Ukraine? It was a pretty
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: sobering topic because a lot of people are critical of Ukraine and say that it's corrupt and this is just another war we don't want to be involved in. So they took it well. You know, they said to us the first few days, they said, you're being too easy on us. And on the last night, as they were preparing for the panel presentation, they said, We get it. You gave us the warm bath. Now this is going to be the cold shower. So I briefed the Yales, the and they were I had a couple of guys who were Yale alumni and Yale and also military veterans. Now they actually care about Ukraine, but I did I said to them, be tough. Ask them really tough questions. And they did, and it was good. So you know, you can't learn if it's just gonna be easy and you're just saying, We love you, we love you, everything's great. they these veterans needed us to see past their injuries and really challenge them. So it was great. That's what we did. And now we're in the process of designing what the next group when they come in November. They will go s go through something similar, but you know, we'll tweak it and it'll be based on current events. So we'll do it in November. We will have had our elections in this country. You know, Ukraine is doing a lot of things over there, so we'll we'll see.
Ron Boire: Yeah. So I think I like the do the hard thing, right? So so much of kind of what we see in society today are people trying to do the easy thing, right? And you know, am I getting the thumbs up? Am I am I getting the like?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. Gold star, yeah.
Ron Boire: listened to a fascinating conversation recently about what people say in a public poll versus what they say privately.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Hmm.
Ron Boire: Right? And there's so much tribalization in the US today where there's only two tribes, right? You know, the left tribe and right and the right tribe. and neither tribe can talk to each other. Like there's
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: so few people in the middle that can actually talk to both sides the of the tribe. And if you're in tribe A and you talk to somebody in tribe B, well then you're thrown out of tribe A. Right. and I think, you know, going way back to Italy in nineteen forty five and then Italy in nineteen eighty five or nineteen eighty when when you when you got there, those that generation understood the hard thing.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes.
Ron Boire: So they worked to avoid the bad thing, right? They told themselves the the truth. And one of the things that scares me today about society is that You know, we have a whole generation of leaders and politicians that didn't experience the hard thing. Which makes it really, really easy to do something that could, you know, tip things over. Right.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. Yeah.
Ron Boire: you know. I won't I won't get into politics even though like the I guess politics is kinda your thing now in some way. You know. But
Dina Consolini Dommett: It is. It and I and I so I came to Jackson School so I could stop doom scrolling and put
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: it in context. One of our faculty members, Beverly Gage, she's a historian, and sh I'm gonna use her again for a different program. she the talk she gave last October for this group of visitors from Europe was, Is this the worst political moment ever? And of course
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: that's a stimulating topic. So it gets us is it? She said, Cast back. There have been a a hundred years ago we had robber barons, we had influenza. We had people who didn't believe in vaccines, didn't believe in in the science.
Ron Boire: Yeah. Yeah, the beginning of the founding of the countries, you know, politicians taking out ads and newspapers slandering each other. It was vicious. It was absolutely vicious. But, you
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes, yes. Yes.
Ron Boire: know, they didn't have nuclear bombs. Right? You know, they had
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Ron Boire: muskets, right? It was really hard to kill a lot of people. They figured it out. But but it was hard to do.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I think look, something is lost. It's it is even biblical. What when the generation that that dies out. So, you know, Moses wasn't allowed to get to the promised land and the children of Israel had to wander forty years until that that generation that challenged God died out. we lose much though when the great generation passes out.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and people haven't really experienced hardship. I mean I did see the Odyssey and what I liked about it, it's tough. It's not a fun movie, but it's the movie for it's the Odyssey. For our times. I don't know if you ever saw the 1954 Ulysses film with Kirk Douglas as Ulysses. That's the one I remember. And that one's fun. That is Technicolor, sunwashed, an exuberant Ulysses. This one, this is a it's a tougher one. It's the perfect follow-up to Oppenheimer, where basically
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: we broke the world and the the bomb, the Trojan horse is the bomb, and we've broken the world. And can it ever be fixed? There's a glimmer of hope though. And I deep down am an optimist. I think we can fix it. I but although I'm glad I'm not the age of my nieces and nephews, I really wouldn't want to have responsibility for putting things back that that the older generations have broken. But there is a way. You have to believe there's a way.
Ron Boire: So when you're working with these veterans, you know, they've seen the hard thing. So when they say you're it's it's really kind of fascinating me that people have done the hard work. they want to hear the truth. Don't tell
Dina Consolini Dommett: That's right. That's right.
Ron Boire: just don't tell me I'm pretty. Fine. What do I need to work on? What are the what are the
Dina Consolini Dommett: Exactly.
Ron Boire: risks, right? And you know, I have a few friends in the military space and they they tend to want that. They was like, no, no, like don't don't lie to me. it's okay. One of the things I have to do, I actually had one of my CEOs say this to me yesterday. He goes, What is that thing you tell me about the bathroom? I go, Well, here's the thing I tell you about the bathroom. Go into the bathroom, look in the mirror, don't lie to your your dog. Betty's over here, by the way. Don't lie to your dog,
Dina Consolini Dommett: I see yeah, I see what
Ron Boire: your doctor, or yourself, right? And we have a society that lies to itself every day.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: Yeah, I'm the I'm the prettiest girl in the room, I'm the smartest. You know, he did something bad to me. It's their fault, it's not my fault. The lack of agency, the lack of ownership. And you know, and we have a political system that You know, I'm anti war, but I've been a I I've you know, I've bombed three countries since I became president. Okay. I got the whole I got I got that all figured out. Like like what does that even mean? Like what is going
Dina Consolini Dommett: I know. I I I I got an option that I'm I don't know.
Ron Boire: on here? And and everything is somebody else's fault. And
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: and nobody owns their mistakes. You know, we have you know, somebody testifying in front of Congress today that was responsible for our health that takes the Fifth Amendment fifty times. I mean, what what is going on? Right? And so programs like what you're doing and what I try to do with companies and executives is like, let's let's let's do the hard stuff because my I I I quote my mom all the time, and I'm sure she's listening again. I quote my mom all the time, you know, when she said, you know, Junior, all the easy jobs are gone. Bad news, you gotta do the hard jobs. And I think we so many of us just wanna do the easy jobs. And I tell my wife all the time she gets really frustrated. She has a couple of businesses, like, like, why don't they just do this? And I go, There's a reason that five percent of the people run the world, 'cause they do the hard stuff. It's so
Dina Consolini Dommett: They do the hard stuff. And so for this, it is a it's really been an honor to get to meet these people. I have to be careful because everybody else now wants to meet them because they are heroes. One of them said to me, So the way we designed it, they they we Yeah. Well we'll yes, we'll have to we'll have to we'll find a way.
Ron Boire: I want to meet him. I was going to ask you to invite me to an extra class. I also want to take the test, by the way, or just
Dina Consolini Dommett: Great. I'll have you do the Enneagram and it's it's wonderful. But the the thing about it, so and and Jimmy Hatch, you you guys should meet. I think you'd hit up he's certainly he tells it like it is. Jimmy, I you know, I said, Jimmy, you need to tell your story to them and the way he tells his story very dramatically about What he went through and taking ownership for the mistakes he made that led to his injury. And he he actually has a a charity for service dogs, and it goes deep with him. his dog was killed and he felt very guilt-ridden. He survived, the dog didn't, comrades didn't tough stuff. But he did the hard thing. But what him saying to the Ukrainians, though he said, I'm fighting, I fought in America's wars of choice. You're fighting in a war for service. Survival and you don't want to be in that war. But they, this group, the 15 of them, some of them were captives of the Russians, so they were prisoners, but no bitterness. amazing. One guy had I sat and I don't even I did the seating plan. Somehow I I sat myself next to the same impressive guy, Ukrainian guy, the opening dinner and the closing dinner, which is good because he wanted to talk to me about educational stuff and how they could do what we do in Kyiv. He's got friends who run the Kyiv School of Economics. Absolutely, they this is great place. But I didn't know his story until the end of the week. They resisted telling their own story because they said, Well, we know our story. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about my story. But we then you you hear this story at the end of the week, and his in particular, with all he suffered. He lost an eye, he lost all his teeth. He presents now looking fine. But how can you be fine after that? And when he was injured like that, he was captured by the Russians and they did nothing for him. And he re-he said, you know, we didn't do that with our captives. We would give them medical. care. He's fine now, right? But at the closing dinner, I that's when I heard his story because he's told it in the last day in his presentation. And the our the panel, the judges were giving them tips like, you might want to lead with that, what it feels like to be
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: in a Russian prison lying on the floor, your body broken. You know, people, even if they're not political, they'll get that. They'll get that that's not a good place to be in. But I was so impressed with him. But he said You gotta stop treating us as heroes, you know. And I I laughed and said, A little hard to do, you know, when we know your story. But he told a touching story about how. He was walking around New Haven on that last day in their uniforms. Cause I said to our sponsor, I said, Would you mind please have them dress in uniform when they present to the panel and when we do our certificate ceremony if you're willing? And she said, Well, that's quite
Ron Boire: Cheap.
Dina Consolini Dommett: a nice idea. And so the picture is of them at the Welcome to Yale signed like that. But a little boy came up to him in the bookstore, he said, and said, Thank you for your service. And I said, And he said he was touched. I said, and he wouldn't even have known that the guy was Ukrainian. I'm glad that kids still come up
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: to serve. people in this country. I hope we've learned something since Vietnam to acknowledge the cer whether or not you believe in these wars, we have to defend our people that we're we're sending into the fire.
Ron Boire: I think the the one Durable lesson from Vietnam is that it wasn't the people on the ground, right? with one or two notable exceptions. But it wasn't the people on the ground. It never is the people on the ground, right? nobody on the ground in Iraq, Iran named the war. woke up and said, Yeah, I'm gonna go invade Iraq and get myself shot up. They didn't do it, right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Right.
Ron Boire: It's always some fat politician in Washington that has armed guards around them.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Rice. And one of the reasons the the Jackson School, the reason it is the Jackson School, our benefactor, John and Susan Jackson, wonderful couple. John Jackson is a Vietnam War veteran and he wanted the students at the Jackson School and at Yale to learn diplomacy. He wants them to learn about yes, strategy, history, economics, political science, but learn about peace, learn how to foster peace. So we're just delighted to I'm so honored to get to do this program in John and Susan Jackson's name. I must get them to come along to the next one and maybe you should meet some of these folks to do a podcast with one of our veterans. When I
Ron Boire: a hundred I already circled Jimmy Hatch. and I I
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, you gotta talk to Jimmy because
Ron Boire: I'm very honored and privileged. I teach occasionally in the Army's FA fifty nine has a class in S at Syracuse. Steve Grumman asked me to do a small program with them. And it's always just you meet in such incredible people. These are the F A fifty nine is the strategy group for the army. And it's just some of the smartest, most self-aware people on the planet. And I was like, You want me to teach strategy to the army strategist? Like, how's that I don't think they're gonna win a war with my my ideas, but I'm teaching corporate strategy, of course. so Speaking of doing the the hard thing, I have two more questions as as one is what do you want to do when you grow up? And two,
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: and then the the follow-on is the state of kind of education in America and and in particular university and advanced degree education that in the age of AI and in I don't about you, but I I use AI every day. I'm teaching Claude who I am and how to how to do work for me. Claude did a 17 page research document on you. It was like, I found out things about you that I you probably don't know about you.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I bet.
Ron Boire: you know where where's it all going? I mean the so s enrollment for MBA programs is is on a multi year decline. a lot of secondary programs are in multi year decline. We have a massive underinvestment in the trades in this country. speaking of builders, you know, not building, we sent the work elsewhere, right? and now we want to bring the world now suddenly we want to bring the work back and there's nobody to if you want to make a lot of money in America, be an electrician in Tennessee right now, right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Right, right.
Ron Boire: Yeah. Right. So it's a great way to make, you know, three hundred thousand dollars a year running wire, right? so how do you see that world and you know, what's what's the answer? I mean, I honestly I'll give you a little bit of what I think the answer is. It's exactly what
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah. She
Ron Boire: Executive Edge does, which is why I love teaching and Rita's program, because it's people opting in to make themselves better and looking for a specific thing. It's it's very customer driven. Right. It's very much here's what I feel like I'm missing, and help me fill that gap. but that's not the university system in America today. And certainly not the mid-tier university system in America today. It's like you're going into a program that's built for it's a factory system. Right. anyways, my thoughts I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Look, great question. Let's go with that. That's a great question. Well, I'm a few things I'm heartened by. I remember watching when Notre Dame was consumed by fire. Do you remember this? yes.
Ron Boire: I wasn't here. I just was doing gut wrenching.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Okay. but what did that spark? That spark, that terrible fire. But they have rebuilt it. I haven't been. I need to go see it. Okay. Stunning, right?
Ron Boire: we were there, we were there last year. It is Dina, it's like so you you've been to Notre Dame. You you remember being inside. Do you remember how dark and gray it was?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Sure, of course, yeah. Yeah. Yes, yes.
Ron Boire: You know why? Well they're burning candles for hundreds of years. That that all that soot is gone. All that marble
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes. Yes, it's all gone. Yeah.
Ron Boire: and granite has been polished. The it's absolutely stunning. It is stunning. It wasn't quite finished last year, maybe it's finished. We're going back
Dina Consolini Dommett: It is finished now. Friend of mine went, it's finished now. I mean, of course, what they needed to do, and I give Macron huge credit for this, they needed to not just raise the money for it, which he did, they needed to teach people those trades. So now
Ron Boire: Yes.
Dina Consolini Dommett: there's a new generation of young people who know how to build a cathedral like that.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: it it it reminded me of when so when I
Ron Boire: Even when they were built they didn't exist. They were built over hundreds of years, some of them. Right? Go ahead.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes. And I'm sure so and the rebuild, I'm sure now it is as fireproof as it can be in modern times. So they so something good came out of that.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and I remember when I lived in Italy, in Rome, there was the controversy about should they restore the Sistine Chapel, which they did do.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: and there were some naysayers like, no, it's it's not his original intention. Of course they should restore it, having seen it before the dark faded colors and
Ron Boire: yeah, it's beautiful.
Dina Consolini Dommett: after the vividness. So I think that my that's my metaphor for higher education. They need to figure out what are the crisis events that are gonna trigger this kind of regeneration. I'm so proud that I got to go to ev everybody in my family, we all studied either something practical. My sister's a nurse, my brother trained as an electrical engineer. My but three of us have PhDs, not because we're all eggheads, but because we can, because we could do it. my father and mother were brilliant and should have done higher education for whatever reason, they didn't do it. But it I think universities they have lost their way a bit. Find it. Find those what are those pivotal events that we're re possibly reacting to, maybe responding is the better word for it, and be a place Where people can envision a better future. One of my colleagues at Jackson, her name is Emma Skye, very impressive British lady. She had been the governor of a region in Iraq. She worked somehow for the American generals during the Gulf Wars. I need to understand that story. She's an amazing lady. There's a workshop she does. She did it for our Ukrainian veterans, she does it for other groups. It's called an Optimistic Futures Workshop, where you envision what your society looks like 50 years from now. And I saw what she did for. Ukrainians and it was great. So and if for the first time in that tough week, we saw the smiles on their faces as they were envisioning a future where Ukraine is sovereign again and isn't fighting for its future. But I I said a geek, you know, should do that for us. What does America look like in 2050? Because there is need. We gotta come back together. you know, and part of that Ukraine future is they need to have a future where they do get along with Russia. their big problem is not so much part. Of the problem is that the West doesn't want Russia to fall, so we pull our punches, we try to hold back. I think this is what we do to Ukraine. We need to come together in America, and our universities should be the place where that can be done. Now, I when I went to Yale, I'm a little bit older than J.D. Vance. I'm not thrilled when people describe an experience at Yale and act like, well, you know, he was the the hillbilly elegy, the hillbilly who didn't fit in with the the you know the Rich types at Yale. And when I read that, I thought, get over yourself. I don't come from money. And I never felt that I didn't belong at Yale. sure, I felt there were other people more naturally brilliant, and there were you know other people who had skills that I didn't have, but I felt that Yale gave me the kind of confidence that I needed in order to lead my life, let alone lead something in life. And I think what we were doing at Columbia, I think the executive MBA was better and is better than. An MBA because people studying after they already have practical experience, I think that's the way that you really build society. So the great generation, what made them great was they were tested in battle and they needed to innovate. That's what I see these Ukrainians doing. You know, you'll see a
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: guy, people in our cohort, one of them, Paul, handsome guy, former film star in Ukraine, and he now, you know, he he served in combat. Several of the other guys, one of them was a dentist, a couple Couple of them were medics. Now they are becoming experts in drone warfare. But also, as one of our faculty, Doug Beck, an amazing guy, he had worked for Tim Cook at Apple. He worked in, he ran our Department of Defense's innovation unit. And what Doug told these Ukrainians to do, I would say to our students: you are the innovation. It's not just what drones you're building. It's not what you're doing to fight a war. It's your ability to pivot and do something different. If our universities can refine those skills and teach whatever students we have. To question, but question in a way you know that's grounded in some reality. Now, the Socratic method of teaching and asking questions is the way to go. I don't think all is lost. I I don't know why we have to be in the two camps like you say we have been. I hope that breaks soon. I hope people are starting to see that. That's just not practical. We've been there before, too. I mean, can
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: you imagine anything worse than the Civil War? That's terrible. But but we need to get on the other side of it. And I think universities have Have a responsibility to do that. And but do it. I admire the the Yale faculty that I use in my programs, if anything, the criticism that my my participants have been saying is that that professor's not really saying what he really thinks, say about China. And I
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: said, Well, because he's not going to. Maybe you'll catch him in a private conversation. He doesn't want to. influence you completely based on his own experience. He wants you to have your experience of that topic. But even I looked at that and and maybe I'm in the bubble at Yale that's doing that that way. I'm not even thinking it's fair to say that there's a right and a wrong way to do this, but I think the best kind of learning is when it's facilitated and not somebody telling you you have to see things this way.
Ron Boire: See, I think the difference in exec ed and EMBA to the core is I think it's tenure is one of
Dina Consolini Dommett: Well sure. Yeah.
Ron Boire: I think I think in the on the exec side and in the EMBA side even Those aren't tenured professors, right? In the and you're bringing in practitioners,
Dina Consolini Dommett: This is my question.
Ron Boire: you're bringing in people that have been in the been in the world, and you're bringing in these professors. And I think it's a much different conversation. And I think those conversations are generally positive and good. But that's, you know, one percent of higher education that that that's doing that. The the bulk of it is in this in this system that is the the factory. And I I just wonder I mean the factory is breaking down in the in the mid tier liberal arts schools especially, they're financially they're dying,
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah.
Ron Boire: right? so there there's there has to be something get that gets rebuilt. and the fear is, you know, for our kids and our grandkids is where do they go to get that thing, get that experience. And, you know, back to having, you know, a degree in Italian in the AI age, there's a there is an argument that that that degree could be more valuable than a technical gr degree, because that's a degree that is about language and understanding and communication and leveraging a skill as opposed to I know that two plus two equals four, which is not leverageable, right? So just one idea, right, in in In in framing what education is in the future is is an openness to ideas as opposed to a closeness, right? And I think that the system today is very closed. It's very much, you know, I'm a tenure professor, I have these programs, this is what I teach. And it's kind of the opposite of they don't want to he doesn't want to say what he thinks about China. They say what they think, right? And they that
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, see that's what I'm saying. I I think that's gonna have to change. All right. So i if you you should feel feel free, we have freedom of speech in this country. You should feel free to speak plainly, but be prepared for the consequences of that. And I'm not sure that they are all Yeah, be prepared for the consequences, you know?
Ron Boire: Right. Well, we're not prepared for the consequences. That yeah, what happened on these campuses and thankfully that we're largely over that, what happened on these campuses over the last few years is evidence of that. We were not prepared to hear the other side of it, either at the beginning of occupations or at the end of occupation. We didn't want to hear it either way. We didn't want to hear, you don't belong here, you're actually not a student, you can't put a tent in our yard. And we didn't want to hear they did have some complaints that were valid, right? You didn't want to hear either one of it, right? It like neither
Dina Consolini Dommett: Sure. Right.
Ron Boire: side wanted to hear it. and that's the extreme and that's
Dina Consolini Dommett: Who was and also who was manipulating that situation? I when I was a grad student at Yale, admittedly, Yale, like so many of the other schools, were not treating their PhD students well. They were just using us as cheap labor and getting away with it. And there were but there were clever people. who saw an opportunity and thought, well, let's unionize the graduate students. And I I think they did unionize. I I was
Ron Boire: Okay.
Dina Consolini Dommett: on my way out, I didn't particularly I didn't think that was the answer, but I agreed that something was wrong, that they were taking advantage. It led to a shake up and it changed how many people they admit to PhDs. at Yale and these other top schools. But I at the time I thought, but this is these are political operators are making a real they're having fun with this. And some of my classmates were naive enough to fall for it. But I don't, it is a shame that the union was even necessary in the first place. But that too was what left a distaste in my mouth that I thought, I don't want to stay in this field. This is not, they're not doing it right. I don't want to be part of this. They're not teaching things that people want to take, they're not gonna get the enrollments, and there's all this agita about how they're managing the Workforce. You should pay people a decent wage, and you don't have to have these problems. You don't have to pay them a lot, but to pay them a decent wage. Don't take advantage. and I think with the the protests, the the university leaders were smart, the ones who said, you can't have these tent cities. You can't be doing this on campus. But I realized that they walked a fine line there. That was that was difficult.
Ron Boire: Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: And I'm gonna I wonder what's gonna happen at Yale. Our president has to make a decision, our trustees have to decide. Have they already? What's gonna happen? There's the government is challenging Yale School of Medicine saying that we are being discriminatory against white people and Asians in the School of Medicine admissions. Difficult situation. I I don't know where I land on this. I think our president and the trustees will make the right decision. But I'm sorry the way education has been so politicized. I I wish we wouldn't fall for it.
Ron Boire: Yeah. And some of it I I think of some of it they deserve, honestly. and and it's this situation where one one voice gets projected as all voices, right? And you know, a couple of universities frankly handled it very, very badly and then it that became okay, that's they're all bad. Right. That's
Dina Consolini Dommett: They're all back. Yeah.
Ron Boire: the easy answer, right? But the the the right answer is Do the right thing, do the hard work, right? How
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yeah, yes.
Ron Boire: do you how do you keep a balance? There is a there is a reason for certain quotas. Largely those reasons I think are gone, but there there are still some reasons for it, right? And how do you how do you balance that? How do you make sure that you have the right diverse population without it's it's unfair to discriminate against anyone, right?
Dina Consolini Dommett: Yes.
Ron Boire: you know, you think about your upbringing, you were you were one of six whose father was a carpenter. You were not wealthy. But
Dina Consolini Dommett: No, no.
Ron Boire: there are a whole bunch of people that think you were very advantaged, right? So
Dina Consolini Dommett: For sure. And and going absolutely. And being in in England, I think, you know, it's very much a class system, but they can't read through the American accent. They just figure, yeah, you you come from privilege. You you have a privileged background. Yeah. I appreciate that the America that I grew up in made that pretty easy. No, I had to do the hard work. You know, you had to put the work in. You had to put the work. You
Ron Boire: Yeah, if you did the work, you got it you got what you deserved.
Dina Consolini Dommett: got it. If that ever goes away, then we really have a problem. If if working hard isn't enough. Yeah.
Ron Boire: Yeah. There's a lot of people that want that to go away. But anyhow, we will we will see where that goes. Yeah.
Dina Consolini Dommett: We'll see where that.
Ron Boire: So thank you so much. I I got
Dina Consolini Dommett: Thank you.
Ron Boire: to I finally got to know you a little bit. This is this is great. I I very much enjoyed this. I appreciate this. And you I you you better invite me to your next class or else I'm gonna say bad things to you to my hundreds of followers.
Dina Consolini Dommett: I Yeah. Well come come to New Haven. Come see us when there's something going on. I'll definitely invite you. We and it's not
Ron Boire: No, I definitely want to.
Dina Consolini Dommett: just the Ukrainian thing. We have very interesting conversations.
Ron Boire: No, I you know, there there's a number of conversations I'm having with people that I think I'd love to introduce you to some people that I think would
Dina Consolini Dommett: Be fun.
Ron Boire: be really interesting. And I'd love to come up to New Haven and spend some time with you and some of the wonderful people you've talked about. This has been great. I've really, really enjoyed it. And I'm really gonna enjoy forwarding it on to my classmates.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Big shout out to your wonderful class of pioneers. I I you know what? I think about them every time I do a new program. So I thought about you guys when I did the Ukrainian thing. I always think that's the gold standard. I need to make sure that this thing attracts the right people, serves the right people. So you guys
Ron Boire: Well, you know, they did tell us that we were the best class ever, you know. But I I also heard they tell every class that.
Dina Consolini Dommett: Absolutely. Well, I don't know. Do they still but you guys were. from all I heard about how you ended up you did great. You should do you know NASA astronaut Colonel Tim Copra from the class of twenty thirteen? I don't know
Ron Boire: Thank you.
Dina Consolini Dommett: him well. I gave him his diploma, but interesting guy. He should do your podcast. We have to see what he's up to these days, but you know on the space station. I'll I'll have to look him up. I'll try to check him down. Thank
Ron Boire: Feel free to make introduction. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was great.
Dina Consolini Dommett: you.