Mr. Adam Taddy Blecher This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The Pilot Newspaper - Opinion Page

   www.thepilot.com/opinion/12140 - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/13/2005   Last Visited: 12/15/2005

   I recently listened to a story told by BBC Global Business Editor Peter Day and his guest, Adam P. "Taddy" Blecher.
   ...
   Blecher has been described as a grown-up Harry Potter because he believes in magic and miracles and seems to live an enchanted life. He exudes positive energy and childlike innocence, but under that exterior is a very clever person.
   
   Blecher is the son of middle-class Jewish parents who mapped out his career for him at an early age. He says he grew up on a conveyor belt as his father, a well-known gynecologist, gave him two career options, medicine or finance. He attended a prestigious private high school in Johannesburg and graduated from Witwatersrand, the city's premier university, as an actuary.
   
   He nearly left to take a job in America, before turning his energy to the vision he had.
   ...
   Blecher gave up a six-figure salary as a management consultant to open the college in 2000. He sees his lack of experience in teaching and university administration as an advantage, allowing him to find a new way to create a low-cost, financially self-sustaining college. When the first freshmen arrived, the college didn't have computers yet, so Mr. Blecher photocopied the keyboard of his laptop and students taught themselves to type on a piece of paper.
   
   Blecher received the Global Leader of Tomorrow Award from the World Economic Forum in New York, where he was recognized as one of 100 young leaders under the age of 37 making an exceptional contribution to a better world.
   
   When he says CIDA will generate the entrepreneurial skills to kick start the national economy, it doesn't sound far fetched - precisely because CIDA is not built on some esoteric hope that the future will fix itself.
   
   Blecher believes everything we need is contained within the human mind and that education is there to unlock peoples' hearts and spirits and to provide nourishment and remove obstacles.
   
   CIDA students are drawn mostly from the rural areas, and part of their qualification is that they must go back to their community is and transfer the skills and knowledge they have gathered. Blecher says these are young people whose lives have not been filled with middle-class luxuries, and he is amazed at the extraordinary generosity and creativity he sees in them every day.
   
   CIDA's educational model is a holistic one, based on the knowledge that businesses don't hire people with facts but with certain qualities. Blecher says that good businesses don't go out to look for someone who can read a balance sheet, they look for someone with integrity, self-discipline, focus, passion, compassion, initiative and team spirit who also can read a balance sheet.
   
   These intangibles are, to many, more important than the practical skills touted by other business schools.
   
   Without this fundamental belief that it is possible to create something out of nothing, Mr. Blecher and his partners might not have been able to create CIDA.