4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
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0:00.0 | My guest today, Roshaw, is currently the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, |
0:09.0 | and before that he led US Aid, the centerpiece of American foreign aid. |
0:13.4 | Within a week of taking that job at US Aid, Raj unexpectedly found himself in charge of the largest |
0:19.5 | single humanitarian effort in the nation's history. |
0:23.6 | I got into my office and I saw that I had one bar on my |
0:26.7 | BlackBerry and I thought, oh my gosh, am I going to miss a phone call from the |
0:30.3 | president? Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt. |
0:37.0 | Somehow Russia has managed over and over to get himself in the middle of huge projects |
0:46.6 | from the Haiti earthquake recovery to the Ebola crisis to a vaccination program |
0:51.6 | responsible for immunizing almost one billion children. |
0:55.6 | His new book called Big Betts, how large-scale change really happens, |
0:59.3 | recounts its experiences on these projects, both the lessons he's learned and the mistakes he made. |
1:09.5 | I'm guessing when it comes to sheer intensity for you nothing compares to the events of January |
1:15.4 | 2010 you're absolutely right about that you were 35 years old and somehow you'd |
1:22.3 | impress people enough that President Obama had just put you in |
1:25.8 | charge of an organization called USAID which had a budget of 20 billion |
1:30.4 | dollars a year and it's responsible for most of the US foreign aid |
1:34.8 | activity. You hadn't even been with that organization for a week when a devastating |
1:41.0 | earthquake hits Haiti killing hundreds of thousands of people |
1:44.8 | one of the deadliest single events in recorded history. Do you remember where you |
1:50.7 | were and what you were doing when you first heard about the earthquake? |
1:54.0 | I remember absolutely. I had just finished touring the emergency operations center |
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