Congratulations to our Spring 2016 graduates: Omeke Aliko, Jason Crabtree, and Jeffrey McKown. It is a happy and sad moment for me to see a student closing one chapter and opening the next.
Omeke, a former football player at Rice (yes, all kind of backgrounds!), brought great enthusiasm to the program. He balanced a challenging “day job” as a teacher with classes. He assisted me in work for the APF that supported the development of a foresight competency model and a foresight ecosystem map. Jason was very active throughout his time in the program, always eager to volunteer for extra-curricular activities. As a brand new student, he joined me for an afternoon workshop and ably facilitated a breakout group (I knew then he was going to be just fine). He did our first internship with UNICEF, getting us off on the right foot with them. He was part of our team that helped out with the HISD Urban Debate League. And to cap it off, he earned a six-month internship with Disney! Jeffrey came to us as an already established HR professional with the goal of enhancing his thinking and tool kit. Like Omeke, he was able to balance the program with his demanding day job, and move the program rather quickly. I appreciated how often he was able to bring his work experience to the classroom and see linkages to what we were teaching to what he was doing.
We hope – no, make that expect! — that each will stay involved with the foresight community as they take their next steps! Andy Hines
