Marie's Profile

Chelsea, this comment was indeed very interesting for me, especially as I do not know that much about different types of schools in the United States! I did read several articles about how public schools here often underperform, especially in lower income neighborhoods. The articles I read (mostly in The Economist) often linked this to the way schools are (I believe partially) financed here – through local property taxes, which are higher in wealthier neighborhoods. I was therefore wondering how does it work for such charter schools (to my knowledge, they are also publicly financed)? How can they ensure to invest in such high quality teachers and offer them financial incentives with presumably the same amount of money as their regular public counterparts? Or do they get some additional funding? I would love to get enlightened on this topic!

I really enjoyed reading your comment! Bauhaus was definitely more than just a new trend in architecture, as you so well captured in your comment, but a belief in a comfortable, yet affordable dwelling, also for lower income citizens. I believe we may not fully comprehend how truly revolutionary, and very humane in its core such ideas were at the beginning of the last century. I also had a chance to visit Mies van der Rohe’s (last Bauhaus director) work in central Europe, namely the Villa Tugendhat. This UNESCO world heritage site is a wonderful example of how to make living practical, progressive, yet truly beautiful. The air conditioning system installed in the basement using nothing else but lava stones and water is extraordinary in its simplicity and ingenuity. Movable glass walls allowed for the borderlines between the outside and inside space to disappear. The famous onyx wall offered not only unique distribution of the space but also played around with the illumination of the room. I recommend reading The Glass Room from Simon Mawer if you are interested in this particular house influenced by the Bauhaus ideas!

A very good view on where consulting is heading these days! One thing I would be truly interested in is how these changes will affect the day-to-day work of consulting companies. One of the greatest advantages of hiring consultants is that they run very lean teams. This allows them to quickly get to the core of the questions asked by their clients. However, as teams and solutions offered by the consulting companies become more complex (mirroring complexity of problems faced by the client), and more parties within the consulting companies become involved (e.g. expert on implementation is part of the team, big data team helps run some analyses while an in-house application design team works on some prototypes etc.), I wonder whether the consulting companies will be able to keep their ‘lean’ attitude for which they are so valued. Or will they slowly turn into mere coordinators of large scale projects that involve many different parties?