User:Doinggreatthings/Athol williams

Athol E. Williams (born June 20, 1970) is a leading strategist, social philosopher and poet. His poetry is written under the pseudonym, AE Ballakisten.

Life

Williams was born in Lansdowne, Cape Town in South Africa in an old converted police station which his parents rented. He has lived at 23 different addresses in 3 countries. In 2009, he married Taryn Lock.

Education

Williams started primary school at St Ignatius Primary School in Claremont, Cape Town in 1976, the year of the Soweto school riots. Tightening of Group Areas Act implementation by the Apartheid government forced him to attend a Coloureds-only school, Turfhall Primary in Belgravia, the following year. He stayed there till 1979 when at the age of 9, his family relocated to Mitchells Plain.

In Mitchells Plain, Williams attended Mitchells Plain Primary No.1 from 1979 till 1982. He then attended Westridge Senior Secondary School, matriculating in 1987. He excelled academically and at sports, leading his school as captain in athletics, baseball and soccer. In 1987 he was awarded provincial colours (Western Province) for baseball and competed in the national schools sports tournament, under the SACOS banner, in Port Elizabeth.

In 1988 he accepted a full scholarship from Boart Longyear to enter a one-year engineering program at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg. Following his successful completion of the program (with distinction) he entered the BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering, graduating in 1992. He was among the first Coloureds to graduate with this degree at Wits. With Apartheid in full swing and rising government crackdown on opposition to Apartheid, Williams became more actively involved in on-campus protests. It was during this time that he experienced the humiliation of racism and the violence of an oppresive regime.

A few months after the 1994 elections that overthrew Apartheid and elected Nelson Mandela as South Africa's first democratic president, Williams started an MBA degree at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. He established friendships with Prof Willard Johnson, who had facilitated his arrival at MIT and Prof Robert Cohen who supported him during his early years at MIT. Williams turned down a USAID-funded scholarhsip to attend another US university, opting instead for MIT even though he had nowhere to live and no money to fund his studies. After a period of initial hardship, the Dean of the MIT Graduate School, Dr Frank Perkins, created a scholarship specifically for Williams which covered full tuition and living expenses. Williams followed the Strategic Management and Consulting track at MIT in preparation for his career as a strategist and management consultant. Williams studied with leading business academics Peter Senge, Stewart Myers, Arnoldo Hax, Arnold Barnett, Rebecca Henderson and Paul Healy. At MIT he was elected to the Student Senate and served as President of the Operations Club and Captain of the Softball team.

In 1997, he started a MSc degree in Finance at the London Business School in the UK on a part-time basis while working full-time. He graduated in 1999 having focussed on Corporate Finance; he studied with world-renowned finance faculty Richard Brealey, Julian Franks and Ian Cooper.

Between 2008 and 2012 Williams took 15 courses in Politics and History at the University of South Africa and in 2010 entered the PhD program in business at Wits Business School which he put on hold in order to attend Harvard.

Williams graduated from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in May 2013 with a MPA degree, with a particular focus on Political Thought & Institutions. At Harvard he met renowned philosopher Roberto Unger with whom he established a working relationship. Williams studied with Robert Putnam, Marshall Ganz, John Ruggie, Mathias Risse and James Robinson. He was instrumental in founding the Reimagining Society Club and editted the poetry book, Our World, Better Together, an initiative that he launched to publish a collection of poems by his Harvard classmates, describing their vision of a better world.

Career

Williams started out as a Mechanical Engineer in South Africa's mining industry. He later spent a few years in a Business Evaluation function at another mining company based in the UK, from where he frequently travelled to Australia, USA, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and India reviewing potential mining investments. Williams spent most of his career in Strategy roles or Management Consulting, for many years with leading global strategy firm, Bain & Company, starting in Boston, spending brief periods in New York and London, and then based in Johannesburg where he was appointed as a Partner. Williams also founded the strategy firm, Taurus Associates, the investment firm Inkunzi Capital and the NGO, Taurus School Solutions. He was the Strategy Director for a leading South African financial services firm and served on over 20 boards including 2 private equity firms. In 2009 he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Public & Development Management School at the University of the Witwatersrand and lectured Strategy and Corporate Finance to MBA students and on executive education programs at various business schools.

Williams has been a speaker at a number of conferences, including:

• Milken Institute Global Conference (2005) on Investing in Africa
• Harvard Kennedy School Education Seminar Series (2012) on Applying Business Insights to Improve School Systems
• Harvard African Development Conference (2013) on SME Financing

Philosophies

One humanity ... borderless society ... cosmopolitanism Non-violence ... vegan Hopeful justice ... Truth ... only the listening Individual duality ... good/evil, propensity/psychological, society 'sick society produces sick people' Label-free ... Path of opportunity ... One finite life ...

Awards

• Selected for the South African Baseball Association national junior team (1985)
• Boart International Engineering Scholarship (1988-1992)
• MIT-South Africa Scholarship (1994-1996), created especially for him
• University of the Witwatersrand, Volunteer Award (2009), for service to the university which includes serving on the board of Wits Enterprise (Pty) Ltd, being elected onto the Executive Committee of the Wits Convocation and serving on the board of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the Wits Business School.
• Inyathelo Philanthropy Award in Education (2012), for founding Taurus School Solutions which works to improve performance of schools in disadvantaged areas in South Africa.
• Selected as a Local Hero in the Mitchells Plain Local Heroes Project (2013) in recognition of his poetry and philanthropy

Publications

Williams has published 2 books of poetry under the pseudonym, AE Ballakisten

• Heap of Stones (2009)
• Talking to a Tree (2011)
• Our World, Better Together (2013) - a book of poetry by his Harvard classmates which he edited and published

He has written articles on strategy, financial performance, leadership and been a commentator on numerous business transactions.

External links

• AE Ballakisten website