On this episode of the OneHaas Podcast, host Sean chats with Andrew MacNeil, Executive MBA class of 2017. Andrew is currently the Global Head of Enablement at Flexport. He is also a Coach, Advisor, and Mentor for the UC Berkeley Executive Education program.

Andrew shares his background growing up in a military family and his time as a US Army Special Forces Officer. He also talks about why he ended up at Haas after leaving the military and how his career in the tech space took off after he graduated.

Andrew also tells us about his time in Afghanistan, where he met an Afghan Army Special Forces Soldier who eventually became his friend. Amid the current situation in the country, Andrew started a fundraiser to help his friend and his family attempt to escape Taliban persecution and land safely in the United States. 

Episode Quotes:

What a business school acceptance can do to jumpstart your career

“It's actually very hard to get someone in technology to hire you out of the military. I struggled very much trying to get an interview, and the funniest thing about it was as soon as I got the Berkeley acceptance, I popped that thing on my resume and got an interview. No one was giving me the time of day before that. It was just a testament to that. Once Berkeley's willing to sign off on you, you have the street cred. Some of my friends call it the technology stink. I was able to get into the program and hadn't learned anything really yet, but all of a sudden, everyone's taking my calls and took me seriously.”

How you can extend your help to the people of Afghanistan

“You can support in two ways. One, keep asking these questions of what's the plan? You can secure an airport all you want, but if people can't get to it, that's not a great solution. And it's not just about America. It's about tens of thousands of people that helped us along the way. And if you think about our ability to have a strong level of national security on the global scale, who's going to want to partner with us after this? Who's going to trust that they're going to be taken care of when they help us? We need to fix it. So, that's one part of it.

The second part of it is continuing to look for nonprofit organizations that are raising money to get people out of there, to support them after they land. There's a lot of opportunities out there to help these organizations.”

Show Links:

• LinkedIn Profile
• Gofundme Mirwais
• Gofundme: Emergency Afghan Rescue Mission

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