Friday on campus we had a speaker, Matthew Reynders, that spoke on his journey to where he is today. He spoke about his college career, his jobs and the path he took to get to what he is doing today at Time, Inc. Mr. Reynders spoke on several different aspects in his speech, but the main ones were: to always keep asking questions, network, take a risk, and to surprise yourself and keep thinking bigger.

When he would be put into a new job he would not know much about it and forced himself to ask questions of the people around him to learn his new situation. The importance of asking questions is vital because it shows you are hard working and your ability to contribute to the company. To show someone you want to keep learning is important, and I would of never thought of that importance in selecting someone for a job. Second, he always referenced networking. Networking is important because it gets your name out there. He always talked about the situations he was given and how he networked to get to know people and what else was out there. An important thing I think he mentioned that goes along with networking is the importance of a mentor. Mentors help guide you and teach you along the way, and he mentioned the importance of mentors in his life. Third, Matthew talked about taking a risk. When he was given the opportunity to jump ship to NYC he knew it was a great opportunity and a risk he had to take to keep advancing his career. This forced him to change his goals, but he viewed them as way point to the next big thing, which is a great attitude and mindset to have about life. The last main point was to surprise yourself and to keep thinking bigger. You should never limit yourself because anything is possible for one who thinks positive and believes in themselves.

Overall, I thought the speaker was great. It was a bummer that the NASA lady could not come, but I am happy I forced myself out of bed to come as it was a great opportunity for us to learn and help us with our career path us many of us, including myself are uncertain of what we want to do. It will be interesting where life takes me, but I know that this speech has benefited me.

The Constant Gardener is a story of fight and resiliency to end a drug war in Africa that is not doing justice and is killing innocent people. There is an enormous amount that goes on in this movie, and it is hard to pin point just one thing. I will focus on just one thing that happened at the end of the movie, that was relatively small and had a little of international business, but insurmountable impact and what I think the message of this story is meant to portray.

When Justin was in Sudan at the village it was over took by refugees. He wanted to save one young child, forgive me because I do not know how to spell his name, of the million out there. He tried to bribe the pilot with what was equivalent of 800 dollars to save a young childs life that is worth so much more. But, that is not how things are done in Africa. One does not take bribes, even if it is to save a child’s life. The pilot said that it is pointless to just save one when there are many more out there. These higher authority got into the citizens of Africa’s mind that they are pretty much useless and just a trial. One only looks out for themselves. At least that is the way the drug companies looked at them, that Africa had no potential. They wanted to test their drug there to get it approved, so they could make millions, even billions of dollars. But, what they were really doing was killing and murdering lives of innocent people with amazing potential.

Justins wife, Tessa, was on a mission to make things right amongst the drug companies in Africa and after her murder Justin took responsibility to pursue her dream. But, what I do not think Tessa understood was the extremely high risk she was putting herself in when entering Africa and this war against the drug companies. One thing one must always know when doing international business is the risks involved. This is because one you could risk your life, and you can also risk the relationship with your business partner.

In The Constant Gardener there were many examples of international business, and I just focused on a few. The drug companies act completely with no morals to Kenya and they act unethically, unjust. In this movie their motives are portrayed well and how they just want to make money and are not concerned with the well being of Africa.

The message is from the mother to the little girl. They have been receiving wedding gifts and one of them was this sword. The little girl has been stealing them, and the mother knows it. While they were gathered there in this scene the mother is making it know to the little girl that she knows she is the one doing the stealing. I’m assuming she is telling her that the stealing is wrong, which in the United States when doing business it would also be wrong and would cause havoc and an up roar between families, gangs, business, or whatever it may be. From this aspect of business I feel we are somewhat similar.

When searching for an article I wanted to find something that interests me. I went to google to find my article and found an article on sexism occur in Japan within a sports federation, the Japanese Futbol Federation (JFA). This incident occurred just a few short months ago during the Olympics, and shows clear and decisive sexism. Japan is one of the stronger countries in the world, but lack equal men and women rights.

As many people know, and if you do not here you go, futbol, or soccer, is the most popular sport in the world. With the role sports play in our society today soccer has become an enormous international business. Even if soccer is not that big of a sport here, us as Americans need to realize that this sport is a huge part of other cultures. Other countries live and die for this. Teams have sponsors, sign players from all over the world, travel the world, etc. This incident occurred in Japan this calender year in preparation for the Olympics and during the Olympics. The Japanese Women’s National Soccer team upon preparation for the Olympics and the Olympics was signed to travel economy class to matches. This may not seem like that big of deal. Like “oh, big deal suck it up”, they are just being stuck up professional athletes, but the Japanese Men National Soccer team traveled first class to all games in preparation for the Olympics and to the Olympics.

The Women Japanese National team won the last World Cup, one of the biggest international sporting events aside from the Olympics, and beat our own USA Women National team. The president of the JFA,Junji Ogura, was quoted saying, “The players have showed brilliance of Japanese women.” But, this brilliance he described did not last long, as they were put right back below professional status. “They (the men) apparently have “professional status”, where as the women have yet to be given it or earned it.” The women are ranked third in the world, won the most prestigious soccer tournament in the world, and compete in the Olympics every 4 years. Where as the men are ranked 20th in the world, and have only made one Olympics in the last 29 years and fail to compete amongst top tier teams.

It is clear that women in Japan lack the power, strength, and status of men. It does not matter how successful they are, they will as of now always be less than men. This has been a problem for many years and is a part of the Japanese culture. A woman was quoted saying this has been a longstanding inequality and a source of contention. We tend to be naive to inequalities like this all over the world, as it is not as relevant in the US, but it needs to be known how women are treated in many other countries. With this example of women in Japan, I believe it is vital that US businesses restrict the placement of female employees, as business with females in many parts of the world is unaccepted and could greatly effect MNCs. This is extremely sad, but the awareness is the start of something to making it right.

Braswell, M.C., Olympic sexism from japan: men flew business, women flew coach to london. AllMediaNY. www.allmediany.com/news