Here is a story of love, ambition and unyielding spirit. Join me, as we delve into Igor’s captivating but understated narrative as Igor and Mari embark on an adventure of a lifetime.
Transcript
Frank: Igor, what’s happening in about six weeks time?
Igor: In about six weeks time, let me imagine a calendar in front of me.
Frank: It’s now the 14th of June.
Igor: Okay, so in six weeks, I will be very anxious to travel to the United States, but in one month and two weeks, well, yes, one month and a week, I will be traveling to the United States to live there for four years.
Frank: Okay, Los Angeles.
Igor: Yep, Los Angeles.
Frank: So, the information I have is that this is not entirely a voluntary trip because you will be accompanying your girlfriend, Mariana, to Los Angeles. So, give us the background story to this. What happened?
Igor: Okay, so let me think where I can start. So, there are moments in my life that I don’t believe in, like, I’m not religious, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in supernatural stuff, but there are times in my life that for some reason, everything aligns, right? So, there’s no explanation. Like, I didn’t plan, but things align and everything goes as it should have gone. And this case, it’s one of them because in 2020, yes, beginning of 2020, I was married and I broke up with my ex-wife and I was in a position in which I had a company, but I was already thinking to sell this company and I didn’t know exactly what I would do next. So, I was busy because I had my company, but I couldn’t, if you asked me at the time what I would be doing five years in advance, I had absolutely no idea. So, I was in this situation. So, 2020 goes by and in 2021, I met Mari, which is my girlfriend, and we start to talk, we start to dating, and Mari, she was a pedagogy student here in Brazil. But she’s a very science-oriented person and she always wanted to pursue an academic career because she really loved the process of doing research, discussing, studying. She’s a nerd like me, basically. And by the end of last year, she started to apply to a PhD program because she was finishing her graduation here in Brazil. And she, in Brazil, and I think most of places in the world, teachers are not very valued, right? So, in terms of career, being a teacher in Brazil, it’s not a good idea. It’s almost like a hero decision to be a teacher here in Brazil. And then she started to consider studying and there were many opportunities to study abroad and the best one she found was studying in Los Angeles because first, she is really passionate about a specific person, which name is Mary Helen.
She is a researcher, very popular researcher in neuroeducation and even before considering the PhD, Mari, she followed this researcher, and she was very excited to know that she was opening a PhD program. And also, United States has a combination of factors which make it attractive for us. First thing, the weather. Like Mari, she hates rain and cloudy weather. So, we had to eliminate a lot of options. The proximity to Brazil, not only in terms of mileage, but also in terms of accessibility. There is an airport in Los Angeles with straight flights through São Paulo if something happens and you want to come back or visit family. And also, the fact of this scholarship she got is really good. She has a scholarship for the whole process of the PhD, which is not common. And she won’t have to pay one cent and not only have to pay, but she will receive a salary. So, those factors combined made her choose United States. And that was the reasoning to her. My reasoning was, that’s why I started to talk about 2020. I was in a similar situation because, okay, I sold my marketing agency in Brazil. I’m working, but besides that, I couldn’t really see my future because I have a very comfortable life, but I don’t have big challenges. I don’t have big dreams as well. So, I was kind of, okay, I’m working here, everything is fine, but I have no idea what I’m going to do next. And then came this situation in which Mari, she decided to go to United States. And then I said, okay, since I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m going with you. And after making the decisions, I got really excited because there are so many things I want to do in Los Angeles. I’m sure I’m going to learn so much. There are a very live and exciting Jiu Jitsu community in Los Angeles. And that’s why I said that things just align because if I had choose someone place to live, I always liked the United States and now I have a reason and I have a good motivation to thrive there for four years. And if I didn’t have, like, let’s say, I didn’t meet Mari or I met her, but she would stay here in Brazil forever. I have no idea what I would do, and I don’t think that’s a good sign. So that’s why everything aligned.
Frank: This is true love. She inspired you. Yeah.
Igor: Yes, a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this feeling of going somewhere in which you don’t know what’s going to happen, at least for me, that’s something which it’s healthy for me, really healthy. When I am bored, for example, I tend to eat a lot. Sometimes I sleep a lot. I wouldn’t call that a depression, but I just start to do like dumb things in terms of health and motivation. So, I can’t be bored. I have to have a challenge. I have to have a perspective. And that’s why one of the reasons I think everything aligns so well. I have no idea what would happen if I didn’t have this right now, because I have to be bored.
Frank: I have two songs floating in my head now. Okay. Maybe we can stand this. So, we have, I think it’s the Mamas and the Papas. “It never rains in Southern California”. That covers the weather side. And then we just move on to Pink Floyd, “Comfortably Numb”, where you would be in that situation as well. Okay. So a million questions coming out of this dialogue. So first of all, which campus is she going to be working at or studying at?
Igor: Yeah, she’s going to the University of Southern California, USC.
Frank: USC. So I’m sure that you will be able to send some sweatshirts, something with USC written.
Igor: Probably. Yeah.
Frank: We’ll do a little international trade there. All right. So, between deciding that you want to sort of pursue an academic career to figuring out where you’re going to go, comes then the process of actually kick-starting this whole process. So, what did Mari actually have to do to get, I mean, this is incredible. She studies, she’s going to do her PhD and they’re paying her a scholarship and a salary of, it may not be very much, but a token salary. They’re paying her to do this. So, A, she must be incredibly intelligent, incredibly talented. So, compliment that way. But how do you actually set the ball in motion to say, okay, let’s do this to booking flights and whatever else? Because the United States is not always the easiest country to stay in. And you’ve made a couple of references in past conversations where you sometimes get the impressions that Brazilians are even more disadvantaged than other nationalities. So, tell us the story about between plan and reality.
Igor: Well, so I was, and I am as surprised as you, like in terms of getting this opportunity, because yeah, it’s just amazing what she got, right? Because she will study with like top researchers on her field. It’s not just study, usually it happens when you are a teenager, you don’t have a very high criteria on where you want to study or what you want to study. You just want to study because that’s what the playbook says you have to do, right?
In case of Mari, she wanted to study this with those people. It’s like they are the top researchers in the world in her field, right? That’s the first thing. Then not only that, she got accepted, but she won’t have to pay anything, and she will get paid, right?
And I would add the one factor just to make the point how intelligent she is. I consider myself a smart person, but she’s 10 times smarter than me. What’s usually the academic journey to a PhD? You graduate, then you do a master’s degree, then you doctorate, and then a PhD.
She went straight to the PhD. She just finished college. When she got accepted to the PhD program, she didn’t have her diploma yet. So, I’m just showing this information to have a sense how smart she is. So yeah, sometimes it’s hard to believe, but she got that and that’s what’s going on right now. And the process for her, I would never be able to go through this process because it’s a very bureaucratic one.
And we were just talking about a detailed focus of the person, detail-oriented person. It’s a process in which you have to be really, really careful in terms of details because you just have one chance. If you apply to a college, to a university, and you don’t get accepted, the chance of you getting accepted next year, it’s very low because they already evaluated you, right? So, it’s very hard. So, you have basically one shot.
Then what she did, which at the time I was thinking, oh, are you sure this is the best take on that? She chose one university, which is USC, and she focused all the energy in this one application. And I would never do that because I am the kind of process person who likes to do, like to aim in a lot of things, shots for a lot of things and hope that some of the shots get to the target. But no, she focuses like one month of energy and focus on this application.
And the application, just to give you a summary, you need reference. So, she had to go search for three references from her teachers referencing English. And those have to be very well written. So, it’s not just asking, you have to ask, make sure the person understands what they need to write. It must be English and blah, blah, blah, a lot of details on there.
She needed to show that she had experience with research, which she did. So, she had to translate a lot of research she was involved into. And also, how the bureaucracy process of providing documentations about health, about schools, history, and a lot of documents. So that was the process. After her application got approved by the first set of defences from the university, she got a meeting with Mary Helen, which is the Head of the Department, the one she admires.
After this meeting, she would talk to a few more people in the university, but in the end of the day, the decisions would be made by the head, Mary Helen. So, after she went through the process, she had to wait like maybe three or four weeks. And one day she was, I think she was working, and she got a call from Mary Helen, she said she was approved.
And the process, I think that’s quite a standard United States. When you get approved, the university will make you an offer. So, Mary Helen wrote the offer, the acceptance letter, the offer, and Mary, of course, accepted. So, like officially she was in.
And after that, there’s a lot of work in terms of visa. The university has a lot of information. They also provide a lot of support for immigrants. And since we have a dog, we also had to look to this bureaucratic work to bring the dog and basically a lot of bureaucracy. Right now, we are very set in terms of pay to work. We are very happy because most of the things are done, even the flight tickets are bought. The only thing we are looking and worrying now, it’s the apartment we’re going to live in, but it seems like an easy process as well. It’s not a big concern for us. That’s a summary.
Frank: So, you said that Mari works at the moment, was working. So, what did she actually do or what was her job while she was applying for all of this?
Igor: Okay, that’s an interesting story. She used to work as a teacher, like for kids. She used to teach kids, right, at a school here where we live. And that’s an interesting story because one of the reasons she had the time to apply because she was studying and working, she didn’t have that much time.
But one of the reasons she got the time to apply, and it was a very lucky one. And on other examples, when things just align by themselves, she got injured because she used to do Kung Fu and she got kicked on her knee and she was injured for one month. She couldn’t walk very well. She went through surgery. It was a difficult period for her. And she got a license to take care of herself from the work. So she had a lot of free time. She didn’t have to work during this period. And the university was on vacation. So, she had basically 24 hours of free time every day for one month. That’s one of the reasons. When her medical license expired and she went back to school, it was in the, well, February of this year. She, like in the first day, and unfortunately, it’s a common practice in Brazil. It happens a lot. When she got back to the school, she got fired because she was like three months off medical license. Right? It’s like the legislation here in Brazil, it’s pretty hard and tough. We have one of the most restricted work legislations, but people still can do those kinds of stuff. So, she got fired.
But here’s the interesting story. She got fired on a Monday and she got the call from Mary Helen on the Tuesday. So, we like to joke that, I told her that I would do that, but she didn’t allow. I would call like the owner of the school. Oh, do you know you just fired someone who got approved in the PhD in our area? The top researchers on your field are you working on it? But she didn’t allow us.
Frank: She probably did it herself.
Igor: So, she’s so nice to do that. I would do for sure.
Frank: So just let me get my head around this. So Mari was working for the Brazilian education system.
Igor: Yes.
Frank: Teaching primary or high school kids.
Igor: Like four or five years kids.
Frank: Okay. So the national curriculum.
Igor: Yes.
Frank: And then she, because she’s out sick, she’s on sick leave. She decides what can I do with my life. Focuses on that and lands with a scholarship at USC. I mean, this is a trajectory. Why doesn’t this happen to anybody? I mean, I think it’s fantastic, but what a trajectory. And then, of course, it’s an absolute seamless transition. Yeah. So.
Igor: Well, just to complement, which is very interesting as well. So, she got fired, but in Brazil, when you get fired, you have like six months of sick… I don’t know how to say that, but you receive your salary for six months. Right. Okay. So, she got fired in February and she’s receiving her salary until July. It’s perfect. It seems like it was planned, but it wasn’t.
Frank: I mean, you could almost say there is a God somewhere because the way this works seamlessly is absolutely incredible. Okay. But I mean, it just shows the laser. If you have a really, laser sharp focus and you set yourself the goal that you will achieve this. And then, and Mari just proves the point. So, how does one celebrate the loss of a job and the gain of a scholarship? So when you, when, when the phone calls, when the phone calls, when the phone calls, how does one celebrate the loss of a job and the gain of a scholarship?
So when you, when, when the phone, when the message came through, what did the, what did the pair of you do? Did you go out for some dinner somewhere or did you just, that’s nice. I got it. We’re going to LA in a couple or what happened?
Igor: It was funny because she got fired. She would teaching at 1 PM, something like that. And she went to the school, and they asked her to go to the HR and fired her. She called him at the time. She wasn’t sad or crying out of that. She just, because, uh, she, she had a sense that that could happen because she had colleagues, which, which, who went through the same process of having the sick leave. And once they come back, they get fired. So, she like, it was a surprise of course, but it like, she had that on her mind that could happen. Right. So, she called, uh, called me at the time. I, so we went to have lunch. We talked about that, but it wasn’t a big deal. She was, she wasn’t like very sad or anything like that.
But in the next day she started to look for gigs because she was, she had free time and the bills still come. Uh, and although she would receive a salary, the salary would be lower than she would get if she was, were working. So, she had, she started to look for gigs, uh, and she, she got two or three gigs. So, I get that week, she walked as a freelancer on something, but on Tuesday she got the call. It was at night. So, she, we, she went here, and it was a mixed feeling because, okay, of course it’s a really great news. She got approved, but we started to think on so many things because there are her situation in terms of, okay, how, how going to be the financial, financial in Los Angeles, what documents you have to, to see how she gonna apply to the visa. There are so many questions and the, and also my side, because we, before she got approved, we didn’t stop to talk about me, what would happen if she got approved. And then we talked to that night, and it was a very productive, uh, talk because I said, I was planning, of course, if she got approved, I would go. So, I said, Oh, I would go if you, unless you want to go alone, I I’m fine going with you because I’m working for American company. I have savings. That’s not a big deal. And I think it would be, it would be healthy for me. But, uh, I had, I had the, I had of course the tourist visa, so I can go to United States, but right now my visa situation can’t stay longer than one year. I can say just one year. So what we planted and we planted that night was that, okay, I, I’m going, but I have to find a way to stay longer, of course, legally, because I want, I don’t want to stay illegally. And one of the options, there are two options, three options actually, but one of the options and the one we chose is like, uh, eventually I have to study something on the United States because they, a student visa is almost a guarantee to get right. The other ones, you have the risk of not getting, and they are a little bit more, um, risky of not getting approved. The student visa is an easy one. Uh, and eventually I have to study there, which is something I think I didn’t mention. So that was the process, but it was an easy one. I think we didn’t have a moment of like huge anxiety. I think we are very good, uh, on, so we, Mari and I, we are very good at solving problems. So things, things show up, we figure out how to solve and then we wait, the other things show up and that’s how we live.
Frank: Okay. So, so, um, everything, everything is, is in place. You’ve got your flight tickets. Um, the dog, the dog is coming with you. Um, the dog, the dog has been vaccinated. Um, there’s a, we talked about it earlier a couple of months ago. Uh, it’s quite a big dog. Isn’t he,
Igor: yeah, she’s a 32 kilogram, seventeen pounds dog.
Frank: Okay. Um, and, and, and she will be in the, in the cabin with you or will they, um, sedate her or how do you get a dog from Brazil to, to Los Angeles?
Igor: So, she’s going with us in the cabin, but it’s not standard. So, we just got this, uh, this way of going with him because, uh, we, we did our research and there is a consulting firm in Brazil. It’s very small one, just a couple in San Paulo that they do consulting. So, you can take your dog with you in the cabin and the method they do that because when you have a small dog, I think it’s, uh, lightest than 10 kilograms, something like that.
You can just put in the box and move you in the cabin without much problem. But when the dog is huge, huge, uh, he can go in the cabin, but there might be a reason. And usually there are two reasons. So, well, actually just one reason. It must be a service dog, right? It must be, he can weigh like true 200 kilograms. Well, if it, if it is a service dog, he must go and there’s no discussion. Like, so she got, uh, um, I’m trying to, to think how, how would call English, but she, like, he went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist wrote a letter to say that her dog, it’s, uh, of emotional support. And that’s, that’s how we got the chance to bring him with us.
That’s the process. Well, it’s a summary because, okay, you have, we will need these documentations, but you have to book a flight, which you have space for him. You have to inform the airplane, the airplane company, right? The airline. And then you have to have a document for when you arrive in the airport. And that’s a lot of documents involved, but that’s the emotional support strategy. Okay.
Frank: So, um, and now you’re at the stage of looking for, um, a place to live. And that reminds me that on Netflix, there is this really, really bad series called Selling Sunset, which is the, it’s a sort of, uh, a soap documentary. Uh, there’s a, a realtor in the Hollywood area, um, uh, called JR Oppenheimer and they sell high-end luxury properties. Uh, so if you need something really swanky, um, that would be possible, but, um, jokes aside, how do you, how do you, uh, how close are you to, to finding a, um, a place to live? Um, and what is it? You just contact a realtor in somewhere and say, hi, we’re from Southern Brazil and we’re going to move. We’re going to move to LA. And can we, can we, um, what have you got? Can you show us something or what do you do?
Igor: Okay. So, we are very close and we went through a learning curve, uh, in terms of finding a place, because first thing we, we started to search on our online catalogues of apartments as everyone do nowadays. And we started to list a lot of apartments. We like it. And we had this huge list. So, but we got very quickly. We understood that with the, uh, the rotativity, it’s very high. So, like if you find a place next week, the chance of this place being rented is very high in Los Angeles. So, there is no point of making a list. That’s the first lesson.
The second lesson is, okay, let’s, let’s wait until June to rent a place because we can just apply. And even if you have to pay a rent before getting to the United States, that’s fine. And then we started this month, but, uh, we started to understand that there are companies like leasing agents that they are definitely not prepared to deal with immigrants. And here, of course, I’m talking about the legal immigrants. So, they like on the application form, they don’t give the option to give the passport. Like the, the social security numbers are required the field, a lot of details that doesn’t make sense for immigrants and you call them. They don’t know how to answer. Sometimes they don’t answer. So, okay. First, uh, first lesson, uh, you, you can’t wait to have to choose and apply. Second lesson, you have to, to, to find out companies that are prepared to deal with immigrants moving to the United States. Right.
And, and, okay. And the third lesson in which we are right now is that, okay, apply. It’s not so difficult. Once you find a place and you have the application form, which makes sense for immigrants, you have to apply and go through the process. So, we are now at this moment looking for places and we have, like, we feel like some place you, you apply right away. We got approved in two places, uh, right now, but we, we are still choosing because those two places are very good. And we are still looking for more places because we want to have more options. The bad side of doing that, you have to pay to apply, which is something new. In Brazil we never did that. And I don’t think any company charge for applying. I don’t know how it’s Europe, but the United States, you have to feel the fee varies from 25 to $50, but you have to apply and pair adults. So, I have to pay for my application. They might have to pay for her. So, like, we can’t, we can’t do that forever. That’s the process.
Frank: Okay. That’s, um, does it also, um, the, the restrictive way of, of finding a realtor and, and someone who will work with you, et cetera, does that also have a bearing on where you actually can live in LA I mean, LA is a huge place and you probably have, um, you’ll have your preferences. Um, but, uh, do you find that, um, what you and Mari want to do can actually also be, be, uh, accommodated that if you want to live in Malibu or Venice Beach or something like that, that you can actually do that, or, or have you found that, um, uh, because of your, your status that you are being pushed into less favourable parts of, of,
Igor: Well, we can choose to live whatever we want. We are not restricted in, in any terms, but we are prioritizing at least for the first year to leave the closest possible to the university, because we, we are not sure if we want to drive in Los Angeles. You want to see how it goes first. Uh, there are a lot of adaptations and having to commute every day, uh, to the university will be one more level of complexity. And we basically, Mari and I, we hate traffic. Like we really hate, it’s not like, oh, it’s annoying. No, we do everything we can to avoid the traffic here, even here in Brazil. So that’s the number of number one priority, which, um, it’s a challenge because Los Angeles. Okay. Los Angeles is a huge…it’s 18 million people and they are facing dealing right now with a huge problem of, uh, homeless people. Um, so that’s the problem number one, because there are places, and we did our research, we talked with people who live there. There are places that are beautiful. Uh, it’s a nice place to live, but, uh, there’s simply a lot of homeless people.
And the problem with homeless people, that’s that most of them over 95% of them are drug addicts. It’s like a real data. It’s not guessing like most of them. So, there are drugs, right? So, it’s not a nice place to live. That’s the, so we, we have to really understand how is the neighbourhood is not just, so this neighbourhood is nice. Just, just to give example, Santa Monica, it’s a very nice neighbourhood, but it’s one of the most troubled places in terms of homeless people. So, we have to investigate and most of the homeless people are in the downtown where the university is. So that’s the first challenge. And the second one it’s violence itself, because I’m not attributing, uh, I don’t think because of course we have a lot of homeless people in Brazil and, uh, the violence and homeless people, they are not, uh, related factors, right? So. Just because there are a lot of homeless people doesn’t mean there are a lot of violence.
However, there are places in Los Angeles, one in particular, which is called a Skid Row, which is like, if you search on YouTube, it’s like, it’s really scary because there are so many homeless people, but it’s like, uh, they are not just homeless. There are a lot of drug dealing, uh, between those homeless people. And there are like blocks and blocks of people living in the tents on the street and a lot of, uh, drug dealing and therefore a lot of violence. And it’s very risky to walk on those neighbourhoods. And everyone talks about Skid Row in terms of, okay, just don’t go there and period, don’t consider going on Skid Row and Skid Row. It’s not that far from the university. It’s like in the North East, right? So we have to live in the downtown, but we have two levels of complexity. We want to live West of the university because East is Skid Row. And we have to really do our homework in terms of understanding the neighbourhood, because it’s very risky to have a nice place, uh, like an internal nice place, a nice house, a beautiful building, but in front of your building has like 10 tents of homeless people there. That’s very risky. So that’s where we are right now.
Frank: Okay. Okay. So, um, the clock’s ticking so we can like all these discussions, they go on for weeks and weeks. Um, so, uh, no doubt you are going, you are both excited. It’s a huge opportunity. Um, um, it’s a life-changing, um, scenario. And basically, uh, you said in 2020, you didn’t know where you were, uh, where the road was going to take you. It’s now 2023. And do you know that for the next four years, uh, the road will take you to Los Angeles, but the horizon is still, it’s still very, very blurred. Um, but, um, what excites you and Mari most about, um, about going to to LA? What are you, what are you both, um, hoping to, apart from career and opportunities, what are you both hoping to, to gain from this medium to long term?
Igor: Um, yeah, there are different because for Mari, of course, is her, uh, academic journey, right? So, we’ll be very challenged as well. It’s like she got approved, but now she has, she has to study with those amazing people. So, we will be very challenged for her. Uh, so I think that’s what most excited her.
Uh, for me, it’s like basically what excites me in general, which is, uh, leaving new experiences and learning. So, there are so many things I want to do in California in general. Uh, I want to travel to, to national parks. I want to do jujitsu in different gyms. There are, it’s very, uh, scattered things I want to do. There is not a one focus, but something that both of us are very excited to, we are living together since, uh, April, right? But we, we didn’t rent this house. I was living here. We didn’t, uh, we never, we never thought it as a home in which we want to make. It’s pretty. That’s the first time we are like building a home. Right. Uh, and we are very excited to that as well.
Frank: Wow. Okay. Last, last question. Um, you work for, for Spencer Greenberg with Clearer Thinking and Sparkwave. Um, how’s that going to impact, um, that you are both going to be in the same country, albeit he on one side and you on the other side of the country, how’s that going to, to work in your favour?
Igor: Uh, well, the, the impacts are basically the time zone. Uh, how Spencer is one hour, uh, before me. So, he will be many hours in front of me. I think I have to do the math, but we’ll be different. Uh, and I like, like specifically talking about the Sparkwave, I think it to be, we affect in a positive way, because I want, uh, to do a lot of things in New York, which, uh, Spencer lives. So I will probably meet him in person and I think that’s good in many, uh, main fronts, right?
Main fronts, right? So it’s, it’s easier to create proximity. I will be closer to embrace more opportunities. I will meet more people. So that’s one thing, but in terms of my career in general, I think it’s, it will be like very positive because I can, I have so many options in Los Angeles, the United States in general, like if I want to build a company as I did in Brazil, I’m sure, uh, there are a lot of opportunities and the chance of being successful is very high.
If I want to pursue a career, uh, in the Effective Altruism Movement, there are a lot of events in the United States, and they can go and attend and I can do whatever I want. If I want to like to work and something completely different, I have the opportunity as well. So, you’ll be very positive in this way. Like what’s not positive, but like in the first analysis, um, at least is like the risk, right?
If, if I find myself without job in Brazil, uh, it’s not a big deal. It can be good at the end because I, my savings are enough to, so I can live comfortably without working, right? But in the United States, I have to, if I don’t have job, I have to find the one as soon as possible, because if I start to spending dollars, my savings will like in four years will be close to zero because it’s very expensive. Oh, right. So that’s the, the, the bad side, but in the first analysis is bad, but who knows? Maybe this, uh, this, this need of driving and hustling is a good thing. That’s something I think about.
Frank: Yeah. Yeah. And, and look, look, luck has been with you. So, the stars will align the crystal balls will glow. The magic will happen. And, um, um, you know, we’ll see what happens in four years time Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, Igor, fascinating story. We need to continue on this one. Um, and of course the closer you get to departure date, the more intense this is going to be. And if we can somehow arrange it for Mari to join us, just to, just to get the, the other perspective onto it, um, and tell her, get her to tell her story and her vision of things that would be brilliant.
Igor: Yeah. Yeah. I invite her, I invite her maybe, uh, maybe we can bring her to a Tuesday meeting.
Frank: That would be brilliant. That would be brilliant. I’m sure Ismar would have a thousand questions for her. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Igor, thanks very much for your time. Um, and we’ll see each other again next week and then in two weeks’ time on this forum and we’ll see, um, where the story takes us.
Igor: Thank you. I hope you have a great evening.
External Links
Mary Helen, University of Southern California. Click Here