IS TSAI CITY THE FUTURE OF YALE?
ASK ANDREW McLAUGHLIN ’91, THE DIRECTOR
Date/Time: Monday, April 23, 2018 | 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Reception begins at 6:00pm, followed by presentation and Q&A
Location: College Room at the University Club
1673 Sherman Street | Denver, CO
Tickets: $20 | Please sign up by Thursday, April 19th, noon.
This year’s Redpath lecturer is Andrew McLaughlin ’91, director of the new Tsai City (Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale). As described by President Salovey, “the center will be a hub of creative activity at the very heart of our new — and rapidly expanding — innovation corridor…the center will bring together students from all backgrounds and a wide range of academic perspectives. And the unifying thread will be their goal of seeking innovative solutions to real-world problems.” At this event, alumni can learn about the new vision for Old Eli and the Yalie (Trumbull ’91) at the helm.
Not simply an addition to Yale’s curriculum, the center is part of a major interdisciplinary push that has implications for how resources are directed and utilized as well as how the university refines or redefines its role in educating students as “innovators, leaders, pioneers, creators, and entrepreneurs in all fields and for all sectors of society. We aim…to develop the skills crucial to an innovative mindset: design thinking, problem-framing, creative synthesis, clear communication, and refined judgment.” [city.yale.edu] In addition, the dynamic structure of Tsai City encourages involvement and collaboration with alumni, and we hope to introduce Andrew to developments in Colorado.
The title of Andrew’s talk is “How Yale Fosters Innovative Thinking”: he will start with the general policy problems that society faces in general, and then how Yale came up with the idea of Tsai CITY to address them, and then how Tsai CITY is going to work and how it fits into the university community.
On the frontline of 21st-century entrepreneurial and non-profit communication issues, Andrew’s experience and expertise will offer much for discussion: he helped launch and manage ICANN, the Internet’s technical coordinating organization, serving as Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. As Director of Global Public Policy at Google, he led the company’s work on issues like freedom of expression and censorship, surveillance and law enforcement, privacy, copyrights and trademarks, regulation of Internet and telecommunications networks, wireless radio spectrum, national security, trade policy, patent reform, and online child protection, and he co-led Google’s Africa strategy and operations. From 2009-2011, Andrew was a member of President Obama’s senior White House staff, serving as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, responsible for advising the President on Internet, technology, and innovation policy, including open government, cybersecurity, online privacy and free speech, spectrum policy, federal R&D priorities, entrepreneurship, and the creation of open technology standards and platforms for health care, energy efficiency, and education. Subsequently, Andrew was Vice President of Tumblr and served as the start-up executive director of Civic Commons, a new Code for America initiative that helps governments build, share, and implement open-source technologies. He co-founded Higher Ground Lab,has been a partner at betaworks, run business operations at Medium and Tumblr, and has been CEO of Digg and Instapaper. He chairs the board of Access Now, is a board member of Public Knowledge and Chartbeat, and is director of the Sunlight Foundation.
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Hosted by Colorado Yale Association