Journey of an Immigrant – from Consultant to Educator – Sumantra Sengupta, Ph.d

In 805conversations by Mark Sylvester

You have to have a global mindset

Big data is important, but small data still does matter.”Professor Sengupta

Dr. Sumantra Sengupta, from California Lutheran University (CLU), has an interesting story about his journey to the classroom. He shared this with Mark and Patrick and talked about how his life’s work informs his discussions with his students. He’s written a lot of books on the subjects of Globalizations, Optimizing Supply Chains, Streamlining Corporations and other topics of deep interest.

They covered a broad range of topics including:

• How he took his professional interests in agricultural trading and turned them into a business. How to look at your business from a global perspective to scale it

• How to look at your business from a global perspective to scale it appropriately

• Working with global partners and how regional differences affect decisions

• Working with Japan

• Advice about ‘leaving something on the table’ during negotiations. i.e. you don’t have to win every battle or every point, every time.

• He’s got some thoughts about people who don’t listen

• He says we should consider being aware enough to know when to exit a situation. How to read the signs, especially when they are all pointing in the wrong direction

• His specialty: Turnarounds. He loves them

• Loved the part of the conversation about how to fire a client

• A recounting of the story about how he was recruited and hired by Gerhard at CLU

• What’s his rule of thumb about being available and his thoughts on responsiveness

This episode was another in our continuing CLU series that continues to inspire and encourage us to dig deeper with the amazing educators that are all around us. You don’t have to be in school to learn from these Jedis.