The Birth of Time Irado

Ahem, is this thing on? Check 1-2-3. Okay great, technology is great when it works isnt it? Lets go with the first blog for Time Irado.

Time Irado (Ch-E-May E-Raw-do) was born on August 30th, 2011 in Secaucus New Jersey. It was a morph of sorts, stemming from Team Brazil's desire to became Team Awesome. Team Brazil is comprised of Katie Duggan, FIDS Manager from New York City (shout-out to my peeps in 5 Times Square), Jamie Shafer, Advisory Manager from Detroit (thats right, good people still live in Detriot), and myself, Tyler D. Schleich, Tax Manager from Columbus (home of THE Ohio State Buckeyes).


Enough with the introductions, Team Brazil is a group of 3 people who were selected to be a part of Ernst & Young's Corporate Responsibility Fellowship.  The Fellowship, for lack of trying to keep posts under 5,000 words, is a skill-based volunteer initiative of our firm, where "top performers" (I use the term loosely because Im included) travel to emerging markets and are paired with some of Latin America's top Entrepreneurs. Note Entrepreneur is spelled with a capital E as these guys (and gals) are the real deal. Every businessman has a story, but not everyone has the guts, glory, and appetite to lay it all out on the line like these transcendent personalities who grow businesses with nothing more than a dream (and a little cash helps too). Back to your question "Tyler, Can I know more about the Ernst & Young Corporate Responsibility Fellowship Program?" - the answer is yes, you can know more and I will provide you with a link so you can read it from someone who was paid to describe the progarm rather than some tax accountant trying to make a few people laugh with this blog! Ernst & Young Corporate Responsibility  -- in case you missed it, that is the link you should click on to read more about E&Y's Corporate Responsibility efforts and the link for the CR Fellows Program is about halfway down the page in light blue (if your monitor is working properly).

The Program is a collaboration between Ernst & Young and Endeavor, to help foster growth, create jobs, and build communities. Endeavor is a global not-for-profit that (rather a not-for-profit to help people make profit but stay with me), according to http://www.endeavor.org/, is leading the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high impact entrepreneurs around the world. There is a lot of great people working on the ground in several offices to help Endeavor spread its cause and last year Endeavor Entrepreneurs generated $286 for every dollar donated to Endeavor. There are facts upon facts that support their cause so take a few minutes to look at their website.

So with this great collaboration between Ernst & Young and Endeavor, the Corporate Responsibility Fellows transplant themselves in emerging markets for about two months each fall and are continuing to help companies in the emerging markets grow at unprecendented rates. For instance, I will be paired with an Entrepreneur who is changing the way construction and building materials are produced, delivered, and installed, which given that Brazil is experiencing a construction boom is a good thing, but as most business professionals know, growing too fast is not always a good thing. Technial resources are needed along the way including Legal, Information Technology, Accounting, Tax, and the list goes on. Thats where a program like CR Fellows comes into play, by helping to provide some of that technical help that may be missing. So Team Brazil, heads to Sao Paulo for just under two months to donate about a thousand skillbased volunteer hours to  three Brazillian Entrepreneurs.

"How do I get involved?" is what you are thinking I know. I have good news and bad news. If you are an Ernst & Young employee (manager or above) you can sign up for the 2012 CR Fellows Program by reaching out to Lisa Nussbuam, the Program Manager. If you are an E&Y employee but not yet a manager, it's another reason for you not to "quit" before making manager (no one likes a quitter anyway right? jk to the 163 people that are in my "EY Graveyard" group on my sametime list)! If you are not an Ernst & Young employee, you can do one of two things. You can finish you accounting degree, get a job with E&Y, put in 5-6 year to make manager, apply for the program, reapply the next year, get accepted, and then create a clever blog that you can be the author to. If you have already graduated with that Nuclear Engineering Degree or perhaps "General Studies", your route may be a bit longer, but you would just need to go back to school to get an accounting degree and repeat steps 2-6 as mentioned before. In all seriousness, both E&Y employees and non employees can get invovled by donating to Endeavor as well via their website by clicking the big "Donate Now" button on their homepage.

Dont worry I am wrapping this blog up, I will make an effort to make these posts short and sweet with lots of pictures but I have a lot of useless knowledge and pent up sarcastic rage that I like to employ into my text because you cant see me make hand gestures or change the tone of my voice. This is a good time to answer your final question, "Tyler, you never finished your story of Time Irado did you?", and its a valid one. Remember, those good people at Endeavor I was telling you about? One of them, Bianca Martinelli, came in to speak to the 2011 CR Fellows class during our meetings in Secaucus on August 30th about Endeavor and our partnership with them. It just so happens, Bianca is from Sao Paulo and I instantly knew I had an email address to ask a lot of random questions to including what should I do about my cell phone, will I be able to get on facebook (just kidding), and etc. Team Brazil, which was appropriately renamed Team Awesome, was then wanting to be translated into Portuguese (Thats right, its Portuguese in Brazil, not Spanish). First thoughts? No not to ask Bianca, but to use Google Translation, which gave us Equipe Terrivel. Apparently that was not a clean translation and Bianca was kind enough to let us in on a little secret, that Time Irado was the local slang and would allow us to win the hearts of the locals (I may have added the bit about winning the hearts of the locals). So it may have taken me thirty minutes to finally get to the point I made in line one, but I think you enjoyed the ride and actually may have learned something. Or it at least gave you time to finish that second glass of wine before the significant other made you shut down your work computer.

Before I go -
A quick shoutout to the rest of the 2011 Ernst & Young Corporate Responsibility Fellows Class.

Mexico
Brendan Maher (FSO Advisory manager, New York)
Shannon Mercolini (ACM Assistant Director, Secaucus)
Michelle Ng (FSO Advisory manager, New York)
Jorge Redhead (TAS manager, Miami)

Argentina
Trisha Chang (Assurance manager, San Francisco)
Kieran Crean (Advisory senior manager, San Francisco)
Rom Ginzburg (TAS manager, Tel Aviv)

Chile
Vivek Menon (Advisory manager, Austin)
Matt Ringelheim (Advisory manager, Boston)

Also, a shoutout to Lisa Nussbaum and Beth Rosemond who are the brains behind the Program!
Not bad for 1,200 words.