The Foreign Service Journal, June 2013

54 JUNE 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS Unreasonable at State: It’s Not What You Think Definition of UNREASON- ABLE- 1. a : not governed by or acting according to reason <unreasonable people> b : not conformable to reason : absurd <unreason- able beliefs> 2 : exceeding the bounds of reason or moderation <working under unreason- able pressure> Unreasonable hangs out with a lot of negative words, such as ridiculous, nuts, crazy and impossible, to name just a few. Daniel Epstein—along with George Bernard Shaw— decided that unreasonable didn’t have to hang with the aforementioned words. Instead, it belonged with words like brilliant, exciting, innovative, boundless—you get the idea. Or do you? Here’s what Shaw had to say about unreasonable and how it equates to man: “The reasonable man adapts him- self to the world; the unrea- sonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreason- able man (and woman).” Enter Epstein, a college kid in 2007, who spent a semester on the shipboard program, Semester at Sea. He says it changed his life (as do most of the students who spend 3½months traveling the globe). But then Epstein took that life-changing voy- BY DONNA AYERST, AFSA NEWS EDITOR PHOTOBYRICOANDRADE,ISE/SEMESTERATSEA age and molded it into the Unreasonable Institute. Things started getting exciting (see new definition of unreasonable above). “If George Bernard Shaw is right, if all progress depends on the unreasonable person, than we cannot afford to not bet on unreasonable people,” the institute postulates. For background, this is what the institute does: “Each year, we unite 10 to 30 entrepreneurs (called “Unreasonable Fellows”) from every corner of the globe to live under the same roof for six weeks in Boulder, Colo. These entrepreneurs receive customized train- ing and support from 50 world-class mentors, ranging from a Time magazine Hero of the Planet, to the head of user experience at Google X, to an entrepreneur who has enabled more than 20 million farmers to escape poverty. In the process, they form relationships with corpo- rations and international organizations, receive legal advice and design consulting, and get in front of hundreds of potential funders. Our goal is to bring all the resources to accelerate these ventures so they can scale to meet the needs of at least one million people each.” (source: www. unreasonableinstitute.org) Sounds unreasonable, unless the notion excites you. So, on May 1-2, the Department of State’s Global Initiative Program partnered with the Unreasonable Institute, Stanford Univer- sity’s d.school and the Aspen Institute to present two days of mind-boggling presen- tations from 15 startups. Unreasonable continued on page 58 PHOTOSBYDONNAAYERST (From top left, clockwise) Solar Ear makes the world’s first solar rechargeable hearing aids; Daniel Epstein (in blue) works with entrpreneurs aboard the M.V. Explorer during Unreasonable@Sea; USAID’s Chief Innovation Officer Maura O’Neill, Raabia Budhwani from State’s Global Initiative Program, Unreasonable Institute founder Daniel Epstein, State’s Acting Special Representative for Global Partnerships Thomas Debass and Institute for Shipboard Education President Les McCabe; a State employee puts pipe cleaners to use to solve a d.school problem.