Mentored by a Legend: What I learned from Jim Wolfensohn

On November 25th, the world lost a leader, a statesman, and a trail-blazing advocate for the poor, for peace, and for solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. Jim Wolfensohn passed away at 86, father of 3, beloved husband and a man of extraordinary talents and character. While perhaps best known for his impact as President of the World Bank, he was also a highly regarded investment banker and philanthropist. He will be remembered as a “game changer” at the world’s social justice and economic development table.

On a personal level, I lost a dear friend and an extraordinary mentor. Jim changed how I thought about the world, my career, and most importantly how I live my life. While our friendship began only 15 years ago, when Jim became a senior advisor to Citi, his relative stage of life and experience made him a father figure to me. His life lessons were a gift, and in his memory, I am sharing them here.

1. Fight the Good Fight

In 1996, as President of the World Bank, Jim gave a speech urging the world to “deal with the cancer of corruption” and to not “mince words” in the process. He would go on to spend the greater part of his ten year Presidency at the World Bank urging global leaders and World Bank’s staff to fight corruption “wherever they could find it”.

There were many countries and senior World Bank officials who initially thought that waging a public high profile war on corruption was not the way to go, and resisted Jim’s early attempts to mount a campaign. But for Jim, not “mincing words” meant standing up to those that urged him to tone down and soften the rhetoric. Jim explained to me that his own decision to proceed at full speed on this anti-corruption campaign was made during a trip to a very poor African country, where his day time tour demonstrated heart-breaking poverty, and his evening dinner with the nation’s leader demonstrated nauseating personal and ill-gotten opulence. It didn’t just motivate him, it made him furious. It brought out the fighter in him. And while the fight against corruption may never be fully over, it is waged by many because of him; The Institutional Integrity Unit at the World Bank that sprang from Jim’s efforts continues to this day.

Jim’s anti-corruption crusade also had a deep impact on me and the way I thought about my role as the then head of the Public Sector Group at Citi. Through our conversations on how technology could be used to fight corruption, his passion became my own, and I began to urge governments to reduce cash, paper and manual processes as a way to shine a bright light into the dark room of corruption. Digital banking solutions were in fact the most powerful anti-corruption tool we had..

The crowning example of Jim’s mark on me came in 2015, when I encouraged Citi to not only consider using technology and crowd-sourcing as a way to further social causes, but also to focus on anti-corruption. We called the 2016 effort “Tech4Integrity” and it is to this day one of the largest scale global crowdsourcing initiatives for a social cause ever done. As the final award ceremony neared, I proposed that we honor Jim by naming the award after him. I will never forget the look on his face when I told him over lunch that, out one thousand anti-corruption submissions, the winner would be awarded “the James Wolfensohn Game Changer Award.” At the IMF when Christine Lagarde and Jim handed the award to AidTech, I remember thinking that the lifelong “game changer” was really Jim.

1. Put Personal Relationships First

Jim had the ability to walk in a room for an official meeting with a head of state or cabinet minister and begin it with a hug - the kind of hug you give your best friend. The number of his relationships that combined personal passion with deep professional respect was simply staggering.

Before any “business” discussion, and without regard to whether you were a President or the security guard, Jim wanted to know first about your children, about your health, and about you as a human being. On many occasions, conscious of Jim’s time, I would move quickly to the matter of the day, and be firmly halted by a myriad of personal and caring questions. And my answers mattered to him.

When Jim and I travelled together during the heart of the European 2010 crisis, in order to give advice on the Hellenic Republic’s debt crisis, I remember preparing extensively with our Citi team on approaches to restructure Greek’s debt. But Jim constructively scolded me for not putting an equal amount of care into the social time with our hosts. Jim wanted personal time, including dinner, with the Minister. Jim wanted time to listen, understand, and to connect on a deeper level.

Jim would figure out not only who the ultimate decision maker was on an important issue, but then find out what motivated him or her, and what their passion was. Jim once went out and bought a tennis racquet and invited Larry Summers to play with him as a way to get to know him better. This approach of prioritizing personal relationships has anchored me to this day.

1. Share Knowledge, Mentor and Teach

Jim loved to share his insights and perspective, both on an individual level and on a global scale. At the World Bank, Jim created and drove the concept of “knowledge sharing” - a process for sharing the Bank’s best practices with the world. At its core, Jim grasped that knowledge could be more powerful than money; despite initial resistance, the Knowledge Management team at the World Bank still thrives.

Jim pushed this same idea with me at Citi and to this day the Citi public sector team anchors its advice with best practices and cross country solutions. For example, in 2010, I sat down with Jim to discuss how impactful mobile money had become in Kenya, as perhaps one of the most scalable ways to solve for the problem of financial inclusion, where many of the world’s poorest are excluded from the banking system. We discussed the pace at which MPesa delivered mobile wallets to the poor, and the number of small businesses that had blossomed from this financial connectivity tool. Jim immediately moved to his familiar framework of knowledge sharing and wanted to see how we could help more African countries accelerate the role out of mobile money platforms. We discussed putting together a knowledge sharing seminar, in Nairobi, and inviting Central Bankers from all over Africa to participate. At the end of the conversation, he simply said “lets go” and so a few months later we were in Kenya with African financial officials discussing ways to make mobile banking a core part of their pan-African development strategy.

While Jim was often thinking on a large global scale, his passion to teach students and to mentor on a more personal level inspired me most. Whether it was Harvard, Princeton or Stanford, Jim reveled in his lectures and the ensuing student dialogue. In 2016, at his home in New York, Jim first urged me to pursue teaching. He convinced me that, despite my work schedule, I could teach sustainability part time at Georgetown, where I had attended graduate school. While it seemed near impossible at the time, I remember him arguing that I had to teach at the graduate level, as he said graduate students would hone my thinking on any issue. I have seen now, after my third year as an adjunct professor at Georgetown, that Jim was right: clients rarely challenge you with the passion and intellectual curiosity of a graduate student. I have learned as much from them as I hope they have from me.

1. Lead a Well-Rounded Life

Jim was the quintessential renaissance man. At a young age he was an Olympian fencer for Australia. To say he was a patron of the arts is an understatement; he chaired both Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He managed to excel in just about everything he did; from saving Chrysler as a banker to playing the cello with Yo-Yo Ma. And he did it all with such ease.

On a personal level, his breadth and depth was intimidating, yet his sense of purpose was contagious. He lived a purposeful life, if ever there was one, and urged others to do the same. While renowned for his philanthropy, he didn’t just give money away. He participated.

In March 2010, a few months after the Haiti earthquake, Jim helped Citi put together a session with multilateral institutions and senior officials from Haiti to look at how to rebuild the financial system after the tragic devastation. It was classic Jim, picking up the phone, motivating others to act, convening, and sharing best practices. Because of Jim urging me to pick social causes, like refugees and children, where I am deeply passionate, I am now on the board of the Tent Foundation and Save the Children.

1. Dream Big, Dream Bold

In 2006, Jim Wolfensohn served as the Special Envoy for the Quartet – made up of the UN, the US, Russia and the EU – and was given a mission to flesh out a Road Map toward a secure Israel and a sovereign, democratic Palestine. He took the role, despite a plethora of uncertainties, because he believed that he could achieve the previously unachievable. The challenges at the time of an Isaeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the complexities involved in revitalizing the area once the Palestinians took it over need little explaining.

Jim expressed extraordinary frustration with the mandate, the withdrawl of support, the process failures, and issues that had to do more with the Quartet than the Israelis or Palestinians. Jim was used to achieving bold results, but this time was different. I remember attempting in some small way to console him, with a discussion of the enormity of the task he had taken on. It didn’t matter. His dream was peace...normalcy, stability, and recovery in Gaza. When he couldn’t get there, it hurt deeply.

But ultimately his experience showed me the value of reaching for the stretch goal, despite the odds. “Just cause” defines the goal, not a calculation of its achievability. Our world, our history, our planet must have men like Jim that take on the greatest challenges of our time with supreme confidence and conviction. Without the Jim Wolfensohns of the world, dreams of peace in the Middle East or of Net Zero will never be achieved.

In fact, many of Jim’s stretch goals became reality. Jim’s Comprehensive Development Framework, which he outlined in 1998 in Jackson Hole, was the framework for the world’s Millennium Development Goals and forms the core of the current Global Sustainable Development Goals. He made poverty the World Bank’s priority, not loans, which was wildly transformational at the time. As early as 2004, Jim was talking regularly about the challenges of green house gas emissions, about deforestation and about clean water. He embraced the crisis of girls in the developing world long before SDG5, well before gender issues were on policy makers’ plate.

Looking back at the challenges Jim embraced, so often they really weren’t the policy priorities of the time: they were ahead of time, anticipatory and longer term in nature. While we all can’t be as prescient as Jim, we can learn a lot from how far he was willing to look out over the horizon and how much energy he put into making tomorrow’s world a better place.

1. Life Should Be a Team Sport

Jim and Elaine were married in 1961 and they were an unstoppable team. They reinforced each other in a way that was truly remarkable; Jim loved and admired Elaine, and never stopped singing her praises. 

My first real conversation about his relationship with Elaine didn’t start with her. It started with conversations about my divorce. I would talk about the challenges of parenting through the divorce, succeeding at Citi and the quest to make a difference in the world. Yet Jim would somehow always turn the conversation to the importance of finding a life partner. He talked about how different life is with a soul mate, someone with shared ambitions, hobbies and passions in life. He was quite the advocate, as that partnership contributed so much to what made them both so successful in life.

Elaine and Jim held many a shared interest, but most importantly they shared a core and dominant sense of purpose. From Jewish causes to classical music, from gender issues to poverty and hunger, they stood together for issues that truly mattered. This passion for purpose was not a burden to be carried but a motivating force. It was also a guiding light that I and many others absorbed, simply by being in their presence.

While I had the pleasure of being with them together many a time, what I remember most fondly was being with them at their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They were extraordinary together, both so relaxed in the peace of their home, as they hosted and entertained leaders of the world, their dearest friends. They did it with such grace it was like watching a ballet, or the perfect team sport.

And they were a team until the very end. I remember to this day watching Elaine care for Jim when he first fell ill severe years ago. I remember Elaine calling me to say that as the incoming calls from dignitaries reduced, how comforting it was for me to tell him stories of our memories together, and to ask for his opinion on the world. I watched her love, her kindness, and her thoughtfulness.

Sadly, Elaine passed a few months before Jim. A message, perhaps, that they were never meant to be apart. Together they left the planet a better place. They left us life lessons and so many examples to cherish and to carry on.

Jay Collins

December 30, 2020

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