Just Five Questions: Nadim Matta ’89
Nadim Matta is Co-founder of Nafda Lebanon and RE!NSTITUTE (formerly Rapid Results Institute), and he serves on the Board of Directors of RE!NSTITUTE and of The Housing Collective in Connecticut. Nadim served as a Yale School of Management Donaldson Fellow in 2012 and 2013, and he was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2012. Before that, he served as co-managing partner at Schaffer Consulting, alongside other SOM classmates, and he worked at USAID and Save the Children in Lebanon.
1. What’s a global trend you are following where you see an opportunity or bright spot in this challenging macro environment?
Global trends do not look encouraging. Perhaps the most troubling one is the dearth of good leadership in politics and society at large. It appears that the accumulation of wealth and power, at any cost, has become the primary motivator of most those who seek - and rise - to positions of leadership. I do not think that this is about the erosion of capability and integrity in individuals. I believe that we have created systems that value and reward attitudes and behaviors that favor individual “success”, even over collective impact. There is a bright spot I see. Not quite a trend. But I am hopeful it will become one. There are one or two countries, and a few attempts in some others, that are viewing primary and secondary schools as venues for building better societies. In these pioneering places, the concepts of tolerance, cooperation, inclusion, empathy, good governance, and social justice are valued and practiced. Hopefully, this will become a trend - where schools are viewed not just as places for preparing young people for success in higher education and in the labor market, but as venues to nurture citizens who are responsible, and capable, of building better institutions, communities, and societies.
2. What’s an example of how SOM’s mission informed your professional path?
The SOM mission both informed and influenced my professional path. I moved back and forth between the private and non-profit sectors with ease and comfort, often using the experience in one to inform my work in the other. And I always tried to keep integrity, courage and humility at the center of the leadership I provided. It did not feel like a big lift. It seemed to come naturally. And it felt very congruent with my overall SOM experience in 1987, 1988, and 1989.
3. What’s an SOM experience that helped shape the way you understand business and society?
Community building and my IGB (Interpersonal and Group Behavior) experiences stand out for me. Most other subjects I felt very at ease with. I was good at math and analytic work, so the “hard” topics were a breeze. Perhaps because I was a novice in the “soft” areas that I felt challenged and intrigued by them. The experiences of these “softer” disciplines stuck with me, and they were instrumental in the way I navigated my professional life. Building community is a dying art form, and it is so badly needed these days. And understanding other people and bringing out the best in them in group work is essential to well functioning teams, organizations, and societies. The foundations for my interest in these topics were laid at SOM.
4. What’s a favorite SOM memory, faculty member, mentor or class?
Art Swersey’s cranberry case remains one of the most memorable experiences of my time at SOM. Art himself was an institution and a model SOM citizen. The way he ran student community meetings was epic. I learned so much about facilitation from him, even though he was a professor of operations research! His humility and the respect he showed to all students set the bar for me in interactions with all peers and colleagues over a lifetime.
5. What are you excited about for the year ahead?
My work in Lebanon over the past three years, since I retired from RE!NSTITUTE, feels like the most enriching and generative work I have experienced in my career. I am hoping that I'll be able to continue to build on it in the year ahead and beyond. The work of Nafda involves building a network of (existing) schools from all over the country, mostly serving economically underprivileged communities, where the principles of engaged citizenship, good governance, and social justice are valued and practiced and are promulgated in the surrounding communities. Nafda means “deep spring cleaning” in Arabic, a nod to what is needed both in the education sector and also in society at large. Most definitely in Lebanon. And possibly in other places… The additional magic ingredient in Nafda is connecting these schools and communities to each other, and in so doing countering the current dominant narrative in the country that the Lebanese mosaic of religions and cultural communities can no longer form a unified national identity. If you know anything about Lebanon, especially Lebanon since the 2019 grassroots rebellions against institutionalized corruption - and the subsequent economic meltdown - you would appreciate how insanely improbable Nafda’s work is. I am happy to report that despite all the odds, the prospects of success after three years of work are not as bleak as one might expect!
Just Five Questions is an initiative led by the Yale SOM Alumni Advisory Board. Want to learn more? Contact Lee Race ’93 with feedback, thoughts, and/or questions.