A Leader of Tomorrow
More than 1,200 students from 420 universities, with 111 different ethnicities from 80 different countries. Those are the statistics for those who entered the 48th St. Gallen Symposium essay competition. The St. Gallen Symposium essay competition has students send in individual original entrees based on the theme of the upcoming conference, while a panel of independent judges (made up of professors, corporate executives, and entrepreneurs) chooses the top 100 entrees. Out of all entries, MS in Mechanical Engineering 2018 student Timothy Aduralere was selected as one of the top 100 to be awarded the title as a Leader of Tomorrow.
“It’s the highest number of submissions that they’ve received since the competition began,” said Aduralere. “I wrote my essay around the theme of the conference, ‘Beyond the End of Work’; how artificial intelligence would affect the future of work in my field of Mechanical Engineering.”
Aduralere’s submission, Reinventing for the Unknown: A Pivotal Approach to Maximize the Constantly Evolving Future of Work, focuses on three major steps: accepting change, utilizing change, and preparing the next generation for change.
“Accepting the change is about realizing that the nature of work is always changing from one generation to another, and we’re just moving on and evolving as human beings,” said Aduralere. “We then utilize the changes to stay relevant in our work. Lastly, preparing the next generation is mostly about educating those who come after us and making sure they’re prepared to make the most use of the change. President Aoun’s book Robot-Proof really influenced me.”
As a Leader of Tomorrow, Aduralere was invited to St. Gallen Symposium, located in Switzerland an hour outside of Zurich. Here, Aduralere was able to network and meet ‘leaders of today’, former recipients of the Leaders of Tomorrow title that have now become very successful.
“I met Dominic Barton [former Managing Director of McKinsey & Company], Jeremy Rifkin, and Bogolo Kenewendo, the Minister of Trade in Botswana,” said Aduralere. “Meeting business leaders like that inspires you to do better. You should keep in mind that there are a lot of smart people in this life, but just being smart doesn’t mean you’ll succeed, but you need to take actions to be successful.”
After graduating from the University of Lagos in his home nation of Nigeria, Aduralere spent two years working before starting as a graduate student at Northeastern in 2016. Since becoming a student, he has done one eight-month co-op as a Mechanical Designer at Architectural Engineers, Inc., and has been actively researching a way to reduce the effect of heatwaves on occupants in buildings without air conditioning, with the oversight of MIE Professor Jackie Isaacs and CAMD/CEE Assistant Professor David Fannon.
“I’ve been working on this for over a year now, using modeling and simulations as well as climate change data,” said Aduralere.
While Aduralere has succeeded plenty due to his determined work ethic and drive for success, he accredits part of his ability to succeed due to the opportunities he has found while at Northeastern.
“I chose Northeastern because it’s in Boston, an academic hub of the US,” said Aduralere. The program is quite diverse, I could choose what I wanted to do, and the co-op program is great for work experience. I wanted to maximize the opportunities I had here, and I did. I did everything I wanted to do.”