Reflections & Prospectives

August is always a month of transition at the Mountbatten Institute, with groups completing their programme and new intakes just arriving. In fact, with the new additions joining our ever expanding alumni, we have now reached the mark of 7,000 Mountbatten alumni worldwide. This is the actual number of those who have successfully completed the programme since it started in 1984. The Institute is very proud of this fact.

Sadly, we have all been watching the news and the devastating impact of Hurricane Harvey in Texas over the last week. Our thoughts are with anyone affected by this directly or indirectly.

American Cultural Exchange Programmes Under Threat

The Wall Street Journal this week carried an article noting that the White House is considering abolishing the JI Visa, the visa which allows foreign trainees and interns to spend up to a year in the United States. While it is unlikely that such a dramatic decision will be taken lightly, it does point to a change in political climate in the United States. Limits on the extent to which young adults can enjoy internships in New York will have a reciprocal impact on the willingness of the UK and other governments to allow young Americans to have similar experiences abroad. That would be bad for everyone.

We will be writing to all alumni within the next week to ask your support and action, but in the interim I wanted to alert you to this initiative.

Thank you for your support of Mountbatten and your commitment to the value of cultural and educational exchange.

Dr. Paul Beresford-Hill, CBE
Director General

Securing Small Businesses in Cyberspace

Donal Kerr (New York, May 2006), a graduate of University College Dublin, also a qualified lawyer (NY state), is a cross-functional legal, policy and business expert with years of experience researching, developing and leading global policies, enforcement practices and processes, and trust and safety initiatives primarily through his previous employer Twitter at their European HQ in Dublin. More recently, Donal is the co-founder of 4Securitas, an automated cybersecurity intelligent defence system. 4Securitas originated as a company after a meeting of minds between the co-founders, who brought together a technical and product vision for an innovative approach for security against a global backdrop of data and security breaches and an increased awareness of privacy. Donal’s vision for the 4Securitas product is that it will enable organisations to protect themselves against hacking, malware, fraud and cybercrime. It will enable staff without an IT or security background to handle some of most critical and sophisticated security tasks, manage risk and reduce costs.

Donal recently published an article on LinkedIn, Cyber Security: an important issue for small business, in which he examines why companies are continuing to fall victim to cyber attacks despite increased awareness of such threats, and gives us some proactive steps companies can take to avoid such security breaches.

Alum
of the Month

Marcus Siezing
New York, January 2000

"It is hard to pick a specific highlight (of my Mountbatten placement), however, learning the basics to code (a skill I truly value today) and building the digital asset and media content library, as well as organizing and assigning a value to all the media that was produced and generated were really useful skills. In the end, the most memorable moment is that it is where I met my wife! I am currently the CIO and Co-President of a private investment firm. I consider myself very fortunate in that I truly enjoy going to work everyday. My day-to-day entails everything from evaluating potential investment opportunities in Asia to managing staff. No one day is the same... Career wise I like where I am. It always challenges me and there is always something new to learn."

Read the full article

Come and meet future Mountbattens!

With the advent of September, our Autumn Recruitment Programme gets into full swing at universities and colleges across Europe and the U.S. All the fairs are posted on Mountbatten Connect, so if you would like to re-visit your alma mater and talk to presepctive Mountbatten about your experince on the programme, please get in touch with us.