It was disappointing that at the City College of New York’s (CCNY) Grove School of Engineering, there wasn’t a more elegant commemoration of its benefactor and one of its most successful alumni, Andrew S. Grove (born András István Gróf). The City College of New York’s Facebook page and the City College of New York’s Twitter had no short or sweet mention to offer. The school’s website discreetly published a piece reflecting his life and the formal testament to his memory among the community was an e-mail from the Dean of Engineering, Dr. Gilda Barabino, in which she mentions that he called CCNY the “American Dream Machine: for its ability to provide students, regardless of financial means, with an exceptional education.”
As a graduating student of the Grove School of Engineering, it is a personal responsibility that I commend exactly how Andrew S. Grove has thus impacted my life and how I can continue to internalize his drive, passion, struggles, and successes within how I approach each day.
In his book Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove wrote “Our priorities were formed by our identity; after all, memories were us.” Although this probably references Intel’s history as a memory-driven company, I believe this quotation is easily applied to anyone–especially entrepreneurs. The pains that we fervently focus our efforts on alleviating are the ever-consistent core of the best startups. Unique insights drawn from our identity as people and as companies shouldn’t deter us from staying true to ourselves and still managing to expand. This resonates perfectly with On Pointe NYC, my own startup venture, as many do not identify with dance but many have similar ankle issues in adjacent fields such as sports or medicine. Although I have never had ankle injuries during my 8 years of dance, to have a culmination project that combined both my dance and engineering experiences was intimately important to me and something I wanted to ardently pursue.
Andy Grove was more than a technology and business icon. He has personally experienced the difficulties of fleeing oppressive governments, something that my own uncle has experienced. My uncle, Reuben Seguritan, was blacklisted by the Marcos government in the Philippines and struggled to make something of himself in the United States since he could not return home for fear of his safety. Today, he is a well-respected immigration lawyer among the Filipino-American community. Both the struggles of Andy Grove and Reuben Seguritan are a reminder for first generation Americans of overcoming incredible hardship that we typically fail to recognize. I am not an immigrant like my uncle and parents but that does not mean that the welfare of the Philippines is not my concern. Throughout my life, I have been encouraged by my parents to pursue fundraising pageants to contribute to those in need in the Philippines and while this mission is not directly inspired by Andy Grove, it is aligned with his values as seen with his generous grant of $850,000 to the International Rescue Committee.
However, to say these are the only influences that Andy Grove has had on my life would be an insult to his memory. He has directly impacted the biomedical space by donating toward stem cell research, a class that I had taken in Singapore, as well as other health causes that personally afflicted him. He has “fathered” Silicon Valley and its culture, which I hear anecdotes about daily from my boyfriend’s work life. He was an inspiration and mentor to Steve Jobs, who pushed for the sleek designs of Apple products with which I am using to type up this blog and message my loved ones around the world. Yet at the end of the day, Andy Grove wouldn’t care what I have to say because he lived happily and fully.
“What people are going to write about me 10 years after I’m dead — who cares?” – Andy Grove
Image Source: http://m.likesuccess.com/quotes/3/140935.png
