I always thought I’d end up in Washington. Few jobs anywhere combined what I did—Latin America, public policy, and international development—and most were in universities, which I’d ruled out because I didn’t see myself as an academic. Most of the rest were in Washington. Plus, I had good contacts there. Washington seemed not only logical, but inevitable.

But going from the Ford Foundation to the Inter-American Dialogue was a major change—almost the flip side of philanthropy. I went from patron to supplicant. From giving money away to raising it. From having people knock on my door to having to knock on people’s doors. From judging proposals to having mine judged. I took a pay cut. I had no job security.

Which was good. I’d worried, during my final years at the Ford Foundation, that I’d stopped growing. Now I was in a different institution doing different things, none of which I’d done much of at Ford. It was almost a different culture. I had to come up with proposals and convince donors to fund them. I had to write papers and give talks. I had to design a program that would resonate with policy-makers in Latin America. I had to create and convince. That ought to help me grow.

I think as well that I was trying to see how I would do outside the protective shell of the Ford Foundation—where having all that money to give away could lull you into thinking you were pretty good. I’d worked at Ford for seventeen years. It was time to leave the nest and see whether I could fly.

I suppose I should have worried more about taking on so much that was new, but I didn’t. I figured I could tap the skills I’d picked up in graduate school at Duke and Chicago, and during nearly two decades of funding policy work at the Ford Foundation. I had the training, some of the experience and knew many of the people. I was probably smart enough. And I knew Latin America. It seemed like a natural next step. Plus, I was genuinely interested in doing this kind of work.

Just as important, I was where I wanted to be. The Inter-American Dialogue was small back then—maybe seven or eight people. It was non-governmental, non-partisan, and non-bureaucratic. Its bread and butter was policy analysis and debate. It brought together some of the region’s top political leaders, policy analysts and intellectuals. It didn’t have much money, but it was respected and connected. It was, so far as I could see, the best think tank working on Latin America and the Caribbean in the country. People I knew and admired—Enrique Iglesias, Alejandro Foxley, Rodrigo Botero, Abe Lowenthal, and Peter Bell, for example—were playing key roles. And my friend and former colleague Peter Hakim had just been promoted to president. So, I don’t want to overemphasize the amount of change I faced in moving to the Inter-American Dialogue. I was still dealing with many of the extraordinary people I’d met while at Ford. It was pretty much the same mafia.

I think partly what was happening was that my long-standing attraction to the best was kicking in again. I had, since high school, felt drawn almost mysteriously to people and institutions that signified quality. That irresistible sparkle had led me to the University of Chicago, and then to the Ford Foundation. Now it was leading me to the Inter-American Dialogue. I was responding to the siren call of talent.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.