Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25

Podcast Ep. 23 Bruce McNamer Stanford MBA '95 meets MBA '25 Batu Demir

• Katharine McLennan • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Today, I’m joined by Bruce McNamer from the Stanford MBA Class of 1995 and Batu Demir from the Class of 2025.

Bruce is a philanthropic leader who has spent his life weaving together business, government, and global development. He’s currently President of the Builders Initiative, part of Lucas Walton’s Builders Vision, where he steers capital and grants toward environmental and social change. Before that, he led TechnoServe, drove strategy at JPMorgan Chase and McKinsey, served as a White House Fellow, and even worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. Bruce brings a rare mix of heart, systems thinking, and real-world impact to the conversation.

Batu is a second-year MBA student who was born blind and is now charting new territory in both AI and accessibility. Originally from Izmir, Turkey, he’s worked at McKinsey, Google, and startups like WeWALK, while also competing as a professional blind soccer player. At Stanford, he co-founded the school’s Disability Club and has been a vocal advocate for designing tech with inclusion in mind from the start.

Bruce and Batu explore how leadership, opportunity, and systems change intersect across three decades. We talk about building markets for good, AI as a tool for empowerment, and how each generation—Gen X and Gen Z—views risk, meaning, and purpose. It’s a deeply moving and often funny conversation across space, time, and values.

 

00:00 Introduction to Philanthropy and Accessibility

08:09 Personal Journeys: Overcoming Challenges and Innovating Solutions

13:41 Career Paths: From Consulting to Philanthropy

17:44 Navigating Career Decisions in a Changing Landscape

20:33 The Impact of AI on Accessibility and Education

25:00 AI for Good: Exploring Opportunities and Ethical Considerations

25:50 Creating a Bubble: The GSB Experience

28:32 AI and Accessibility: Designing for All

31:40 The Evolution of Business Models in Tech

33:53 Government and Business: A Complex Relationship

37:53 Economic Challenges: Lessons from Turkey

41:43 Empowering Communities: The Role of Development

44:02 Reflections on Relationships and Learning

48:43 Finding Purpose: Advice for the Next Generation

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Stanford MBA: From Baby Boomer to Gen Z | Class of ‘95 Meets Class of ‘25

Each of these episodes will feature a different pair of Stanford MBA people -- one from the class of 1995, and one from the class of 2025.

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Note: this transcript is generated by AI, so it won’t always be perfect, especially when it comes to: 

·        Incorrect breaks in a sentence (AI hears the pause and assumes a new sentence)

·        Exact word recognition – you may see that there are words that don’t make sense from time to time

 

Katharine McLennan (01:04)

Today I'm joined by Bruce McNamara from the Stanford MBA class of 1995, one of my classmates, and Batu Demir from the class of 2025. Bruce is a philanthropic leader who has spent his life weaving together business, government, and global development. He's currently president of the Builders Initiative, part of Luke Swalton's Builders Vision, where

 

he steers capital and grants toward environmental and social change. Before that, he led TechnoServe, drove strategy at JPMorgan Chase and McKinsey, served as a White House fellow, and even worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. brings a rare mix of heart, systems thinking, and real world impact to the conversation. Batu is a second year MBA student who has...

 

Batu is a second year MBA student who was born blind and is now charting new territory in both AI and accessibility. Originally from Izmir, Turkey, he's worked at McKinsey, Google, and startups like WeWalk, while also competing as a professional blind soccer player. At Stanford, he co-founded the school's Disability Club and has been a vocal advocate for designing technology with inclusion in mind.

 

from the start. Bruce and Batu explore how leadership, opportunity, and systems change intersect across three decades. We talk about building markets for good, AI as a tool for empowerment, and how each generation, Gen X and Gen Z, views risk, meaning, and purpose. It's a deeply moving and often funny conversation across space, time,

 

and values.

 

Batu Demir (03:00)

actually on the Stanford campus and this is, I still live in the GSB residences. And so this is, this building probably didn't exist when you guys were here. It's the new one, Jack McDonald. Yeah. So now we didn't get to meet the legendary professor, but we get to live in the building that that's after his name. I don't know if you guys had this at the foam parties. Yeah. So Tuesday evenings, they have the Taco Bell version of it today. ⁓ yeah.

 

I think there is a Taco Bell around the bay that's like by the beach. I forgot the exact location, but the classmates go there. It's supposed to be like the nicest Taco Bell in the world.

 

Katharine McLennan (03:44)

Bruce, where do we find it?

 

Bruce McNamer (03:46)

I am in Chicago. Our offices here in the West Loop, the so-called West Loop, or Chicago.

 

Katharine McLennan (03:55)

What are you up to on a typical Tuesday for Bruce?

 

Bruce McNamer (03:59)

Not nothing typical, but let's see this morning. Well, I did drop off because I have a son and came into work and we had a management team meeting this morning and then I spent a couple hours, not eight, I often go on site visits. A lot of it's, I'm in philanthropy. had, let's do a really interesting kind of real estate project that we're developing in a neighborhood in South Side of Chicago. So just go back and my Jimmy John's. ⁓

 

sub really quickly.

 

Katharine McLennan (04:30)

So it's philanthropy and construction. So tell us a little bit about it. Because I saw that and I was trying to work it out.

 

Bruce McNamer (04:37)

Well, what we do here is a little different. The context is pretty different from, because I've been involved in philanthropy and nonprofits in different ways, but it's different here in that this is a family office and this is Lucas Walton's family office. It is, it's called Builders Vision and the whole idea is many pools of capital here for investing and for grant making.

 

Whether that's investing in different asset classes, venture capital, growth equity and the like at market rate returns or in public markets or in funds or in concessionary investing or in grant making. It's all the line for good. It's all about shifting markets and minds for good at right capital to the right need. And so we can take on a range of things. Most of our focus is in climate. So we work.

 

across the office thinking about healthy oceans and sustainable food and agriculture and the energy transition. also, know, Chicago is our home. So we try to make a difference here.

 

Katharine McLennan (05:37)

Have you been with the, is it the Walton family or has that been for a while? five years.

 

Bruce McNamer (05:44)

Been here for five years.

 

Here, we moved here five and a half years ago from, I'd been in Washington DC for about 20 years before.

 

Katharine McLennan (05:53)

Were you in Washington before Stanford?

 

Bruce McNamer (05:56)

No, I am into Stanford immediately from Paraguay. I'd been a P.S.C.A. volunteer there.

 

Katharine McLennan (06:03)

that's right. Okay. Coming back to me. That's right. And by the Bruce did a joint law degree and business degree at the same time.

 

Bruce McNamer (06:07)

President for.

 

Katharine McLennan (06:16)

How Bruce, how many other people did that?

 

Bruce McNamer (06:19)

Or our year, maybe 10? Yeah, which was like, I think the year before there had been four and the year after not many, but we had a kind of a spike and yeah, it was curious. I don't know if people still do it.

 

Katharine McLennan (06:33)

Yeah, but do you know joint law degree business group? ⁓

 

Batu Demir (06:37)

there

 

at least five people I can think of now, but I'm sure there are more. I probably don't know all of them even today as we have a month left till graduation. Some of them, I think people are at different places. Like some of them are doing their MBA first. Some of them are have started or like finished their JD already. And I think there's like some, there are some people who did their JD in a different school and are doing their MBA now. ⁓

 

Katharine McLennan (07:07)

So Batu, tell us a little bit about it. Before we were recording, you were telling me that you grew up in Turkey and you're you going back to Turkey. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

Batu Demir (07:18)

Yeah, so I guess I can give a quick back place. I was born and raised in Turkey in a city called Izmir, which is in the western coast of the country. For those who don't know, I just described as Turkey's California. So like similar weather, similar vibes. It's more like SoCal, I guess more than Northern California. You don't have the Bay Area. You don't have all the innovation.

 

Katharine McLennan (07:21)

Yes

 

Yeah, yeah.

 

Batu Demir (07:43)

But I guess one of the things that is different about me was that I was born blind. And growing up, it shaped my childhood in different ways. But I think there were a few things that were pivotal in my life. One was that in Turkey at the time when I was born, two things were really popular. One was playing soccer and the second was biking. And at first I wasn't able to do both of those. And I was like, like all of my friends are doing it. Like, what am I going to do? And then...

 

⁓ I also have an older brother who's also blind. And so he and I started sort of like collaborating together to like find different ways to be able to do the same things. And for the soccer problem, we ended up coming up with an idea that if you would put the ball in a grocery bag and tie it up, and so it would make a sound when it moved and we would be able to like chase after it. And so, and then the peers...

 

would also want to play with us because it didn't really like change the dynamics or the roles of the game. And for biking, we ended up developing a methodology. I guess we didn't develop it. It exists. That's how, so it's, it's called echolocation. That's how bats navigate because they also can't see. So you basically make a sound as humans, you can make a sound with your hands, snapping your fingers or like clicking your tongue.

 

that the tongue is easier if you are biking. And so like the way that the echo bounces off of the walls and the obstacles, you can kind of tell that there's an obstacle in front of you or not. And so this is not perfect. I wouldn't go on a highway.

 

But it's, good enough to function in a neighborhood that I'm familiar with. And so I think that I'm saying these were pivotal because it taught me that one, like I didn't have to sit at home and cry and I could just get out and try. And two was that I was developing these crucial skills that now I can sort of like sound in my MBA experience like resilience, problem solving, innovation. So all of these, I sort of had to do from an earlier age because I was forced into it.

 

But I had so many, I had so much fun memories.

 

Bruce McNamer (09:55)

Yeah, where's your brother, too?

 

Batu Demir (09:58)

He now lives in Germany.

 

Katharine McLennan (10:01)

that's amazing. Okay, I want to come back to that because it reminds me, Bruce, as I get to know the 2025 class, it strikes me they're way more creative than we were. I don't know if you took the course that was might have been two terms, but it was all about learning how to manufacture and then sell and I can't remember what it's called. the project was bicycling lamps thing that they had to set up at Stanford. ⁓

 

It's creative. don't know. It sounds like you didn't the court first.

 

Bruce McNamer (10:36)

Creativity and this I can't remember, but I didn't, but I remember because I was there so long. There was also another cohort that did, ⁓ coffee cups, ⁓ Trent Trent. Well, you could make a better coffee mug. Yeah. They had to do the business standard business plan, but then they had to go in like millet or whatever you do. Yeah.

 

Katharine McLennan (11:01)

So I'm going to jump back and forth, but Bruce, five years with the Walton family, but prior to that, Washington. So what was going on in Washington?

 

Bruce McNamer (11:12)

I had, so I left a business school, law school, business school in 96 and I stayed in the Bay area and worked for a while. And I think about you, you were at McKinsey. I worked for McKinsey for a while. And then I went to Washington where I thought it was going to be a year to work in the Clinton administration. And then I stayed and I worked at startups. But then the real answer to your question, Catherine, is because I've been around business and I've been around international development.

 

working in poor countries, I got a chance to run an organization called TechnoServe, which took those and put them together. It was like business solutions to poverty. So I ran that TechnoServe for 10 years based in Washington. And it was working in Africa, working in Latin America, India. We were in about 25 countries. And we had a lot of McKinsey alums, in fact, a lot. it was like, how do you take people typically in poor agricultural settings and

 

Help them identify markets, aggregate product, think about the customer, the quality, access capital and global supply chains, whatever it might be. And so that was why I was in Washington. Why I stayed, why I always had to go back to the Bay Area. It's so beautiful. Like, go back there. And I'm not going back because this work, and then I stayed and got into philanthropy, first corporate with JP Morgan and then with, ran the community foundation for Greater Washington. So, life's funny, you know.

 

Katharine McLennan (12:38)

Hey!

 

Batu Demir (12:40)

I have a question for Bruce. Where and how did you meet your partner?

 

Bruce McNamer (12:44)

I'm lying. To answer your question, I didn't get married till I was, till seven years ago. So I was single.

 

Katharine McLennan (12:51)

Yeah. And so you're, have a child, Bruce, six year old. fantastic. Oh, they're so cute.

 

Bruce McNamer (12:56)

Boy,

 

Batu Demir (12:59)

You met her right before you moved from DC to Chicago.

 

Bruce McNamer (13:02)

That's

 

right. We met on part of the appeal for this job coming to work for Lutens. But it's like, this would be an adventure for our little family, right?

 

Katharine McLennan (13:11)

Bruce. Wonderful. this is good. Do you guys have such a McKinsey before business school? Is that where you were? Were you in Turkey for the McKinsey? Yes, I was. Okay. So what was Stanford? Why Stanford?

 

Batu Demir (13:26)

think I was, so when I started working at McKinsey, I'll give you the dry answer and then I'll give you the personal answer. And when I started working at McKinsey, I think that was a typical career path still. I guess it was, mean, yeah. That you would go on and do an MBA. Though I will say it's becoming less and less common because the consulting companies are realizing that if they let people leave, they don't come back.

 

So now they're incentivizing people to stay and be promoted without doing the MBA. I think in the US, they even have a program where like you do two years as an analyst and then they promote you to become a manager. Where like if you do your MBA and go back, can't go back as a manager, you go back as an associate.

 

Katharine McLennan (14:11)

So you're coming to graduation, what are you gonna do afterwards?

 

Batu Demir (14:17)

Yeah, so I'm, I'm still trying to figure that out. I wanted to work in AI and I'm still looking for a job, looking for the best opportunity. I have the option to go back to consulting and I feel like if I can, anyways, we'll see. I hope I'll find the best opportunity, but I feel like it's a, it's a difficult period of time because until today, maybe you guys can talk to this, but until today, things are linear.

 

It was a binary decision. Like which college did you go to? Which, what's your first job right after college? And then which MBA program you wanted to do, which for me, Stanford was like, when I was looking at different schools and programs, I have this philosophy in life that like, if I'm making a decision, I try to make that decision with my heart and my mind. So like, I look at both and my head was like, well, any MBA program is going to be great because they're all great. then.

 

My heart was like, well, like when I look at the websites and just like, without talking to anybody, anyone else, just read the websites. The only one that makes my heart rate sort of like fasten is, is the, the Stanford website. And so I was like, okay, it's going to be Stanford. And I only ended up like applying to two schools and Howard wasn't one of them. I guess I was fortunate and lucky to get into Stanford and, but I was going to say like, this is the, so I feel like

 

It can be lit, the career path can be linear until the MBA, but then post MBA, it's really not linear and you have a lot of agency. guess I hope to say you have a lot of agency on how it goes and shapes out. But it's also scary. Cause I don't, yeah. Cause I don't, I don't know which career path is the best one and how, like if I go into a career path, can I go back? Like what is, do I want to live?

 

There are a lot of open questions.

 

Katharine McLennan (16:14)

risks in your memory, but our class generally either went to the consulting world, the investment banking world, and then a few were entrepreneurs. And we were just hitting the internet. was the, was 95 was when the first, it was called Netscape at the time, went public listed. So not at the same as you guys are at AI. So.

 

Bruce McNamer (16:37)

We were.

 

Katharine McLennan (16:43)

Bruce, what do you remember at this time deciding where you're going to go?

 

Bruce McNamer (16:48)

Well, you're right. think many fewer, just this is my impression, like when there we were, right? Silicon Valley, right? It was even then like a hotbed of entrepreneurship and know, it's waves of entrepreneurship of various kinds, you know, semiconductors to the personal computer to, you know, PowerPoint. like, I think we were a lot more conservative. think we get to your point. We went into the safer routes thinking they're

 

I think many of us, was, be a route from that to entrepreneurship. And there was the internet boom and we just saw like this whole set of people make this move. And I remember like a senior colleague at McKinsey saying, they're all leaving and they're going to want to come back in two years. be anything here for them. And he was not wrong. And then you had, I think you had it actually had a generation of, went to, I went to.com. It's like.

 

Batu Demir (17:36)

Hehehe

 

Bruce McNamer (17:45)

I did it there. wasn't a.com doing business development for varsity books, know, like, and it was a pretty massive displacement of people who sorta went to tech, but it wasn't really tech. was.com and so, and then that all wiped out and there you were in tech and then what'd you do? So I think there was a, and some of those people though, they did great and they're still around and they're good for them. But I think for many, was this much more, I hadn't worked at McKinsey before.

 

But I'd worked in banking before. So it was not a too radical a transformation. And for me though, Batu, it was a little bit of like, honestly, it was, I wasn't quite sure what, so I'm going to just do the safer thing, you know? And I'll learn something. I'll get consulting skills and it doesn't hurt to have yet enough, but you can go through life just getting the imprimile or the next institution and never really resonating with the thing. And I used to call it my chicken little problem. I used to say like,

 

I'm just wandering around until the thing comes that hits me on the head and was worrying about Chick-fil-A. And fortunately it did, but I, it was really, it was just a conservative and it was not a hard choice. McKinsey, great place, right? And I hadn't, so it was pretty easy and it was in San Francisco. And so a lot of good reasons to do it too.

 

Katharine McLennan (19:01)

This is an interesting choice point for you Batu. The AI or McKinsey, either way. Gosh, what are you thinking about the AI? You guys are a little more advanced than we were in the internet in terms of experience. We didn't have the internet the entire time. We had a little tiny thing called Mosaic, which became Netscape and became, I think AOL eventually. But Batu, you guys just slightly more with AI. So what's attracting you about AI?

 

Batu Demir (19:32)

think? Well, personally, AI is really like making my life easier because previously when I had pictures to look at, I really like couldn't tell what it was because I have no sight at all and I use my computer with a screen reader software. So that basically reads what I was on the screen. But when it comes to pictures, it's basically useless. But now I can basically attach the picture to chat.gpt and say, Hey, like, can you describe.

 

what's in this picture and it's wonderful. Like for graphs, I just look back to the McKinsey slides that I was making. Like I would make the slides, but I have no idea if it would work or not. And I would have to like show them to someone to get their approval. But I feel like now if I could go back, I'd be even more productive. And then it's also a great time to be a student because now like whatever question you may have, you can just go and ask to Josh APT and it probably will give you a satisfying answer.

 

The only thing I'm scared of is it might be dulling my intellectual thinking abilities. Because like, probably like if I didn't have ChachiBT, I would have to like think hard and long about the questions. And now I have the option to give the questions to ChachiBT, even if I give my own thinking and be like, Hey, like, I think this is the answer. Just that like, that, that drafting process, that thinking process, I feel like it's becoming

 

faster, but I don't know. feel like we will, we'll need to see how the world evolves to really like understand the long lasting impact of AI on student and education and broader institutions.

 

Katharine McLennan (21:12)

Quite a few of you guys have described that, Bruce, they were allowed to, we'll verify they allowed to use ChatGPT through the degree, right? But to,

 

Batu Demir (21:22)

Yeah, it's

 

considered as a part of Open-In. Although this year I heard that for the new class of 2026, they are changing to have the exams in person. We take exams in person the first quarter and then the second quarter onwards, we were doing like Open Book, Open-In, Open Chat.

 

Katharine McLennan (21:43)

Is that right? We spent that thing called Blue Books and we had to pen, we had to use pen and answer them in the course. So, Brice, why do you guys sing AI in the work that you do? How does that manifest?

 

Bruce McNamer (21:59)

I think it's manifesting as a manifest for other on the investing side. And I think there's a due diligence in terms of syndication in terms of, and these are still rudimentary, I think uses on the kind of social services side. think it's early to early on. think like the real impact is, is kind of yet to be felt, but it will be felt in every dimension of life. And, know, on the philanthropic side, a lot of the philanthropy we do, even as we, a lot of it's around that, but equity in life, but it's around market development.

 

So upstream research and policy and standard setting and how do you create the conditions for sustainable markets to take a, all those markets are being, I think, profoundly affected. Like these are the development times of various products, goods and services. And, and so, but I think we're still early in our use of it. I love it. I think it's the greatest thing, but it's a very personal, but boy, can you get an answer and boy, and I still, I totally hear what you're saying about you. Like, I'm just telling.

 

But I fancy like, yeah, but I'm really being thoughtful about my questions or whatever. I don't know. I also love it for like the things, the whimsical things as well. mean, it's a great life improver, even as I'm terrified as to like where this goes and its long-term implications. And I would say that Batu, don't know how you feel about this, but I feel like when we were going to school, the mid-90s was like this truly innocent age. Like Cold War was over.

 

you know, at the end of ideology, it was like the internet was just evolving. You know, the country seemed, the world seemed to be becoming a better place. And that is not, I feel very anxious. And I have, maybe it was in 9-11, but like with climate and with, you know, the AI and political, know, but like, these are anxious, anxious, uncertain times. And it is a profoundly, we were cosseted in this, maybe we didn't feel like this, but it was a much more innocent.

 

Katharine McLennan (23:58)

So much more innocent, Bruce. And what's interesting, Batu and Bruce, so many of your classmates, many, many more seem to be going and saying, okay, AI, love it. Now, how do I use, and I think you are too, ⁓ how do I use it for good? And so, so many are, I had been blown away, frankly, the using AI, for example, one of your classmates is going to...

 

look at solving some of the problems with Medicare. Some of them are certainly going to use it in the environment and are doing those dual degrees over across the street with the environment. So you are looking at using AI. Tell us a little bit more about that if you go down that track, but I bet you're going to be there at some point.

 

Batu Demir (24:44)

So I don't have a technical background and so...

 

Katharine McLennan (24:49)

None of us did, except for the technology club that I should have joined. And that instant meet in the cafeteria, what was I thinking?

 

Batu Demir (24:59)

Comment on the anxiousness point first. I fully agree with what Bruce is saying and I second that. I feel like one of the things that happened at GSB was that like that is all going on in the world, but I feel like we either like consciously or unconsciously create, I feel like we somehow create this like bubble of being at GSB. And so these discussions don't really come up during like all the classes or like the friend discussions.

 

because it's almost a way of like, guess, I don't know why, maybe it's because people are here from like every walk, every country, every ideology. At least personally, I feel like we're not having enough dialogue around that, but maybe it's because I also studied political science, even though I'm not really like doing politics, I still am interested in reading and learning about it. So that's probably a personal point. On the AI side, I feel like my brother, not problem, but issue or like...

 

If I could do something, what I would want to do is I want. So basically when I care a lot about accessibility and I feel like accessibility needs to be incorporated in the design of new tools and ideas from the beginning. Because if you try to do it later, it's like you are trying to patch something and it doesn't work as well. And so that's what happened with the internet. All of those websites were created and

 

And we're still like spending time making them accessible. And it's always more difficult to make something accessible later on because you don't really build that with ⁓ accessibility in mind. And so that's what I'd love to do with AI is that make sure it's being built with thinking about the needs and the needs of the underrepresented communities, which who probably don't get a say in how these things are built. So that's my, that's my ask or that's my, that's where my heart.

 

tells me to go.

 

Katharine McLennan (26:54)

Well, the way you described AI helping you already, you know, being able to translate photos and pictures and graphics through words is pretty amazing. ⁓

 

Batu Demir (27:06)

We'll

 

only get better from here. Once it has a video feed, then I can point at things and ask questions. It'll be amazing.

 

Katharine McLennan (27:17)

And that may be a channel that you'd go into. Is that, that's kind of a thought. Okay.

 

Batu Demir (27:22)

I would hope to, or like if I go work at McKinsey, I would try to build my expertise in tech and AI and then hopefully transition.

 

Katharine McLennan (27:30)

You might be in competition. bet so many of your student, fellow students are like, well, I'm going into AI. I'm going into AI. But isn't AI an enabler? And Bruce, I'll go back to you. When we first graduated, one of our classmates started eBay. One of them, I think, discovered the Hotmail, the people in the garage. But it struck me that a lot of it was about building the infrastructure of the internet. Bruce, how did you see it?

 

Bruce McNamer (27:56)

If

 

it was not the infrastructure, was like varsitybooks.com. We were going to have students online. so that was, and then later, because this is where we ended up. And then I went to a real technology startup, which was trying to do real technology. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, know, was telling it. Yeah. So, but it was infrastructure. But yeah, you're right. A lot of it was everything. It Cisco systems and a lot of like, lot thinking about like how we move this stuff around and packet switching and da da da da da da to make it all work.

 

Katharine McLennan (28:26)

Disco was 400 people. It was one of my projects in ⁓ the Organizational Behavior Council.

 

⁓ again, what was I thinking?

 

Batu Demir (28:39)

It's like

 

Bruce McNamer (28:40)

Not me and some other people went there, but where were you going? Cisco, like yeah.

 

Katharine McLennan (28:46)

What was that? So, okay. So the dot com gotcha. Did it pick you up? And by the I know the history of the dot com is it kind of went huge bubble. I remember Warren Buffett coming to our investment class in second year going, don't invest that. I need hard steel cap boots. You need to invest in those and look in the eyes of the leadership. And I mean, he, he waited until the internet and Microsoft, et cetera, were.

 

up at a certain level. so Bruce, was 2000 integral in your change over to Washington?

 

Bruce McNamer (29:24)

No, it coincided. I had McKinsey to go to Washington and, you know, considering I was in and did work in administration, the administration came to that. So I was going to go to the Bay area, but there were a proliferation. Like anybody who graduated when we did had options to go to a dot, to a dot com company, which were not technology companies. It was, I think I had offers at three different pet.coms, know, like pets.com and petstow.com and pet.

 

Everything was going to be intermediate by the internet. And it wasn't wrong. The timing was wrong and things did get, and Amazon did most of it. But, but it was, and these were all companies without business models. were clicks. don't know if you remember, but clicks were the thing. Like if you get people, you had no way to monetize all this. And, and in the end, of course people figured all that out. And probably true for AI. I don't know how they're monetizing the tremendous expense. Like

 

in terms of infrastructure, terms of data centers, in terms of power, in terms of everything else. Like when I ask it about Pokemon and I go hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending to get an answer that I, my six year old about stronger Lugia or, you know.

 

Katharine McLennan (30:38)

Fantastic. Well, that's the interesting thing. What are the business models? there was an author that wrote about two books, Life After TV and then Life After the Internet. I can't remember. It's fantastic. And he asked the same thing. And at the time he was focusing on blockchain and he was saying it was going to be the depth of the Google advertising model and now Facebook. So it'll be interesting to like...

 

Do you guys talk about what the business model of AI is?

 

Batu Demir (31:10)

do, but I think it's still evolving. So I think the way people talk about it or we talk about it in class was that like when software was first invented, it was priced, like you would probably like send it in disks and you would charge just like per software. And then it became sort of like this, like, yeah, it became like a sort of a user or like seat based pricing model. And then I guess with cloud, it sort of became like use based.

 

And with AI, so people are predicting it, they're going to find a way, but it's either going to be like, for example, for an AI agent who is helping with customer support, how many, how many sort of like support requests do you help solve? like, there will be, I think people will get creative with the models because imagine like if you employed a hundred people to do your customer support before, and now if you are doing it with AI, you probably like,

 

As long as your costs are less or fewer than less than employing those hundred people, like you can charge somebody between that area. And I think people are still looking for that area and what that is. My understanding is that now that they're still building the infrastructure, the costs are high. People can't even charge that much. And so they still sort of going with that user-based charging model, which I guess we're familiar from paying for the chatbot tools.

 

Katharine McLennan (32:32)

I want to keep them on the subscription model if they go advertising, but it'd be so, so disappointed. Okay. But now of course I want to ask about the Clinton administration. How does that happen? And what are you doing?

 

Bruce McNamer (32:51)

applied for and was awarded what they call a White House fellowship.

 

Right. Yeah. So was a lot of people in my class and you spend a year in the administration. And I worked at the National Economic Council. I work on policy and colleagues in my program, right? know, Department of Defense and Treasury and this wonderful, wonderful program. And actually I did it with a colleague of mine from McKinsey at the same time. She applied, we in Stanford. We applied, we got together, Leila D'Souza.

 

Lila and I went together and it was remarkable. And the idea is that you would go and then you would leave government and you go do what you did, but with some much better understanding of how policy gets made and government as a kind of a home. Cause we're often disconnected in business, particularly, particularly then it was just like, there's that and then there's us and the two never meet. it was a wonderful, remarkable, remarkable experience. didn't stay in government. That was my one kind of foray into that.

 

but it sure gave me a respect for people in government.

 

Katharine McLennan (33:58)

What, tell me a little bit about that.

 

Bruce McNamer (34:00)

You know, these are people on the one hand, you think, ⁓ White House like ambition, and that's a thing that drives them and it's prestige. mean, that is not untrue, but these are people who could be in a lot of different things in the world and making a difference in a lot of different, and they come to this, sure, with a mix of motivations, but one of them is government can be such an enormously powerful agent to dump or change, enormously powerful in ways that the business can't do. mean, business has its own power, but

 

Government is such a venue for change. so just the respect and for the commitment to the job, and particularly that the White House was, you know, it's kind of a place and so, and people, you know, put in the time. And that kind of engendered that kind of like, wow, you're really doing it.

 

Katharine McLennan (34:47)

What does a McKinsey do with the government?

 

Batu Demir (34:49)

McKinsey does not actually do consulting with the government because they used ⁓ to. Back in 2018, they were having a new ministry of economy or finance appointed. And he announced that he was going to work with McKinsey to do a turnaround strategy for the economy because those were sort of the years the economy started going.

 

down and what happened was they basically like opened an office in Ankara, is the capital. They hired like 40 people. And then there was a huge like a lot of media pieces on Turkey is handing over its economy to the Americans. And then they got so much bad press from that that they added on television and said, we don't need any consultants. We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. And so we're not going to work with any consultants from here. And so since that day.

 

They're not actually in any work with any, I guess, consulting company. terms of stability, think things are really... So basically one of the, I think in the year probably 20, starting from 2015, but really like picking up in 2018, they started going against the Orthodox economic policies where they started believing that inflation was caused by high interest rates.

 

Even the inflation was high, they did not raise inflation rates, which only resulted in losing the investor confidence and the foreign investor confidence. so people, was less demand for the Turkish currency, which was Turkish lira. And it just like spiraled out of control from there on. And they basically, they also appointed people who didn't really, who weren't really experts in economics. And so inflation was pretty high, like a hundred percent.

 

150%.

 

Katharine McLennan (36:43)

It's wheelbarrow time.

 

Batu Demir (36:45)

Yeah. And I think it resulted in sort of like.

 

really like, I guess, decreasing the number of people who were sort of in the mid-class category. And then it just created a huge gap between the people with low income and high.

 

Katharine McLennan (37:04)

Yeah. And what's interesting back to one of your classmates I just spoke with yesterday, he is from Saudi and it'll be interesting because they're just at the point, I think, you know, I'm watching it, where they have the opportunity to plan and strategize about how they're going to set up the government and the power of the Stanford-Harvard connection to design that is fantastic. So Bruce, like you compare the Clinton time with now.

 

I was just hearing inflation and the lack of expertise. Sorry. How does it affect your office? what's, how are you guys coping with the factors? Let's say the fact.

 

Bruce McNamer (37:45)

I think the main factors right now for anybody and for most of us is uncertainty at large and from a policy perspective. And that's whether you're thinking in terms of economy, which like what a tariff, no, yes, no. You know, drone power, you know, that's unsettling. think certainty there, but also from a policy perspective as relates to the issues that we care about, know, sustainability.

 

climate, racial justice, DEI for many organizations. That's how you're framing it. Like what happens with all this and what language do you even use? And what records do you protect? And like, I never thought I'd be on Signal, but I'm on Signal. I think uncertainty more than anything else, which is always kind of a bugaboo link for people in business. Just tell us what the rules are. Now you may hate them, but tell us where this is going to up.

 

Katharine McLennan (38:42)

Are you returning to Turkey?

 

Batu Demir (38:44)

I'm actually planning to stay in the US. think the main decision point that I have today is that the number of opportunities in the US are, I guess, there are more opportunities here than there would be in Turkey in terms of industries, in terms of the dynamics. And so that is the main reason that I'd like to stay. And then I feel like in the long term, I will probably want to move back home because that's where I grew up. Is that what you did as well?

 

Katharine McLennan (39:14)

Bruce, you, were you, what was your home? did you? Oh me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I was in Australia from 1990, moved as a 22 year old. And as soon as my feet hit the ground, I was like, I'm staying. But I was a, my father was army, military. And speaking of what Bruce was, we lived in Germany actually for four years during the cold war, including Berlin for two years.

 

Batu Demir (39:18)

⁓ I was asking you

 

Katharine McLennan (39:42)

So in 1989, November 11th, no, November 9th, when the wall came down, still get shivers. I still, honestly, I get shivers and bruise. Some of the more adventurous of our classes, both in Harvard and Stanford graduates, had the bravery to go into Eastern Europe when that wall came down and really build up the financial infrastructure.

 

with the developing nations that you've worked in with. What's been the most remarkable thing that you've seen?

 

Bruce McNamer (40:14)

After Peace Corps, most of my developing experience was on that kind of, there's so many ways in which we help. And in fact, you know, in terms of disease, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of so many ways that US assistance particularly is, and that's all remarkable. And we, I wish we were doing it, but I would say that we also helped in terms of the kind of business development stuff that we were doing and the economic development as a driver for good. And you know, you don't need.

 

You know, the most remarkable gains in kind of human history have been made in the last 25 years in terms of lifting people out of poverty, terms of, you know, advances against the treatable diseases, infectious diseases, know, you know, helped by that was about 400 million people in China made their way from poverty to the middle class. And there was no development assistance. was just the power of markets put to work to help people. Give people a leg up and...

 

You know, unlocking capital and training and access to opportunity is a hugely motivating thing for most people. And I, for a long time, I had a picture on my desk in Peace Corps and it was of this village leader in this little town in Ethiopia. And I this picture of this guy at my desk, we worked with him in this very small town, we were doing coffee in Ethiopia. like, he was not the classic poster child for like, we got to help people in Africa. Like he was, he was.

 

He had these fierce blue eyes and they just drill right through you. this, like, so on it. And any small village anywhere has these people. It's equal opportunities everywhere. like, give those people a chance to do something on their own. Just give them jewels and capital and just a little amount of like some access to the education. And boy, you know, the human potential is with the right kind of tools to get stuff done is powerful. Powerful.

 

Katharine McLennan (42:07)

Again, DEI, USAID, and Peace Corps is under challenge, but to with some of the policies affect accessibility.

 

Batu Demir (42:20)

I think we just need to provide the infrastructure to all groups that they have all the needed infrastructure, the training and the schooling and the curriculum to get there. And we need to level the playing field. as long as we're doing that, my wish is that we won't need diversity quotas. And the statement that all the corporations put in the website that we fully support

 

at DEI and like, think you know what statement I'm talking about. My wish is that we make that disappear one day. That it's just, it becomes part of the band.

 

Katharine McLennan (43:00)

What have you learned at Stanford Beats on Tuesday night? What have you enjoyed about the Stanford two years? What are you going to miss?

 

Batu Demir (43:13)

I think I'm going to miss the convenience of having so many friends in the same sort of like within one mile from each other and just the freedom to text each other on a random day and say, Hey, what are you doing? and, and if they're free, just like meet up or like be able to meet for lunch, coffee. I think I'm going to miss being close to everybody.

 

Katharine McLennan (43:18)

Yeah.

 

Bruce McNamer (43:38)

I just stay right there.

 

Katharine McLennan (43:40)

you'd still keep in touch with a group of men.

 

Bruce McNamer (43:44)

We get together once a year and it's been a little hard for me the last couple of years because I'm behind all these guys with child rearing, like we're fit and to that. And we spent a lot of our second year, like once a week getting together and chatting and trying to get to know each other better and establish some bonds that way. And it's really stood the test of time in a lovely, lovely way. These are great guys and you've seen kind of the arc of our lives, you know, every year get togethers and real

 

you know, spending quality time together when we get together, it's like, how is it going? Like, formally, like, how's it going? Your turn will be going, like that kind of.

 

Katharine McLennan (44:25)

You

 

passed the talking stick. Batu, one of the things I reflect on is touchy-feely, which is people listening is the class that really learn how to communicate with each other in group. Did you have the opportunity to go through that, Batu? Yes. What did you think?

 

Batu Demir (44:44)

I really liked it. think it gave me a great perspective about what other people, I guess how other people perceive me. Even though I might think that I have the self-awareness to like think about how I might be perceived, it's still from my point of view. And so I think it's one of those rare opportunities that you really get other people's point of views. And it's like not only, it's like 12 peoples. And so it was really helpful.

 

Katharine McLennan (45:11)

What do you remember besides the men's group? What did you take away? I can't remember the Black-Scholes equation. And I just use chat TPT and all of the, well, you would have known the fixed income. I love that. I love that. But do I remember it?

 

Bruce McNamer (45:29)

I don't, it wasn't, I do remember getting a broad exposure to the whole set of kind of parameters around business, which is good. It's a holistic, but it's not a vocational school. You know, you don't go there to learn to be a business person. You learn to be just doing what you're doing. Or if you learn to be a finance person, it's either in finance or you're in academic finance, you get PhD, but it was more just that broad kind of introduction, but then the relationships I think and the...

 

And the power of that, you can use that, you can push that sort of utilitarian, like what can I get from this? But not that, it's like relationships are still, even still, as we're on Zoom and everything else, they're the thing. And that's the thing that I've, I don't know if I learned it there, but it was certainly reinforced there. I, you know, in my career, I'm not calculating about relationships, but like I spend time with people because I like it.

 

breakfast or the lunch or the how are you doing or the thing and the thing that have no particular purpose except for the relationship itself and maybe it doesn't but it makes for a richer life. ⁓

 

Katharine McLennan (46:40)

question for you, Batu, that I didn't ask was in terms of blindness, how many blind people have gone to Stanford Business School?

 

Batu Demir (46:52)

I actually do not know and I don't know if there is a, I don't think there are many. ⁓ and, and so I am extremely thankful to be, be able to be here and then be present. And I hope, and this is one of my, I guess one of the things I was trying to do while I was at GSB was that I'd love to make sure that there are others after me. And so, ⁓ we founded a disability club here and it's been, I guess, I hope it to be part of my gift to the school. And I hope.

 

It will be sustainable when I leave as well. And so I hope there'll be many more and we'll start counting.

 

Bruce McNamer (47:29)

Batu, I asked Chet GPT how many blind students have gone to Stanford GSB and it didn't say, but there are two notable ones. One Dave Power from 1980 and one Batu Demir.

 

Batu Demir (47:41)

I'll need to find him and meet him.

 

Katharine McLennan (47:43)

Yeah. Okay. So the conversation to a close. What recommendation would you give for this generation?

 

Bruce McNamer (47:54)

I, you know, I'd kind of put that in the category of like the timeless truths that are independent of AI or the internet or anything, or even your next choice. it is like at some junctions, just try to be purposeful about living and about the choices you make and find opportunities to reflect, and check in with yourself and not you, Batu, but just we need to do that because it goes by pretty fast. And, you know, so make sure you're checking yourself.

 

Like, is this the life I want to be living? And I'd have some notion of what that life looks like in its whole sense, not just to make the money and do the thing, but like, what do want in my tombstone? I don't want this to go. And then check in, check purposefully. Because boy, does it, it goes by fast.

 

Katharine McLennan (48:38)

is

 

so fast. And back to part of the reason I've done this podcast is what do you want us to know? What do you want the 60 year old person to know and to focus on?

 

Batu Demir (48:53)

I, it's difficult to say, but I feel like, ⁓ I think even though we're saying that there's, ⁓ probably the key thing that I feel like we have been talking about with my friends is that like people are now looking for, like, I guess it's, it, it, it's in line with Bruce's advice too, because we're looking for purpose and meaning and it shows up in different ways. so like people are looking for community. think.

 

My generation somehow sometimes hides that purpose and meaning behind other things. So sometimes they say they're looking for community, sometimes they're saying they're looking for better job, but I think we all are looking for purpose and meaning and it's difficult to find. And so if your generation can help us find that purpose and meaning, which I know is very difficult, you would really appreciate it.

 

Katharine McLennan (49:46)

Thank you. That's a wrap.