Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Aldo Boitano - If You Want to Listen

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 38

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Aldo Boitano is an entrepreneur, author, Ph.D. candidate (Pepperdine), engineer, world-class mountaineer, and executive developer. He is also a husband and father. He serves as Chief Technology Officer & Partner at Egreen.com, Director at Chilean Lithium Salars, and the Executive Director at Executive Development. He's led expeditions to the South Pole for Wharton and UNC-Charlotte and was the  Dean of Instituto Vertical. He has served on numerous boards including the International Leadership Association and Electra.

Publications by Aldo Boitano

Aldo's Expeditions on K2

Quotes From This Episode

  • "We were aligned with the objective of being the first-ever Latin American team to climb K2 via the 'high route' and survive."
  • "There’s a big difference between teams that have a soul, have a purpose, who are more generous and collaborative versus teams who are selfish and misaligned."
  • On his dissertation work - "It's not that much different from mountaineering. You empower people, you have devil’s advocate, you have small teams...you fight hard on the problems and you are soft on the people."

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

Episodes Mentioned in This Podcast


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Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate. 

Scott Allen  0:13  
Today I had just published an episode, titled Why haven't you heard of Roald Amundsen? And my next guest...as soon as I said to him, Have you heard of him? He said, of course. So today I am so excited because I have Aldo Boitano we met when we both served on the board for the International leadership Association, although is in Chile, and he is a mountain climber among many other things. He has a Ph.D. candidate. He is a business owner. He is a climber. He has a father, he has a husband. And so he has many roles. And today, we are going to talk a little bit about climbing and exploration. And we're also going to talk about how that aligns with leadership. And that's the conversation we're going to jump into. Although I have had Sara Safari, Sara, she has climbed the tallest peak on each continent. She's been on Everest, but she was there in 2015, when there was an avalanche that really killed about 20 people at Basecamp. She was going to go back this coming year, and then COVID hit. And so she's she has an eye on 2021 but doesn't yet know for sure if that's going to happen. And, of course, this episode I just mentioned on Roald Amundsen, that was a really, really fun conversation. I had not heard of him. But maybe we get to know you a little bit. And then we'll get to know about your climbing career and your explorations. Wow. And then we'll go into

Aldo Boitano  1:53  
Yeah, well, it's all coming together. I was born in the mountains in Chile, we were we have a lot of mountains here the Andes, of course, The southern part of the Andes is called Patagonia. And, and I try my mother said she got pregnant have me at a ski resort at 10,000 feet and I was born up in the mountains. In the old days when we leave the mountains now, we don't leave them much. We just go on tracking more expeditions or whatever. I was moved to your main move to Spain early age. And at 12. I climb my first big mountain with my mom, dad, and grandpa. And never stopped since then. My first expedition was at age 15 in three weeks with me and a bunch of friends and climb one of those Seven Summits that you were mentioning Aconcagua, when it was 19 solo climb or try to do a solo climb, there were so many people in the route that still find people most of the route other than the last part to the summit. And then there was a dead body in the summit. So I wasn't alone in that either! So but it's, it's its mountains are a good experience and a lot of learning if you want to listen, if you don't want to listen to you probably there's a lot of people in the cemetery and they have the are good friends who passed away because of mountaineering action. So that was one part of the life the other life is the joy of meeting people from abroad with the young experience of living in Spain and Germany and the US too. And, and all that came together to a life of one set of jobs related to outdoors, I run an outdoor company, and dean of a university, CEO of a ski resort. And then the other part is the engineering part of me that a couple of books with the sponsorship of ILA, two books, and we're making a third one now outside the network of ILA and a Ph.D. and other things related to leadership. And the other side is just engineering, solar projects, lithium development projects, drilling in parts of the US and Canada, for water and other resources so that's been my life, but it's always there to try new things and meet new people like you on the board of ILA. I was very excited that the years we have together and I miss you when you left and I just I left myself after my second term so

Scott Allen  4:26  
Well Aldo you have so much going on so many different interests. I have great respect. And let's land on climbing for a little bit. So take me through the tallest summit you have the tallest peak you have something that would be k two. Is that accurate?

Aldo Boitano  4:44  
Yes. Well, I was part of an expedition that was meant to be a new route when we got the permit but we were the second in the world to climb k two through that route. The south southeast. Which spore of Cato okay. 1986 I was I'm now 53. That was 29, I think, wow.

Scott Allen  5:06  
So you're 29 years old? Would you take us through that experience? Would you take us through what that looks like from a leadership standpoint even? How does leadership work on on on an expedition like that? Is it? Is there a formal role that set does everyone just know their role and follow-through, I'd love to hear that we

Aldo Boitano  5:26  
had a Yeah, we had a three-year training experience, and not only training every day from January 1 to December 31, every year, and every afternoon and over the weekends and holidays, and etc. But we also prepared ourselves as a team, we started 14 people, originally only seven went. We had to put money ourselves to finance the expedition. My mom and dad are mountaineers maybe not as experienced as I am, but they knew exactly where I was going. Why not have every four people that go to K2 two dies, okay, too. So it's the highest ratio of death of 8000-meter mountains, people who summit and very famous people have died there. So we train on that part, we become a very solid team, based on skills. We brought social skills, we brought technical skills, of course, and we brought a lot of personal skills. We were not the best climbers of Chile, or the world or anything, but we try this very hard mountain very hard route. with people from all walks of life, people who had a doctoral degree, people who haven't finished high school because I had to start working to support their families. And we aligned behind this objective of being the first-ever Latin American team to climb K2 to via "high route" and survive. Actually, it was the first goal we set up was come back alive. the second goal was to climb the new route. And the third goal we actually ended up as part of the fundraising, we had to open up to the experience to others that the movie was featuring in National Geographic and Chilean TV, the book and become a very public expedition back then. So we train a lot, we tried to replicate here in the Andes, anything that we could find in the mall is, is not quite the same. So a mountain that took a week to climb with climbed it in two days, if we want to ride bikes, we'll ride bikes, not at the normal time of people like six or seven or eight in the morning, we'll start at 4 am in the morning with, with headlamps. So we did a lot of that and a lot of work with psychologies in situations. We saw videos of people dying on the mountain, we actually brought somebody from the UK who was the only survivor of a 13 people death in K2 back in 1995. 

Scott Allen  7:48  
Wow. 

Aldo Boitano  7:50  
We read a book about it. So so we train on that, and we ended up leaving all of those things, we almost lost two team members, we are very almost close to the summit rescue of him or one of those two, and the other one was a little bit better, but both in very bad shape and we barely made it despite everything. So in the end, it was not only about it, all these things that I mentioned, but also about values. Yeah. And the value of sacrificing yourself. I didn't summit I was on my way to the summit, to come back with somebody to rescue him. And I didn't doubt it for a second. And now nobody doubted and, and, and we made it work like that. It was really like I said, it's stressful and hard. Again, we had no satellite phones, a lot of things that today you take for granted. K2 two doesn't have any support of Sherpas or at least in those years. So we did the mountain by ourselves the whole mountain very technical, very, almost 90-degree route most of the time. So I lost one set of glasses, they came tumbling down some 10,000 feet big wall. So we did it and learn a lot of things through that process. Again,

Scott Allen  9:07  
Tell me about some of the learnings that as you reflect on the experience

Aldo Boitano  9:11  
thing is resilience. You don't need Heroes for the day. It's such a big, it's three months, almost three months climb 70 something days in the mountain plus coming in and getting out. And you have to be very focused, be very worried about your emotions, especially when people start dying around you. Three people from South Korea died in a nearby mountain. We met this Italian party climbing to be the normal route and become friends with them and we just witnessed the death of one of them who fell to our route and so the body and everything and a lot of remains from older expeditions. Couple a mother and the widow of a famous climber arrived in base come to to see the mountain and witness where their husband Sam had died the year before. So it was really, really strong. And so you needed the resilience, you needed some sort of optimism, some sort of clarity with the objective. Again, the first objective coming alive, we actually sacrificed the first window, we went up, but the window didn't hold on to the mountain, and we canceled our ascent and descent and bought us some more time sending the only external help, we had the cooker and the system cooker, running down with handwritten fax to be sent to the world to extend our permits and move it and everything while and on that same day is when the Italians and the South Koreans die for people die on that day when we choose. Let it go. And let's try it again. And then we try it again at two weeks later and successfully did it but again, almost paid the price of losing someone so so it also becomes "Why are we doing this?"

Scott Allen  11:02  
Why did you do it Aldo?

Aldo Boitano  11:04  
Well, that's a famous phrase by the first leader of the successful British expedition "because it's there." That's because it's there. Yeah, but the thing is still there and it will be there. For a long time. I don't think K2 or Everest will disappear. But if you're willing to learn and for me when I come to a stumbling point on anything, I said I'd been better I don't think at a higher standard I'd been part of a high-performance team. And so one thing is I've been better and the second thing is I've been with people who have helped me carry through this is this client key to at least at my level by yourself solo climb like I did I concur with you need others and this other team was very different. Again, we were not the best climbers of Chile or the world but the combination of our assets and our resources and the way we handle together for making jokes for cheering ourselves up for keeping silent respecting private spaces from waking up every day or two in the morning drink a gallon of water before going out so our blood will be thinner and we wouldn't freeze our fingers or feet. And every day, and every day, and every day, and every day, and witness all the things that happen and we stick together and we made and we were not friends, some of us were, not the whole team We're friends we just connected through the mountain to the objective through the goal we were sharing. And I have been seen in professional life and when I consulted with teams there's a big difference between teams who have a soul, have a purpose who are more generous and collaborative versus teams who are selfish and different agendas and misaligned and so on. Yeah, and it all it's always the same. So we saw the mountains is a good excuse to have documented all those things and have photos and something to tell but life is like that and work-life is like that. So So that's my take

Scott Allen  13:10  
As you are building the team I love some of those stories. They were really really incredible. And even the story of you saying look, I had to help save somebody and it wasn't even a thought in my mind. I knew exactly what I had to do it would sacrifice my getting to the summit, but we will save this person are all of those norms set ahead of time? Do you all have rules that you are going to rules of engagement so to speak that that is it is that group decision making is that how did you align that and organize yourselves?

Aldo Boitano  13:47  
Well, again we so we tried to recreate a lot of crisis situation climbing mountains and shorter times hard to route even biking in the different crazy times. The leader of that part was a very successful climber who climbed to be able to do the hardest route and everything. He wasn't the leader of the Expedition but he was kind of a natural leader and leading by example. But then at the same time, we stopped every two Thursdays and we talked with psychologies and so on and we and we talked about these things what happens if we have to...if there are not enough resources to everybody summit if we have to...okay we agreed that if anyone was even one will be enough and we plan for two out of the seven

Scott Allen  14:35  
Really?

Aldo Boitano  14:36  
The mountain had so much snow that we said "if we send two will send them to die because they'll be put snow up to here" and that will take a lot of energy out of them so we double even in bad weather really bad weather we had we doubled our efforts and put enough resources for tourism and then we said okay if they come back safely, three more concrete climbs the next day and all of us can climb. Yeah, well that was an issue. We were going up from 8000 meters to summit, this person fell ill and we all have moved around to save, Miguel. But there wasn't a real leader like when you're really connected. And you really make the connection that bond. And then of course you talk about these hard things. We wrote diaries, for example. Yeah, you're working in a flood plains beautiful mount and so that you...It's early that sunlight is just coming out in the early morning after you drink all the water or there's the moon out there. And you start seeing bodies, not full bodies, heads, shoulders, hands, and from and some from the 40s, 30s, and some more, more, more coin base. And then we'll write in our diaries, "what the heck is this?" Yeah, I want to go home I this is not what I train, I will share those feelings. And in our base camp tent, where we spent 80% of the nights, four days, nights, I'm sorry, because we prepared a mountain but we always came back to base camp, around 17,000 feet to, to, to have a good night's sleep and to and to recover from the effort. And while we were sitting up the mountain, we all wrote the same thing. But I didn't tell you Scott or tell that other person, we will. Once we did the book, we find out that we all were sharing the same one day somebody raised their hand and said, let's do something about it. Let's pick up a good day. Let's not climb let's talk to the other expedition of the Japanese, the Germans, the Americans, and the British. And let's do something. And we collected all those dead bodies a full day with gloves and everything, we found out that we had the only doctor in base camp of a tooth. And with and we collected all the dead bodies took photos for families in case anybody wanted to recognize them, marking the GPS where they were and had a ceremony in different languages, and that's how we, we celebrated those people. Well, then they came again, the sun came up again and we climbed the mountain again, but we did a gift to each other and not on purpose. Okay, I will eat this up, be scared, and instead of taking everybody down, we took more of a positive account. Of course, it's impossible not to be a little bit scared and watch yourself harder in the mountain. This is like you going to play American football or soccer somewhere and you go to a stadium and a lot of people have been killed in that stadium. You know, you'll want to be careful like are beaten very badly beaten in the sport. So

Scott Allen  17:37  
You've really scenario plan for everything you've scenario plan for emergencies and crisis. You've worked with psychologists, you've worked on your physical stamina. You've tried to do more than the normal person as you said, would climb, climb a mountain in a week? We're gonna do it in two days. And your training you said, for how many years? Was it three,

Aldo Boitano  18:03  
three years, three years.

Scott Allen  18:04  
Three years? That is just incredible. That is absolutely incredible. 

Aldo Boitano  18:08  
And again it wasn't it was physical, but more than physical was to really bond us together and get ourselves aligned. And that's what we did actually. And that's a lifetime experience how you can bond with people who are not your friends. I climbed....I lead expeditions to Antarctica and other places with friends. And it's not always that easy. To do things with friends actually. 

Scott Allen  18:31  
Yeah. Say more about that! 

Aldo Boitano  18:33  
Yeah, well, when they're friends, and we're in this Chilean Navy vessel, icebreaker down into them going down to Antarctica, they're gonna drop us in an island where it's only have been visited five in history, the size of Rhode Island or something a big island. And, and we're gonna try to climb the second highest mountain of in Antarctica, Cordillera, North to South Cordillera. And, there's a problem because, in military ships or Navy ships, you can't go anywhere and then, "Okay, you will hear and a speaker said, "We need to talk to the Chilean mountaineering leader and everybody will look at me, my four friends. Okay, you gotta go. What do you guys do? Well, we're taking who was taking photos, hold it up. There we go. And, and of course, raising the money, the pyramids, a lot of things that I did, they did big things to we were a team and but that type of accountability for those things where nobody wants to take responsibility. I'm the leader, and then we're in the mountain. Okay. I propose to do this and that note, and I propose, okay, I am the leader and I agree that we should take things democratically and everything but, but I mean, if that's what that was, that's what happens, really. I mean, and we will When was dying that mountain, by the way, the big mountain in Antarctica, we took one photo froze with minus 40 or minus 45. Everything was frozen the cameras they, we had a thick layer of, of ice outside our Gortex jackets without really coming out of our NFL like, like a heavy code and everything we had covered by skis. Now we had to do it by hand, they fell into a crevasse, and was really, really 27 hours without stopping in that to climb that mountain and come back Antarctica, and then wait for the boat to pick us up. But so leading friends, sometimes you have an experience of your friends and everything but the professionality part of it. And I'm guaranteed...not guaranteed.

Scott Allen  20:48  
No, not at all.

Aldo Boitano  20:49  
I mean, when you're 26 you're 26 you think it is? Of course, now I'm 53. And you know, some friends are not? Okay, let's stick with friends. And let's not do things together. When you're 26 you don't have those dimensions you don't. Again, my expedition was when I was 15. So when people ask me, do you know how to cook? I don't how to cook, how to write. I read everything. I mean, how can I cook? How can I not know? If 12 I start climbing and at 15 I started with expeditions for three weeks or months.

Scott Allen  21:24  
As you're leading others on some of these expeditions, likely people who have very, very little to no training, what are some things you observe when you're doing that work?

Aldo Boitano  21:36  
Well, one thing is, there's always surprise if you're gonna I mean, my style of leading is empowering people of course. There's a real danger, you try to take away from that I lead leadership expeditions to Antarctica, with Wharton MBAs for 10 years, and I set that up and I did all that work. So you leave them with a space to empower them and everything. And but what happens is you learn new things, okay? There's not only this way of doing this, the students who are less skilled in mountaineering, much more skilled maybe in business because they study at Wharton MBA, but they also found a new way of doing it, okay. And so you got to win your power, you really got empowered, it's not like, I let them play, but they don't know. It's saying I'm the one if your ego comes in if you're not truly believing in another, like a true other as itself as a self, being of value, you're, you're in trouble. You're really just the line, you're saying you're empowering. And so so. So that's what it is. So I not only lead but I a big generation of people I train, and some of them when much more I'm very happy for them much more success than me in mountaineering. But that's what it would Professor does, we have to teach others to go beyond them. And so it's empowering. It's trying to stay them away from trouble, if possible, let them put their fingers in the plugs and learn by that...without killing them. I mean, that's kind of the and then title, have fun in the process and enjoy, the good thing about mountaineering is like a lifestyle. A lot of people said, "Oh, it's a storm got you guys stuck in a tent for a week. Yeah, we had so much fun, we learn all the translations of a soup. In Italian, in Russian, and you name it or, or, or the, or the gas canisters, the gas canisters come in like in 10 languages, and we know all those things...so we played stupid games, like do a test with the, with the remaining spaghetti that we had or whatever you're really, really if you're stuck, if you can't, then your only worry is to hit the tent so the snow that is about to collapse the 10 comes down for a week, and then go out for your human necessities and take some snow to melt it in and come to eat something. You really

Scott Allen  24:21  
I had Sarah, Safari in class about, well, three weeks ago, and she said she was commenting on COVID. And she said look, "I have an apartment. I have water. I have food. I have a restroom. I'm good!

Aldo Boitano  24:37  
You don't need that much stuff. This is Walt Whitman said all this before us. Before us. He said all these things. When I came home from expeditions, I couldn't sleep in my bed. I had to put my sleeping bag for a few days and in that and a mattress and mountaineering motors in the floor. I felt like my bed was really really soft. And then the other thing that happens is it the other certain he becomes very addictive and also, sadly, like many other things, do you think you have some sort of truth and, and you just are in the subway full of people and you want to scream out like people speaking of face and go listen to God in this case, okay, go to the mountains go to the outdoors. So but and then, okay, maybe not everybody wants to hear that. Okay. My engineering classmates, some of them I took them to climb or hiking or rock climbing or some but a lot of them couldn't care less about my endeavors. And they said, "Okay, well, how do people have other things." This mountaineering is something that I enjoy a lot. I'm very passionate about it. There are other things too. So you become more humble and everything. And then the real humbling experience was to lose nine friends between when I was 27 until I was 34, or something in a lapse of eight years, I lost many, many friends who died, died because of mountaineering. And moved everything again, I finished thanks to that I finished my engineering career got my master's degree in engineering I set up more rescue rules and, and approved rule rules for going in expeditions for the people in my climbing club. Most of those nine were from there. Yeah. The German climbing club and, and, and. And then, well, the big thing about death is okay, it's a lot of suffering and things. But I wouldn't trade any moment that I spent with these people because I in extraordinary circumstances, we shared special times and went to special places and not only the mountaineering, mountaineering came with their poetry with projects of a climbing contest of cleaning the mountains, they access funds, a lot of things that we started this group of friends.

Scott Allen  27:00  
Yeah. Did the mountains have different personalities?

Aldo Boitano  27:05  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah. Africa, for example. It's without the locals who you are forced to use, but they're a big service, especially in Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya because it's a good excuse mentally, it's a good excuse. And sometimes you get sponsors to pay some of the way to travel the world and see cultures and get to really know the culture if you are with a Maasai for two weeks. You will learn a lot of things about them about how they behave the same in South Africa is not in mountains but in wildlife. Reno sightseeing expeditions and outdoors expedition - Leave No Trace, etc. Yeah, same the same in in anywhere. Moab, Utah, or Mont Blanc or whatever it is. You're there's always or in Peru. Yeah, in Peru was very special to climbing mountains of Peru. Get to know the people that are made a lot of friends. 

Scott Allen  28:03  
Well, tell us a little bit about your doctoral studies. I'm switching topics. I love that you have you've had these life experiences where that were so incredible. And transformational. And then you actually study leadership, and then you're doing your Ph.D. at Pepperdine University. Talk about your dissertation work. What are you exploring? Now, as you do that work?

Aldo Boitano  28:28  
Yeah, I tend to mix both sides of me, the engineering and the science with it with leadership and of course outdoors and everything, so my dissertation is focused on finding connections between successful high tech companies, the acquiring the fortune 500, of course, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, Oracle, and others. It's a qualitative study. I've done already got approved chapters one, two, and three are now on chapters four and five, doing the interviews and then finalizing the links between high tech companies' culture and leadership. What type of leadership would be exercise without saying the companies because of all the IRB protections and everything? Yeah, not that much different from mountaineering. you empower people you have devil's advocate, you have small teams, it's hard to climb a mountain with 100 people in a climate with four or five. Yeah, even when we're seven, we were never the seven in the mountains were three or four of the most how you're open to different conclusions, how you fight hard on the problems soft on the people, all those things are part of that thing and they are hiring too. They're hiring to come in top companies their data, they don't care much about the titles. Of course, I'm technical background, but they're looking more at the people themselves. Interesting. So and that's, that's What I found out and to they're worried, even though they may have so much money, they're worried about the ethical thing. So what they do, how they do things, they're not the evil, big tech as they're portrayed in the press, at least the people that I met, they're really, and what they look like is my dream and you in LA was to democratize leadership. And that's what you do this and I'm very grateful for the podcast you do. These guys want to democratize access to high tech, the gap is already increasing between those who have and don't have, and they're these people are worried about that. So it's, again, some of the stuff I'm learning in mountaineering in a business where empower people, small teams and all that, but also with some values, a set of values is not only about the money, and they do have a meaning and they try to the people, at least the interview. They're looking beyond that. And of course, all the things that are happening now. Yeah, some of them all their office to attract talent. And this is office What What is it? What is this thing nowadays with COVID. And, and we travel and spent and that all this Congress and meetings and gatherings and now it's all webinars, podcasts and Zoom meetings and Microsoft Teams meetings and, and but they're doing that whatever they can, some people have adapted better than others and some of our workers, it's not that easy, because they're at home, they have a lot of things to do related to their family. So there's been fascinating writing that always been linked to more of a servant leader, a leader that doesn't have all the answers, has a lot of questions, a flat organization. So I try not to be biased. And I hope on purpose asked my research questions the other way around. But it came towards this and people who I never met before. So I don't know, personally. So I'm happily surprised. But by the value, values, things weren't there.

Scott Allen  31:58  
It is interesting. So Aldo what is the timeline look like for the dissertation? When are you thinking you're going to be finished?

Aldo Boitano  32:09  
I will I was finishing I thought in this December, but that was going to be a pro because the time to get the 15 interviews have taken me longer. Yeah. But like I said, 80% of the dissertation is done with all the literature review the research questions, and all those things better. But I'm also trying to find some ideas because coming from a third world country like Chile, or second or whatever you want to put us I'm always worried about this, this gap and our we are more of an untrustworthy society, versus the Anglo Saxon and Germanic countries who are more, are more trustworthy. Okay, regardless, regardless of your own view, and the medium, whatever you're more trustworthy. And, and I believe seven years in the US, so it really knows. So but that relates also to business and collaborative efforts and doing things and helping others. And so I'm worried about tech is tech, and it will always be a tech. You need special brains and everything. But it's not the only tech, it's a soft part of tech that I'm trying to find out how it works. What how, what are the clues that make some people successful or not? Thanks nowadays to the internet and everything. People can work from any country with people in other countries. But still, if I'm giving you this interview, and I'm untrustworthy, and I said, What am I gonna do this and that, I will, it will be a really choppy conversation, because they will stop all the time with their calculations or making a new and end if you want to get something for yourself, selfishly, that's not the case, again, you will be asking weird things to move me somewhere...pause. So the same with tech, you let it flow and again, these hard on the problem, soft on the people, and be ready to try things that have never been tried. And over and over again, that keeps happening mostly in Silicon Valley in the US with over the new and new inventions and new things. And, and, and so I'm trying to listen to that and try to come to some conclusions why that is happening here. So repetitively and so successfully...

Scott Allen  34:20  
when I love that you're seeing some connections in your work between mountaineering and some of what you're seeing in these organizations. And I imagine even in some of the gaps of what you're seeing that, that there are lessons from mountaineering that could directly tie to some of these experiences.

Aldo Boitano  34:38  
Yeah. And well, a friend of mine, one of the friends who passed away a couple of days ago, we celebrated 18 years since he passed away. He says "mountains are their mountain will stay, we will not be different, maybe we'll be different when we come out of them if we're ready to listen." And I've seen it I've been on with other people on the big expedition, climb something harder than the first journalist or the first radio interview or whatever, go to TV that comes in some play the most heroic stuff and, and risked their lives for saving everybody..."Oh, no, it was hard. And but we managed together and others who didn't do any of those things. Yeah, we almost lost our life. And I did there, isn't it? Okay? So we were humans are humans for good or for bad. So so it's a matter of you make the connection and the same, like saving the board of ILA. And I think we all were very generous and everything and donated time and efforts and pay our expenses to be there with trips and everything. And at least for me, it was a big effort to be able to travel and but we did it with a good intention. And that sets us apart. In so it's more, not the mountain, who is an excellent excuse to travel the road together with somebody and enjoy the process with that person or those group of persons. But it's, it's who with who you do things? That's what I've learned over the years to engage with people I trust and I care about. And then okay, what is it what maybe is not a mountain, it's a book or it's something so in this case, I'm privileged that you invited me to this, along with our distinguished speakers, and very happy to help you as I can, that don't hesitate to contact me for anything I can help you.

Scott Allen  36:32  
Aldo, I very much appreciate it real quick. Before this, we close out. What are you reading right now? What are you watching right now? what's been on your radar?

Aldo Boitano  36:42  
Oh, well, 183 books to read (for the dissertation).

Scott Allen  36:47  
Me an unfair question for you as

Aldo Boitano  36:49  
No, no, no. But I subscribed to the New York Times and read a lot. And that brings a lot of literature. I forgot the name of this guy. Who wrote the 20 lessons of the 21st century and what's his name? 

And Thomas Friedman, a lot of articles about him. A lot of poetry from women. A lot of stuff about solar eclipses, we have one on Monday here in Chile. So I'm breeding with my six-year-old son about that is a gifted son for him to create and write at age three, so so a lot of things come up from all over the place. But where are we going, it's kind of the even wrote an article that was written in the LA Journal of very, I think the right and left has changed in the world. And it's more alone, or collaborative. Because I see tendencies both on the left and the right, of going isolated. And of course, there are always many countries in the left on the right, who go with other countries, so so that along with a crisis of our time to this for me, it's not COVID COVID is one of the symptoms is the global warming crisis. I've seen glaciers melt in my lifetime, glaciers who were, I don't know, 10 miles long, and now it's just a half a mile away, everything has melted, and the water that comes and feed our citizens is less and less and it's like California, big fires in the summer, etc. So, so how are we going to take the human species because the climate will not die, we will die as a species on the planet will survive, and we'll see what other forms of life come out of it. But, but where are we going to do about it? And, and COVID on anything show, of course, you got to be protective of the people in your country and set up rules for immigration or so but then that also has a mentality of abundance and they acknowledge that we can do it alone. Just like not climbing a mountain alone, keep the world keep the world safe. It's not only safe about wars and things, it's about climate change. Yeah, we're suffering in southern Chile like northern Emmet, north of the Northern Hemisphere, which is going to be a shelter for people. Yeah. I mean, Santiago, which is like Central California is becoming desertic by every year and people are buying land in the south. The cows are moving south here is colder, going to Antarctica. More rain or forest more timber. So the cows, the wineries, the grapes, and the people everybody's going south in the desert in the desert. The desert is coming our way. This the same probably in the US. I think people will start going to colder places.

Scott Allen  39:59  
A good friend of mine is the CEO of the Red Cross in Northeast Ohio. And he said that it was the most difficult year for hurricanes and the most difficult year for fires that they'd ever experienced.

Aldo Boitano  40:22  
Antarctica to a big chunk of ice. So how was it like 1000 square kilometers, and sometimes huge. An island wise was floating away to King George Island, and a week ago, it was going three feet per day, but the size of the ice was larger than the island where he was heading. I don't know, what will it happen? But we got to try to do something not by ourselves.

Scott Allen  40:55  
Hopefully, the Sustainable Development Goals and continued focus in that space by corporations. I had a really fun conversation with Steve Kempster. Who you know, and he was talking about this, you know, leadership for what?.

Aldo Boitano  41:09  
Your noble energy? Yeah. Before we said it was for our grandchildren, but now it's for ourselves and for our kids. That's how, how it's affecting. Not the grandchildren anymore.

Scott Allen  41:25  
Exactly.

Aldo Boitano  41:26  
Okay. Well, thanks for your time and the interview.

Scott Allen  41:29  
Aldo, thank you so much for the work that you do. I'm excited to have our paths crossed again in person and I will buy you a pint.

Aldo Boitano  41:41  
Thank you. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai