Part I: The first three months -

I am Marcella (the one in purple), MBA Partner Coordinator.

I was an MBA partner myself and have lived to tell the tale. I am now ‘on the other side’, part of the MBA office team (in the photo) in charge of welcoming the partners of our MBAs, helping them feel at home and create their own partner community.

Part I: The first three months -
It’s the beginning of March and everyone has more or less found their rhythm, both on the MBA side and the partner side. The MBA’s are in full swing of things - the pressure cooker has started to do its job and they have started to look a bit haggard, their clothes less pristine and the bags under their eyes darker than before... all is as it should be. Partners have also settled in by now, found their new bearings, have connected with each other thanks to FB and the activities we put in place at the beginning of the year and hopefully have all come out of the tunnel of the various seasonal illnesses. Thank god spring is arriving soon!

This is actually my 6th March as Partner Coordinator, and I have now started seeing some patterns emerge from year to year. Each January I start with an Excel list of names, addresses, birth dates and countries of origins. Apart from a few enthusiasts who cannot wait to know what awaits them in Lausanne, who with the help of FB have started connecting (and then only in the last 2 years really), I don’t really know what my ‘partner class’ will look like until the first few days during the various orientation sessions.
This is what I found this year: 58 partners in total, 21 kids ranging from only a few weeks old to 3yrs – 29 partners living in Lausanne with a few others joining us at various intervals. We’ve also already welcomed 3 IMD babies and are still waiting for a couple more to be born - plus a few more partners will join us at a later date. Totally different from last year when we had 54 partners, 32 kids (yes you read correctly) with most families living here in Lausanne.
Yet despite the fact that there always partners who want to learn French, partners looking for work, partners travelling, parent partners, weekend partners, short and long distance partners, male and female partners, stressed out partners, zen partners, active partners and so on, like a recipe, if you change the proportions of your ingredients your cake can turn out tasting differently each time - and so it is. Each partner class has its own identity, its own special mix, its own special recipe - and each time I take a bite it’s a totally new experience, discovering flavours I have never tasted before! (Excuse the metaphor, but as you have been reading, food is a constant theme here…).

But then it’s not just about the proportions - it is of course the ingredients themselves. Sometimes it’s in the flour, brown/rice/self-raising, or in the size of the eggs, or depending on what sugar you use: raw, white or honey, whether you use flavourings or essences, nuts or raisins and so on. Or in the cooking – slow baking, pre heated oven, fried, cooled, etc
It’s still early days of course and I am slowly getting to know the partners as individuals, but already their personalities, their skills, their backgrounds, their experiences, their ages, their resources, their interests, their strengths and also their weaknesses, their optimism and also their pessimism, their highs and their lows, their opinions, and so forth, have started to mix into something special which by the end of the year I am sure is going to be one delicious cake!

And I look forward to seeing it mix, rise, cook and in the end taste it with gusto – after all, it’s no secret, I do love my sweets - :0)

Until next time Marcella