Never Stop Learning: Interview with Dr. Keith Keating, Chief Learning & Talent Officer of BDO Canada

Adam Mendler interviewed me for his leadership series, and it turned into one of the more personal conversations I've had on the record.

We covered the part of my story I don't always lead with. I'm a high school dropout. I made it about two months into tenth grade. My father was in the military, so I grew up in Germany, Korea, and Japan before we moved to the United States when I was twelve or thirteen. My education was uneven in a way that's hard to explain to people who went through one system. We didn't study U.S. history overseas, because in the larger global story it's a small piece. Then I arrived in an American school where the curriculum was built around it, and I was immediately behind. I was behind in math too. I had teachers telling me things about my potential that I believed for far too long.

There's an irony I enjoy. I now run learning at an accounting firm, and math was my worst subject by a wide margin. Fortunately my colleagues arrive with the technical skills already handled.

Adam asked strong questions about what actually moved me from that starting point to a doctorate from Penn, and I tried to answer them honestly rather than tidily. The path wasn't a plan. It was a series of moments where I decided the story I'd been told about myself wasn't the final version.

If you want the background behind the frameworks, where any of this came from, this interview is the shortest route to it.