October 6 – Dinner in Moscow with a former student of hospitality management at SUNY Cobleskill and a graduate of the International Academy of Tourism in Tula who is now employed at Deloitte in Moscow, where she works in human resources, after working for three years at KPMG. Without any doubt, her year at Cobleskill and subsequent internship at the Sagamore in Lake George were instrumental in her being able to find work at such high quality employers as KPMG and Deloitte.
October 7 – Meeting at the U.S. Embassy with the Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs and the Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer. The Cultural Affairs officer is the person in charge of the U.S. – Russia Peer to Peer Dialogue Grant Program. He informed me that our application was one of 200 and that only 20 of the 200 were funded. He sent a link to a website that provides details about the successful applicants’ projects. We were encouraged to apply again when the next round of this program will open, in early 2014. They received a larger number of applications than anticipated, all of which had to be read and ranked in only two weeks with a reduced staff. The Assistant Cultural Officer expressed his admiration for the work the ATA has been doing with our colleagues in Tula over the past 22 years.
My conversations with the Commercial Officer revolved around the potential for some of NYS firms to do business in Russia with assistance from his office. He has already followed up.
In the afternoon I was driven to Tula and went to the very comfortable Hotel Armenia, formerly Ind-Garnik, where I was the guest of the Pedagogical University for the week.
October 8 – Met with the staff of the International Relations Office at the Tolstoy Pedagogical University in the morning, who provided an outline of the activities related to their 75th Anniversary. Foreign guests present for the events were faculty or executives from academic institutions in China, Italy, Colombia, Belarus, Germany, Ukraine and Italy, all of which had sent students to attend the Pedagogical University.
I had lunch on Tuesday Oct. 8 with Prof. Yuriy Chadaev of Tula State University and four of his students. We chatted about the government shutdown in Washington and I was asked how this could happen. I didn’t have an answer except to say that unfortunately on occasion, true democracies are a bit messy. The students stated that this type of situation could never happen in Russia. The shopping mall at which we had lunch in the Café Venezia, located right next door to the hotel, is every bit as modern as any shopping center in our region, with many stores with English names that would be recognizable to all of us. The shopping center has six floors with a broad atrium with escalators and glass walled elevators, a food court with the usual assortment of fast food shops and a 10-screen movie theater. Neither Crossgates nor Colonie Center looks any better than this modern mall in Tula.
In the afternoon, Yuriy Chadaev took me to the office of Victor Sinkofsky, the Director of the Yasnaya Polanya Orchestra. Victor is unwilling to bring unqualified musicians to Albany this coming spring and offered his best wishes to all of his friends in our area. Unfortunately, he is unable to say when he might have four musicians he would feel confident in bringing to play in Albany. His office is bright and cheerful inside an old building near the zoo in which other cultural organizations have their offices. The dinosaur statue in front of the zoo is nicknamed “Mother-in-Law” by locals. On International Women’s Day every March 8, locals dress the statue in a skirt and paint lipstick on it. Newlywed grooms bring bouquets to the statue on their wedding day for good luck.
In the evening, I had dinner with Galina Prokhorova, now retired after many years working with the Tula City Administration, Svetlana Nikitina, her replacement as the Head of the Office of International Relations at the Tula City Administration and Svetlana’s husband, Pavel. Galina is in fine spirits and sends her love to all of her friends at the Albany-Tula Alliance.
October 9 started with a meeting in the Tula City Administration Offices with Svetlana Nikitina and her two immediate superiors, Alexei Trutnev, Head of Economic Development and Svyatoslav Parshin, Head of Investment Policy and Economic Analysis, of the City Administration. There is a big push by the Tula City Administration to develop a business incubator and the three people, Alexei, Svyatoslav and Svetlana have this as their primary task. My experience of 23 years in economic development allowed us to have some useful conversations, which were followed up in a pleasant dinner at which Alexei and Svyatoslav hosted me. We will pursue some initiatives to allow our friends to learn some of our best practices and will invite these friends to visit Albany in the near future.
By coincidence, as Svetlana and I were going down the five flights of stairs at the Tula White House (elevators were out of order), Mayor Alexander Evgenyevich Prokopuk was coming up. He immediately asked us to come to his office, where we had a delightful exchange of ideas. Mayor Prokopuk is an energetic gentleman of about my age, whose hobby is deep sea diving. We took pictures, agreed to keep in touch and are now authorized to use his name on our letterhead. He is the Mayor, not the Head of the City Administration.
Programs and meetings related to the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Tolstoy Pedagogical University took up a good deal of my time on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Ceremonies included recognition of current and former faculty and staff including Nadezhda Shaidenko, former Rector. We were treated to a series of musical, dance and theatrical presentations followed by receptions and meals. I presented the engraved silver plated tray to Rector Vladimir Panin, who expressed his appreciation for the gift and for the excellent hospitality he received during his visit earlier this year to our region.
October 10 was a memorable day, because I attended a positive meeting at the offices of the Tula Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which was arranged by Svetlana Nikitina. Our host there was Alexander D. Krulov, a vice-president of the Chamber and four entrepreneurs were in attendance.
We discussed their commercial prospects in global markets and made tentative plans to assist them in expanding their markets to the USA. There are prospects for future cooperation with the Chamber and the ATA’s Business Committee. Afterwards, Svetlana Nikitina introduced me to a very dynamic lady, Oksana Pitkova, who operates a private kindergarten where English is used extensively. Their facilities are spotless and she is at capacity. She would like to host an American young lady for one month who could live in her family home to help her daughter improve her English. That night I had dinner with Anna Stepanova, who was a SABIT intern about 12 years ago, when she was an employee at Demidov’s Style. Anna has had great success since she began working at SCA, a Swedish manufacturer of cellulose and paper products, taking responsibility for Human Resources and staffed their new plant in the Tula Region. Her efforts have been rewarded by the company, which offered her a senior management position in their facility in Munich, Germany. She is a very capable executive and is moving up the corporate ladder at this prestigious company, where another former SABIT intern, Svetlana Petrovicheva, also has an executive position.
Barbara Webster, the two local high school students, Maggie Keesee and Will Heatley, Svetlana Nikitina and I met with the Coordinator of Education for the City Administration. The two young people were wonderful ambassadors, who contributed to the discussions, which focused on other potential joint projects.
A visit to Lyceum #4 to help prepare the Skype teleconference with Tech Valley High was pleasant and productive. The conference was held on October 15 and involved students comparing notes on the levels of contamination in the Hudson and Upa Rivers in our respective communities. Dmitriy Shmigirilov and his colleagues at Lyceum #4 were excellent hosts. I had an opportunity to comment about the collaboration with Denis Bychkov, Minister of Education and Culture for the Tula Region, at one of the events at TSPU. He indicated his approval of these initiatives. Denis Bychkov visited Albany last year on an Open World program.
My last day in Tula was highlighted by a lunch with Thom Brotski, the person responsible for investment promotion for the Tula Region, who visited here earlier this year. Thom was accompanied by his fiancée, Vera Kiryunina, the owner of Sloboda, a large circulation weekly in Tula, well as being the communications advisor to Governor Vladimir Gruzdev. Thom and Vera, as well as Alexei Trutnev and Svyatoslav Parshin of the City Administration, are very interested in establishing an MBA program in Tula. We will discuss this point with Dan Robeson and Mel Chudzik. Currently, there is no MBA program in Tula and we could be helpful in working with one of their universities and the regional and city governments to implement one.
All in all, it was a visit full of potential opportunities for further cooperation.