| Fall '07/Winter '08: Alumni: Sean O'Sullivan '85
Lessons from the Mideast
Sean O’Sullivan ’85 has seen the world up close—and believes others should too
Try walking by the charred pieces of a bombed-out building
every day for months, and see how you feel.
A 10-story communications building in the middle of Baghdad had been blown to pieces,” Sean O’Sullivan’85 remembered. “Iraqis had to walk by that sort of mayhem every day. It was disturbing for me to see this and realize that not only was no one doing anything about it, no one even had plans to do anything about it.”
So O’Sullivan took on the job himself—founding JumpStart International, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization, in 2003 and hiring 3,500 Iraqis to “tear down the old and make way for the new.” In doing so, he acquired a perspective on the world that echoes in his convictions to this day.
From Mapping to Music to Venture Capital
O’Sullivan bears an uncanny resemblance to the ideal of the Renaissance man. While earning his electrical engineering degree at Rensselaer, he and three other students founded MapInfo, now the world’s leading provider of “location intelligence” (i.e., computerized mapping) solutions. MapInfo was the first to create the ability to type an address into a computer and see a street map—a technology now used all over the world.
After seven years as MapInfo’s president, O’Sullivan left to start a rock band, which produced two CDs, and a popular music studio in Philadelphia, which recorded INXS, Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, and other superstars.
Music was hardly his last stop. Indeed, he went on to launch other technology companies, start a venture capital fund (backing 18 companies, six of which are now publicly held), earn his master’s degree in film production, and create a handful of independent films. It was on a documentary shoot in Iraq that the inspiration for JumpStart came to him.
(top) In July 2007, JumpStart completed the renovation of the Gaza Polytechnic Institute (GPI). The completed facilities consist of over 2,500 sq. meters with eight classrooms, two computer labs, administrative and student service offices, a library, a multipurpose building, and a cafeteria. (middle) Dr. Yahya Sarraj, dean of Community College of Applied Science and Technology, delivering his speech during GPI ribbon-cutting ceremony on November 7, 2007. (bottom) Students working in a GPI lab.
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“I’ve Seen Some Difficult and Terrible Things”
JumpStart managed to clear, build, or reconstruct nearly 1,000 buildings and other projects in Iraq—including over 300 homes for hundreds of Iraqis and reconstruction workers. However, the human cost was high. Several of the organization’s managers were kidnapped, tortured, or killed. O’Sullivan tragically lost JumpStart’s co-founder, Mohaymen Al Safar—who was to be the best man at his wedding—to an assassin.
“I spent 12 hours a day walking and driving throughout the streets of Baghdad for 18 months after the invasion,” said O’Sullivan. “I’ve seen people with arms and legs blown off, dead people, people staring at me moments before they died. I’ve had countless machine guns pointed at me. I don’t need to see any more death and violence to know that death and violence are not the way forward.
“Despite the desires of the staff to continue, I just couldn’t keep sending unarmed humanitarian workers into that situation,” O’Sullivan recalled, “and yet I wanted to keep showing the Arab world that Americans want to be part of a peaceful, nonviolent solution, not part of the problem.”
As a result, JumpStart moved on to the Gaza Strip, where it recently completed construction of the new Gaza Polytechnic Institute. The four renovated buildings now house technical and vocational training for hundreds of Palestinian students in the area. JumpStart’s partner in Gaza, the Community College of Applied Science and Technology began classes this past September. In yet another recent JumpStart project, residents of Gaza repaired streets ravaged by military incursions in the city of Rafah, generating desperately needed income for themselves in the process. Currently, JumpStart staff members are active in Jordan, working with Iraqi refugees and making plans to assist recovery efforts in the Dominican Republic.
In spite of his experiences, O’Sullivan cautions against jumping to conclusions about conditions in Iraq and other flashpoints. “Think about your own experience in a U.S. city, and compare it with the media coverage that city gets,” he said. “In the 1990s, when people thought of L.A., they thought race riots and guys with machine guns protecting their stores. But that’s not what it’s like there—at all. It’s the same with Baghdad: the caricatures are not reality. One of my most welcome surprises was discovering how warm, generous, and open Arab people generally are.”
The Imperative of Travel
That, in a nutshell, is why O’Sullivan is so passionate about cross-cultural experiences. “It is absolutely necessary, for anyone who wants to make informed decisions, to travel and explore other cultures,” he said. “It is the only way to overcome the hidden xenophobia that we’re all burdened with. The more you travel, the more you understand.”
Ten years ago, O’Sullivan took part in a program called Semester at Sea. The program immerses college students in an international curriculum while exposing them to an unparalleled cross-section of cultures. “It puts you in the middle of 10 or 12 diverse, mostly Third World countries,” he explained. “You might be eye to eye with people in some of the most desolate shantytowns in Africa, or Dhalit villagers in India. For engineering students especially, it adds a sense of urgency and appreciation for what humankind can do and yet still isn’t doing.”
O’Sullivan, for his part, has offered to help defray the costs of the Semester at Sea program for up to 150 Rensselaer students over two years. In response, Semester at Sea will make several engineering courses available on specific voyages.
On another front, O’Sullivan’s recent $2 million gift enabled the founding of the Rensselaer Center for Open Software, in which students develop low-cost applications to advance the development of civil societies. As he sees it, open source software could not only heighten productivity in emerging countries, but also improve specific areas such as government transparency, elections, and disaster response.
The value of civil society is something O’Sullivan learned on the streets of Baghdad. “When people don’t take responsibility for the well-being of their government, there will be chaos,” he said. “We are all so dependent on a stable society for a peaceful co-existence, and I don’t think most people realize how fragile this veneer is. We each must take a greater responsibility to ensure that our governments work for us.”
photo by Nancy Stone
