You would think that when Andrew Zimmern comes to Babson, it’s to talk about food. Or business, or entrepreneurship.
He did talk about those things today – to a packed house of 350+ Babson entrepreneurs and friends from the Greater Boston food community.
But he also talked about family, community, humanity – and travel.
“The most important thing I do in my life is travel.” Standing in front of a wall of flags, speaking to an audience of over 50% international students, he could not have been more intuitively placed standing in his own living room.
“I’m a better guy on the road… At home, I don’t stop enough to participate in my world. But when I travel, I become more compassionate, more teachable, more in touch with my values.”
The Bizarre Foods host came to campus to announce his post as an Entrepreneur in Residence. Babson President Len Schlesinger teed him up with a play on the Jerry Garcia line (which is core to Babson’s strategy): “I’m pretty sure that, like Babson, no one else does what you do.”
“I have wanted to be here for a long time,” Andrew told us.
His stories were authentic, accessible, approachable, and most critically: actionable.
In one, he explained the dire economic conditions in McClellanville, South Carolina and how one entrepreneur experimenting with discarded construction materials had built ‘octopus condos’ to attract a premium-priced Atlantic species that had never lived off the Carolina coast – and thus, reinstated a struggling fishing community.
In another, he described the eye-opening experience of seeing the Himba of Namibia in cultural flux with the advent of a hydroelectric dam and realizing that it was his Western liberal mindset that framed such a transition as wrong.
And he brought it home with a story from Marblehead, MA: “No one wants to eat dogfish in Massachusetts, so it all gets shipped to England for fish and chips.”
On the impact of food decisions for local economies, he added. “Every time a chef puts dogfish on a menu, I’m convinced, a family is saved.”
Andrew’s ‘fireside chat’ and the answers he gave Babson entrepreneurs who questioned him were articulate, passionate and honest.
“I have the privilege to be a front-line observer to food problems and food solutions all over the world. That’s what I can contribute to an ‘action tank’ like Babson – bringing stories to people who are trained to make a difference.”
Babson couldn’t be more thrilled to receive them.