Larry Jacobs recently joined federal service as a Presidential Management Fellow after 10 years in non-profits and 20 years in commerce. “My calling has been the care and development of organizations and their leaders,” says Larry, “and government is the third leg of the stool.” After ten years of consulting in the Pacific Rim, North America and Europe, Larry returned to graduate school at the University of Michigan. “Facilitating two-week international workshops involving people from 10 or 15 countries not only changes your perspective on conflict,” he says. “It also brings into the focus the myriad ways in which decision-makers from
different national cultures perceive and respond to risk.” Jacobs says perception is a key issue, and is tied closely to representation of risk as well as culture. “In our futurizing work at W&I Strategic Forecasting,” says Larry, “we spend a fair amount of time struggling with how to communicate with American decision-makers about the complex of external factors that add up to significant future risk. In many ways, it’s an information theory and information visualization problem, and I tend to approach it that way.” Mr. Jacobs will be a member of Panel F, “Using estimates of contextual risk.”