Jill Sparks, Executive Director of the Small Business Center, took educational leave in October to accompany a delegation from the Walker College of Business at Appalachian State University to Cuba. She was working with the director of the Transportation Insight Center for Entrepreneurship at ASU, speaking to various groups about entrepreneurship, a relatively new concept for the country.
Two of the students from Walker College, Michael Bremer, and Lennon Redford, happen to be A-B Tech alum. Michael and Lennon both attended A-B Tech to transfer to ASU and are both pursuing their Master’s in Business Administration. The following are their thoughts and observances from their trip to the newly-opened country.
Michael Bremer
From a sustainability standpoint Cuba is one of the few countries in the world that hits the mark. I wanted to see how it was structured. It was a good trip and Havana is a very nice city.
The country’s infrastructure was far worse than I imagined and was an eye-opening experience. It was very rich in history. The buildings are old and staircases in some of the places were marble. You could feel and see that the construction was from the 1800s.
The trip definitely gives me an idea about dealing internationally with businesses. It was what our focus was. Cuba is just now letting small businesses separate from the government and it was interesting to watch them getting set up and in a foothold. We got to go to the same hotel where (Ernest) Hemingway stayed. A lot of places advertised his frequency of visitation.
Lennon M. Redford
The trip to Cuba was extremely insightful especially for understanding Cuban-U.S Relations. There are valid and problematic points on both sides of the intangible wall that separate our two countries. This is why it is so crucial to examine confrontations and difficult situations from both sides of the spectrum so as to better understand the problems and conceive of a fair solution. I also got to experience the social environment of old communism, post-revolution, versus a new hybrid form of communism, and capitalism were small businesses and some professions have been opened up to the private sector. I witnessed the real and honest camaraderie Cubans have for one another in their community. I learned about the strength of the Cuban people who survived traumatic times during the Peak Oil Crisis as well as the governments ability to grow and diversify exports around the economic embargo enforced by the United States.
Cuba has a rich and diverse culture filled with art, dance, music, food, and the best cigars one could ever smoke. In some ways, I expected this but nothing can beat a first hand experience. Something about walking the streets of Cuba and smelling the air is just not obtainable via research. There is a Cuban saying that I heard multiple times on the trip “That every Cuban is an engineer.” This must be true as the cars from the 1950s and older continue to fill the streets. This was one of those small things I was excited about seeing in Cuba, and one of the reasons I picked it among other options. It is truly unbelievable that this country is so close geographically yet so dissimilar culturally and politically. I hope things continue to change for the better for Cuba’s politics and economics. I also hope that embargo restrictions will continue to lessen to enable peaceful trade between our two countries.