CEO SmackDown

First of all, a shout out to roommate George for cleaning up the apartment while the other three of us were out tonight. The bathroom, specifically, was getting hairier than a den of shedding sasquatches. Mucho gracias.

So today was a big day on the ol' intern calendar. It was finally time for us McGraw-Hill interns to have lunch with our CEO, Terry McGraw, at corporate headquarters on the penthouse floor. We were told in advance to come dressed up with questions for senior management, as VPs would be sitting at our tables.

At quarter to eleven, our usual crew of Penn Plaza interns took the subway up 48th and checked through security at 1221. We soared up in that fancy elevator once again and arrived on the top floor with the amazing view. Lunch was already set out -- a full buffet of half a dozen different sandwiches, salads, desserts, and drinks. We were given name tags with our table numbers on them, and, after dishing up, I set out to find numero cinco.

The seven people at my table were a collection of Standard & Poors, corporate strategy, and computer programming interns. These sorts of events always feel like your first day in high school, where complete strangers united by nothing but age are forced to meet and greet with sweaty palms. Fortunately, since most people's awkward years are long over by age 20, the process is much easier (I would like to note, however, that for God knows whatever reason, I chose to spread out my awkward years over the last decade -- grade eight I got glasses, grade nine I took enough Accutane to wipe out every pimple on the planet, and second year university some schizophrenic-slash-masochist inside me thought 'braces and jaw surgery? Yes please').

I digress.

The lunch was great; we had some legit laughs, talked a lot with the Chief Information Officer, and got some good insight into the future of global markets, digitization, and intellectual property protection as it relates to McGraw-Hill's corporate growth strategy.

Terry was a great speaker, too. Instead of getting all technical with specific business units, he managed to remain pretty macro in his message of passion and growth. He's very charismatic, very smart. Very rich (didn't say so, but everyone knows). And very influential -- from 2003 to 2006, he was chairman on the Business Roundtable, a group of America's top CEOs (Coke, Exxon Mobil, GM, IBM, Wal-Mart, etc.) whose companies' revenues combined total over $6 trillion.

And beyond being funny and dedicated, he's pretty badass too -- the guy had a huge shiner on his right eye. He didn't tell the story behind it, but I'm pretty sure it was the result of a big Michael Bay-like action sequence. I can see the posters now:

CEO SMACKDOWN
"Don't mess with McGraw."

When I got back to my office, the co-workers were excited to hear all about the lunch. That's what makes this internship program top-notch -- most employees don't get to see their own CEOs in real life, and here I'd just had grilled chicken sandwiches with the guy. Pretty cool.

That's all the updates for now. Only three weeks left in the Big Apple; time is going by much, MUCH too quickly. Of course I miss home (and barbecues and golfing and legal drinking), but, as the song goes, "Home is where the heart is..."

And, as the T-Shirt says, I heart NY.