I am happy that the Open Society Foundations have achieved so much over the years in the field of early childhood development. But I think it is also worth remembering how we got involved in the first place—a story that shows how sometimes the best ideas come from keeping an open mind, so that you can find things you didn’t know you were looking for.
In 1993, due to the success of my business strategies, I was able to expand significantly my philanthropic work, which was largely directed at the time to supporting the transformation underway in the former Communist countries of East and Central Eastern Europe. My predominant concern was launching what was to become Central European University, with the idea that it would help develop the new generation of leaders that the region so needed after decades spent under the deadening weight of Communism.
I wanted the new university, with its focus on post-graduate studies in the social sciences, to have the best academic minds we could locate, and I devoted myself to talking to everyone I could find who had ideas to contribute— including Dr. Fraser Mustard, the great Canadian teaching doctor who was one of the founders of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Dr. Mustard was famous as a cardiologist. But at the time
he was becoming increasingly focused on raising what were then new questions about the socioeconomic determinants of human development and health, starting with early childhood (work that was to help to lead the evolution of the concept of community care that has spread far beyond Canada).
When I told him about my vision of the transformative impact of Central European University, he cited new research on the unprecedented development of the brain in the first few years, and then told me I had to start younger. Instead of focusing on university students, I should look at pregnancy and the critical first six years of childhood.