I lost three friends recently. They were taken from the world way before their time and the loss of each of them impacted me immensely. I started introspecting about what, beyond their friendship, was making me mourn their loss so deeply and intensely. This got me thinking about their contribution to the world and I found a common thread — each of them stood up for the little guy.
Mike Gestrin was a man with a big heart and an even bigger personality. During my year at Templeton College at Oxford, I was a 22-year-old living outside the country for the first time and the youngest on my MBA course. I was navigating challenges around race, professional inexperience relative to my peers, and the financial stress of living in an expensive country on limited means, with loans to pay back. Mike always, always, treated me as an equal and with dignity and respect. The respect you would bestow upon a fellow human being regardless of his or her race, colour, experience, background, gender, or financial status. And when he saw me, or someone else, being bullied on account of any of these reasons, he always stepped in and shut it down.
Jonathan Atherton was the man on whose shoulders the stand-up comedy circuit in South East Asia was built. Like Mike, he always, always treated everyone equally. And he always took the time out to speak to new comedians and offer them honest…
