L. Rafael Reif

“I met Mohammed, maybe for the first time, in the mid ’90s, maybe early ’90s to mid ’90s.

I remember my initial reaction is — very much what stayed with me all these years — is an extremely kind, generous, pleasant person, easy to talk to, very intellectually stimulating.  And the part that I remember the most that has been true to this day, and is the part that I enjoy the most, is his curiosity.  He’s incredibly curious about just about everything.  And that each time we have a conversation, not only I enjoy it thoroughly, but it always makes me think.  And there is not a single conversation that doesn’t end with me trying to do something, that I know that I’ve got to do something.  And, quite frankly, very often, it makes us both to something together, which is even better.

So, Mohammed would turn to me at a surprising moment to say, “Well, what’s your latest idea?  What are you thinking these days?”  And that — that, just about every time — whatever I share with him gets much better in the conversation and becomes an action item for he and I to do something together – it has happened quite a few times in the last few years.

There is so much to admire about Community Jameel.  There are many family foundations, of course, and just about every one of them focuses on a particular topic or domain whether its museums, or the arts, or, or health, or education.  Community Jameel, it feels like its goal is basically to improve the human condition – it’s to do whatever is needed to improve the human condition.  To impact the lives of many people who society has forgotten.

And, and that seems to . . . that’s really, what drives Mohammed – and that seems to be what’s driving Community Jameel.  And that is, that is something really to recognize and admire – it’s very unusual!  I don’t know of any other foundation that focuses so much on impacting people. People who need to be touched.  It’s always important for them to impact large numbers of people with what they do.  Whether it’s with poverty or whether it’s water insecurity, you name it – that’s a critical component of everything they do.

Community Jameel has been extremely important to MIT.  Community Jameel really cares deeply about improving the human condition, improving what’s, what needs to be fixed in the world.  MIT is very much the same way.

It’s really a perfect match.  And they have been to us an amazing force to enable all the things we want to do.  We’re addressing poverty; that’s important to Mohammed and to Community Jameel.  We’re addressing water and food insecurity; that’s important to them.  We’re addressing education worldwide, whether it’s in refugee camps; that’s important to Community Jameel.  We’re addressing the use of technologies like AI in health; that’s important to them.  So, the matching goal from objectives is pretty much perfect.  And they have enabled MIT to do all the things that MIT actually wants to do as well.

Mohammed has described to me, years ago, how his father brought him up and educated him.  And the tremendous respect and love that Mohammed has for his dad comes through strongly in those conversations.  And it’s very clear that that shaped Mohammed’s view of the world.  And that, and it’s very clear, that also has shaped the way he has brought up his own children.

In my humble opinion Community Jameel, the whole Jameel family, is truly a gift to the world.”

 

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