James Pearce
Born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, I grew up playing rugby and spending much of my time outdoors. I attended a public (state) school on Auckland’s North Shore, known for providing the Cambridge International A-Level curriculum and offering students the opportunity to potentially attend university abroad. After making the decision to stay in New Zealand and study Law at the University of Auckland, I left after one year to study tuition-free at New York University Abu Dhabi. At the age of 19, I left New Zealand, and have since lived abroad for 8 years.
At NYU Abu Dhabi, I studied Political Science and Legal Studies, double majoring in subjects that, while knowing they would unlikely relate to my immediate career after graduation, stimulated my intellectual curiosity and allowed me to broaden my mind in terms of new worldviews and perspectives on society. The ease at which faculty members were accessible enabled me to speak at and organize conferences, meeting some of the world’s foremost minds across business and politics, including at the Milken Institute’s annual meeting in Los Angeles. While at NYUAD I spent time in New York, Washington D.C. and London, doing internships across academic research, tech and finance. Wherever I travel, I also try to join the nearest Touch Rugby club, which remains one of my lasting cultural ties to New Zealand.
My experiences at NYUAD exposed me to good governance, the role of business in society, and how governments can create lasting public-private partnerships to solve society’s most multifaceted issues. Not satisfied with ending my exploration of these ideas, I continued to immerse myself in these concepts by embarking on a Master of Public Policy degree at the University of Oxford, where I was a member of Christ Church College, carrying out my studies at the Blavatnik School of Government. Oxford’s collegiate system exposed me to graduate students from all fields, and I was lucky to become friends with some of the sharpest minds I have met, who I now count as friends for life.
After a one-year stint in New York City, working on creating data infrastructure centered around user privacy and data sovereignty, I pivoted to the world of consulting. Becoming a strategy consultant in the Middle East, given the strong ties between business and government, was the opportunity to marry my greatest strengths and intellectual curiosities. I now work at Bain and Company in Dubai, tackling strategic issues that cut across society, often involving multiple sectors of the economy.
So far, my life has been shaped around my desire to expose myself to the greatest breadth of ideas, cultures and opportunities, with the aim of best preparing myself for what comes next. My goal is to work in the startup world, and while I am indifferent about the exact product or service, my sole ambition is to tackle problems that hamper economic mobility and social outcomes. Eventually, I will return to New Zealand – contributing to the place that raised me is an essential part of my life path, and I feel strongly about sustaining the economic mobility that my country offers.