Roberto Foa

Before arriving at the Financial Times I was a consultant with the Future Foundation, where I had worked with BP, Defra and the Social Exclusion Unit. Prior to that I worked with the China-Britain Business Council in Shanghai and edited a webzine in Paris.

Being at the Financial Times was a change of pace from these earlier pursuits, presenting a rare opportunity to be at the very fulcrum of current affairs. Each day news would flow in from around the globe and the editorial team would meet to thrash out the issues, leading to lively and trenchant discussion. It was a privilege to partake in these debates, and an honour and a challenge to be charged with compressing them into the high-density format we know as the 500-word editorial.

The Financial Times is a truly global operation, and during my summer it was a pleasure to see it in action. Researching for a piece often meant making calls to correspondents in far-flung corners of globe; most days involved using the TV link to the Hong Kong office and September offered a chance to spend time with the team in New York, where I was fortunate enough to attend a conference with Paul Bremer, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Roach. Events such as these, including a (painfully early!) breakfast with Francis Fukuyama and countless discussions among the FT staff themselves, have made these months a time of immense intellectual stimulation and excitement.