Working toward a “Legacy”

Posted: April 27, 2008

If you’re passionately interested in risk communication, please read this.

I'm 63. I semi-retired in early 2001, then went back to work after 9/11. Now I’m working as hard as ever. But I am thinking more than ever about trying to institutionalize my approach to risk communication so it will still be around after I retire (again). If I were a good manager I’d have founded an organization that would outlive me. But how does a sole practitioner leave a legacy? There’s Jody — my wife and colleague Dr. Jody Lanard — but I’m hoping she won’t keep working forever either.

I have two ideas.

1. Teach a risk communication master class.

I’d like to identify around 10 people who are at least a generation younger than I am, who want to integrate my approach into their professional tool kit. I’m looking for people who:

have a good deal of relevant experience already and are determined to stay in the field.
know my work pretty well already and are willing to invest time and money in knowing it better.
come from a variety of backgrounds (professionally, geographically, ethnically, etc.).

My tentative plan is for the group to spend one or two weeks a year in residency together for a period of five years. Most of the time will be spent analyzing risk communication case studies, trying to figure out what should be done (or what should have been done). Between these annual sessions we will stay in touch by email, by visits when feasible, and perhaps on a dedicated website. We might also want to write some joint articles, collectively or in various combinations. I have two goals: to share everything I know, and to build a community of risk communicators who will hang together with me and then without me. (Of course I expect to learn from the group as well.)

I haven’t thought this through or costed it out, so obviously I’m not looking for commitments yet. And I doubt I can ask people to commit to more than one year to start. If you think you might be interested, please write to me at peter@psandman.com.

2. Endow the website.

I want to keep adding to this website for the foreseeable future. But one way or another, eventually I will stop. By then I’d like the website to be in the hands of an organization that will maintain it and add to it.

I think I have enough resources to endow the website so the organization that takes it over won’t have to foot the bill. Of course it needs to be an organization that can accept charitable contributions — probably a university, an NGO, a government agency, or a corporate foundation. More importantly, it needs to be an organization that has other risk communication programs besides my website, and that is going to stay committed to risk communication over the long haul. And of course it should be an organization whose approach to risk communication is reasonably compatible with mine (though they needn’t be identical).

If your organization might be interested in hosting, maintaining, and expanding this website some day, please write to me at peter@psandman.com.

Peter M. Sandman 59 Ridgeview Rd. Princeton NJ 08540-7601	Phone: 1-609-683-4073 Fax: 1-609-683-0566 Email: peter@psandman.com
Website design and management provided by SnowTao Editing Services.