So, hi everyone, and thank you for being here. My name is Meraf Dean, and this is my colleague, Gometi Anandan, and we're gonna talk today about women leadership cohort. So before we start, a quick question to the audience. How many of you have been part of, or are still part of a cohort? That is like a group of people that support each other in to achieve a certain goal. Okay. So, I think this talk is gonna be very beneficial for most of you.  We're gonna talk about the benefit of the cohort. We're gonna give you the secret ingredient of how to form such a successful cohort. And there's a key takeaway, one key takeaway. Okay, so, I would hold starts, started. So, we have, we all work in Red Hat, and we have senior leader, Perry Myers, who we're very lucky to have him on the crowd today. Gonna get back to him afterwards. And Perry has in his group two wonderful, well-accomplished women leaders, that's Gometi and Kate. And Perry was also mentoring me, so I'm from a different org. And then, Perry had a great idea. So, we knew all of us, and in your background, and we knew we were all at the next level of management. So, he figured, why don't I connect the dots and let them know each other? And this is basically how our cohort was started. This cohort is working extremely well. So, just to give you an understanding of what does it mean? So, we meet once a month. And in this, during the discussions, we bring up to the table very important topics. I listed a few here, just to give you the feeling of it. So, one example is to inspire ideas that were previously discounted as too ambitious. So, as women, we sometimes tend to, not to aim high, but rather to aim low. And this is a place where we kind of took these targets and break them down into something more achievable, doable. Another important topic is that we kind of advise each other because one of the hardest topic is how to be a mom and have a career at the same time. How do we manage that? We advise each other. We have the ability to expand the network via this cohort. So, for example, Gomathi here is mentoring one of the associate managers in my org. And I thought it was a good match because they're both trying to, doing the same path in their career before they become a manager. And of course, we require variety of perspective and learning opportunities. So, in short, this cohort is extremely beneficial then we kind of try to understand why? Because in the first place, none of us really looked for help or support to tell you the truth who are very good at where we were. We're well, we know our job, we're very professional, we're good at what we do. And still this cohort added something that wasn't there before. So we kind of tried to this talk, reverse engineer, to try to understand why makes it, what makes it so good, what added value does it give us? And it was kind of a surprising to profoundly understand this. What basically lies underneath that is that this cohort helps us to address gender related challenges together. And in order not to leave you like in this very high level statement, we're gonna give you some down to earth examples, three good concrete examples, and I'm gonna hand it over to Gamathie. Let's go into examples. Let me ask you a question first. How many of you here have felt like self-doubt?  There you go. Guess what? I'm part of that group as well, and that feeling has a name. It's called imposter syndrome. And it is basically you being insecure of your abilities that make you feel that you don't deserve to be in the role that you are in, even though you have all the qualities to be in the role and perform really well. There was a poll conducted by one poll which basically surveyed 4,000 adults. Two thirds of the adults said, two thirds of women in that group said that they rarely feel truly confident about their abilities and always had some sort of self-doubt. And the self-doubt most often arose in workplace settings. So imposter syndrome, workplace settings. It goes very well together. How does this cohort help me address this imposter syndrome? Basically, they provided the support that I need because I was able to trust Kate and Mirav and it helped me strengthen my self-esteem. During the meetings, we meet once a month, as Mirav mentioned earlier, and during the meetings, we talk about our insecurities. We highlight each other's abilities. Quote examples, hey, by the way, you did that, that's awesome. You know how much that means when you are feeling self-doubt, someone whom you think are really well-established and talented, state that to you in a personalized setting that makes a world of difference. And I hope you are able to have a group similar to what we have together to address your insecurities as well. Let's go to a different example. Women also tend to shy away from self-advocacy and personal brand range. I'm gonna quote another study here. You have to bear with me, you're gonna get a lot of numbers now. Harvard Business School did a research where they studied 4,000 working adults and 10,000 school-aged youth.  The researchers were surprised by their finding. So they did more research and they found out that these insecurities or the way people rate or women and girls rate themselves less favorably started at a very young age, as young as being in sixth grade. So that is a huge problem. We have started having these self-doubt and inability to rate ourselves for what we are worth. And so they did more research and they found out that the way they rate themselves less favorably stems from the fact that women and girls think that they have their skills and abilities are far less than their counterparts, men and boys. So they wanted to, we wanted to talk about this. When we were having one of our discussions, we talked about how we don't promote ourselves, how we don't empower ourselves and do what we wanted to do. So I'll give you a specific example. When we started talking in the first few months, Mirab here got promoted to a senior manager. We both were so happy for her when we talked about her journey on how she got to being a senior manager. And at that point, I shared with Kate and Mirab that I feel I hold myself back sometimes because when it comes to my career development and progression, because I feel that people might see me being aggressive in when I warrant or talk for myself and I didn't want to be seemed aggressive. And immediately after I shared that, they both crushed those insecurities for me. Again, I wouldn't have shared these, of course I shared with my family and friends, but sharing with someone who is in a similar role as you in a workplace makes a huge difference, right? So what happened after that? We talked a little bit more about what we wanted to do in our career at Red Hat and beyond. And at the end of the meeting, Kate and I came back, came out of the meeting with a concrete plan of what we wanna do, how we wanna initiate these discussions with our respective manager for the next level in our careers. And we also set a timeline for that. Before we meet the next time, we will have this discussion with our respective managers.  The difference here is, as all very talented managers, we write down plenty of notes, we capture the notes and we assign action items in the document. So we both had an action in the document that was assigned to us, which said we talked to our respective managers about our career progression the next level to come up with a plan for it, not to say I want to get promoted, but to come up with a plan for it because that's the first step. About personal branding, that's another example I'm gonna talk about. So we talk about personal branding and branding in general. So I think the discussion started like, oh, somebody doesn't know me in the different org. And I was telling, oh, I normally do this where I figured if I take some tasks which is not related to my role in my day-to-day responsibilities, for instance, when I joined this group, the new group that I am in at Red Hat right now, well, it's not new really, I've been there more than two years now. I started running a program, a reward zone program where basically we distribute rewards for associates to recognize the work that they've done in that specific quarter. And I said I normally take these kinds of additional tasks or responsibilities just to put my name out there. I've learned that when people know your name, they tend to connect better the next time you reach out to them for anything, right? Doesn't necessarily have to be a favor but it makes the conversation, it makes the relationship much better when you reach out to someone and they already know your name. They are like, in their head, the connection goes on. Oh, this is Gometi, I've talked to her, I've seen an email from her and then they are much more open to responding to you. At least that's how I feel. So I figured someone else would feel that way too. So I shared that with Mirav and Kate and they thought it was a great idea and they said they would look for other opportunities. That's our way of promoting our self-brand. As I said, build confidence, practice self-empowerment and personal branding and hands it. The next myth, women tend to not have strong networks. I kind of learned something new. I'll show you a visual. I hope everyone can see this well. I did not know this statistic before I started preparing for this presentation. This is a LinkedIn research and based on this research, they say that women tend to have 14 to 38% less of a stronger network than men around the world. So it's not one country, it's not one geography. Everywhere, all around the world, women tend to have a weaker network than men. So why is networking so important? Social networks are critical to professional advancement. So let's talk about specific needs for men and women because they're different, apparently. Again, I did not know that when it comes to creating a network or using your network to your benefit. Men need centrality. What does that mean? Centrality means you have a lot of contacts, you have huge network, and those contacts in your network will help you create more networking contacts. So you have a huge network. Men need that. Women also need centrality, but women also need an extra additional thing, which is an inner circle. They need a trusted inner circle to help empower them, support them, and give the little boost that they need to reach out there to their central networks and help them enhance and leverage those networks for their professional development. So we talked about inner circle. My inner circle is my cohort. Hopefully you all have, and if you don't, create your own inner circles as well to build those stronger networks. I'm gonna give you an example about this and about networking. How it helped us. I'm gonna call out another person in our audience now. So we were talking in our discussions again, we were talking about our networks and how we know other people within Red Hat in different groups. And I think Mirab had that idea of, oh, we should bring in one of the senior leaders, women leaders to our group and so we can raise these questions and get their perspective. And Mirab said, should bring Karen. I know Karen. She'll be happy to come to talk to us and Karen did come to talk to us and it was a very, very, very useful session because she happens to be in the crowd. It happens to be in the crowd. And she answered all our questions. I think confirmed some of our beliefs, helped boost our confidence, did everything that we thought she would and did a little bit more. And after Karen left, we all got together and said, that was really good. That was really useful. Maybe we should try, think about someone else. And then Kate said, oh, I know someone else from a different business unit. So I'll reach out to her and we'll have her on our meeting next time. And we'll get her perspective from a different business unit point of view. Again, we wouldn't have reached out, I personally wouldn't have reached out to Karen to talk to her, raise my questions, share my thoughts, if not for this network. What else? I guess? Another visual. One of my favorite ones. So yesterday in our social event, I explained this to someone. I was talking to someone whom I never talked to and he asked me, what is your talk about? I was like, oh, it's about women leadership cohort. And he's like, I really don't understand. I think in 2023, everybody has equal opportunities. What is that we are talking about here? It seems like two backwards that we are talking, still talking about, women need additional opportunities and so on and so forth. So I told him, the difference is equality and equity. What is equality? Equality is giving equal opportunities, the same opportunities to everyone. That's equality. What's equity? Equity is giving the opportunities that people need, the addressing those gaps along with those opportunities so that whoever is not having the enough opportunity to whoever has those gaps, those gaps are addressed and eventually everybody's equal. So when there's equal opportunity, everybody has a fair chance at those opportunities as well. I hope those examples were helpful. I'm gonna hand it back to Mirab. Okay, so I hope that at this point, you're all convinced that having a cohort is a extremely beneficial thing for you all. Some of you are asking yourselves, okay, so let's say I wanna start one, what does it take? So we wrote some criteria, but please take it with a grain of salt because this is based on our own experience. It wasn't tested in lab or being researched or anything. Basically, we think three conditions should be met. The first one is that all the members should have some sort of a common ground. That could be a similar place, a position at work that wanna go to the next one, similar to what we have, could be around a specific goal. So for example, a group of people can form a cohort so that they can stand here next year and do a talk because it's scary as hell to stand here. So that's the first criteria. The second one is that the group has to be small. We think three to five top, that should be the optimal number and the reason is two-folded. First, some intimate things are being shared in these discussions. So it's very hard to do it in front of a very large audience so it needs to be small. And on the other hand, it also gives everyone, each member, sufficient time to talk and express themselves. Last but not least is of course, the technical stuff. You need to have easy means to communicate. That'd be easy, time zone or any other elements of communication. Okay, so almost last slide, the key takeaway. The key takeaway that we ask you to take from this talk. Remember Perry from the beginning? So we ask you to kind of be Perry. Be Perry in the sense of do a similar, Perry played a crucial role in forming this cohort. So this is kind of a call out to all leaders to try and connect others into similar cohorts because we believe it's gonna be extremely, extremely beneficial to them as it is to us. That's it, thank you. Yes, that's a fantastic question. I'm just gonna repeat it for the recording. So we have a question, how about having a man into the cohort? Not necessarily be a part of the cohort, but someone that you can ask questions to and extend the network and get his perspective and get to know us. So that is a fantastic idea. And yes, the plan is I guess to have some men. I don't think that a man can be a part of the cohort because then something gets lost. There's a certain thing of being a woman with women. Maybe there's gonna be another different cohort that combines men and women, that's a good idea. Yeah, I think I have a little bit more to add. So as you say, we have plans to reach out to other senior leaders who are not women and bring him or a different pronoun to our group. It doesn't matter who it is, right? All we want is to learn from others. It could be men, it could be women, it could be any marginalized group. That's our goal. The additional point I wanna add is the common ground that we had is that we are women, right? So obviously you could form a group which you have a common ground. So it could be men and two women or someone else and they can form a cohort. The key is they have some common ground, some common criteria that they are working towards because I think for us, that's what made this more successful. Go ahead, Yara. Okay, oh, you wanna answer his question. Okay, go ahead. Yes, of course. That was awkward. Hi, I don't know. What's up? No, I don't know.  We work in a very men-dominant field. We always get the men's perspective. So when we find women, it's not like every woman have the same perspective, right? I have my perspective, Gomati has her perspective. When we talk, we're not like, yeah, yeah, we totally agree with each other. We're very different. And I do agree that, yes, we can have cohorts with men too, definitely. We want that, we want that communication, we want that network, but we already have it. We have the men, I mean, I work with what is the majority of men, we are like a few women in our team and we're trying to build all that, right? We don't need more, I would say. We want that support from a fellow woman in our team, in our workspace. And I totally agree with you, right? I totally agree that it is important, but it's missing the point. It's missing the point to this talk, in my opinion. I appreciate working with these females and I appreciate working with all the men in my team. And I mean, without the man, Perry, this wouldn't even exist. So the man is already there. So thank you, Perry. And I think that's, can I sum up to my answer? Thank you. Thank you. This is really awkward, I think, like this. Go ahead. Oh, I have a couple of... Okay. There shouldn't have been a discussion there. Yeah. Okay, I saw a few hands.  All right, so I don't think there's a question. There's just a statement that you made. So I'm going to repeat what she said. Okay, it doesn't have to be. It just occurred to be that our group formed the way it formed. She is a senior manager. We both are managers. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be similar levels or anything like that. All right, go ahead. So the question is, you work as an engineer and you don't have a lot of women engineers that work closely or in your group or within your extended network at Red Hat, or I don't know where you work from in your workplace. So what do you do in that situation? This is exactly where your leaders play a key role, right? Help you extend your network. I'm going to answer this and you can add on Mirab after. So I think you reach out to a leader that you look up to in your organization and ask them, help me find other people, other women, other, you know, from their own network of contacts to connect you with them, you know. I'm not saying it will work because we are all humans after all. You know, after a couple of sessions, it may work. It may not work, but at least you get that contact, right? So you get that introduction with someone whom you don't know that exists in other organizations. I did not know Mirab works in a different organization and again until I was introduced by Peri to Mirab. So essentially you need to reach out to one of your leaders in your organization and I'm sure they will be open to helping you find that contact and form the group that you want to. So if I may add something. Yes, please do. So that is a great question and I cannot just entirely relate to that, but just mind you, the similar ratio is I think in women managers because there are a few of us, I'm afraid, I know. So I think the best way would be to kind of find some other softwares, engineers, women engineers and then form yourself together and I don't know, kind of expand it. Like the ideas that can come out of this cohort could be great, like how do we go and prepare the next generation? Like I don't know, even from a university, but yeah, feel free to reach out to us afterwards. Can you try to ask, are there any issues and how are you using the work of that? Okay, so your initial question was like, how did Peri know whether we had common way of approaching things, like we have common things that would help us form a group better and then there was a subsequent question of how are things in terms of do we have differences of opinion or do we get along well, is that correct? Okay, so I don't know if Peri knew or not, all Peri knew was we were all getting new managers under us so we were going to be new manager of managers. So he said, oh, you guys can learn from each other and so I'm gonna connect you and he said did an email introduction to us. That's how, that was the key, right? The common ground was we were all going to be new manager of managers. So that was the common ground. To answer your subsequent question, which now it's completely blank, yeah, we do have different opinions but it is not like we get into arguments during our cohorts, we raise our opinions and we say, oh, I feel differently about this and I consider Mirav as my friend now and more than my coworker, she's my friend now and same with Kate, so I think we get along really well. Okay, you wanna add anything else? No, I said pretty well. All right, any more questions?  Five minutes, so. Uh-huh. What is the strong network? Strong network. So you can define it as something, depending on the size of the network. Oh, actually, let me reiterate the question first. So you would like to know or understand what a strong network means, right? So a strong network is something that you have, you can count it as number of people but in my opinion, I think it's how effective the people that you have in your network. So for instance, you need something, you need an opportunity or need to get a career advice or you need to get some information that you don't know yourself. These are the people that you have around you whom you can reach out to and potentially get the information you need. So it's like multiple sources of information who has different perspectives. So if I have to define a strong network, it has to be diverse, it has to be something that is easily reachable and you are gaining and also providing information to your network. In other words, you are giving as well as receiving benefits from the network. Yes, please. So I think a strong network would be a bit different because I think it was referred to men in that context. I think men are more bold in reaching out and extending the network and going high far more than women. So this is something that we should improve. Did that answer your question? It better. Okay. Any other questions? All right, so feel free to reach out to us if you want to discuss about this, if you disagree with us, we definitely want to hear about that as well because that's how we learn and we grow. Thank you for listening to us and giving us the opportunity to talk. Thank you for our leaders who came in to support us and the friends and everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


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Oh my God! Call a C.M. and he got a gladiator. A gladiator? Did you? Dylan, you got to be careful where you're going to start calling C.M. Why? This is one of your niggas in the whole world. Hey, you see that nice statue over there? See that? Because we know you stayed last night at the papal residence, so did you meet with Pope Francis? We had the opportunity to meet with him this morning. He is on his way to Greece now, but we did have the opportunity to chat with him a little bit. Can you describe for me what that meeting was like? Was it a private meeting? What did you talk about? Well, I don't want to go into all of the details, but he was apologetic that he was unable to come to the conference last night where we were originally going to meet because of complications regarding his trip to Greece. But I just conveyed to him my admiration for the extraordinary work that he is doing in raising some of the most important issues facing our planet and the buildings of people on our planet, injecting the issue of the need for morality in a global economy where we have the top 1% now only more wealth in the bottom 99% where we are moving in a suicidal direction in terms of climate change. He has been upfront on that. He is going well beyond the Catholic Church to, I think, the entire world's community and that's just something that you're sure about.  What's he like personally? He's a beautiful man. He really is. There's a radiance. You know, I don't mean to overdo this. I'm not a Catholic, but he is a beautiful man and there's a radiance that comes from him. It was a very, very wonderful moment to meet with him.


Today we are opening a box that I have never opened before, Star Strike Blast. I can't believe that this man got so tired to be not uploading that he just came to my house and said, I'm gonna make you upload. That is exactly what happened. Not enough prime style opening videos. Can I be honest for a second? Yeah. I forgot about this channel. No, like literally two days ago I was like, I have not uploaded on this channel in a while because I've been so focused on streaming and everything else on my main channel. But to be fair, there hasn't been anything to open outside of this. This, like once I did this, I was like, all right, I'm kind of bored. But Pokemon is doing much new stuff and Yu-Gi-Oh is doing Darkwing Blast and there's something else that's coming out that I'm excited for. So what's inside this box? All right, let's get onto the real card game, okay? Yu-Gi-Oh, all right, Star Strike Blast. This set, I don't even remember when it came out. I think it was like around 2010, something like that. This set only came in first edition. There was no unlimited for this set. Inside there's the Ghost Rare Shooting Star Dragon. So that's what we're really hoping for. There's also a ton of like super rares and stuff that are really expensive. Do I do the honors? Do it. Woo! There it is! Last time we pulled Exodia, it's gonna be hard to live up to that. We're gonna see what we get. By the way, if you missed the Exodia video, a lot of people did, go watch it. We pulled Exodia last year, it was awesome. All right, let's do this. We are starting off Star Strike Blast. I don't know a lot about this set because I have never really opened it that much. So this is our first time opening this box. I think this is one of the last five of these boxes I need to open. I was gonna say, what's the big hit here? Is it just shooting with a shooting star? Well, the Ghost Rare is probably the biggest. I know there's some other good stuff. I actually hit the, what is it called? The Glolobob Ulti in the Every Pack opening out of the set, and that's like an $80 card. So there's some good Ultis in here you can pull as well. We got the Booby Trap, Wadhopper. Let's pull something good. Scrap Lube, okay. We got the Extra Valor, nice. I don't know why, but- Oh, wow! Is that a secret rare? That's a secret rare from back. We're off the bat. Okay, secret rare. So I don't worry. I got you. I just had a sleeve. You just had the sleeve. Am I stupid? We found him, don't worry. We're good, we're good, we're good, we're good. We will sleeve up the secret rare. You can slide that over to me. All right, gotcha. You know what? I wanna pick from right here, because I feel like this pack right here is magical. Okay, all right. I'm really hoping we get an Ulti out of this box. I don't know what the ratios are for this. Like we got a secret. I don't know if that means we're gonna get an Ulti or not. What do you do? How many do you throw in the back? I just did three in it. I think it was like the third card. I think you would need to do four and then switch the two. I think that's what you have to do. Okay, switch the two? Yeah, that'll work. Yeah, scrap, that's a good card. Swift scarecrow. Is there any like good, valuable, or like hit cards that are like comments? I think there is. I probably should have looked at the list. Oh my gosh, yeah. There it is. I just got PTSD actually. Pumpkin, heat wave, and then that's it. Okay, yeah, I think it would have been right in front of that if it was there. So not bad. I mean, is there any good comments? Vanity's emptiness. All right, I think that you do four and then you go like this. Let's see if that works. All right, we got the main. Half counter. Blackwing, Etsyon, the two swords. All right, White Dragonfly, the Carcury spider. I think, isn't this in like the old school games? I wanna say it is. I think this was like an old school card in like some of the video games, like the GBA games and stuff. I'm pretty sure it is. Let me know in the comments. Axifool's Attack Gainer, Creation Resonator, and ooh, okay, Ultra Rare, Missed his LBZO card. For a second, I thought that was an ultimate. Hold on, that's two in a row. I'm on fire right now. You should just pick the top pack.  Well, the Ghost Shirt will be later. All right, right, right. So if you're about to leave, you don't wanna miss the Ghost Shirt. All right, you know what? I'm just gonna follow this because this is obviously mapped. So all the heat. They put them all at the very top. Imagine. All right, so we got Allied Justice. Blackwing, we get a lot of booby traps here. Yeah, a lot of booby traps. Synchron Soldier, Star Siphon, Rescue Warrior, Attack Gainer. Okay, okay. All right, I got excited for some. I was like, damn, is it? Am I gonna win a pack battle? Is it about to happen? Well, it's about quality and quantity. Okay, I'm just wondering, because I don't think I still don't think I've beaten you. And I mean, how many has it been? 20 pack battles?  I know, here's why. Because no one was actually challenged to a pack battle. This wasn't technically a pack battle. That's why I'm winning. This is not really gonna count. Okay, we got the Necrolinker, the Cursed Bill. Okay, Synchron Soldier, Exterios Fang, Star Siphon. I still think my favorite pack battle we ever did was when I pulled 10,000 Dragon. Ah, I don't have to bring that up. Lancer Archfiend and Needles. And then you lied to me. That was the best part. So a lot of people don't know this, but usually when we do pack battles, we wanna tell each other why we pulled. But if the box battle is ass, I will literally like text them and be like, yeah, mine was all right. But then that day I'm like, I can't let them know. I'm gonna just do four in case I do have some fire. I don't wanna like potentially scratch or whatever. Oh yeah, good idea. I text them and I'm like, I pulled nothing. But if you want, we should do reaction videos to make up for it because like the boxes are expensive. And it's like, you know, we can get twice the content out of it, let's do a card. And then I'm like, yeah, just record your reaction to it and he just did it. And then didn't realize the reason why. Oh, we got one. The Globob! That's also banned, isn't it? Oh, it's an Ultra in this set. Okay, there's also an Ulti that we pulled last time. Okay, so that was- That's a good card. This is banned, isn't it? Globob, I'm pretty sure it is. It might be. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is. I think this just got unbanned randomly or not unbanned, but like- It used to be really good. Taking out the ban list for craftable cards and magical- Oh, this card's good too. White mare. White mare, yeah. All right, come on, Ghostrear. This is the time. If there's a Ghostrear in this box, I'm gonna lose it. Let's go. I don't think I've ever pulled a classic Ghostrear before, so this would be a first for me. Yeah, I've definitely not pulled this one. So let's see if we can do it now. No, we can't change. Can we talk about how good Ghostrear is used to look versus how good they are or how awful they are now? So for example, no hate against Ghostrear in the past, but look how stale this is. Yes, compared to the old one, yeah. Bruh. Yes. It's actually cartoonish the difference. Like, I don't know- Why is it so gray? Yeah, it's so sad. Where's the happiness in this? Like, look how much this pops. This is beautiful. Big time agree. Let's compare it to the shooting star dragon in just a second. Yeah, right, right. How about, it's gonna be in this pack right here. All right, man. We got some scraps. I can't, apparently I forgot- What's the specials? I forgot how to open packs. Let's go. Mirror of the ice barrier, a lot of Karakuri stuff, rescue warrior. Nice. Oh, okay. It's a foil. You've got two foils now, you're catching up. Of course, naturally. For now. I can start off ahead, but- I think you got the fire ones though. So is it too ultra with the potential Ghostrear? I don't know, that's the thing. This is kind of the weird area between like 5Ds and like GX and stuff where they kind of like changed up the ratios and everything. So like, I know there are oldies in here. I don't know what the ratios are. I don't know if we'll even get one. There's that spider again. Hopefully we will. There's a lot of decent ones in here, scrap lube. And there we go, nothing. Just depression. All right, just a rare, all right. I'm sure a lot of people can relate, but there's nothing more painful than opening like classic packs and then seeing just a regular rare or you finally get a hit and it's like, oh, what's that one? It's the bad one. Oh, great secret rare. Yep. At least we got a secret because secrets wouldn't guarantee per box back then, weren't they? I don't think so, but I'm really not sure. Extra veiler. I wish it was effect veiler. Nothing, great. All right, great.  What, we pulled the Exodium like the last pack, didn't we? So like. I want to say yes. It was something like that. It was like the last pack. You brought the first edition LB packs too, right? Yes. And then we pulled that last and then we pulled like, didn't we pull Rygeki or something? Yeah. No, but I'm saying you brought the LB box open here as well today, right? Oh, oh yeah, totally, totally. Yeah, we'll be opening that in the next video. Keep an eye out, make sure to subscribe. If you don't see it, you must have missed it. It was there, I promise. It's actually funny seeing like LB blown up after Pokemon did because like I remember me and Pokey we found somebody who had like a bunch of boxes and we just bought them for like the dirt cheap. I said I have that box to be cracking to right now. Yeah. Pull nothing. That's also the biggest fear is like I would love to open a vintage box but I know if I open up a box and I should get like an ultra rare Gaia, I'm going to be upset. Like cool things. Hey, look, we can just open RetroPak. No big deal, RetroPak one. Yeah. Let us know in the- There might be the LLBR blue eyes in there. If you comment enough in the comments that will manifest that we opened it right after this. So we will know soon if you've made enough comments to open the RetroPak one. So we'll see. I've had the age to find RetroPak two again. Yeah, we got to bring it back. Dude, you opened, you're pulling that Shining Dragon. Ooh, there we go, Jagooniddy. All right, I remember that one from Dual Links. Yeah, I would love to pull the Shining again. So we might have to bring back our old school battle, our RetroPak twos. You sent it to just PSA, right? Yeah, I got it. I wonder what happens if you send it to like BGS. It has like a line in the thing. It has like a line in the text box. It's really weird. So I don't think it would get it today. Yeah, but you might get that 9.5. Maybe I'll send it to CGC, get that 9.5. You could. I've actually recently got into CGC. It's funny because Roxton will tell you, I did not- I thought it was cool. You did five, but it's okay. You know what, maybe, you know what? There's going to be a ghost rare at the end, watch. Good luck. It's going to be a ghost rare. You know why I know? Because I'm a believer of fire pulls. Like, oh no, mine was last card. What did you do? I'm a Dragon Ball fan, so I can't count. Can't count, and also a Yu-Gi-Oh fan, so you can't read. So you're- Yeah, no, I'm getting twice the railing here. Yeah, day-to-day activities are rough for on-site. All right, you were talking about CGC, I think. Right, so Roxton will tell you, when CGC was doing gratings, and everybody was like all about PSA and BGS, and they were backed up, I was like, I would never go into CGC. Like, I'm good. And then I bought this. This one on sale, I remember, I was going to buy yours for like a while, and this went up on eBay for, I think I got for like 600 bucks. And I offer 600, and they accept it, and I'm like, is this real? And then once I actually held this case, I'm like, this is actually kind of nice. So now I fall into this- I told you that, and you were like, no, they aren't nice, those cases aren't good. I was like, no, you got to feel them, man. They're really good. It's funny because I love BGS cases, and Roxton hates them. Yeah, I'm not a BGS case guy. Yeah. I love the sub grades. I don't love the... Yeah, there's too much sleeving, which is good for protection, but it's like, you want to be able to see it. CGC is actually great. This sounds like a CGC sales video. CGC is sponsored by CGC. Okay, maybe not.  What's going on? Sorry, PSA, I'm sorry guys. Well, so this is my issue with CGC originally. I feel like when CGC took over, a lot of people were like, oh, I only trust in BGS and PSA, because that's what they were used to. And CGC has it around longer because they were obviously great in comics and stuff. And I always felt like CGC, because of that, purposely would have created cards way more harshly to show that they're like... They did at the beginning, for sure. And they definitely did, because... Oh, look at that! Oh, look at that! Nice! Let's go! Super arc, how much go? I didn't even expect that one. Yeah, we're just like mid-CGC conversation. I think you won the Pac-Bubble here. No, you can still get the ghost. That would win. A ghost and an ult in a box? That's insane. I mean, I don't know if it could happen, but maybe. I really don't know what the stuff is. How's it looking? Oh, this looks great. Oh, but it's got the... The imprint? I don't care. I'm standing in anyway. Yeah. Sometimes you can sneak by with that. Yeah, so I just actually... I just got a...  I actually like that art. The Ultimate Rare of Black Loss of Soldier from OTS. And I was excited, but it's got that same, like, Ultimate Rare imprint. Have you seen my no-name one? Yes. I have it with me. Yeah, somebody hit me up and they're like, yeah, I have one with no name. Do you want to buy it? I was like, yes, please. You guys, I want to see that in person. I was like, yes, please. I love and hate that Ultimate Rare's have those imprints because they're not damaged or cards. They're just how the cards are made. Right. The new OTS ones, they like stamp them so hard, too. It's like, you can see the artwork to the back. Oh, for the Synchron. That's a good card. Oh, that's a great card. That's a great card. We're gonna, we're gonna sleep that up. I think it's like five bucks. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. There we go. If we get a Ghost Dram, this would be a great box. Stag, half-counter, Leandrake, scrap searcher, Bartheon, Wadhopper, Medallion, and a Black Wing. Okay. Look how beautiful this looks. I love Ultimate Rare's. I just like the artwork for this card. Then you just get to the back and you just see that imprint. This card gets all that, all the hate because it's like not very good, but it's so expensive. I think it's great. It's, it's pretty good, but it's like not good enough to be worth the price. No, no, not at all. But I think it's awesome artwork. I don't, I don't even, you can open the next one, I'll open the. Okay. I don't even run it because it's like, I rather have the extra, extra dex to buy for like something else more important. Right. Like it's almost good enough to play, but not quite. I've used it before and it's like, oh, this card's pretty decent. I think the problem is, is because the original black loss of soldier honesty is better. I've said what I've said. He's like, no, this link. Well, no, no, not really. Well, you still, you still get the banish and that one's like hard to like kill. It's like really good. Yeah. And it can like gain attack and stuff. So it's just like a massive like 5k tower. Is there, do you know if there's a link card if it's used for material that it makes it so you can get destroyed by battle as well. Because if that's the case you can probably make this card snapped. I don't know. Cause I know there's XC stuff for that. I don't know if there's link material stuff. Cause like, again, what it does in case you're new to Yu-Gi-Oh, BLS can get destroyed by effects if you use it, if you summon it using a level seven or higher. Yeah. And every single time it destroys a card of value you can either add 1500 attack permanently or banish. So that's a good effect. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's just that it gets beaten so easily by everything else in today's meta. Goes rare. Oh, I forgot. Yeah. Droll is in here. That's probably like $10 plus. That's an underrated card. This used to be a $30 rare. Yeah. Which is insane. So that's a good pull. I love and hate this card. Yeah, yeah. I'm the type of person that says you should always run Droll and I never use it. Yeah, yeah. This is actually that bad of a box. No, it's pretty solid. I mean, we're getting good rares. We're getting all, you know, all the rarities besides Ghost Ray. Until now. Until now. Until now. Here it comes. No, that wasn't it. That timing would have been great. There's a lot of black wings in here. I kind of forgot about that. All right, see what we got. It fits well with the black wings set coming out. Here's a better question. What's the next box you're going to go after? This is like, you know, you never open this. I still need to open Invasion of Chaos first edition, so. You never done that? It's very expensive. I have never pulled Black Loss of Soldier or Chaos of a Dragon, including reprints.  It took me forever to pull BLS. Oh, Delg, the Dark Monarch. That's a guy I have not heard of too often. I actually think that's a little bit, like in terms of value. I don't think there's a lot of reprints. Oh, we're in the last pack? Yeah, the card that I've pulled like a bajillion times was Chaos of, I'm not Chaos of a Dragon. Oh, the Dark Vision of Chaos. Dude, I pulled that one. It feels like that's the easiest one. And every time I bought the Vintage Packs, I always pulled it. And I graded that 10 a couple of years ago. I graded it 10 out of my last sub. I got a reprint 10, which never happens. It's gonna get killed on this. It took me a really long time to get the BLS, but I pulled a lot of CEDs and like Demox, but it seems hard to pull them. It's gotta be. This set? No, BLS. I don't think so, but it definitely could have been. You know, knowing Konami. All right, we're on the final pack. So we gotta pull. This could be a Ghost Rare. We gotta end it with a Ghost Rare. That might as well be. Or we never upload again. Okay. Yeah, you heard it here first. Why do you think I stopped uploading my second channel? Yeah, this was recorded months ago. It was when you stopped uploading. I made the gamble and I lost it. Let's go rescue warrior. Oh, we got a super, the Monk Ranching. All right. My favorite thing about card openings is like you open that card. It's like, oh, great. Woohoo, super. It's awful. All right. Well, that was fun. I mean, that wasn't that bad. Honestly, a lot of decent cards. We'll take that. That's really dope. I like that card. I'm definitely grading it. Putting it in my next bulk sub. Just $15 bulk. And you also got side blocker. Nice. I don't think that card's good. Yeah. I'm just, I'm optimistic here. All right. Thank you guys for watching. We will have another video in rhyme style coming up at some point. So see you guys then.


Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this press conference from the 49th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos. It's day number four of the World Economic Forum. It's Davos Thursday, so to speak. Thank you for being in the room with us today and thank you for watching, whether you're watching on Twitter, Facebook or our website. Thank you for tuning in. This press conference is dedicated to the launch of an exciting new partnership, a public-private partnership, I should say, between Ghana and Novartis and additional partners. I'll introduce my panel. Any moment to you now, I just want to express from the World Economic Forum's perspective as well, that we pride ourselves of being a platform for these important initiatives. You might have heard of GAVI, you might have heard of the Global Fund, so we're very excited to add another very important initiative to this list of initiatives. Without further ado, let me introduce my panel to you. To my immediate left, I'm pleased to be joined by the Honorable Kwaku Agiman Manu, who's the Minister of Health of Ghana. To his left, we're joined by Dr. Anthony Nzia Azare, who's the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service. Right at the heart and center of our panel, we have Vas Naram Simhan, who is the CEO of Novartis. To his immediate left, we're pleased to be joined by Professor Kwaku Ohenefrem-Pon, who is the President of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Ghana and Program Coordinator for the National Newborn Screening Program for Sickle Cell Disease, and I think it's fair to say one of the leading global authorities on a sickle cell. And we're joined today, last but definitely not least, by Petra Lau, the Global Head of Public Affairs Policy at Novartis. Thank you very much for being here. And I would be amiss not to recognize that we have in the audience His Excellency, the Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Babumya. Thank you for being here with us today for this important announcement. Thank you very much, Minister. Without further ado, let me hand over to you. We would like to hear from you why is sickle cell so important for Ghana, and why is it such a priority for your government? Please. It's on. Thank you very much. Sickle cell has been the country years before Yvonne I was born. But we haven't gathered resources and having given sickle cell the needed attention that it needs. At the moment, WHO actually has looked at sickle cell in West Africa. And in 2006, the WHO actually reported that sickle cell disease contributes the equivalent of more than about 9% of under five deaths in West Africa, and up to close to about 16% of under five deaths in individual West African countries. Ghana, unfortunately, is packed with West African countries. And therefore, this thing is right with us. We have in the past had renowned scientists who have done a lot in sickle cell. But we haven't been able to allocate budgetary resources to enable them to actually do what they should do best for us, to find a solution to the problem. And that is why at the moment, I'm going to see sickle cell as a high-profile area that we should tackle. Thank you. Thank you very much, Minister. Anthony, let me jump right to you. You work, especially on the implementation of the work here, and you work closely with the Sickle Cell Foundation, share with us your perspective. And what are the next steps you see for implementation? Please. Thank you very much. The next steps are, one, the cooperation that you're having, the partnership. We want to use the cooperation, the partnership, to make sure that the sickle cell disease bedding in Ghana, for that matter in Africa, when we finish, will come down. Two, we are also going to make sure that the treatment is also given to everybody, affordable treatment, which is sustainable. And this we are going to do through, already we have done the standard treatment guideline for sickle cell. And we are going to do a failed test quickly, which you take about a year. And we have experience already in Ghana in commercial, the sickle cell, newborn screening. So we are going to stand on that one and make sure we have centers of excellence in all the 10 regions, now 16 regions. So every center, there will be center of excellence over training. We also have diagnosis so that we have at least one sickle cell screening center in every region. And we are also introducing new treatment, hydrocelluria. As I speak now, it has been, the Food and Drugs Authority of Ghana has given it the license to bring it into the country. And I'm sure it's already in the country. So we are going to also make sure we give this hydrocelluria, which has been used, some old drug, which reduces the disease complications. And we are introducing it in Africa and for that matter in Ghana for the first time. Novartis, one of our partners is making sure that it's also affordable. And we want to make sure this treatment is also sustainable. And we are going to stand on this partnership to also get to other partners who are very much interested, which I'm sure Novartis and the Sickle Cell Foundation Minister of Health and Ghana Health Service will build on. And going forward, we know we need also data. And when we get the data, then we can then plan and make it sustainable. So we are going to do a lot of research. And we are also talking to Novartis, which they've agreed that Ghana will be used for also testing of any innovative drugs in Sickle Cell. And if you do all these things together, we are sure that Ghana will be the gateway for Sickle Cell management in Africa. And Novartis is so kind enough to bring also the price of hydrocelluria also down to be affordable. And we are also trying to put it on the National Health Insurance Benefit Package. So these are all the things that we have been doing. And already, as I said, the Sickle Cell guidelines already in place. And I'm sure we'll carry this in once the agreement has been signed already within the next few months. Ghana will be a sure piece for Sickle Cell disease in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa. Thank you. Thank you very much. And once Anthony already hinted to your role as the CEO of Novartis or of your company in this partnership, but maybe you can expand a little bit on that why Novartis is engaged here and what you're bringing to this partnership. Please. Thank you. And we're incredibly proud to announce this partnership with the Ghana government, the Ghana Health Service, the Ghana Ministry of Health to tackle Sickle Cell disease in Africa. This is really part of our long-term legacy as a company. For over 100 years, we've been working on antibiotics. We've been working on malaria. We've been working to reimagine medicine to extend and improve patients' lives. In the area of public health, we've been responsible for the donations and leprosy for over 30 years. We innovated Coartam, one of the first artems-in-in-based malarial drug that is now approaching its billionth treatment, now distributed in Africa. And we also work quite a bit now in access to medicines as we've continued to evolve our approach with our work through Healthy Families, Novartis Access. And most importantly, our recent announcement of our access principles, where we've committed to bring new innovations in our pipeline to low and middle-income countries as fast as possible, with a goal of eventually being able to bring these medicines within a year to populations around the world. So when we saw the opportunity to tackle an incredibly important disease like Sickle Cell, where children are dying before five years of age, 50% to 80% of the children born with Sickle Cell in Sub-Saharan Africa are at risk of death at that age range, we wanted to act. And we were really fortunate to meet incredible partners like in the Ghana Health Service, Ghana Ministry of Health, and the Sickle Cell Foundation in Ghana to decide to really take action. And we've done that around three different dimensions. The first is in treatment. So in treatment, we'll be working with the government to help set up the appropriate treatment guidelines. As the minister mentioned, we are working already to, we've already registered hydroxyurea, which has recently been shown in the New England Journal of Medicine to be really an incredible treatment for patients with Sickle Cell disease. We're working to then take that medicine into the pediatric population to make the first pediatric formulation and make that available to children in Ghana. The second is around diagnosis. We want to support the Ghana Health Service in building centers of excellence and screenings centers. We need to screen these children very early, identify that they have Sickle Cell disease, and ensure they get treatment with penicillin and hydroxyurea so we can prevent needless deaths. And lastly, we want to advocate. We want to educate across Ghana to ensure that patients and families understand that these resources are available so that we can really tackle Sickle Cell disease in the country. The fourth element is on research. And we are looking now to perhaps bring one of our first clinical trials outside of infectious disease into Ghana as part of our work to develop a drug called chrysanlizumab, which is another advanced treatment for Sickle Cell disease. So a comprehensive approach. My sincere hope is that this will lead to catalyzing a transformation across Sub-Saharan Africa, that many more countries will join this movement so that we can make Sickle Cell disease a manageable disease for children and families and hope one day we can cure it from the continent. Thank you, Mass. Professor, the minister has already so eloquently described the burden and importance of Sickle Cell for Ghana, but I'd like to invite you to share a bit more a deeper insight on the burden of the disease on the population, please. Sickle Cell disease is an old disease. Almost every African language has an expression for the pain that Sickle Cell disease causes. Sickle Cell disease is related to malaria. The gene that causes Sickle Cell disease, in fact, affects over 300 million people in the world. These are healthy carriers of the gene, and we now understand that those people, especially as young children, survive malaria better than those with regular blood. So here's a gene that has protected so many lives, but in a double dose or when it's inherited with another abnormal gene that promotes sickling, it becomes a disease. We know now that there are 450,000 babies are born every year in the world with Sickle Cell disease. More than 80% of them are born in Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the children born in Sub-Saharan Africa are undiagnosed, untreated, and they die. So we lose about 50% to 80% of them by five years of age. A lot of research has gone into Sickle Cell disease, understanding the disease itself and the gene that caused it. We have learned enough about this disease to learn knowledge to other genetic conditions, but those who suffer Sickle Cell disease around the world have not benefited as much. And so we hope that with partnership, with the major companies such as Novartis, that there is no recognition that Sickle Cell disease is an important public health problem in Africa, in the Middle East, in India, and now where people from those origins have also moved around the world has become a global disease. So this initiative, this partnership, will bring attention to Sickle Cell disease throughout the world. The cause of Sickle Cell disease is not just in those who are affected, the families, the communities, and all that they have to go through with this disease. It's a major public health problem that has not been fairly addressed. Thank you, Professor Petra. It's one thing to acknowledge the importance of this disease, but it takes some work to get to a partnership like this. This is not something that a company like Novartis or any other company does every day. This is quite an important step. Maybe you can talk us through a little bit the importance of these type of partnerships. Sure, Georg. So in global health, there's a widespread understanding that we cannot solve the problems alone. Partnerships are the paradigm of the day, but it's hard to get these partnerships actually right. And often, if we are looking to this industry, we are often being asked simply to reduce the price of medicine, but our experience is clear. If we just do this, this is not going to help patients at all. So we are really, really proud that in this partnership, we can work together with the government of Skarner, the health services, the academic society to develop an end-to-end process, as well as explain its screening, treatment, research, and advocacy. So the patient will have a seamless way finally through the treatment system. Also, it's a multi-stakeholder partnership. So it's everybody who is involved in this is on board. And I'm pretty sure if we, as we implement this, we will find we will need other partners and we were more than happy to invite and join them in. And maybe the last point for success here is we are incredibly proud. We have been working with the government of Ghana and being very clear on what is everybody's responsibility, what is the incentives, which resources are required. This good conversation at the beginning is the best guarantee for success that there are no disappointments later. And so we hope with these three ingredients, we will make this a success. And I'm sure, Georg, we would love to come back in a year and tell you about the progress. You're welcome too, absolutely. Thank you very much. Let's open the floor for questions and answers. If I could see a show of hands. There is a gentleman here, we have a microphone. If you could identify yourself for the sake of our online audience as well, please. Thank you. Hello, Alexandre Cabaret from DevEx here. I have a question on the partners that you would like to convene around this partnership specifically, what type of organizations are you looking at partnering with? And how do you plan to replicate that maybe in other countries? Well, I can start and invite my colleagues to join in. This is a partnership between Novartis, the government, the Sickle Cell Foundation and the various medical societies. I think as we expand this partnership, as we hope to, to other countries in Africa, what's most important is the strong political will that we need to see. I think what was extraordinary here is that the president of Ghana himself had a commitment to this. The vice president is here and we're honored that he is here as well. And you can see that we have very high level and deep commitment to make the partnership a reality. The other element is, and perhaps Professor Koff could speak more about it, the Sickle Cell Foundation has been working on this problem in Ghana for a very long time, has nobly established the screening centers that are required to make this program a reality. So maybe Professor, you could say a few words about that. I think it's very important that a problem like this cannot be solved only by those of us who live with it. When we started the screening program in Ghana for newborns, I started with a research grant from the National Institutes of Health in the United States. And Ghana is not the only one now involved in newborn screening. We have a team of experts around Africa who are also learning how to do newborn screening. Unfortunately, just like Ghana, governments have not been able to fund newborn screening alone. And so in each of these countries, we are looking for partners such as Novartis and other companies to help with us. It's important that scientists who are also working in Sickle Cell Disease in other parts of the world look at Africa and engage us in some of the research work that they do because it is through those kinds of partnerships that we train people to do modern research and particularly to take advantage of some of the new medications and new treatments that are along the way. So it's a general partnership of companies, community-based organizations, governments, and research scientists around the world to solve this global problem. Thank you very much. We heard this week a lot about the importance of data in all types of field. And Director General, you mentioned the importance of data. Could you expand a little bit? How optimistic are you that the data will be available that you need to combat Sickle Cell Disease effectively? Thank you very much. We, through the National Newborn Screening Program, we've developed a database where Professor Ahini Frumpong did with some people in the US and we are going to build on this database so that you use up just mobile phones in the small clinics, get the patients guarded and especially the newborn babies where they are tested and they are put on database and they will follow them up. It's about, I think about 1.7% or 1.8% of the children who were tested in Ghana were all positive. So we follow them up through the treatment to adulthood. And luckily because we are introducing new treatment like hydroceurea and the new ones which will come which we hope that Ghana also will also get advantage of being used as the first country and then we get advantage of it, we will build up the data and then follow the children up to adulthood and we are hopeful that this data will be used for Sickle Cell Disease in the whole of South Saharan Africa. And we are also working together with the Research Institute, Noguchi Memorial Institute and then also with a quasi-center for collaborative research and then through Ghana Health Service and our research centers. We have three research centers in Ghana in the Northern part, the Middle Belt and the Southern Belt. So we all work together, collect the data, analyze the data and then use the data and also planning and policy. And then this is how we are going to use the data in the country. And then secondly, we are also digitalizing our health system. We are now going to eHealth almost from the chip center to the health center to the digital hospitals and then also to the teaching hospitals and the regional hospitals. So we are all going to be on digital health. And once we have the digital health, anybody who is tested and put on the data can be assessed anywhere the person goes. And more importantly, we are even going a bit further in digitalization by also using drones to also service the areas where they are very under-served areas and very hard to reach areas and also for emergency medicines. So these are all the things that we are putting together and data is very important in all these things. So we make very good use of data to make sure that it works and works well not only for a second cell but for the whole total health system. Thank you. Minister, you want to add to that, please? Data, data, data. As I speak, I want to tell you that for adults, we don't seem to have any data on who carries sickle and who doesn't because you have not been doing screening at very early stages. We only get to know our sickle cell status after complications setting and we begin to attend facilities. Then when the doctors suspect that you might be one, they test and you become positive and they put you on some medication. So this sort of engagement, the partnership we're now going to have with the VATIS and the Foundation will expand the activity of screening newborns and if you're able to cover the entire country, then we can lay hands on quality data to let us be able to tell what percentage of population are carrying this disease or not. So I believe one very significant thing that we will achieve with this type of engagement or partnership will be our data. That will be collected, detecting the disease in people at very early stages who give us adequate information on how we can allocate resources and money. This disease is better. Thank you, Minister. And let me follow up with a question to you directly and I'm sitting far away enough from Vaz to ask that question. So Novartis is, if I may say so, almost like a usual suspect because as you mentioned, Vaz, you've been in the field for 100 years and you're kind of an obvious choice to work in this partnership. But Minister, we heard from the panelists about data. We heard about mobile phones. We heard about other kind of technologies in use. Are you planning on involving partners outside the health industry and how would that help and what are the most immediate needs there? You can run any health system without partners. I always tell people, especially when I meet the media and they confront me with what is your priority, I find it difficult to mention just one area. We call health spans across several diseases, several systems, several stakeholders and you cannot just run efficient systems without partnerships. We have partnerships with several people. We have partnerships with organizations, multilateral, bilateral. And so partnerships are a way through which we can actually tackle and manage some of our diseases and our health issues that we have in our country. One of the things I think Ghana has is a vibrant entrepreneurial setting as well in the data and digital space. We've learned about this on our own through work we've done with startups in Ghana. So I believe we as industry and the global community needs to also support local entrepreneurs that are working on data science and digital, allow them to build new technologies to address some of these problems and I think that's a big opportunity. Thank you very much. Do we have any more questions from the floor? Yes, we have a follow up question from Devex here. Please, yes? Yeah, maybe just on the research bit because you've released a new drug recently, right? And is it the one that you'll be using in Ghana and where do you hope to get to the new research and what this drug will be impacting basically and how it can be cured? So sickle cell disease treatment has been I think not a great story for many decades. Actually hydroxyurea, the drug we talk about here was developed for other uses and became licensed for sickle cell disease in the late 1990s. So that's the medicine we start with. You can manage sickle cell disease very well with penicillin, cheaply available and low cost hydroxyurea at least in the younger ages. So that's where we start with this partnership then build up the capacity in the country. We recently received breakthrough therapy designation for a new medicine. It's not yet approved in the United States in Europe also for sickle cell disease which is a next generation therapy. Our plan now is to run a, we hope or look evaluating I should say running a clinical trial in Ghana to evaluate the use of this medicine in Ghana. And then this medicine could be put on top of the system and eventually the hope longer term as new technologies like gene therapy become available. Could one day if the Ghana system is strong enough then to then actually use a gene or cell therapy to potentially cure or at least dramatically reduce the burden of the disease longer term. But I think it starts with the foundations of screening of the basic care and then we go step by step. And that's why we look at this partnership as a decades long effort to tackle the disease. I don't know anything I got wrong, Professor. No, I think you're completely correct. If we don't have a strong scientist, basic scientist, clinical scientist, we cannot conduct clinical research. And if you're not able to organize a large patient load into clinical research that means you cannot even do clinical trials like drug trials. So many times sickle cell research is being done where the disease is not very common because where it is most common in sub-Saharan Africa systems, medical systems are not well developed for research. It's important that these drugs when they're being developed that we also contribute patients, experts and also learn how to do these things because where the problem is biggest, you would think that that's where the solutions should be first also tested and proven to work. Thank you, Professor. Mindful of the time and being a Swiss organization, we try to be on time. If there's any closing remarks now would be the time. Otherwise, I congratulate you for this new partnership. And as the forum, I thank you for announcing it here today on our platform. I think it's a shining example of how public sector, private sector, foundation and academia can work together. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for being here today and thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you.


Good morning guys, welcome to the New York blog. This is a day in New York with Kyra. Basically, we're going to New York and it's like 3.30 a.m. right now. We're going to fly in, have the day there and then fly out. I told Kyra how much I was stressed out because I didn't like have the plan and then I showed her my little thing and she was like, oh well that's like almost everything online. And I was like, oh my God. And then I was like told her about, like I just kind of want to take a taxi and she was like, okay. And I was like, oh my God, I couldn't sleep all night because of that. So anyway, everything's good and we are getting ready. I'll show you guys my outfit. So I'm wearing this black coat again. I brought my arm warmers just in case it's too cold. I got that from Spencer's family, which is funny. Throwback if you know all the way back then. Then I'm wearing, shoot I can't set this up, sorry dinosaur. So I'm wearing a black turtleneck, doing the Rock Johnson thing with the necklace here. And then I have my Gucci belt.  Oh, and I'm taking my tote, like my never full. So I have this sweater from Ari and then I have a heat cooling sweater under this. And then I have my pants also from Ari. Socks for ever 21. And then I have my helpers that I'm not wearing right and then I have this black turtleneck coat from forever 21 and my Kate Spade purse. And if you're wondering what Ari means, it's like the store Ari by American, isn't it an American equal thing? Anyway, it took me like two days to, yeah. It took me two days to realize that. All right, let's go. The first thing is a must. We got the Cheez-It. She got the white cheddar and I got the original. All right, so we just landed. We got off the plane and we are headed to, well, first the bathroom because I need to go, but we're going to catch Taxi Cab to go to Ralph's. The flight was really smooth. Oh yeah, we got a good hour nap. There they are. All right, we made it to Ralph's. Ralph, I'm so excited. It is so cute in here. I wonder what Kyra's going to get. Kyra told the vlog, like what'd she say? She was like in one minute. It was so nice and she was like in one minute, they have four floors, which if you look up, you can actually see them. Yep. They're so cute. I'm wearing Ralph's, Ralph's one right now.  And we had no idea that they had like three floors that you could explore and if you go down those elevators right there, do you even go check out the bathroom? Woohoo! We're on the top floor and it's the home decor. Look how pretty. Also Kyra got a purchase. She bought a really nice perfume and the lady, I think her name is Maria. She was so nice. We're stopping into our favorite apple. Gotta love the apple store. We stopped into San Ambrose because I want to try this princess cake that they always talk about. Oh my gosh, look at all of this. How cute. Guys, I got the princess cake. I'm gonna do a taste test but I don't know where we're heading next. Kyra was genius. And she's like, we can sit at this bench. I'm like, yep, true that. All right, so I'm gonna try the princess cake. I'm so excited. I've seen this on TikTok like so much that I'm like, I don't know, it's just been hyped up. So there it is. Oh wow. Hold on. Wait, can you see it? Yeah. That's it. Let me take off this like wrapper thing that they put on it. Dude, this is like gonna be my lunch. It's kind of big. I think this is fondant. It's a very light fondant.  Do you like it? Yeah. It's a hint of moist. Hint of moist. Hint of moist. But it's very good. It's very light, yeah. So it's perfect because there's burgdorf here and then the apple store. There's burgdorf over there where that blue is. And then over here's the Plaza Hotel. So we're gonna head out like four things at once. Kyra, are you ready? Get into burgdorfs and look at this huge backyard. Oh my gosh. It's like my dream perfume, but it's like super expensive. So I don't think I'll be getting that. Look at the Goyard. Goyard is like one of my favorite and like I want to get one so bad. Made it to the seventh floor. All right, I found the main like Christmas stuff here. I'm gonna hopefully find a Christmas ornament for my souvenir. Let's cross our fingers that I can find like a cute one that resembles like New York. It's kind of crowded in here, but I wanted to show you guys. It's so cute. All right, so we came into the main big apple store because Kyra's never been here. So I'm like, you need to see this because this is like the flagship, the apple store to like visit. So we're here and we're gonna explore and honestly I need to charge my phone. So maybe I'll use one of these chargers that they have. I don't know if that's allowed. Okay, so we're kind of regrouping in the apple store. We're using the MagSafe chargers to charge our phones and Kyra's gonna find someplace to eat because I did not like pick out or have like any restaurants in my like itinerary list thing. So she's doing that. And then I think we're gonna go ice skating after lunch. That's gonna be super fun. But yeah, so that's what she's doing and we're just charging the phone. So far it's been so fun and spontaneous. Like we've just been telling people like, we're literally here for a day and we're going home tonight. So it's been super nice. What's more Christmas than this? Christmas carols in New York City with the Salvation Army and Christmas trees on Fifth Avenue. Like what even? We're gonna head into Louis Vuitton now. Okay, so we're walking to lunch and after lunch I think we're gonna do Cartier. So we went into Tiffany. We just been like walking around like the first level of like which one was it? Prada, Tiffany. And then now we're going to lunch. I'm so excited. I'm really hungry. There's the honks. Update Kyra. Any updates from you? We're having a great time. We're having a great time. I know. Like we cannot... It's not that cold either. No, it's not. Especially with walking and stuff. It was so funny because... It's so hot. We look at each other half a time and we're like, oh my God, we're in New York. We can't believe it. Top restaurant and that's what Kyra wanted and it's called Domo 51 and she was wanting this like rooftop view like good prices. So we were like looking and looking and then we found the line but we didn't have reservations. So we walked up and the lady was like, oh, do you have reservations? And we were like, no, but we were like manifesting that we could get a spot and she was like, okay. And then grabbed two menus and we got a spot. So A plus for this, it's kind of like a break. We're starving and I'm glad it worked out because we didn't want to have to pay to go to the rooftop part in this museum place. So, yeah. So I got the pasta and they did light sauce for me. So I'm really happy about that. They did it so good. We got a pistachio drink like on the house. So that's so nice of him. He just like brought it out. Taste test. It's very like refreshing. Oh, yeah. So they changed the lighting and they brought out these candles. All right, so we're done with dinner. Look at this view, guys. We were just taking pictures because there's the Rockefeller tree. We're gonna go there next after we charge our phones. Isn't that just like a beautiful sight? Anyway, Kyra and I got a picture together because there's no one to take our photo. So we just did the self timer with Linsbuddy like right here on the rooftop, but good choice for rooftop. I'm proud of myself for finding it. So Kyra and I took those photos you saw on like the rooftop and now we're just kind of waiting for our phones to charge. She just realized, so she got this perfume, right? She got the Ralph Lauren perfume and she was like, oh, I don't know if I can take this on the plane because of, you know, fluid ounces. So I'm telling her, like she spent, it was like $140, right? She got this one. Exactly 3.4. No, no, no, that should be fine. Unless you want to not risk it and just have it shipped back. Anyway, she got this and obviously doesn't want to throw it away. So I was saying that we should just ship it back to her house. I don't know. Here we go. Here's the tree. At Rockefeller Center. Find the ice skating stuff. And that's what we're doing. It's so, so crowded. Like, oh my God, it's kind of crazy. Not a big fan, but it's fine. We're going to find where we need to go. And overall it's still fun. I just really do not like police crowds. It's crazy. All right, so the crowd's gotten a little bit less. We're going to go to Macy's so we can say we've seen it. And then we're going to try woman rank because the other rank at Bryant Park just didn't work out. So Macy's. We just need to cross the street, but there's the big Macy's, the world's largest Macy's. So we're heading there now. It's still super, super crowded. Damn. All right, I don't know where we're going to go, but you know what? We're going to figure it out. Yeah, let's go this way, Kyra. It's a little less crowded this way. It's like a whole mall in here. I know. It's so crazy. It's crazy huge. It's so crazy. This is like a mall. It's a little over-stimulating, but they have an inch sugar. They have a whole Mac section. And no, not Mac, the makeup. Mac, the Apple Mac. The store keeps going on and on. We're in the watch department. And I love the garland. It's giving. It's definitely giving Christmas. We're entering the shoe salon, as you can see over there.  This whole place is just like shoes all over. So big. We got Louis Vuitton over here, shoes. And we got Coach and Ugg. Michael Kors is over here. It just goes on and on. We're on the next floor, and we don't know what floor we're really even on, but it looks like women's clothing. Look at this old elevator. This is interesting. Never have seen a wood one. Okay, so I just noticed we were passing in equinox. I've never seen one. It looks so nice. Look at how cute this little Christmas bar is. It's adorable. We decided to come to this bar because it was just a lot more, I don't know, there's more space and stuff. Got the rosé and it's so good. It's actually quite big too, so definitely get what I pay for. All right, so we made it to the airport. It's actually before seven, which is amazing. Our taxi driver was crazy. He was like zooming so fast. That's how we got here a lot earlier than we expected, but whatever, it's great. It's good to be early than late, so we're here, Kyra pre-checked us in, and now we just have to go through security, so we're heading there now. Today was so fun, reflecting on it. Kyra and I were saying we did almost everything on our list, and we're so tired. It was so successful, and it went so fast, like a blink of an eye, and it's done. This is your sign if you're seeing this video to do something spontaneous and fun because, I don't know, this has just been really cool. I'm glad I did it. I don't have any regrets, and we calculated. We only spent like $250, roughly, because we split like costs, ubers, taxis, whatever. So, it was great. Watching L. It's all over everywhere, all over. She's watching L, saying it's all.