THE FOURTH SEASON CAME TO AN END

The fourth season of “Yessenov Lectures” — guest lectures of Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation — has passed away. About 1300 students from 9 universities of Almaty and Astana met with leading experts in their fields during this academic year. On 13 lectures 15 speakers shared their professional and personal secrets with the audience.

We addressed our questions regarding the outcomes of the season to the coordinator of the Foundation’s projects – Grigory Lee.

Do you think it is possible to call the season successful and why?
Yes, absolutely. For the first time within the framework of “Yessenov Lectures” we cooperated with such universities as KIMEP and the Eurasian National University named after Gumilev in Astana that are interesting from the audience and geography point of view to us. Two more lectures were held in the Kazakh language. In one case, it was Lyailya Sultanqyzy, a TV presenter and producer who is very popular with the audience (especially female). More than 140 listeners came to see her. And when the question-and-answer session started, I’d realised we’d be there for at least two hours. The performance of Zhalgas Serimbetov, a biologist and a PhD candidate from the University of Manchester was brilliant as well. He spoke about the role of enzymes in the production of medicines before students of KazNMU named after Asfendiyarov. Two more lectures were held in English. In one case it was Madeleine Celander, a Sales Manager from Sweden, in another one — a PhD candidate in chemistry Almagul Zhanaidarova.

The audience of 1300 listeners is not a bad indicator, but what about those who could not come to the lectures?
The value of lectures is really high, because we always invite high-level professionals who share their experience, the latest news and life hacks in their field. Therefore, a long time ago we have decided that all the “Yessenov Lectures” will be recorded, edited and posted on the Internet. As soon as a lecture is ready, we issue a teaser, and then provide the audience with a link to the full lecture. All “Lectures” are stored on our YouTube channel. Everyone has the opportunity at any time to go and see the material he or she is interested in.

How come that you held 13 lectures, but the number of lecturers is 15? Meaning, that more than one expert took part in some of “Yessenov Lectures”?
Right. Educational center InterTest invited us to speak at the KIMEP in the “Find Your Way” project. The audience was mostly 9-11 graders. We thought that it would be interesting for them to see that success can be achieved regardless the discipline chosen as specialization. Therefore, we offered five participants of our research internships in the world laboratories and represented different fields of study to act as motivators, to inspire high school students to achieve more. Each speaker presented for 10 minutes, and in the end the schoolchildren received much more information than if they had to listen to one speaker from one field for the whole hour. There were a lot of questions at the end, and we realized that the guys lit in the audience and the desire to do something with their lives, not to sit idly and not to let the grass grow under their feet. This is important.

Whose lectures of this season would you recommend both — those who are planning to work in the same field as the lecturer does and those who are just trying to find their way in life?
Of course, it is difficult to single out anyone. But, for example, I learned a lot from the speech of Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of “ATF Bank” – Sergey Kovalenko. His topic was “What kind of people business is looking for?” But behind this lies everything you need to know to, firstly, not to be left without work in the near future, and secondly, to choose a favorite thing to do and enjoy life. And, if you’re talking about passionate people, during the season in their speeches their passion was clearly demonstrated by the Deputy Chief of Design Bureau of space technology “Galam” Arman Bekembayev, co-founder of “Zero To One Labs” Arman Suleimenov and Zhalgas Serimbetov already mentioned above. We have already summed up the results, and immediately after a short holiday with my family, I plan to think about the season 2018-2019, because for the “Yessenov Lectures” it will be the fifth anniversary.