Hi, I’m Debby Fry Wilson. A group of us from Microsoft Unlimited Potential will be taking part in the RacingThePlanet’s Gobi March (China) next month, and we are truly excited about this incredible opportunity. 

There will be three runners, myself as team captain, Orlando Ayala and William Calarese, along with a team of three volunteers - Josh Nash, Roxanne Seubert and Camilla Buttery – all of whom work on the company’s global effort to help the world’s citizenry realize their unlimited potential through education and the use of technology.

They will be profiled on this blog over the next few days.

We will participate in the 7-day, 250 kilometer race around Kashgar, in an area called Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, which is usually inaccessible to foreigners.

When we first conceived this project, we wanted to put our hearts and souls into genuinely showing our support and passion, not only for the people of China, but for the 5 billion people around the world who have yet to experience the benefits of technology.

We also really wanted express our personal commitment to the work that we do every day, while emphasizing first-hand how technology can make real differences in uplifting people and communities around the world. 

And, of course, we wanted to stress the importance of volunteerism and how the personal grit and determination that we bring to our work mission of using education and technology to change the lives of those less fortunate than us, also pervades our personal lives.

We also wanted this to be an experience for a team of people; a diverse set of folks, all the way from a program manager to a senior vice president, and we wanted folks with different sets of strengths and experiences.

For example Roxanne Seubert, a program manager at Microsoft, has worked on emerging markets for four years. She is responsible for program managing the localization of our products in emerging markets around the world, yet she has never personally visited or experienced any of the communities to whom she delivers products every day at Microsoft.

So, this is a great opportunity for her to see the people and the culture that will benefit from her daily work. That way she grows as not just as an individual, but also professionally in the work she does for Microsoft.

Likewise, Josh Nash is an executive communications manager whose entire career at Microsoft has been focused on emerging markets. He has been to a lot of these countries, but this will be a very different way for him to experience it: seven days of actually engaging on the ground with the local communities.

To do a race like this and to be an effective team, we have to leverage one another’s strengths.  We each bring different strengths to the table, and one of the things we learned as a team is that we had to let go of who we are at Microsoft and work together as equal team members and contributors.

That has been an interesting professional and personal development learning experience for the race team. Although we have a work hierarchy, that doesn’t work when we are out in the field trying to do something as grueling and physically and emotionally demanding as this race.

Our participation in the race will follow a formal executive visit to China, where Microsoft will donate two fully equipped InfoWagons, open a Partners In Learning school, launch a Family Education PC program for rural communities in Miyun county outside Beijing, and provide digital literacy content and training in libraries and iCafés across Xinjiang.

These initiatives extend those announced when the company launched Unlimited Potential in China just over a year ago, which followed Microsoft’s earlier commitment of investments and donations to support information and communications technology in China’s K-12 education system.

Overall, we will genuinely be bringing technology to one of the remotest and underserved areas of the world. By extending this executive visit through to the Gobi March, the team will for the first time really be experiencing “the field.” 

We will be living and trying to survive the harsh terrain and environment for seven days, and will also be spending time with the local people and be immersed in their culture and in the way they live, rather than going back to our Western hotels at night. 

We will also be crossing the desert with just the clothes on our backs, as one of the race requirements is that all runners carry everything they need, so every ounce of weight matters.

I expect that, as a result of all this, we will develop a truly deep passion for the people to whom we are trying to bring the benefits of technology, and that we will embody their situation and plight in the world in a way that we never could sitting in our offices in Redmond or showing up for a brief formal event.

To that end, it isn’t really about doing the race at all.  It’s about being a part of the race and experiencing that part of the world in a way that we never would in any other way.

We look forward to sharing our experiences and stories with you as we traverse this remote part of the world, so please come back regularly and follow our progress.