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Managing crises and shaping the future of Chile: An interview with Sebastián Piñera

Chile’s president has taken a businesslike approach to recovering from an earthquake, rescuing miners, and rejuvenating his country’s economy.

interview with Sebastián Piñera article, crisis management, Public Sector

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Minutes before the inauguration of Sebastián Piñera as president of Chile, on March 11, 2010, an earthquake hit his country. While small relative to the magnitude-8.8 quake that had rocked Chile 12 days before, it still underscored a key theme of the president’s first year in office: crisis management, in response both to the earlier, massive earthquake and to the accident, later in 2010, that trapped 33 miners some 2,300 feet underground for 69 days. In an interview with McKinsey’s global managing director, Dominic Barton, and Alejandro Krell, a principal in the firm’s Santiago office, President Piñera described what he learned from those experiences, how his background as a business leader influences his governing approach, and some of his dreams for Chile and Latin America.

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