Gabriel Fairman

Gabriel Fairman is a Brazilian philosopher and entrepreneur who is currently the CEO of Bureau Translations, a translation and localization company. While at Swarthmore College, Fairman studied under Frank & Gil Mustin Professor Kenneth Gergen and developed an unprecedented special major entitled "The Death and Re-Birth of Human Agency" with a concentration in Interpretation Theory. Under this major sponsored by the Philosophy and Psychology Departments, Fairman studied how the human decision-making process is impaired by a lack of awareness of paradigms and cultural influences over our perceptions. After graduating from Swarthmore College, he spent four months at Fo-Guang-Shang, a Buddhist monastery in Kaohsiung, Taiwan living the monastic life, meditating and practicing kung-fu. He then went on to work in global procurement in New York and finally returned to Brazil.

In Brazil, Fairman worked in the mining and metals segment mediating negotiations between Brazilian producers and Chinese buyers for a year before joining Vale, the world’s second largest mineral producer. He then went on to become the head of Bureau Translations where he applies core Buddhist principles mixed with Social Constructionism, and Shaolin thought to the company’s daily routine. He is known for his humane approach to business and lectures on the origin of the Translation metaphor and how an understanding of this origin changes the very act of translation. Fairman’s current line thought takes the understanding and appreciation of metaphors and their origins to the limit in terms of shedding light on how we do things and how we could possibly face things differently.

External links

* [http://www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/index.php?id=527 Swarthmore College Bulletin, March 2007, Article on Gabriel Fairman]