Early exposure to India created 'life-altering' thirst for knowledge

Published June 26, 2006

by JOANNE WOJCIK

jwojcik@BusinessInsurance.com

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Paul Hackleman's life exemplifies the proverb, "The early bird gets the worm."

He arrives at his job as San Mateo County's benefits manager at 5:30 every morning, has written three books on employee benefits-related subjects; moonlights as a benefit consultant, speaker and lecturer; serves on numerous professional boards and committees; and, in his spare time, listens to "The Great Courses," an audio lecture series on such topics as "Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century" and "The American Mind."

During his 32 years as a public servant, he has also found time to marry wife Rebecca, help raise their two children and, more recently, take in a developmentally disabled foster son. In fact, Mr. Hackleman's dedication to family recently earned him the Father of the Year Award by a local community organization.

By the time Mr. Hackleman "settled down," he had already traveled the world, first as the son of a military officer, and later as a college student. During his junior year at the University of the Pacific, he participated in an international studies program affiliated with India's Bangalore University that included a round-the-world airline ticket, enabling him to attend the 1970 World's Fair in Osaka, Japan, and celebrate his 21st birthday in Paris. He also was introduced to Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India who was assassinated in 1984.

"India was life-altering," he said, describing the first image he witnessed as his flight approached Calcutta's Dum Dum airport--named after the ammunition the British had used during their occupation of the country. He noticed the city was uncharacteristically dark and later learned that a catastrophic typhoon had just struck, crippling the city, and when his taxi drove through the streets he saw bodies floating in the floodwaters.

"I don't think you can ever be the same person" after living in India, he said.

After graduating from UOP in Stockton, Calif., Mr. Hackleman continued his liberal arts education at the University of Chicago graduate school, which he selected based on the curriculum and the faculty--many of whom guest-taught at UOP--and the breadth of its multi-million volume main library that occupies an entire city block built on the site where scientists in 1942 triggered the first sustained nuclear chain reaction as part of the Manhattan Project.

"They must have had maybe three or four or five original editions of Voltaire, of his complete works. The same with (Jean-Jacques) Rousseau," he recalled. "And these aren't rare books. These are books you can check out."

Given his education and life experience, one has to wonder why a man so learned and worldly would choose to pursue a career in benefits. But, if you ask Mr. Hackleman, it's because it quenches his thirst for knowledge and presents endless challenges and opportunities.

"I wanted to get into a field where I thought the opportunity to grow is endless, the opportunity to find something new is endless, the challenges will be endless, and they won't be the same ones again and again and again," he said.

Moreover, he believes his classical education--he studied such subjects as Greek philosophy and ancient civilizations--has enabled him to take both a strategic and philosophical view of the benefits offered by his organization, tailoring them to meet the needs of the county's employees so that they, too, can become productive, self-actualized individuals.

"I think if I were to apply for this position today, I can't really imagine that I would be hired," Mr. Hackleman said. "An employer would take a look (at my resume and say), 'How wonderful that you have European intellectual history. What does that have to do with employee benefits?"'

However, "I think I came to this position very well-rounded. I certainly didn't have a degree that helped me out in terms of the specifics of my career," he said.

Mr. Hackleman's undergraduate education at the University of the Pacific was intended to "raise a cadre of students or leaders who really have a very solid grounding in dramatically different cultures than their own," he explained.

Likewise, the University of Chicago "took a broad-brush approach to the way in which man's mind changes over time as reflected in literature, poetry, science, architecture, music--any endeavor where man expands his knowledge or understanding of the world around him," he pointed out.

In fact, Mr. Hackleman credits his liberal arts background with making him a quick study. For example, he used that skill to learn enough about Canadian pensions to teach a course on them on behalf of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

"I won't pretend that I was an expert. But there's enough common ground from the administrative perspective about how things are run in the United States and how things are run in Canada" to see parallels that Mr. Hackleman said enabled him to understand the system.

"What keeps me in this job" is "I never doubted that I'd always have fascinating things that I could get into here. And some of them I could get into myself. But there would be plenty of stuff that would come my way, the county would let me get involved with."

"The mediation and homebuyers programs are perfect examples of just getting into an area I wouldn't even pretend to have foresight about. They just arose and from them it seemed like here's an opportunity that we can leverage in some way," he said. "And I've always been interested in risk reduction strategies. I've always had that desire to really go at controlling costs in ways that I have thought, and still do think, are not artificial."