Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi lived and went to school in an oil refinery in Iran in the 1950s.
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TechTranscript
00:00 You grew up in Iran. You were educated, began your education in Iran.
00:04 Yes, I was educated in there. I went to a special school, which was for six years,
00:11 which was actually the school was in a refinery. We lived in a refinery. That's why I know the
00:16 oil and gas business pretty well. You lived in a refinery.
00:20 Yes. Our school was right in the middle of the refinery in a city of Abadan.
00:26 The purpose of that school was to train people who knew enough about the refinery to become
00:31 future managers. We are talking about 1950s now. But you left Iran.
00:35 I left Iran in 1966. I came to the United States. I was very fortunate. I went to
00:41 Stanford University and I started working in the United States. I'm married to a lovely lady,
00:47 which we are still married for 55 years. But she was very curious to see the culture
00:54 in the country I was born. And we went there in 1971. I taught at the university there for two
01:03 years. And then I ended up working for the government and I was put in charge of developing
01:09 the steel industry for the country. And then in 1979, when the turmoil happened, that wasn't a
01:17 place for me and my wife to live in because my wife happens to be Jewish. And I left everything
01:23 behind and came to the U.S. with nothing. And we started from scratch.
01:28 [Music]