 Welcome to CBS 2018 in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Dr. Marco Serrata who is from Montserray Tech in Mexico. Dr. Serrata, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Now when I just start off by talking a little bit about this symposium, it's all about capacity building, what do you think are the skills required for digital transformation? Well I think this is a key question and in order to answer it I think that such skills should be classified in two main veins. The first one is what is usually defined as the hardest skills where when we speak about artificial intelligence, new technologies, virtual reality, big data, etc. All of these new technologies require new skills that allow individuals and organizations not only to use these technologies but to develop new applications and new things that empowers them and organizations to work further on them. And the second thing is not only hard but soft skills and I think these are the most important ones because technology is changing so fast that in order to be able to take advantage of such technologies it's not only about the hardest skills but what is defined as the soft skill? Creative thinking, collaboration, resilience, just to mention a few. Such soft skills are crucial to face the different challenges that we have as individuals, as organizations and as a society as a whole. And how do you think we can work together in order to prepare tomorrow's workforce? Well I think that it's a work that has to be developed not only by individuals but we have this the triangle in between academic institutions, higher education and at lower levels as well but there's also private firms, organizations and the government. You cannot think about any of these three edges by themselves. We need collaboration in between all of them and while thinking about them I think that we must think about four different dimensions for such skills as individuals, personal development, creating more awareness on the context, also on improving the kind of relationship that we have with others, cultural intelligence, being able to network with other individuals not only in your geographical context but worldwide and also in terms of processes among organizations. Now I know you remember one of the panels today. I wanted to find out from you what have been some of the key takeaways that you've heard from the conversations here? Well for me one of the main takeaways I would mention two actually. The first one is this triangle in between, on the collaboration in between the different parties. I think that we have to be able to create a society this kind of crowd working in between the different parties. It will not happen if you just have academic institutions, organizations or government. You must have a strategy. Any of these parties may start but if you don't have the other parties on the ship it's not going to work at all. And the second takeaway that I will also mention is that given this pace of change, this uncertainty that is taking place in our context, we must be aware that first of all, yes it is about lifelong learning, learning throughout life but we already know that the other edge is about life-wide learning. What we mean by that is it's important to be learning throughout your life but not only through the things that you learn at higher education institutions, at school but also what you learn throughout life out of the classroom and how to keep track of that especially for the softer skills. I think that is crucial. I know there's been a lot of exchange information here but I wanted to ask you why do you think it's important like this is important? Well this important is crucial and I think it's a key initiative to help again not only individual organizations but society as a whole because it's not only about thinking, reflecting, sharing ideas but the most important thing is about placing seats for action on what has to happen in every different country. Regardless you are an emerging economy, you are a developed country, all of us are into this new digital economy and society so we'd better act on that and this kind of event allows us to present these seats for action that are most nowadays. Well thanks for taking the time to be here and and thanks again as well for being here at the symposium. No thank you so much for having me here it's my pleasure.