I live in a little town in Northeast Tennessee. It was a lifestyle move I made early in 2001
when I relocated from Austin, Texas.
It’s a small town with no traffic, beautiful mountains, lots of golf,
and a regional airport that connects me to Atlanta and the rest of the world where I
conduct my business.
The remarkable thing is how this tiny place is known as I travel.
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| Blue Ridge Mountains |
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| Ambassador Campbell |
Earlier this year, I was part of a meeting in Ulaanbaatar
with US Ambassador to Mongolia Piper Wind Campbell. As she entered the room and dropped her
paperwork on the conference table, she asked “Who’s here from Johnson City,
TN?” Turns out she has family in the
area, and an Aunt who works in our local public library. The Ambassador’s commercial officer served in
the military with a man from the Tri-Cities.
Small world.
On a more recent assignment to the West Bank to work with
Palestinian women-owned businesses, I met with two local experts who had vetted
the companies with whom I was to meet.
In the course of our meeting, one of the experts—Mohammad Najjar—looked
at my card and commented on my being from Johnson City. “You know the area,” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “I lived there for three years.” He had received a master’s degree from our
East Tennessee State University, and gone on to work at Eastman Chemical for a
time before returning to Palestine.
Small world, indeed!
It seems the more I travel, the smaller the world
becomes. We’re so interconnected that
the six degrees of separation, from a geographical sense, seems more like two
degrees. I continue to be amazed at
those I find during my travels who know my tiny part of the world, and I relish
the opportunity to find out more about their spots on the globe.
Life is good. These
connections are the icing on an already spectacular cake—my international
development work.
