It Really is a Small World

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.

Blue Ridge Mountains

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.