The Privilege of Living a Global Life

Most people who follow me on LinkedIn know I am an American. However, far fewer know that I have spent much of my life living or working outside the United States.

My earliest years were spent in Athens, Greece, where history is not studied it is lived. There is a continuity to daily life there that shapes your sense of what endures and what is fleeting. Greek and Lebanese were spoken in my home alongside English.

From there, my life became deeply connected to the Middle East, where I lived across many countries. Places like Saudi Arabia taught me that hospitality carries weight differently. It is not performative, not situational. The cultural heritage is felt in every detail, and the nuance is easy to miss if you are only passing through.

I spent years across parts of Africa, where rhythm, resourcefulness, and community are inseparable. The relationship between place, people, and value runs deeper than most outsiders ever see. I lived in Japan for two years, which was its own education entirely. Precision and restraint are not concepts there. They are practiced disciplines. An expectation that details are handled before they are ever noticed.

I also spent time on the Indian subcontinent, where scale and cultural layering constantly recalibrate how you think about complexity and coexistence.

My academic path followed a similar arc. Dartmouth. The London School of Economics. Thesis research at the School of Oriental and African Studies while living in London. Mandarin immersion at Georgetown University, as the only non-Chinese student in the program.

None of it was a strategy. It was a privilege. It did not just inform my perspective. It formed it.

And what it built, looking back, was range. The ability to recognize what holds across contexts and what does not.

That distinction defines this work.

Today, our clients live across markets, cultures, and standards, often within the same week. The firm we have built reflects that reality. So does our growth – over 60% of our revenue comes from outside North America.

Experiences are shaped, tested, and judged on a global stage now.

That is the standard.