I have always been interested by adventure, exploration, and constantly learning from and about new things and ideas. This holds true for both my personal and professional lives. I find the world an incredibly beautiful and amazing place, with all its variants of geography, climate, culture, language, belief systems, customs, historical contexts, foods, art and much more. I guess this started for me with my family’s annual summertime road trips to visit grandparents, which were exciting and fun journeys to different places. It really didn’t cement itself, though, until my senior year of college, where I spent three weeks traveling through Western Europe for an international business and economics class. After that, the hook was set.
At the age of 25, I left home by myself and relocated from Pennsylvania to California to pursue my career and life goals. It was a very difficult yet rewarding experience, but it showed me that making smart choices on career risk can open the doors of opportunity. After a series of successful steps along my early career path, I was ready for the ultimate adventure and rewarding learning experience.
Upon returning from my honeymoon, my new wife and I relocated to Asia to lead the treasury and capital markets businesses of Thailand’s emerging economy. As things happen, we spent the next 12 years living outside the US, leading rapidly evolving capital markets businesses in emerging economies throughout Asia and Latin America. The personal and professional experiences from this journey were life changing. Not only was I able to be intimately involved in the opening up and rapid development of these markets, we also had a front row seat to experience the social and cultural changes that came with these new globally connected economies. It left a profoundly positive impact on both of us, and to this day I am a better business leader, and we are both better people, for it.