This journey began when my family was transferred by the DuPont Company to Frankfurt, Germany, I was 7 years old. Living in another country and visiting behind the iron curtain, broadened my perspectives, and helped me to develop skills to be able to adjust to different environments, bridge understanding and embrace “new” and “different” things. My first sport was soccer, not baseball

Those early experiences led me to pursue a career in international business, beginning with handling export traffic for a steamship agency shipping chemicals around the world; working for a Fortune 500 company as an export administrator; selling consumer electronics (video game accessories) to major mass merchants in Europe as international marketing manager for a small consumer electronics company; turning a profit on my own international distribution business selling to Asia; and leading the State of California’s export trade program for more than a decade, serving thousands of companies and creating hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact.

Operating in multiple time-zones, extensive travel to 4 continents, conducting business in 50 different countries is packed with cultural awareness, and insights into the local environment - strengthening the Global Mindset. Turning those experiences into tangible results is a matter of learning how to bridge understanding and how to take good ideas from one market and apply them in another.

I am passionate about international business - practice it daily, constantly learn and teach others. In global markets, the same concepts apply - “business is business” and “marketing is marketing”, but at the tactical level it can be very different. Adaptability is an incredibly important skill to have, it’s “Sur-Thriving.”