| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | When I was in the fourth grade, my family took a trip to Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. My father had lived in Europe as a young travelling musician and had made many friends, and during our visit we stayed with some of them to keep costs down. One of them lived in a bucolic village outside Paris. I remember leaving their home on a freakishly warm day in February and driving to a train station. The sun was shining brightly as I walked around the city, but what I remember most is emerging from a dark metro station. There, as I came up the stairs, I saw the Eiffel Tower in real life against a cloudless blue sky. “This is real life!” I can imagine myself thinking. Perhaps that moment had an impact on me because I saw something which had only been an abstraction in books or movies become tangible. Concept and reality merged into one. It may have inspired me to go out and see as much of the world as I could. Since then, whenever I visit some globally famous site for the first time, I revisit that same feeling. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | I identify with my father most closely. He has always been a great teacher and helped me understand that no matter what the situation, the right thing to do will reveal itself. He encouraged me to explore and to question everything while at the same time offering me guidance. He worked hard to provide the things I needed growing up. He is my best friend. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | Long-term, disimpassioned thinking, selflessness and integrity are the traits I admire most in leaders. In friends and partners, I look for insightfulness, compassion and honesty. All must have a sense of humor. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | The term funny is way too subjective here, plus how can we label funny in such a superlative fashion if we are being asked to look back on an entire lifetime? What is funny to me now certainly wasn’t funny to me when I was eleven years old. I suppose I could mention the most coincidental thing that has happened to me instead. When I was sixteen years old I won a writing contest and was awarded a trip to rural Ireland for part of the summer. It was a fantastic experience and I made many friends. One of them, I’ll call “R.,” came to visit me the following summer and stayed with my family. Times were good- Clinton was president, tech stocks were paying everyone out, the economy was booming and Bin Laden was obscure. However, it was a time before email and Facebook so when R. left our home we received one hand-written thank you letter and I assumed that I would never see him again. Years later, during college, I spent a summer working in nightclubs and on construction sites in Edinburgh, Scotland. A good friend and I thought we would take advantage of a temporary visa opportunity and go on an adventure. One night while we were waiting in line for falafel (or something), we heard a group of guys speaking in thick Irish accents. We started chatting to them and eventually realized that I had spent the summer in their tiny town (it only had about 1000 residents) all those years ago. When I asked if they knew R. (who lived in a manor house with a bunch of Irish Wolf hounds, so not a hard guy to spot), they told me that they were in town to visit him! He was living in Edinburgh studying advanced mathematics and his apartment was just a few blocks away. We immediately went back to the apartment to find R. sleeping quite deeply—so deeply that I had to splash a pot of cold water on his head to wake him. He jumped out of bed swinging and tripped himself in a swirl of fists and blankets. When he saw who it was there were hugs all around. Since that day, over ten years ago now, we have kept in close touch. Over the years we have backpacked through the Balkans, partied in New York City and driven through Tuscany and more. I imagine that my life would be quite different had we not experienced such a chance run-in that night. I am glad it turned out the way it did. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | At this point, I would like to travel to Southeast Asia. This vast and diverse region plays a critical role in today’s economy and hosts ancient cultures and unrivaled natural beauty. I have always sensed that people from that region guide their emotions with a spiritual/moral compass much different than the one we follow in the West. For example, while in many cases they remain moribund by tradition, I am intrigued by their reluctance to harbor a grudge. The food is really good, too. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | I would like to pass on curiosity. I feel that a truly curious person, rather than someone who is merely inquisitive, will strive for a life of learning and will indeed enjoy the process of self-improvement. That trait, more than most, will help in academics, career advancement and in one’s personal life as well. |
