It started in high school with a French exchange program. A bag, a flight, and a family in France who didn’t speak much English and I didn’t speak much French yet. Although I spent a lot of the trip in Nancy and roaming the countryside tending sheep, that trip cracked something open in me. Sitting at a wedding celebration, where I understood maybe a third of the conversation, eating food I couldn’t name, realizing the world was so much bigger and stranger and more interesting than I’d given it credit for. I was hooked.
Early in my career, I got lucky. Work took me to Australia first. Sydney had this energy I hadn’t expected. Relaxed on the surface, seriously ambitious about enjoying the outdoors. The beaches were packed at 6am and emptied at 9am as the offices filled. I made friends there I still have. Then came Japan, which is in a category of its own. Learning to love sushi, being a visible minority for the first time in my life. The precision, the culture, the Japanese food, the way a city of millions can feel quiet in the right moment. Living there, even briefly, changes how you see things.
What I didn’t anticipate was how much the professional travel that came later would add up. Conferences, client visits, team off-sites across time zones. A lot of it was work, sure, but the in-between moments were always the real thing. A conversation in an airport lounge. A dinner that ran three hours longer than planned. A walk through a neighbourhood because you had an hour to kill and nothing to lose.
I’ve met people through travel who became friends, mentors, collaborators. Some I still talk to regularly. Others were a single conversation that stuck with me for years.