a couple of weeks before the end of school i sat on the top floor of the forum, sipping coffee, being nostalgic, thinking about the final days of school...and my pending unemployment.
rather than actually do something about the job situation, i composed a quick email to joe mccarthy and dean ellwood, proposing that steve, eleni and i spend the summer traveling around the world with a couple of video cameras, profiling what ksg grads are doing.
the idea being that prospective students, alums, donors and the broader ksg community would be excited and interested to see profiles of ksg grads who are doing important and impactful work and that telling their stories through video could be more compelling than the written word.
i hit the send button and figured that would be the end of it. another pipe dream dreamt.
back to the career services site.
within seconds, a reply came back from dean mccarthy..."i'm on it" was all he wrote.
fast forward to july 8.
a lot has happened.
with the incredible support and hard work of joe, melodie jackson and sam piggot from the ksg communications office, steve, eleni and i are off on a a six week tour to four countries to profile some fascinating ksg grads. we're heading to tbilisi, georgia...belgrade, serbia,... darjeeling, india and ...ho chi minh, vietnam.
this past week we've been in dc, preparing for the trip - visas, innoculations, logistics, etc. we've also done our first profile - on marie nelson - a 1998 ksg grad who is a producer at npr.
marie has an incredilbe personal story - fleeing from civil war in liberia, moving to maryland where she lived in a house with more than 20 other women and children, going to duke at age 16, getting a call from the office of jesse jackson the day after she handed in her pae with an offer to work for him when he was appointed as a special envoy to africa under pres. clinton, and producing for nightline.
we spent a couple of days with marie in dc, including filming her and michele martin as they recorded a pilot of their forthcoming radio program for npr on african american issues.
in addition to filming and steve's ordeal with the surly visa woman at the indian consulate, we also managed to catch some world cup and see a few other ksg folks around town including james crabtree, jonathan phillips, dallas boyd, mark linton, mary abdo, caryn marks, nate fick.

tonight we're off to tbilisi via munich.
we'll be profiling the foreign minister of georgia - gela bezhuashvili - who completed an executive education program and was in the midst of his mpa when the rose revolution occurred in 2003, drawing him back to georgia to join the new government.
gela and the president of georgia - mikheil saakashvili - were just in dc this past week meeting with president bush and condi rice. check out this link for more info on their meetings and agenda.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/05/AR2006070501548.html
undoubtedly gela will have a fascinating story to tell and we're excited to meet with him.
we also plan to meet up with marissa bohrer, mpp1 now 2, who's spending her summer in georgia to hear more about her experience and share a glass of georgia's famous wine.
lowlights of our time in dc - england losing on penalties.
next stop, tbilisi.