To that end, at age fifteen, I won parental approval to work as a teen model for the May Company, a large department store a mere three miles from my high school, but within view of the distant shores of beckoning adulthood. Only to be denied permission for both in no uncertain terms.
As a last-ditch attempt, I hatched the preposterous idea of finishing high school at a Swiss boarding school. But, that, too, fell on totally deaf ears. My strivings took an academic turn as soon as I completed my first Anthropology class at UC Berkeley.
They and Anthropology called to me. Still eager to jump outside my cultural comfort zone, I joined my first true love, an archaeologist, on a six-month excavation in the Peruvian altiplano. By the time I conducted my own Ph. A fertile training ground for what was to come. My seamless, if sometimes unorthodox career path has lead me to my current incarnation as a nonfiction book author and a corporate historian βvocations that fit me to a tee and variously tap my expertise as an anthropologist, researcher, interviewer, writer and photographer.
Life's unplanned detours have also inspired me to reach out to breast cancer patients and professionals across the United States as a patient ambassador and to teach English to Maya university students as a volunteer in Guatemala. But no matter where I amβfrom the far-flung corners of the globe to my own neighborhoodβwhat I have come to value above all is that "exotic," unexpected wonder is everywhere, right before my very eyes.
