No matter what time zone I am in, my phone buzzes most frequently when I am asleep. Whether a missed call from a friend in Kenya, an email from a musical collaborator in Canada, or a LinkedIn message from a U.K. investor in my educational startup, I eagerly wake each morning to many new notifications. Growing up, I traveled extensively, living on three different continents. In fact, my passport looked like my coloring book. Learning five languages and adapting to foreign environments while maintaining my identity, has taught me to value different skills, including networking.
Over fifty different area codes in my phone represent the active relationships I have developed. Through these connections, I was virtually introduced to a talented musician based in Canada. We never met in person, but through the power of communicating via the internet we produced an original song together. After completing this project, we reached out to our networks of people in the music industry and discovered a vocalist based in Texas to sing and compose lyrics for our song. To this day, the three of us have not yet physically met, but despite living in different time zones, we were able to release an upbeat dance track with a record label based in France.
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My aptitude for connecting with this diverse network stems from my international background. My father is a blonde-haired German, and my mother is a dark-haired Persian. I learned the art of building relationships while attending schools on three different continents. In America, my peers primarily discuss college applications and materialism; in Germany, soccer and music; in Israel, politics, and technology. It would have been nearly impossible for me to learn how to build and maintain this global network had I not been exposed to a spectrum of