Could you tell our listeners about that?

Sure.

So my dad's family came from Lithuania and Russia.

They were Jewish immigrants.

They settled in Philadelphia.

My mom's family had come from England, you know, a hundred years before my dad's family.

And they met because of the work of my father.

Can you tell our listeners about this experience that I'm talking about and the sort of eye-opening experience it was for you?

And as they say, the rest is history.

Exactly.

So I graduated high school in 1970, actually, spring.

And I was just sort of a lost young man.

But I knew enough that I wasn't ready for college.

So I persuaded my mom to let me go to a kibbutz in Israel, where I was going to spend six months and then backpack in Europe.

And I got to Israel and met these American kids that had grown up in Kenya.

So what was your agenda when you went to work for President Clinton? What was his goal? What was your goal when he brought you on board?

What was your kid? What's going through your mind at that point? Because you're hearing conversations, I'm sure, with a lot of adults and people around you because you could understand you weren't that young.

Well, I was 18 years old.

I had finished high school in Massachusetts and took a gap year.

And I made my way to Israel, Kenya, and Uganda.

And I happened to be in Uganda, in the town of Mbarara, Southern Uganda, met a school teacher, English school teacher.

He put me and my friend up for the night.

And the next morning, as his wife was driving us to the road so we could continue our journey to the capital, He comes running out and says, don't go anywhere.

Who would you put on that list?

Express?"[laughs]

So she wrote back a letter, you know, a week or two later saying, "Tell me more about this Africa idea as time goes on." And, you know, amazingly, that became the title of my book.

But I got down to Nairobi and, you know, thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

It was so beautiful.

The air was crisp, clear, it was warm.

I already talked about the passion fruit juice, but the, you know, the vegetation was so lush.

And staying at the youth hostel with a fraternity of backpackers, and, uh, I get this idea to hitchhike up to Uganda, go see what's going on over there.

I mean, right now we have a lot of conflict around the world, and there has to be something at the other end of it where can we use this as an example?

So there is kind of a thought that American corporations coming over to Africa Um, and the same with China and Russia, you know, is a new, some people view it as a new form of colonization, right? Why, why do you, do you agree with that or do you push back on that and why?

I push back on that and this is why.

So my experience with the U.S. private sector was shaped in South Africa in the early 1990s.

At that time, it was almost to the end of the apartheid era.

Nelson Mandela wasn't quite out of jail yet, but there was something still in place called the Sullivan Principles.

And the Sullivan Principles were forged by Reverend Leon Sullivan, a Baptist preacher from Philadelphia.

Huge guy, huge guy.

My other personal question is, what is the Lemon Scholarship Endowment? Thank you for asking that.

I think that was a really beautiful example of putting your faith in others and building trust.

That was a really important moment in my career.

So, you know, I set my goal when I was about 20, my first year in college, second year of college.

And then as I started moving, you know, I did the master's degree in Dar es Salaam.

I came back and did a PhD, University of Southern California.

Then I was hired at the State Department to be the South African analyst.

And I was on my path to be a policymaker.

Yeah.