A multimillion-dollar social media campaign on two of China's most popular platforms requires careful planning and vision. Digital Strategist Rishi Kadiwar, '05, MBA '10, says success also requires global mindset — especially when team members work in multiple countries and speak numerous languages.

Some people wait until they travel abroad to develop a global mindset. But Elaine Oves ’15, a marketing associate with Interel Group, says the process starts at home. “You don't have to travel far,” she says. “You just have to step outside your comfort zone and interact with people unlike yourself. The more you do it, the more you learn.”

Visiting other countries, whether for business or leisure, can seem daunting because of the abundance of variables in a new environment. Philip Grove, MBA '15, an international sales manager, chooses to focus on the one constant variable in each trip: himself.

Global business strategist Paul Adler, MBA ’78, can’t help asking questions when he meets somebody from another place. His cultural curiosity propels him forward. “Being interested in other cultures is impossible to fake,” says Adler, a former business development executive for IBM who launched his own firm in 2018.

Sameness can be reassuring. But Maurice Nick, a supply planning manager at Stanley Black & Decker, prefers the disruption of new ideas. "I grow tired of situations quickly," he says. "Without having different insights, different perspectives and different people around me, I get weary in what I'm doing."

A global perspective starts with a local outlook for Rocio Holub '04, a senior manager for global operations at DAI Global, LLC. She says understanding on-the-ground conditions in foreign environments has helped shape her career. In her current assignment, Holub has traveled the world to establish businesses and promote sustainability in foreign markets. She says forming relationships and experiencing different environments firsthand provides valuable perspectives that allow her to better accomplish her objectives.

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions start with empathy, says investment banker Abhjieet Biswas, MBA '00. "Everything else can fall into place," he says. "But if there are barriers to understanding each other, you won't be successful." Biswas, a 2000 MBA graduate of the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, says empathy is also a key component of global mindset. "It means having the ability to marry knowledge of local markets with a global outlook," he says. "And to see these two things as complementary not supplementary."

Every transaction is international when you work at Maersk, the world's largest container ship operator. "Supply chain management gives you a really literal illustration of global business," says Katie Praske '01, who spent nearly 15 years at Maersk as a customer service and compliance manager. "Each shipment touches at least two countries. You can't do anything in isolation."

Development banker Evelyn Hartwick, EMBA '10, embraces ambiguity and stretch assignments as a way of life. "People who resist change don't grow," she says. Hartwick knew little of the world outside El Salvador when she arrived in the United States at the start of a civil war that tore apart her country in the 1980s. She was 17, fresh out of high school and alone in a foreign place. "I had $200 in my pocket, and I didn't know any English," she says. "Needless to say, I experienced culture shock when I got to New York to study."

Stephen M. Feeney '70 knew his place in the world as a New York banker. "I was working for various financial entities in a narrowly defined square block bordered by 42nd Street, 59th Street, Third Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan," he says.