Mar 26, 2026 | ACROSS CULTURES, AT HOME
“I’m not sure I understand or agree with this,” my mother said to me last Tuesday. She was watching my daughter negotiate her own bedtime. In my mother’s world, children don’t negotiate. Parents decide, children obey, and the structure keeps everyone...
Feb 12, 2026 | ACROSS CULTURES
The room went silent. Not the comfortable silence of people thinking, but the heavy, suffocating silence of a deal falling apart. I was twenty-two years old, sitting in a conference room in Shanghai. On one side of the table sat the executive team from Church’s...
Jan 29, 2026 | ACROSS CULTURES
The room was rich with red velvet curtains and lipstick, and I watched red shoes moving across the wooden floor. I was sitting in a cult tango venue in Buenos Aires called Salon Canning. It was 2019, and I was there on a birthday trip I had gifted myself. I had flown...
Jan 15, 2026 | ACROSS CULTURES
We often believe that if we can just find the right words, we can talk our way into belonging. We think if we explain our values clearly enough or justify our presence eloquently enough, the walls between us and “them” will crumble. I used to believe this too. I spent...
Nov 27, 2025 | ACROSS CULTURES
What Twenty Years in China Taught Me About Conflict Hong Zhou changed how I think about business partnerships with one question. I was 22, nervous about a major deal that seemed to be falling apart. The American executives wanted everything spelled out in the...
