The Origin Story

People like me have a hard time describing who we are. Our identities have been shaped against a backdrop of unpredictability, cultural change and adaptation. We had to learn how to blend in, and yet our differences defined us. We are quite likely to be considered foreign no matter how long we lived somewhere.

I connect a lot about a lot of things. I’m not a polymath, because to claim that would be arrogant, and I’m not. But I have seen a lot, lived through a lot, loved a lot, read a lot, met a lot of different people, and have internalised  a multitude of cultural codes. I’m part of an international cohort for whom education - some would say elitist education - was the norm. I come across composed, knowledgeable, complicated, and insatiably curious. That thirst for knowledge and deeper understanding is a common trait of people who grew up my way. It is driven by restlessness.

I describe a third culture kid. We are the fifth largest nation on Earth. I was born in the Soviet Union in the depths of the Russian winter. No, I don't like the cold, but big hats are my thing. I migrated to Austria and spent my early childhood in the schizophrenia of a communist diplomatic compound within capitalist surroundings. I ski well. I moved to West Germany and the United Kingdom. I am mostly punctual and mostly polite.

I saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was saluting Lenin one day, and learning Adam Smith and De Toqueville another. I was the youngest female foreigner to be admitted to Merton College, Oxford after completing the International Baccalaureate at Sevenoaks, the leading IB school in the UK. I value good table manners and I was trained to converse about art, sport and politics with ease. I speak three languages fluently, but neither country would consider me native. After the LSE, I wanted to be a bureaucrat in the European Commission.

Shaped by the 90s, I was convinced by contemporary rhetoric, the Spice Girls and Germaine Greer that women can have it all. The next twenty years were meanderings through the bewildering paradoxes of modern relationships, as a foreigner, a working mother, a woman in technology, a global citizen.

The need to fit in was compulsive, but the success of doing so mixed. The cultural challenges didn't just extend to what to eat for Christmas, but when Christmas was. Secular Russians have a family meal on New Year's Eve and celebrate Orthodox Christmas in January. Austrians give gifts on St. Nicholas' Day on the eve of 5th December. Anglo-Saxon traditions ended in an inedible pudding.

Behind cultural adaptation lies a paradox. The more you fit in, the more of yourself you abandon. The more authentic you are, the more rejection you risk. Although recognising "your own kind" has become easier (and the IB is a good, although by no means the only, proxy), there will always be the need to manage the rhythmic see-saw of alienation to self and alienation to others. 

As a result, I see connections where others may not. I recognise patterns, empathise with emotions, see context and how things fit together. This is how I finally ended up doing what I love - marketing.

I’m sharing these experiences so you can believe my writing more easily. Borrowing Bob Dylan’s legendary phrase, I have no direction home. There’s no agenda. This endeavour is for your amusement and my leisure. It doesn’t escape me that this page is far more than 100 words long - which is the stated objective of this project. But this will be the only page in which I indulge. I’d like you to understand me and to trust me.