Living abroad was everything I had dreamed, after early tastes in Haiti, Peru, and Kenya. Even so, the long-term realities of life in a developing nation under a communist government awakened my understanding of American history in ways I couldn't have imagined.
In early 2016, I visited our village office in Laos to pay a quarterly tax fee and watched my neighbors line up to vote in an election where the winner had already been decided by Communist Party leaders. A few weeks later, our family landed in Kampala, Uganda, where we met our daughter Hope for the first time. We spent four months immersed in her culture, navigated the Supreme Court adoption hearings, and built connections with a nation that would forever become part of our family's story.
Uganda's election was in full swing that year too. Yoweri Museveni was running to retain power after 30 years as President, all social media had been disabled, and his political opponents had been placed under house arrest. Our family of 4 flew out as polls prepared to close.
We landed home to finalize adoption paperwork as our own 2016 election ramped up. I had voted across party lines since my early 20s, always analyzing candidates on character and their ability to bring people to the table, and always conscious that in a state with one-party rule and few competitive districts, making your voice heard sometimes means pulling whichever primary ballot actually gives you a say.
But that general election was the first time I felt it was impossible to vote my conscience and still choose a Republican or Democratic candidate. Almost everyone I knew felt the same way. I heard it over and over: "Is this really the best our country has to offer?"
So, I voted for a 3rd party candidate in 2016. I expected so many others to do the same based on their truest values, and was disappointed to learn that our country wasn’t ready for a political disruptor.
My family returned to Southeast Asia, where we welcomed Quinn in Bangkok. I turned down a job offer from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime because I preferred to keep my hands in grassroots fieldwork. With an incredible team of national leaders, I helped launch 3 businesses to employ survivors of human trafficking and religious persecution, assisted with dozens of cases, and wrote my doctoral dissertation, repeatedly confronting the same truth: men and women wanted safe, dignified work.
Our family of 5 repatriated to Columbia, Tennessee in 2019. Whether teaching business as a university professor, researching ethical employment practices for Freedom Business Alliance, founding nonprofits, or advising international counter-trafficking organizations, my energy remained as much global as it was local.
But in 2023, things changed. I returned from a research trip to Nepal and a conference keynote in Thailand, and Abel had grown us to a family of 6. I could see that the work so many of us had poured into economic solutions for trafficking survivors was starting to move the needle, with fresh hands coming to carry it forward. The problem-solving that had always drawn me to other places and other people met me on my own soil. The hills of Tennessee called, and I saw our state in a new light.
