The Sharpener

The voices of division threaten peace in our world. So here's a poem to remind us that peace communicates, but we must also communicate peace.

Peace is a choice. Choose it.

Peace is a voice use it.

I donated to the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, I hope you will too.

NEW POETRY FROM THE SHARPENER:

* Read it here: https://bit.ly/3SMTmwf

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#peace #worldpeace #poetry #blogger

[Mild language warning] The Sharpener has been to some dark places recently, including death, loss and disease. Here, You’ll find an update, because, let’s face it, it’s been a while since we caught up, and I also want to lighten up the gloom, and share my path of reinvention through the pandemic and the birth of the virtual revolution known as the metaverse. If the past couple years have been about adjusting to the ‘new normal’, the road ahead will be about adjusting to a world of constant readjusting. Perhaps my story and thoughts through this will mean something to you as well, for whatever they’re worth. Much more The Sharpener blog and website.

Artwork by me. I designed all the artwork on this website, except in the group projects, in which I specify which role I played in the talented groups I have worked with.

Don’t feel like reading this post? Listen to the podcast here!

Extraordinary.

It’s 3 AM in Greece. Applause and rejoice after our last ever client presentations at Columbia University. We say our congratulations and I end the video chat when all is said and done. Everyone and everything disappears with the clap of the screen.

Silence.

The loved ones I am staying with went to bed hours ago. The quiet is a void that is normally full of beautiful sounds. Outside my window, I see Athens. A vibrant 24-hour city with a heartbeat flattened by the pandemic and a second national lockdown. In Greece and around the world we seem to be moving perpetually in place, like hamsters on a wheel.

Last year at the end of the term, snow fell poetically as though on cue as we walked out through the courtyards and the famous plaza. But this year there will be no grand mahogany walls, no buzz from the business library, none of the electric energy that crackles with every footstep in Butler library. None of the quirks, like that strange prehistoric ape skeleton I encountered one day when I was stressing out about finals in a life science building that looked at me as if to say, hey buddy, I got wiped out by the Ice Age, no, go ahead, tell me about your problems…

But this year I will have none of the glow of the downtown lights. None of the jazz, but most importantly, none of the exceptional people I have met. I had a plan—we all did—but it flipped like a switch, (with no opt-out button!) from in-person to remote. From together to apart, from somewhere to anywhere, from certain to fluid, from handshakes to hand sanitizers, from “congratulations!” to “we regret to inform you.” Three mentors I admired in work and life since my early years at ACS Athens, are no longer with us. My dreams became plans that I chased, only to shrink back into dreams. I decided to make myself useful, sharing what I have learned about working from home. I began taking up old hobbies again, like drawing (I made the cover art for this post, and most other art on this website). But what now?

As I looked out that window, the starlight caught my attention like a tap on the shoulder; what I saw was more than stars. I saw in them the people who gave me a chance when others would not, the loved ones who gave me a place to stay, and, more importantly, love, during lockdown. Like a movie projection, I saw a picture across the sky of the small things; the home-cooked meals, the games, the smiles, the celebrations, the whispers of reassurance from my mentors supervising from above, and the big picture; life, love, and the medical workers who fight the invisible war every day. In one insightful class I took last year, we learned these are known as the bright spots.

Astronomy tells us that the starlight we see traveled a long way to reach us; so far, in fact that the stars they came from probably died long before their light ever reached us, but, what I see out there is a light so bright, and a hope so strong, it crossed the universe just to show us what hope can do. That is what gets me through our endless night.

And, for me, my friends, that is

Extraordinary.

Happy, healthy Holidays from me to you!

Listen to the podcast above!

I’m ready for my close-up!

Communication in our hyperkinetic multimedia landscape is a two-way street. Ignoring your audience is like ignoring your own vital signs. In this era of the empowered customer and the empowered audience (which are of particular interest to me for this blog, which reflects on my experiences and adventures in that very landscape) your followers make or break you, and no one can afford to ignore them.

Part of the reason for my opening of the floodgates to you is the larger radical shift in the industry from “push” to “pull” tactics. For many years, the dominant thinking in the media world was that you had to ‘push’ out a sales message, buy this coffee, vote for that candidate, etc. But since the dawn social media, the mostly unheard customer suddenly became the dominant voice, By clicking to ‘like’ a video or photo (or use the other reactions now available to us) using a downward or upward thumb like in a gladiator’s colosseum, the audience now decides who survives. The run down bagel shop on the street corner or the Greek taverna run by someone’s plucky eighty seven-year-old grandmother now can lead national rankings on review sites on its reputation alone, and the once impenetrable corporations that dominated public taste and opinion are suddenly beholden to the thumb.

Now that the customer is at the center of the universe, the ball is in the media creators’ court. What we once called the captive audience is no longer captive. The customer’s ability to lose interest in you and find what he or she needs elsewhere means that we must make a bold move: make things that people actually want to see, a topic I explore in our talk.

I also have personal reasons for going live. You may know from an earlier post that the captivating power of live broadcasting is a theme of this blog. My blog and its extensions have found an audience, so I felt it was time for a direct conversation from me to you. Without the loyal, passionate and intelligent people I am proud to call my followers, I would be living in an echo chamber, in an era where it has never been more important to break outside our own silos and tune into opposing points of view. It is seductively easy to shut out the opinions we disagree with and hear only echoes of ourselves. By enabling a discussion about the media, I hope to invite you to challenge me, and each other, so we can all expand each other’s horizons.

I structure this talk by asking the big picture questions I deem crucial to understanding the complex creative digital environment we inhabit and how it affects our lives. Does quick access to things and services come at the cost of our privacy? Are we truly in control of our digital footprint? Occasionally, I zoom into a quirky topic of interest, (for example, what Snapchat has in common with sitting around a campfire.) Finally, I address advertising in particular, and open up the floor to your excellent questions that I hope to integrate into my work moving forward. The wheels in my head are always turning.

Watch what happened in the video link below. For your convenience, I have supplied links to the individual topics I discuss, in case you don’t feel like watching from beginning to end.

Enjoy!

Enduring power of live experiences— 2:25

Access vs. Ownership— 5:39

Will machines take our (creative) jobs?— 8:38

Expediency vs. privacy—12:38

What the internet has in common with sitting around a campfire—16:45

How content consumption is different today than ever before—18:08

Importance of community and authenticity in our media—19:28

Importance of immediacy in our media landscape—20:43

The On-demand World—22:06

How will artificial intelligence and machine learning factor into the speed of content-creation?—23:42

Piracy—24:02

Customization—24:48

Truth & News—26:37

Is it better to make a relevant boring ad or a creative stunt ad? 31:07

Should an ad just sell a product or can it make the world better? 33:23

Is authenticity a worthwhile goal in advertising? 35:05

Should we regain control of our media or are we too preoccupied by modern technology to take back our privacy and ability to think for ourselves? 12:38

Don’t feel like reading? Listen to the podcast here, or the video (above)!

But for every wedge that drives us apart, there’s a moment of magical unity. These are the times that brought us together out of pride and admiration for where we were as Greeks, how far we’ve come, and how much we can look forward to. Anyone who feels something for Greece has a favorite moment.

Maybe you remember the cheer from local Greeks that lit up the Australian sky after the victories of tennis champions Stefanos Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari. Perhaps you remember the songs and dances that painted Greece in the national stripes the night the Greeks won the 2004 UEFA Euro soccer championship. Maybe you have admired Yorgos Lanthimos’ rise as a director from Athenian auteur to international Favourite. Like Luis Buñuel (an earlier director whose sense of mischief he shares), he cast his surreal spell over the world.

/ˌkäməˈrädərē,ˌkaməˈrädərē/ : noun.

“A spirit of friendly good fellowship.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

I love that word, not for its sound, but for its meaning. It’s the solidarity you feel with those you share a world with. Camaraderie is borrowed from the French word comrade, which addresses any kind of ‘fellow’, ranging from fellow students, members of an organization, the armed forces, and so on.

What if we Greeks could bottle up the camaraderie from those unifying moments? What if we could use it to encourage a sense of teamwork and fellowship that we can use to build Greece’s brightest possible future?

The National Hellenic Student Association of America (NHSA) is an organization that empowers young people with Hellenic roots by bringing them together through its various initiatives. Most importantly for me, NHSA operates through a powerful sense of teamwork, as I have witnessed as a proud member of their marketing team. I wonder what Gombrich would have said about us.

NHSA was built from the ground up by Hellenic-Americans. They organize bi-annual conventions and events of a social and professional nature, and partner with other organizations to promote “…Hellenism, education, mentorship, and overall unity of the Hellenic community.” Unity, of course, is the operative term here.

If you walk the streets of New York’s Astoria, Chicago’s Greektown (the host of the latest successful convention) or America’s other historically Greek neighborhoods, you may see a full spectrum of our culture on display. In NHSA, members always ran the full gamut of the Hellenic experience, which proved to be key to the collective culture of our organization, and common ground was our secret weapon for the upcoming convention we would host in Fall 2018 in New York City. We overcame our greatest differences, starting with geography.

When I received the call of duty to be NHSA’s Marketing Strategist from my friend and then-president Alexander Thomopulos, part of my initiation was to be added to the cloud-based project management software we use internally. I felt like I had opened up a microcosm, like the self-sufficient communities of tiny people in the film Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne (who is of Greek descent).

What I saw there was an elaborate global ecosystem of work with members as far flung as Toronto, Canada and Athens, Greece. Meetings would be announced and those who were located in a time zone that accommodated the meeting time would jump into our weekly conference calls, and those unable would get the meetings notes with action items allocated to each person. And if someone had created something to be reviewed by someone else who was unavailable due to the time difference, I would work with them on a separate channel on the platform. I was never left hanging, and everyone responded when they could, and as well as they could.

Regardless of where each member is located, the constant is our all-hands-on-deck approach: whenever something needs to be done, someone rises to the occasion. Whenever food needed to be delivered from a bakery to the venue of a convention (including prestigious and logistically complex places like the Condé Naste Building, which we used for the New York convention), or searching for an event space, the task would be opened up to all of us, and eventually someone would jump in.

This model of open collaboration applied at the organization-wide level, but also as we broke off like cellular growth into smaller committees, including, marketing, the committee I was on. This process of opening up challenges to a community is a form of open innovation, in which important decisions are decided on by a passionate community rather than just to closed rooms of stakeholders. Research has shown that open innovation is conducive to the kind of unexpected associations that spark creative thinking, as I wrote in an earlier post.

In his brilliant TED talk, innovation consultant Charles Leadbeater uses the example of mountain bikes to make his point about collaboration. A community of bikers in Northern California were frustrated about the flaws of racing bikes and recreational bikes, so they came together and invented the mountain bike by mixing and matching the best of both when the big corporations in the biking industry only saw risks in doing so. Today, the majority of bikes sold are mountain bikes.

Mountain bikes, Wikipedia, rap music, and other game-changing things in our culture were born from the collective creativity of passionate communities, often working outside the corporate world. NHSA’s open model of collaboration, and engagement with its community are reasons why I admire this organization and its vision for a collaborative future for Hellenic organizations and beyond.

The bedrock of the collaboration that happens at NHSA is, of course, the culture that unites us. Our shared story as Greeks, and our willingness to use that story to elevate each other, and learn from our differences, are some of its greatest strengths.

The process of developing the marketing strategies I created for the New York convention was an exercise in finding common ground. In the strategy presentation I put together, I decided the common denominator of New York and Hellenic-Americans is the story of immigrants to Ellis Island who searched for a better life. I identified parallels between today’s young Hellenic professionals who job hunt in a new city and the experience of our brave ancestors—including my own— which became core to the promotional strategy for the convention.

Excerpts from the strategies I devised for the NHSA convention. See the full presentation here.

Collaboration between members of NHSA was also an exercise in finding common ground, and using our differences as strengths that ultimately fostered an inclusive experience for everyone who attended the convention. The full spectrum of Hellenic experience is represented in our organization, with members from or descended from Greece and Cyprus who live around the world.

The choice of music on the Greek night (the after party on the night of the convention) is a discussion where our differences may have influenced each person’s choice of music, but the sum total of our opinions made us stronger.

Having grown up in Greece, I can say I was exposed to equal doses of Greek pop and folk music, whereas others had a strong preference for one of the two genres. In the end, we decided on a blend of both, a choice we suspect pleased everyone’s ears that night at Kellari (a chic midtown taverna). Suffice it to say the exit door to the place was left unused until the wee hours of the morning. NHSA proves that shared experience and diversity within an organization are not necessarily at odds, and our range of viewpoints across the gamut of Hellenic experience brings with it all the benefits of diversity we hear about today.

The Greek night itself also brought out our shared experience. From the first note of Απόψε Στις Ακρογιαλιές (Tonight on the Coastlines), that disarmingly simple Kalamatiano dance familiar to many of us since childhood, began to form as we held hands in a circular formation that never closes because it knows no strangers. I saw many singing the words to popular songs like Ξημερώματα (dawn), regardless of how well they knew the language or where they were from. Greek song is a homecoming of sorts, and it welcomes everyone, as it did that night.

At the actual convention, after the speaker panels ended, we broke for a speed networking lunch hour, where the convention speakers sat with convention attendees at tables organized by field (medicine, law, business, etc). As I looked around, I realized that our shared story was the reason why every mentor was there in the first place.

One of those mentors had taught my brother and Alex when they were students at ACS, the international American high school in Greece that I also attended for over a decade (more about that here). I’m convinced she would never have joined us if she had not shared our story bound by our culture and experiences.

Another mentor, whose table I sat at during the networking lunch, is a renowned journalist and lawyer who has anchored for WCBS Newsradio, CNN, CNBC, and interviewed various heads of state. In an interview with the Greek National Herald (known to generations of New York area Greeks as «Εθνικός Κύρικας»), he talks movingly about the impact of his Greek upbringing on his life’s work. Perhaps those memories of starting out put him in the wing-tipped shoes of the likes of me: Greek-Americans trying to make it in a big new city.

Striking poses with convention speakers, mentors, and executives. Included also are scenes from the networking lunch hour and the speaker panels.

Remembering and mining this common ground is so important, because it builds trust and friendship within organizations and among people. Common ground is important as a shortcut to reaching trust. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who has done brilliant work on the topic of trust, says trust is crucial to any organization or a society, because trust reduces the complexity of processes, and ensures everyone gets their due. But trust is fragile, and it must be nurtured, which is why the efforts we make to explore our common ground and build trust and our community must be sustained in order to work.

The New York convention reminds me that the way forward for us Greeks is together. The culture of our heritage has produced exceptional individuals who have made us proud. Film directors, are crucial as visionaries, but they are part of creative teams that make movies happen. Similarly, we should celebrate and encourage exceptional Greek teamwork as much as exceptional Greek individuals.

The Greek shipping industry comes to mind, an age-old business that captures the popular imagination as much as the sea that surrounds Greece. The staying power of Greeks, who have continued, since antiquity, to hold one of the world’s largest and most successful merchant fleets, is living proof of what our teamwork can do. The 2004 Olympics, despite the challenges that arose, were a dazzling display of collaborative creativity that captures our awe of Greece’s great past, promising a bright future.

For me, both examples involve teamwork that stepped into our shared imagination, and then took a step outward (as we do in some of our dances) to draw from our hive mind as the wellspring of our greatest future. NHSA, for me, embodies this team spirit that could serve as a model for organizations on a larger scale.

Archimedes famously said “give me a place to stand, […] and I will move the Earth.” If we Greeks follow the lead of NHSA and stand together, is there anything we can’t move next?

With the convention speakers, mentors and executives. Photo courtesy of NHSA of America.

Click on the image to view my video. Read on to learn about about the mysterious martini !

I believe there is such a thing as a spirit.

It may be the only thing the body can’t deny, like the irresistible child of a chronically cruel parent. I will now tell you a story that has nothing to do with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). But before you reach for the SPAM folder, bear with me for a second (close friends tell me my conversations always have a destination, let’s say it’s Greece. But you may go through customs in Botswana to get there.)  

Something strange happened this year. My family had gathered in New York to celebrate my aunt’s birthday. A beloved relative had died not long before then. A chronic illness—not Parkinson’s, I’ll get there—had made it difficult for her to show up for things in person. But she would show up in every other way: a phone call, a bunch of flowers, a promise of a party at her place the next time we visited. Six of us showed up early at the restaurant that day, so we had a drink at the bar. Her drink of choice was a gin martini. Six of us were there. Seven drinks arrived. The unclaimed drink was a gin martini. Even if some mix-up in the order caused the extra drink, her spirit was on our minds again.

I am reminded again of the spirit when I think about Parkinson’s Disease. Two important people in my life developed the disease in their later years. I felt my blog and podcast were the place to discuss them because, like me, they had that mysterious urge to imagine and create.

The lady grew up in Athens, Greece and knew several of the great Athenian artists of the mid 20th century. Animals were often the subjects of her paintings, and she would sooner nurse a stray cat or dog back to health than buy one of her own. She filled her garden during big family barbecues with the people and animals she loved where food and conversation crossed generations, and many interconnecting tables.    

The man came from a Greek family in Massachusetts and worked his way up the executive ranks as the creative head of major advertising accounts in the legendary Mad Men 1960s and later. He was a mentor to me and countless others, inspiring my own enthusiasm for his field, and giving others a reason to consider my work.

What compels me to write about these remarkable people is the strength of spirit they had that they gave me and their loved ones as gifts, like that mysterious drink. It seems ironic that a symptom of the disease is memory loss, as their loved ones were in their thoughts every day. How ironic it is, then, that slow movement is a symptom, as they were in constant motion.

For those who are not familiar, Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurological movement disorder whose symptoms include muscle tremors, poor coordination, and memory loss. According to the American Parkinson Disease Association, It affects over one million Americans and an estimated 10 million people worldwide. More information than ever about Parkinson’s exists online, but ever more remains unknown. There still is no cure. The web has liberated the voices of so many patients of all walks of life, who often approach the disease with cautious optimism and the urge to stay ahead of the curve by using the latest tools and technology to their advantage.

Technology put the Michael J. Fox. Foundation (MJFF) on my radar again (I had been a fan of Fox as an actor, who first caught my ear for his starring role as the bookish Milo Thatch in Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire. I then worked backwards to Back to the Future, and his earlier films, and eventually learned he was behind the Foundation).

The organization came to my attention again recently when the news broke that MJFF had pledged more than 120,000 dollars (more than 110,000 euros) to develop an app that allows Parkinson’s patients to monitor their symptoms from home. The project is a clever partnership with Greek professor George Roussos from the University of London’s School of Business, who develops wearable device apps that record Parkinson’s motor symptoms, including the distinctive tremors. The funding will go into a software toolkit that will allow him to analyze data from his cloud-based symptom tracking apps, which will ease symptom tracking for individual patients, and pool data that will forge Parkinson’s research forward on the patient and public health levels.

The foundation continues to do all kinds of great work, and I am particularly impressed by their multifaceted approach to the disease. MJFF funds and promotes experimental treatments, organizes research studies, rallies for policy changes to improve the livelihood of patients, and builds community around those affected. One initiative is the Fox Trot 5K run/walk that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. $0.88 of every dollar is donated to its research programs, and the majority of proceeds are poured back into the foundation.

More than all the above, I admire the quality of spirit and the sense of hope the organization brings. Medical advances have made a staggering dent in PD. But a body that feels alone leaves the spirit behind. Then the body goes too. Studies have shown the power of hope in the lives of patients. John Bowlby’s studies showed that abandoned children would not eat without if they did not feel loved. Patients are the same way. They lose hope, even if they have the best care money can buy. It seems to work the other way around, too. The absence of hope may shut us down, but the presence of hope gives us a glimpse of infinity. For patients, research shows that hope makes it easier for them to cope, and may even have a direct impact on healing. hope’s greatest gift is resilience. It’s a gift patients and researchers can benefit from. For patients, hope can mean the end of suffering. For researchers, like the team at MJFF, it can mean the end of Parkinson’s.

This kind of spirit is what I admire most about the Foundation. It’s the reason behind my donation this year on my birthday. Spirit is what I come away with when I think about the organization, like the inexplicable glass on the edge of the table. I hope the foundation does for you what it did for me and that you will consider donating.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

.....

It was December 21st, 2017: a cold Greek day in a country of mesmerizing warmth. We were making our annual pilgrimage to our school, gravitating back to the mothership where both my parents, aunts, brothers, many friends and I had once lived, worked, thought, played and voyaged. 

There were others who did the same that day, 40 to be exact. There were enough names to fill a sprawling board in the famed cafeteria with our names and where we had attended school since we graduated. That warm, familiar place still appeared to be a crossroads of the school. Any combination of people is possible there. You could find an administrator waiting on the sandwich line while a coach rushes by to ask for ice to aid an injured knee, only to run into an Optimal Match specialist he hasn’t seen in a while, but will soon sit on a panel with to discuss the i2Flex method on a livestreamed webcast. 

There were few free hands in the house. It seemed each person hand held a cup of fragrant hot chocolate in one hand, and the other held either a kourambie (buttered biscuits sprinkled with powdered sugar) or a melomakarono (honey cookies). The annual spectacle of students, math instructors, librarians, secretaries, and athletes belting out Jingle Bells began to unfold before my eyes. 

Among the faces I recognized were children of fellow alumni, with whom I share something important: the experience of growing up here. They may remember the rite of passage of crossing the street that once physically separated the elementary school from the rest of ACS. Perhaps they remember the homework packets, school plays to apply their knowledge of Greek mythology and seeing where it was first set in stone on the Acropolis. Perhaps they remember decorating the inside of their first locker, or treading lightly through a middle school dance. 

Perhaps they had an early Eureka moment, mine was learning the power of great design as I watched an egg parachute I had designed in my Design Technology class floating elegantly from the balcony our class had dropped its projects from. Perhaps they remember the intimidation of a great challenge, and the joy of rising to meet it. The moment my eighth grade ears heard that my film review for the Blue and Gold Magazine made me the youngest ever contributor comes to mind. Perhaps they remember the rigor of obtaining an IB (International Baccalaureate) Diploma , which taught me a critical thought process that I still use every day. 

Maybe they remember the sense of teamwork they fostered with friends across the classroom desk, between free shots in the back field (or, in my case, between strokes in a swimming team race), behind the debating podium, between bites at a lunchtime yearbook meeting, or between takes in the student newsroom.

I could not shake the question in my mind as I read the names of those who returned: What is the force that brings them back? What is it about ACS that we flip back to as we plan the sentences in our stories of our lives that have yet to be written?

I know I cannot possibly account for the experience of so many who saw ACS in so many ways across so many generations. I hope I can make a small contribution to a discussion about a group of people who have roamed our world—and solar system—and still report back to mission control. Here goes.

As I looked back through my history at ACS, I tried to remember the first of many times when I felt a hand of guidance on my shoulder; the hand that never held out an answer, but offered glimpses of new, unexplored ideas and possibilities. It allowed me to see have Eu-reka moments for myself, and delight in the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of stones no longer unturned.

The earliest one I can recall was early in my first year at ACS. We had just been sent off for recess. We may have just completed the unit on the American settlers or nutrition. I recall writing a story about a magical box that gave you whatever you needed at that time. After I thought I had scribbled the story on a set of notebook papers with margins for illustrations on top I dropped it on the assignment pile. I could not contain my excitement for completing the story , or so I thought. 

I exclaimed. “I can’t believe such a small box could be so powerful.” 
“Did you use the word small?” asked my teacher. 
“No,” I said.
“Well, you should,” she added, explaining the power of adjectives to show rather than tell. I penciled that word in and continued.
“Anyway, so about that small, plain box.”
“Did you write plain?”
I saw where this was going, and, hoping for some recess, dreamt up this box in vivid detail, and as quietly as I could.

My teacher’s line of questioning still runs in the back of my mind, like the inner voice that tells us the picture on the wall is crooked, and more importantly, gives us the conscience to set it straight. Advice, often unsolicited, and not speaking from the agenda of a set curriculum but with the voice of conscience that transcends disciplines in our world that defies disciplines, what Dr. Gialamas calls the Global Morfosis Paradigm.  

That hand of guidance returned time and time again both to sharpen my tastes (which eventually led me to a Masters Degree in Advertising) and embolden my creative spirit. In high school, I was frustrated with the lack of consolidation in my IB Visual Arts process books (journals that track creative projects from inspiration to execution.) I was encouraged to take a new approach. I knew, from the first time I dared set pen to paper (now stylus pen to tablet) I was cartooning and storyboarding, even before I knew what those things were. Why not tell my process as a story? After all, as I discovered, my natural impulse is to storyboard. Rather than parrot off passages of cave art from a textbook, why not cast a cave painter as the narrator of prehistory? So I did, with the encouragement of my teacher, who gave me source material along the way, including Scott McCloud’s indispensable Understanding Comics. Had my approach been rejected, my process could have remained disorderly. But because I was given the fuel, my best practices had liftoff. This process has carried through to my recent work as a creative strategist in my advertising portfolio , which I am currently showing around New York as I continue on the Great American Job Search.  

I know these are only my stories. There may be as many other tales of mentorship as there are hairs under the graduation caps every year. I have read stories of teachers who inspired their children to return to this school as teachers. I have seen teachers who mentor not only as teachers, but also as athletic coaches, debate moderators, student magazine editors, book club coordinators, student council advisors, math club proctors, and conference panelists at the strike of the 3:45 PM bell. Those restless guiding hands remind me that the day comes to a close but teaching and learning never do. 

I believe ACS encourages those creative leaps that bring the world of the imagination out in the stratosphere within reach. By understanding the world as we know it (what it is and how it works), we can then question and rebuild it.
As I wrote in an earlier post, the unexpected association of unrelated ideas is the mental clay whose form is as flexible as the limits of human imagination. The process of remix has given us some of the greatest ideas and inventions we depend on today, like the way Larry Page and Sergei Brin envisioned Google by imagining web links as a series of bibliographical citations that endlessly link back to other sources. Those simple mental leaps simply changed our world.  

I believe the long-standing Truman Trial in the famed 10th grade “Combo” (American Studies / Literature) class is a form of remix. The necessity of former US president Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb rested in the hands of my team of lawyers and our witnesses as the entire school tuned in online and in person. With the gravity of this case upon us, I felt we had a personal stake in the course of history where our role could have been passive. The engagement with such a charged case reminds me of the difference between coasting along as a passenger and steering the starship. Sitting at the captain’s helm gave me and my team pause before every argument we added to our case, and every cross examination I did. The stakes were high, so the lessons of the trial remain unforgettable.The intricacies and curveballs the case threw at us, like the resurrection of Machiavelli as a defense witness, have conditioned my brain to a state of remix. This openness to new ideas and associations have helped kick my ideas into hyperdrive. The time where my advertising class studio team envisioned LEGO blocks as the portal to a digital in-store experience  comes to mind. Had my school not taught me to be open to new connections, I may have never made them.

I know this kind of thinking still abounds at ACS. I am so impressed to read about student revelations on the famed Humanities trips, and other excursions that ask the big questions and ask what makes a place like Greece unique. Each of the many excursions reminded me that Athens is a place of limitless remix where the past, present, and future are in constant conversation. The sprouting of student work on student portfolios and blogs seems to encourage the free flow of knowledge and reflection across the disciplines, both for the students, and their global viewership. Dr. Gialamas’ knots come to mind as the symbols of the infinite feedback loop of reflection and rethinking in learning. 

I believe Ilia would never have devised the 1.50 Club had ACS not taught him to search for new ways to see his world. It was a simple insight that € 1.50, a typical price for an iced Greek coffee, can buy a boxed lunch for a student in need. That alone ignited a powerful partnership with DIATROFI, an initiative within the impactful PROLEPSIS Organization that has helped feed food-insecure children all over Greece. 

The “C” in ACS for me is as inseparable from the experience as the letter is from its title. Community at ACS has an international perspective. It means your language teacher may have another degree in concert music from a country that neither you nor she is from. Community means that your athletic, forensic, and university-related travel itinerary reads like the content of your European geography quiz. Community means that the nationalities of your friend group read like a U.N. delegation. 

I am proud to be woven into this school’s rich community-wide culture that I think informs my perspective today. I found an outlet through that community in the TEDx Youth Talks when I was so thrilled to have rediscovered comics as the engine behind my creative process and I decided to give a talk that took the audience through my process. I remember following the expressions of the faces I recognized in the front rows of that darkened theater; students, parents, and teachers I had grown up around, experiencing each epiphany like their own. When it was my turn in the audience, I found myself in as much awe of the stories I heard as my own. Everyone watching the stage from their seat or living room heard stories of space elevators, the power of smiling, at-risk outreach in Greek villages from friends, teachers, and faculty. As often happens at our school, the line between teacher and student faded. Learning soared. 

I felt that same community focus in ACS’s Summer Leadership Institute . When other participants and I began defining our ideas and perceptions of leadership, I originally defined leadership as the work of visionary individuals. But as we walked the halls of the University of Richmond and Washington DC area churches, museums, political offices and murals where leadership was a function of responsibility to a community, I began to see the common ground between leader and follower. 

I remember a moment where that distinction melted entirely. We were in the ACS library, a few days before we flew to DC for the second part of our training. We did a dance routine in shiny top hats trying hard to put our best left foot forward. I wondered at the time about the relevance of this activity to leadership, but stepping back into our unfortunate chorus line, I remembered that we were in a row formation, where the back rows mirrored the front. There were leaders, there were followers. We all served the dance, which bonded that little cross section of our community, and our (mercifully) small audience.

In my experience, I believe the small moments define the meaning of community at our school as much as the turning points: The collective gasp of relief in an IB or SAT exam when we realized the material we studied is what appeared on the test; the cheer and laughter of student athletes, coaches, and parents as they view the annual Sports Banquet slideshow ; the insights that crackled across the auditorium while we watched a Yannis Simeonides’ brilliant rendition of Plato’s Apology after we had all read it over the summer ; The buzz in the Incubator or the state-of-the-art Sabbagh Media Studio where ACS comes together to flex its creative muscles; The snap of the camera shutter that captured the cover of the ETHOS Magazine where my brothers and I were photographed with several dozen children of alumni who also attended ACS; the notification that invites young ACS alumni to their very first NHSA (National Hellenic Student Association)  convention where Hellenic ACS alumni have thrived in their respective communities around America and passed the torch onward. 

Before we went home on that cold, yet warm Greek day, I looked back at the constellation of alumni signatures across that cafeteria wall, and the inspiring young people about to join their ranks. I looked back at the mentors among them, and the very process of reflection they had taught me, the examined life they encouraged me to live. My years at that school helped to make sense of the moments that came after, including this one. 

In a way, Ilia was right. In a way, it was the end of an era. A generation of my family at ACS would end with him. But I knew, after years of returning, that we may drift, but everything we learned and learned to love about our school keeps us in orbit.