With all respects duly afforded to the Disney empire for coining the term “the happiest place on earth”, I’m not in Anaheim or even Orlando. I am sitting in a dense alpine forest, studded with pine and larch trees, listening to a live (free) classical music concert performed by talented musicians in formal attire. The only distraction is the occasional passing of the little red train, which you hear before you see, as it glides through the woods like a cross country skier on freshly fallen snow. My Happy Place: Switzerland, Act 1 – train How did I get here, why is this my happy place, and what should you know about Switzerland and the Swiss? These are timely questions as August 1st, the Swiss national holiday, is upon us. So I will also make sure not to end this post today without first offering you a really good option…

Inspired by Life! Beginning – or ending – can be exhilarating. And a bit off-putting as well. I say that as someone who just chucked over thirty years in both Corporate America and Academia (plus a whole host of other fascinating and unrelated career stints, which will be making occasional appearances on these pages). I once delivered a robust commencement speech on the irony of how we interchange the words “Commencement” and “Graduation”; they certainly mean very different things. So, why the change? Why now? More to come on that, but for now, let’s say that a different strain of music kept playing louder and louder in my head. My go-to classical soundtrack was still “Ma Vlast” or “My Homeland” – an incredibly moving and patriotic work by the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana. But new and discordant tunes kept surfacing. At first, I didn’t understand. And then I travelled to…