This week I had the honor of emceeing Fort Worth's commemoration of the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, standing before the largest World Trade Center artifact in Texas.
Read More
I flew to Cleveland for one day to check the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame off my bucket list. I didn't expect to end up playing guitar with the house band. Sometimes the best experiences are the ones that were never on the itinerary.
Read More
Twenty-seven years after boarding my first plane to Japan, I found myself speaking to hundreds of people at the Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. I never could have predicted where that first trip would lead. The most consequential experiences in life rarely announce themselves in advance.
Read More
I didn’t advance to the Defender Trophy Global Final in Africa, but becoming one of six U.S. finalists is a memory I’ll always carry. The competition tested everything from off-road driving to problem-solving in unfamiliar terrain. Sometimes the real achievement is becoming the person who was willing to begin.
Read More
I traveled to British Columbia with a duffel bag, a lot of hope, and no idea what the next three days would demand. Competing against 120 people from across the U.S. and Canada taught me more about leadership than I expected from an off-road competition. Sometimes the experience that changes your trajectory begins with a simple decision to say yes.
Read More
It was an extraordinary privilege to welcome Mary Jean Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to Fort Worth for Sister Cities International’s annual conference. Her visit reminded me that global stability is built one relationship at a time. Citizen diplomacy may not make headlines, but it creates the trust that survives everything else.
Read More
It was an honor to welcome Ghana’s Vice President, the Honorable Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, to Washington, D.C. for Sister Cities International’s 70th anniversary. Watching national and local leaders come together reminded me that international relationships aren’t only built in capitals, they’re built city by city. If you’ve never visited Africa, put it on your list.
Read More
$2.4 billion in goods cross the U.S.-Canada border every day, a number that reshaped how our Fort Worth Forum delegation thought about our closest neighbor. Proximity, it turns out, doesn’t automatically create understanding. Leadership trips work best when you return home with sharper questions, not just souvenirs.
Read More
I was incredibly proud to watch my wife, Rachael, receive the Great Women of Texas award for her work supporting first-generation and international students. There’s a special kind of joy in watching someone discover the work they were meant to do. One encouraging voice can change the direction of a life.
Read More
Walt Disney World’s busiest day tops out around 85,000 visitors. Expo 2025 Osaka was averaging 230,000 a day. What stayed with me wasn’t the scale of the buildings, it was watching our Youth Ambassadors turn a national exhibit into a series of personal connections.
Read More
Planning a major event in another country is exciting and terrifying at the same time, especially when it means bringing 561 people from 15 countries to Izumisano City, Japan. Behind every fireworks display and tuna-carving demonstration was a team solving problems no one in the audience ever saw. A gigantic arigato to everyone who helped pull it off.
Read More
The United States just established its first two sister-city partnerships with Papua New Guinea, a country of roughly 860 languages and a motto that says it all: “Expect the unexpected.” A signing ceremony is only the beginning. The real work happens through the decades of relationships that follow.
Read More
Nara is often overshadowed by Kyoto and Osaka, but it taught me an important rule: do not get distracted while holding deer food. Beyond the humor, the city offered a lesson about identity. The strongest communities don’t imitate their neighbors, they lean into what already makes them unmistakably their own.
Read More
I had never seen a grown man carry and dance with a 100-pound tuna on his shoulder until the opening day of our U.S.-Japan Sister Cities International Summit. Between that and the story of a tsunami-swept boat that became a sister-city friendship, I learned that a conference becomes memorable when people encounter a story, not just information. Thank you, Izumisano, for that kind of welcome.
Read More
At the USA Pavilion in Osaka, visitors could feel what it’s like to launch into space while 230,000 people moved through the Expo that day alone. A world expo is a little like the Olympics of people-to-people diplomacy. The most important result may not be how many people walked through a pavilion, but how many left with a new idea about another country.
Read More
“Hi Carlo, I’m the great-great-great-granddaughter of General William Jenkins Worth. Your city is named after him.” That was not an email I expected to receive, and two years later it turned into a City Hall exhibit of the general’s own uniform and field desk. Sometimes one email opens a door to a story a city didn’t know it was ready to tell.
Read More
They came from 47 states and spoke 22 languages between them, all training in Fort Worth before representing the United States at Expo 2025 Osaka. What impressed me most wasn’t their talent, it was their willingness to become a stranger’s first personal connection to America. Diplomacy doesn’t belong only to governments.
Read More
Fort Worth had the honor of hosting Sister Cities International’s official training for 89 Youth Ambassadors before they left for six months at Expo 2025 Osaka. We introduced them to the Fort Worth Herd, Billy Bob’s, and a healthy dose of Tex-Mex before sending them off as citizen diplomats. A young person may arrive thinking of a role as a temporary job and leave understanding they’ve become something more.
Read More
What started as a pandemic-era idea to recognize minority-owned businesses in Fort Worth eventually landed in Rotary International magazine, reaching 1.2 million Rotarians in 200 countries. Community initiatives don’t need to start at national scale, they just need people willing to act. I think Richard would be proud.
Read More
Before millions of visitors ever walked through Expo 2025 Osaka, I got to see the USA Pavilion behind the scenes with Sister Cities International. More than 160 nations were facing the same challenge: how do you represent an entire country in a limited space? The finished result looks effortless because the preparation was not.
Read More