A career aptitude test would not have predicted that Sarah Russell would end up as a global advisor. In fact, when Russell was young, global education might’ve come very last on her list of potential career paths.

Her family had lived on one plot of land, in one small Massachusetts town, for more than one hundred years. As a rule, they did not venture out of New England, let alone beyond the country they called home.

“We were not an adventurous tribe,” Russell joked during an annual storytelling event hosted by the International House and the Center for International and Global Studies. “My mother firmly believed that leaving Massachusetts was risky, and that leaving the United States would almost certainly result in a case of intestinal parasites.”