valo and I’ve been to every country in
the world but what does that really mean
not just factually that I’ve stepped
foot in every nation or that I have
every stamp in my passport rather my
eight passports but what do you learn
from a journey around the world for me
it starts and why did it I look at
travel as being about learning and
connecting the world is an incredibly
diverse place 193 sovereign nations a
few dozen others that have different
claims to statehood 6,000 languages
spoken in seven and a half billion
people and all seven and a half billion
of us are intimately connected by our
humanity by the simple truth that we all
sleep we eat we laugh we cry and we love
and once you realize that you’ll see
that there’s not a single person on
earth whether the billionaire the
incarcerated the oldest or the smartest
that is dissimilar from you Nobel Peace
Prize winner Lester B Pearson once said
how can there be peace if we don’t
understand one another and how can we
understand if we don’t know each other
what I learned in traveling all around
the world is that if we approach travel
as looking for the foreign then foreign
is all that we’ll ever get but if
instead we look at travel to connect
with others on similarities and only
secondly to learn from the differences
then that builds connection then we get
to know each other and then we
understand and that is the starting
point to really travel for me my travels
started to visit the people that I was
already related to I went with my
grandmother to Germany to visit my mom’s
family and I went to Italy and Argentina
to visit my father’s it was an amazing
experience for me to go into a
completely foreign place and be told
welcome home then I attended the United
World College a boarding school with
students from 90 different countries and
there I became related to many more
people from all around the world and not
related by blood but related by human
experience
so then I decided I wanted to start
visiting them I wanted to understand the
lives that they lived before they came
into mine so as a teenager I went to
Oceania to Central America
and to Europe I stayed with my friends
in their homes I learned about their
lives and I met their families and
that’s still my favorite way to travel
to be with my friends who are from those
countries to get that unique local
perspective up to now I’ve stayed with
friends from school in 75 different
countries then I went to university and
I started to study economic development
and identity I not only learned the way
that we connect with one another but it
opened my eyes to the ways that we
Deakin echt that we disconnect from one
another the cultural and institutional
barriers that we put up between each
other we forget that we share humanity
and instead we focus on how we don’t
share the same race gender class
religion or sexuality and we let these
things divide us we forget that we all
come into this world completely helpless
literally connected attached to another
human being and then we spend so much of
our time here trying to disconnect we
give power to the forces of patriarchy
imperialism and enhancing inequality so
I wanted to understand why we have
hierarchies the haves and the have-nots
the people who we give power to and who
we listen to and those who we silence
one of my role models Katherine
Wasserman Davis once said that it’s more
fun living in a world that you’re trying
to make better and so I always like to
have a purpose for when I’m traveling
something specific that I want to see a
person I want to meet or something I
want to do I like to leave each place
having myself and the location be a
little bit better than when I first
arrived so I started to travel for my
studies and from my research I founded
the NGO trail of seeds and we worked
with agricultural communities in
Tanzania in Brazil in Venezuela and in
the island of st. Kitts I became a
strategy advisor
working with governments and with
organizations on topics such as
education in health care now I’m a
foreign policy adviser I look at the way
that we connect with one another as
nations and all throughout this I like
to take my own personal trips I
especially like to go to places that I
either knew nothing about or the ones
that I only heard negative things of
because I knew that in those places
there was a misunderstanding and what I
found in each and every one of those
places is that exact same thing that I
had in my own homes and the places
dearest to me I found lives being lived
people being happy and people connecting
with one another and especially when I
heard something negative I wanted to go
and see it for myself
so after living for three months here in
India I decided to go for four months to
Pakistan after living in Israel I
decided to go three separate times two
is the two Palestine I went to Syria to
Yemen to Afghanistan Venezuela and yes
even North Korea and in each one of
those I saw people connecting and yet we
somehow forget about that connection and
so when we hear about a bomb going off
or about a woman being raped we somehow
dissociate we think of it as too foreign
we think of it as something that they do
without thinking of how similar they are
to us and yet if we really want to have
positive change we can’t just think
about the outcome or the effects of
something we must think of the cause of
the foundation and the conditioning that
led them there and maybe those examples
are a little bit severe but in reality
we sometimes can’t even accept the minut
differences of people liking a different
song playing a different sport or eating
different food because those things as
well are foreign but Travel eliminates
the foreign it shows us how similar we
are by showing that the passions and the
fears are the same we just manifest them
in different ways
and when you start to meet people from
all over the world you begin to see that
there are real
and integral parts of the human
experience that go beyond your own
personal experience and that kind of
connection is what leads to peace and
understanding and that’s the importance
of travel so let me tell you a story
about someone completely different from
me that I shared something with I was in
Guinea in the forest region in the in
West Africa I was on my way north to
Mali I had to go 36 hours on a dirt road
in a truck that was built for twelve
people or was built for seven people but
was filled with twelve people I had to
sit on the front seat next to a guy my
age at the beginning we just talked
about the journey about the long road
ahead about where we would find food and
how bumpy the road was then we started
to laugh with one another when we
started debating who was better Ronaldo
or Messi and then we started to become
familiar and we started to share a
little bit about where we came from and
where we were hoping to go and that’s
when he told me that the reason that he
was in this truck the reason he was
going north was to ultimately make it
all the way up to Libya and then
hopefully get on a boat illegally and
cross into Italy he was fleeing from
poverty and hardship and he was trying
to make a more prosperous life for
himself and for his family his decision
was already made so I didn’t ask him if
he knew about the thousands of lives
that are lost in the Mediterranean when
these boats capsized or their very real
possibility of being kidnapped along the
way and sold into slavery which happened
to a friend a sister of a friend of mine
but I did tell him to make sure to bring
a lot of water because most of his
journey would be through the Sahara
Desert and these trucks are really old
they break down and they get stranded
and then he asked me what desert he
didn’t realize that what lay between the
home that he had left in Liberia and the
one that he was hoping to make in Italy
was the world’s largest and most hardest
expanse I was a little bit shocked
I looked at him and then I looked out at
the bright green beautiful expanse
around us and then I realized that even
though we had spent the last 24 hours
doing the exact same thing literally
sitting next to each other sharing one
small seat in reality our experiences
were totally different he was escaping
risking his life to try and live a
better life and I was there because I
wanted to for fun and maybe if we had
started our trip together talking about
his poverty and my fun journey around
the world we would have never been able
to connect because we would have never
thought that we could be similar but
that’s not what we did instead we
started with what we shared we started
with the journey our youth and our
dreams now I don’t know if he made it to
Italy but every time that I see a report
about the migrant situation in the
Mediterranean I subconsciously will look
for his face and his face is one of
dozens of the hundreds of people that I
have met all around the world people
that I connected with because I
approached them as similar to me rather
than as different and when you do that
when you start to realize that there are
people who live completely different
lives then you understand them and you
get to know them but travel like this is
a privilege to be so comfortable in your
own life that you’re able to go out and
explore those of others it’s incredibly
important for me to acknowledge and be
aware of and to think about how my
journey to every country in the world at
such a young age was made much easier by
my identities as a white man with an
American passport and enough money to do
so we all have different privileges that
manifests in different ways at different
times in our lives we must appreciate
these and be aware of them but we also
must work hard to share those with
others I like to share my travels with
others because I know that many people
aren’t able to have these experiences I
want to share what I learned to help you
who aren’t able to do that on their own
so let me tell you a little bit more
about my trip to every country it kind
of happened on accident I didn’t wake up
one day and say that I was gonna go to
every single country in the world and
then quickly go and check them off a
list i didn’t even land in one region
and then systematically cross off every
country there in fact I’ve been to North
America South America Europe Africa and
Asia 20 separate times each I’ve been to
Oceania five times and I’ve been to 50
countries two or more times I spend
about one week on average in each
country but sometimes less and sometimes
a lot more there’s 15 countries that
I’ve lived in for two or more months the
whole thing took about 13 years but one
thing that I’m not is careless I find no
joy I don’t think it’s cool and I don’t
get any excitement from being in danger
people think this is weird when I say
that I was in Syria and Yemen in 2017 or
when I tell them that I was in Iraq
during the Battle of Mosul but I always
try and find the best ways to have the
safest experiences and actually this
isn’t as hard as people think it is the
world isn’t as scary and as dangerous as
it’s made out to be and that’s mostly
because people are good I have had bad
things happen to me in my own home as
well as when I’m traveling abroad but
what always amazed me more than the
cruelty of the few is the kindness of
the many there are always more people
out there who want to help you than
there are who want to hurt you we need
to be smart and rational with our safety
when we travel but we shouldn’t let fear
get in the way of any of our passions
but we also shouldn’t let stupidity get
us in trouble either Travel should make
you happy it should be about what you
want to do I’m incredibly lucky with all
the diverse travel experiences that I’ve
had and I’ve never tried to fit into one
certain box I wasn’t only a budget
traveler or only a luxury traveler I
didn’t only go fast or only go slow
I wasn’t always
for authentic experiences and I wasn’t
only visiting tourist sites I did it all
if I wanted to relax I would go and find
a resort and I would stay there the
whole week not leaving the hotel or the
pool but if I wanted an adventure I’d
put on a backpack and I’d go trekking or
in buses overland in Africa or Central
Asia because travel again should make
you happy you should travel how you want
you shouldn’t let others tell you how to
do that the ways that you should feel
fulfilled so I am absolutely not here to
tell you to visit every country because
what I learned along the way is that the
number of countries doesn’t really
matter it’s about meeting new people
listening to them realizing that their
experience is a true human experience
and maybe letting it change you knowing
that you’re better because of it
because you now better understand
humanity and thus yourself Travel is
about seeing the beautiful things in the
world it’s about meeting new people and
learning what you didn’t even know you
didn’t know and this is much easier to
do in a foreign country where everything
is completely new but really we can be
traveling every day we can listen to
others we can ask them to share the
stories because travel is a mindset it’s
a mindset of an openness to learn about
the new so look to the person on your
left and look to the person on your
right they’re different from you but
they are the same they have something
that they can teach you something that
you never knew you didn’t know and you
have something you can teach them too
because we all live a different 24 hours
every single day we all go through this
world in our own unique experience so go
out there and look for the new because
that’s what travel is about learning and
connecting thank you [Applause]
the world but what does that really mean
not just factually that I’ve stepped
foot in every nation or that I have
every stamp in my passport rather my
eight passports but what do you learn
from a journey around the world for me
it starts and why did it I look at
travel as being about learning and
connecting the world is an incredibly
diverse place 193 sovereign nations a
few dozen others that have different
claims to statehood 6,000 languages
spoken in seven and a half billion
people and all seven and a half billion
of us are intimately connected by our
humanity by the simple truth that we all
sleep we eat we laugh we cry and we love
and once you realize that you’ll see
that there’s not a single person on
earth whether the billionaire the
incarcerated the oldest or the smartest
that is dissimilar from you Nobel Peace
Prize winner Lester B Pearson once said
how can there be peace if we don’t
understand one another and how can we
understand if we don’t know each other
what I learned in traveling all around
the world is that if we approach travel
as looking for the foreign then foreign
is all that we’ll ever get but if
instead we look at travel to connect
with others on similarities and only
secondly to learn from the differences
then that builds connection then we get
to know each other and then we
understand and that is the starting
point to really travel for me my travels
started to visit the people that I was
already related to I went with my
grandmother to Germany to visit my mom’s
family and I went to Italy and Argentina
to visit my father’s it was an amazing
experience for me to go into a
completely foreign place and be told
welcome home then I attended the United
World College a boarding school with
students from 90 different countries and
there I became related to many more
people from all around the world and not
related by blood but related by human
experience
so then I decided I wanted to start
visiting them I wanted to understand the
lives that they lived before they came
into mine so as a teenager I went to
Oceania to Central America
and to Europe I stayed with my friends
in their homes I learned about their
lives and I met their families and
that’s still my favorite way to travel
to be with my friends who are from those
countries to get that unique local
perspective up to now I’ve stayed with
friends from school in 75 different
countries then I went to university and
I started to study economic development
and identity I not only learned the way
that we connect with one another but it
opened my eyes to the ways that we
Deakin echt that we disconnect from one
another the cultural and institutional
barriers that we put up between each
other we forget that we share humanity
and instead we focus on how we don’t
share the same race gender class
religion or sexuality and we let these
things divide us we forget that we all
come into this world completely helpless
literally connected attached to another
human being and then we spend so much of
our time here trying to disconnect we
give power to the forces of patriarchy
imperialism and enhancing inequality so
I wanted to understand why we have
hierarchies the haves and the have-nots
the people who we give power to and who
we listen to and those who we silence
one of my role models Katherine
Wasserman Davis once said that it’s more
fun living in a world that you’re trying
to make better and so I always like to
have a purpose for when I’m traveling
something specific that I want to see a
person I want to meet or something I
want to do I like to leave each place
having myself and the location be a
little bit better than when I first
arrived so I started to travel for my
studies and from my research I founded
the NGO trail of seeds and we worked
with agricultural communities in
Tanzania in Brazil in Venezuela and in
the island of st. Kitts I became a
strategy advisor
working with governments and with
organizations on topics such as
education in health care now I’m a
foreign policy adviser I look at the way
that we connect with one another as
nations and all throughout this I like
to take my own personal trips I
especially like to go to places that I
either knew nothing about or the ones
that I only heard negative things of
because I knew that in those places
there was a misunderstanding and what I
found in each and every one of those
places is that exact same thing that I
had in my own homes and the places
dearest to me I found lives being lived
people being happy and people connecting
with one another and especially when I
heard something negative I wanted to go
and see it for myself
so after living for three months here in
India I decided to go for four months to
Pakistan after living in Israel I
decided to go three separate times two
is the two Palestine I went to Syria to
Yemen to Afghanistan Venezuela and yes
even North Korea and in each one of
those I saw people connecting and yet we
somehow forget about that connection and
so when we hear about a bomb going off
or about a woman being raped we somehow
dissociate we think of it as too foreign
we think of it as something that they do
without thinking of how similar they are
to us and yet if we really want to have
positive change we can’t just think
about the outcome or the effects of
something we must think of the cause of
the foundation and the conditioning that
led them there and maybe those examples
are a little bit severe but in reality
we sometimes can’t even accept the minut
differences of people liking a different
song playing a different sport or eating
different food because those things as
well are foreign but Travel eliminates
the foreign it shows us how similar we
are by showing that the passions and the
fears are the same we just manifest them
in different ways
and when you start to meet people from
all over the world you begin to see that
there are real
and integral parts of the human
experience that go beyond your own
personal experience and that kind of
connection is what leads to peace and
understanding and that’s the importance
of travel so let me tell you a story
about someone completely different from
me that I shared something with I was in
Guinea in the forest region in the in
West Africa I was on my way north to
Mali I had to go 36 hours on a dirt road
in a truck that was built for twelve
people or was built for seven people but
was filled with twelve people I had to
sit on the front seat next to a guy my
age at the beginning we just talked
about the journey about the long road
ahead about where we would find food and
how bumpy the road was then we started
to laugh with one another when we
started debating who was better Ronaldo
or Messi and then we started to become
familiar and we started to share a
little bit about where we came from and
where we were hoping to go and that’s
when he told me that the reason that he
was in this truck the reason he was
going north was to ultimately make it
all the way up to Libya and then
hopefully get on a boat illegally and
cross into Italy he was fleeing from
poverty and hardship and he was trying
to make a more prosperous life for
himself and for his family his decision
was already made so I didn’t ask him if
he knew about the thousands of lives
that are lost in the Mediterranean when
these boats capsized or their very real
possibility of being kidnapped along the
way and sold into slavery which happened
to a friend a sister of a friend of mine
but I did tell him to make sure to bring
a lot of water because most of his
journey would be through the Sahara
Desert and these trucks are really old
they break down and they get stranded
and then he asked me what desert he
didn’t realize that what lay between the
home that he had left in Liberia and the
one that he was hoping to make in Italy
was the world’s largest and most hardest
expanse I was a little bit shocked
I looked at him and then I looked out at
the bright green beautiful expanse
around us and then I realized that even
though we had spent the last 24 hours
doing the exact same thing literally
sitting next to each other sharing one
small seat in reality our experiences
were totally different he was escaping
risking his life to try and live a
better life and I was there because I
wanted to for fun and maybe if we had
started our trip together talking about
his poverty and my fun journey around
the world we would have never been able
to connect because we would have never
thought that we could be similar but
that’s not what we did instead we
started with what we shared we started
with the journey our youth and our
dreams now I don’t know if he made it to
Italy but every time that I see a report
about the migrant situation in the
Mediterranean I subconsciously will look
for his face and his face is one of
dozens of the hundreds of people that I
have met all around the world people
that I connected with because I
approached them as similar to me rather
than as different and when you do that
when you start to realize that there are
people who live completely different
lives then you understand them and you
get to know them but travel like this is
a privilege to be so comfortable in your
own life that you’re able to go out and
explore those of others it’s incredibly
important for me to acknowledge and be
aware of and to think about how my
journey to every country in the world at
such a young age was made much easier by
my identities as a white man with an
American passport and enough money to do
so we all have different privileges that
manifests in different ways at different
times in our lives we must appreciate
these and be aware of them but we also
must work hard to share those with
others I like to share my travels with
others because I know that many people
aren’t able to have these experiences I
want to share what I learned to help you
who aren’t able to do that on their own
so let me tell you a little bit more
about my trip to every country it kind
of happened on accident I didn’t wake up
one day and say that I was gonna go to
every single country in the world and
then quickly go and check them off a
list i didn’t even land in one region
and then systematically cross off every
country there in fact I’ve been to North
America South America Europe Africa and
Asia 20 separate times each I’ve been to
Oceania five times and I’ve been to 50
countries two or more times I spend
about one week on average in each
country but sometimes less and sometimes
a lot more there’s 15 countries that
I’ve lived in for two or more months the
whole thing took about 13 years but one
thing that I’m not is careless I find no
joy I don’t think it’s cool and I don’t
get any excitement from being in danger
people think this is weird when I say
that I was in Syria and Yemen in 2017 or
when I tell them that I was in Iraq
during the Battle of Mosul but I always
try and find the best ways to have the
safest experiences and actually this
isn’t as hard as people think it is the
world isn’t as scary and as dangerous as
it’s made out to be and that’s mostly
because people are good I have had bad
things happen to me in my own home as
well as when I’m traveling abroad but
what always amazed me more than the
cruelty of the few is the kindness of
the many there are always more people
out there who want to help you than
there are who want to hurt you we need
to be smart and rational with our safety
when we travel but we shouldn’t let fear
get in the way of any of our passions
but we also shouldn’t let stupidity get
us in trouble either Travel should make
you happy it should be about what you
want to do I’m incredibly lucky with all
the diverse travel experiences that I’ve
had and I’ve never tried to fit into one
certain box I wasn’t only a budget
traveler or only a luxury traveler I
didn’t only go fast or only go slow
I wasn’t always
for authentic experiences and I wasn’t
only visiting tourist sites I did it all
if I wanted to relax I would go and find
a resort and I would stay there the
whole week not leaving the hotel or the
pool but if I wanted an adventure I’d
put on a backpack and I’d go trekking or
in buses overland in Africa or Central
Asia because travel again should make
you happy you should travel how you want
you shouldn’t let others tell you how to
do that the ways that you should feel
fulfilled so I am absolutely not here to
tell you to visit every country because
what I learned along the way is that the
number of countries doesn’t really
matter it’s about meeting new people
listening to them realizing that their
experience is a true human experience
and maybe letting it change you knowing
that you’re better because of it
because you now better understand
humanity and thus yourself Travel is
about seeing the beautiful things in the
world it’s about meeting new people and
learning what you didn’t even know you
didn’t know and this is much easier to
do in a foreign country where everything
is completely new but really we can be
traveling every day we can listen to
others we can ask them to share the
stories because travel is a mindset it’s
a mindset of an openness to learn about
the new so look to the person on your
left and look to the person on your
right they’re different from you but
they are the same they have something
that they can teach you something that
you never knew you didn’t know and you
have something you can teach them too
because we all live a different 24 hours
every single day we all go through this
world in our own unique experience so go
out there and look for the new because
that’s what travel is about learning and
connecting thank you [Applause]
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