In May 1993, as we were preparing to leave Laos after more than two years, Russell received an invitation from the East-West Center in Hawaii to serve as a Centerwide Fellow. Joking that we hoped the title wasn’t a comment on his waistline, we boarded a plane in Vientiane, our arms filled with flowers from …

As we neared the end of our stay in Vientiane, we had no inkling of where we’d be going next. This circumstance is fairly common for self-employed professionals in international development. You may just go home for a while and hope for short-term assignments, or you may be moving on to the next long-term one. …