I never finished my dissertation due to the explosion of amazing opportunities after the end of Communism. The opportunities that Columbia, SIPA and HI opened for me were life-changing and transformative. Could there have been a better place on Earth in the 1985–1990 period to pursue Soviet studies? Absolutely not.

In 1989 I set up the first East View Information Services company with a new-found colleague and friend from the USSR Academy of Sciences. The company continues to this day with a global publishing mission. We still have offices in both Moscow and Kyiv, and have experienced this terrible and tragic war through our staff.

An HI professor once said that it takes weeks or months to make weapons, but decades to produce area studies specialists. Columbia continues to execute this mission admirably—I am blessed to have been touched by this epic institution.