Last year was my seventeenth birthday. My whole family was coming arriving at my house early that day to celebrate with me. As usual I was late, having gone out earlier that afternoon commemorate another birthday with some friends. As I walked in, everyone was waiting for me in the kitchen. The first great grandchild in this new generation of Americans is almost legal. My ninety year old great grandfather is waiting on the couch to wish me “another one down” as he calls it. Seventy-five years ago he left a small Italian village in the Alps to start a new life in America. He left his parents and three siblings to join his older brother, who had left three years previously. Both brothers had been driven out by the fascist Italian government during the time of war. By his side, his wife, whose parents had emigrated from war town Yugoslavia. Although she had been born in America, she carried a thick European accent when she spoke. Continuing my rounds of “hello’s”, “thankyou’s” and “I love it” to all my relatives, I finally arrived to the other side of my heritage. This side of the room sat my Oma and Opa, one set of grandparents from my mother’s side who had fled Germany when the Nazi’s started persecuting the Jewish followers during the Holocaust. I was later told they left through Switzerland with only the closes on their back, immigrating not to seek a better life but to stay alive. The other set of grandparents have passed way however, they too emigrated from European Countries. One entered from Ireland to escape starvation where the Potato famine wiped out most of their family decades previous. The other from arrived from Poland to escape war torn Europe. After passing through Ellis Island, they started a new life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

As I grew up I was so fortunate to experience my diverse heritage. From my childhood, where I would spend nearly every Sunday at one of my immigrated great grandparents’ houses, I always was inflected with ethic foods, language, and culture. The traditions and stories retold at out Sunday dinners have shaped my values for my life. It is this culture diversity that I want to share and explore through the University of Pittsburgh College of Business Administration’s Global management and International Relations.