Scott Cocking

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Being a marketing kid of course Scott had to color outside of the lines and wrote his biography in the first person. Enjoy!

I remember boarding a giant Pan Am 747 from New York to Zurich, Switzerland, as a high school student.

That was a special year for me. I was going as an exchange student from Spokane, Washington, to Zurich, Switzerland. Joining other American students, we connected with students from around the world in a small campus setting in Switzerland to adjust to our new life. It was the start of me as a global citizen.

Since then, I have studied in Germany as well and worked at several of the major global advertising agencies in the world, doing global advertising for large brands. As I was doing that, the sands shifted. The world became much more complex, emerging countries began to feel their power, and it was no longer enough to merely translate copy into a different language.

In my travels around the world, I also began to really appreciate how that complexity, that richness of culture, that desire for everyone to understand themselves through their culture and how they fit into the world, was an opportunity rather than an obstacle for me.

What I did not have, though, was a framework to help me be a more successful person in that world. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) provides that framework—helping provide a practical and measurable way to be a better, smarter global citizen.

I now find myself back in Spokane, working at an amazing organization, People to People Ambassador Programs, where I can provide support to students like I was, as they change their perspective of the world. They are entering a much different world than I did, and I am excited that I can provide them a fresh and exciting way for them to use CQ to be smarter global citizens.