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I have spent a lot of my career operating in high-pressure environments where the stakes are real and the margin for error is thin. People often ask where that comfort with uncertainty comes from. The honest answer is Canada.
Specifically, a customs booth in Vancouver International Airport, October 1997, three weeks after I turned 14.
My mom had asked earlier that year if I wanted to go to Canada for my studies. My response was an automatic and enthusiastic yes. I had never travelled internationally. I had no real sense of what I was saying yes to. Shortly afterwards, I learned a family member would also be making the trip because my mother couldn't fathom sending her youngest daughter across the world alone.
We drove to Gimpo Airport and just like that, we were Vancouver-bound. No parents. No English. No experience navigating anything like what was ahead.
Ten hours later we landed. Everything was a blur. We followed the crowd through immigration, passed the marquee waterfall and the Indigenous art pieces lining the terminal, and walked up to the customs booth. Simple questions. We could barely answer them. The language barrier was total. We were pulled aside and sent to a waiting room for over an hour.
When the officer finally called us forward, a translator helped her explain the problem. We didn't have the Letter of Acceptance from our school. Without it, she couldn't let us through.
My heart was in my throat. We had cross-referenced the checklist from our broker multiple times. We had done everything right. And still, here we were, two teenagers alone in a foreign airport, facing the very real possibility of being sent home.
We stood there speechless. The officer sighed, then asked us to approach her desk. She leaned forward and spoke quietly, almost like she was sharing something she shouldn't.
"I'm not supposed to do this, but..."
She printed our study permits and waved us through. I have never forgotten that moment. A small act of discretion from a stranger changed the entire trajectory of my life.
But the day wasn't done.
Somewhere in the chaos of getting through customs, our winter jackets had been left on the other side of the border. In late October, heading to Winnipeg, those jackets were not optional. Getting them back required convincing security officers, through gestures and broken explanations, to escort us back across the border. Eventually someone did. The jackets were found. We made our connection.
We landed in Winnipeg exhausted, relieved, and still without anyone to pick us up. This was the late 90s. No cell phones. No way to reach anyone. We sat in the arrivals area and waited, trusting that someone would eventually appear.
What I didn't know then was that this day was quietly teaching me something I would rely on for the rest of my career.
When there is no safety net, you stop waiting for perfect conditions and start working with what is in front of you. You learn to read a room, adapt quickly, and hold your composure when the plan falls apart. You learn that most problems, even the ones that feel impossible, have a path through them if you stay calm long enough to find it.
Every time I have walked into a boardroom navigating an inflection point, a capital conversation, or a decision with no clear right answer, some part of that fourteen-year-old in the Vancouver airport has been in the room with me.
She did not have a backup plan either. She figured it out anyway.
