In spring 2007, Head of School Douglas Hale dined with Pierce Lord ’98, of New York-based Lord Asset Management Company. An extraordinary idea emerged: Lord, who began doing finance at Mercersburg, would give four faculty members $7,500 apiece to travel wherever they chose outside the United States. The only string attached to the annual lottery? Share the experience with the community upon return to the ’Burg. Lord shares the wherefore of his gift—and his favorite point on the globe—with Mercersburg magazine.
 
MM: What was the “A-ha!” moment? When did you recognize that travel was vital?
PL: When I went to London my junior year at Colgate. I spent a semester there and thought, “Wow, there’s a lot to see out there.” London School of Economics professors taught my program. And we had Fridays off, so we’d jump on the train or take a long weekend in Paris. I also went to Greece—to Santorini and Ios.

MM: You recently spent a half year traveling. Where did you wander?
PL: I went to New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Egypt. I rode an elephant in India (it was stinky—and a little bizarre). This trip was my second to New Zealand; the first time was after college. I finished at Colgate in three and a half years, and I was traveling by myself—and I had no game plan whatsoever. I had researched the country, but I was flying by the seat of the seat of my pants.

PL: That trip was shortly after 9/11, and there weren’t many Americans traveling. You meet so many people and you speak to other young travelers when you’re out there on your own. When you’re traveling without friends or family, you’re relying on yourself and there’s something beautiful about that.

MM: What’s your response to the adage “Wherever you go, there you are”?
PL: I disagree with it; I came back different. My friends noticed a significant difference in me. I was more laid back, less stressed, and I was also more open to new ideas. I was less ignorant and more understanding of different cultures. I realized that each of us is a small piece of a big world—but we can, as individuals, do amazing things.

MM: What words do you live by?
PL: When I was traveling, I came up with my own adage: “Make it easier for good things to happen.” You don’t always have full control of life… if you’re looking for a new job, you’re increasing your chances of having something good happen by talking to people, asking for their ideas and their help. If you sit in your apartment, you can pretty much count on failure. By being open [and taking some risks], you can make it easier for good things to happen.

MM: Why did you choose to focus on faculty when making your gift?
PL: Doug and I came up with the idea. It adds to the compensation base for faculty, but it also affects the future—getting new talent on the faculty and retaining people.

In my imagination, it would also create a level of excitement. Faculty might be able to do these trips on their own, but this allows you to do something random, something that you might not do when you have a family or other priorities. This [traveling abroad] is the only thing you can do with this money.

MM: What do you expect will be the net effect of your gift on Mercersburg?  
PL: Excitement for people to go outside the Mercersburg bubble and return to share their experience with everyone else and get them excited. Traveling changes you as an individual, but it’s also what’s best for the world. Most conflicts are created by misunderstandings between cultures, and traveling is an easy way of simply making the world a better place. You begin to understand and respect each other.

PL: I met one student on campus last year who told me he wouldn’t have been able to go on a spring break trip abroad—except that Mercersburg helped him. Now he wants to travel more. These experiences will give him a running start once he gets onto a college campus. He’ll be a better student, he’ll have Mercersburg’s great values, and he’ll be more attractive to employers when he graduates. And we can do this relatively easily; we can add enormous value. It’s a no-brainer.

MM: What’s your favorite place in the world?
PL: New Zealand, although Fiji is a real close second. In Fiji, I’d have breakfast, play chess with the Israeli divemaster, and scuba dive every day.

PL: But my first trip in New Zealand really changed me. The country has remarkable geographical diversity—ocean, mountains, river streams, and fjords—all within a space about the size of Colorado. The country is under populated. People there are very clean and environmentally responsible; you just don’t see people litter. In fact, they’ll pick up a piece of trash if they see it. They do a good job with their parks, and the people are very honest and frank but not overly friendly—a Kiwi will see that I am on the corner and lost, come up and help me, and move on. All of those things just clicked in my brain. It’s as though they said about Americans, “Let’s do what they did, but do it better—make it make more sense.”

—Heather Sullivan