I turned around.  Tribe was standing in the doorway to the classroom we’d just left where we taught the students about the power of differentiation when launching social ventures.  During class Tribe only spoke when he was called upon and even then he was barely audible.  Now he was the one addressing the mzungu (Swahili word for “white person) by himself.  His classmates had already gone to supper.

I was stunned. Not only at who was asking the question, but also at the gravitas of it.

“What do you mean my vision?”  I stammered.

Tribe stared at me deeply.  “What is your vision for me?”

I had only been in Africa for a few days.  Tribe’s school, Gayaza Cambridge, in the rural outskirts of Kampala, was one of the first schools I visited.  To get there was an experience in itself.  On the first leg of my trip I took a matatu (large van that follows specific routes through the countryside) from my compound in Buziga to Old Taxi Park (which was the epicenter of the riots that rocked Kampala 4 days earlier).  From Old Taxi Park I hitched another matatu to Gayaza which was an hour and a half (mostly over bumpy dirt roads) away from Kampala.  We fit over 20 people in a 14-person van.  I sat next to a woman that brought a bag of hay which she laid across my lap the entire ride.  It seems like anything goes in these matatus – they have given me a newfound sense of patience and humor.

As we snaked through various provinces and neighborhoods in the matatu I was in culture shock.  We drove through places that were destitute.  There were children begging on the side of the matatu.  There were donkeys, cows, longhorn cattle, goats, monkeys and chickens walking in the street next to cars and matatus and people.  When villagers saw me in the matatu they shouted mzungu!  Children stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the odd white person.  Everywhere I went it was a spectacle.  I felt like I was dreaming.  It was surreal.

When we got off at the Gayaza stop we were greeted by 20 boda boda drivers (motorcycle drivers that take you anywhere matatus cannot) yelling “mzungu! mzungu!” and tapping their respective seats.

Amy, the program director, asked one of them if they knew where Gayaza Cambridge was.  The man sheepishly nodded and quoted us a price of 500 shillings (25 cents).  She asked him again – louder.

“DO YOU KNOW WHERE GAYAZA CAMBRIDGE IS?”

He nodded again and patted the seat for us to get on it.  She shook her head and walked to the next boda driver in the throng.  This boda boda driver was adamant that he knew where Gayaza Cambridge was and quoted us 1,500 shillings (75 cents).  We got on and within 30 seconds we were flying through the Ugandan countryside – weaving around animals and potholes and branches lying in the street.  I had never been on a motorcycle before and now I was sitting behind Amy, whipping around on the back of boda boda and entrusting my life to a man I’d never even spoken with.

“Why didn’t we get on the first one?”  I shouted to her through the wind.

“His price was too low.”  She replied.  “If they don’t know where they’re going they’ll quote you something cheap.  Once you get on the bike they drive away and ask you where to go. If you don’t know they charge you extra for getting lost and drive you back to the boda boda station.”

The boda boda dropped us off 5 minutes away from Gayaza Cambridge.  After giving him 1,500 shillings we gave him another 1,000 shillings so that he’d come back and pick us up after our session.  It was already dusk and we were worried there would be no boda boda’s waiting for us when we were done.

“Here is 1,000.  Will you come back for us?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“6:20 sebbo (sir).”  Amy said, looking him in the eyes.  “We need you to come back.  We have no way to to get back to Gayaza.  Will you come back?”

He nodded and rode off.  (He never came back).

After Tribe asked me the question he hung his head to the side and limply looked at the ground.  I looked at him a little longer, trying to figure out what my response would be.  Finally I said the first thing that popped into my head.

“Well – what do you want to be?”

Of all the difficult parts of moving from Manhattan to Uganda – what I struggled with most was effectively communicating with students in the Educate! program.  I didn’t know how to speak with someone 10 years younger, from a completely different socio-economic circle and altogether different set of circumstances than myself.  It was hard.  I struggled, and I still struggle with it.

And while that was hardest part of my transition, the move to Uganda was much harder than I’d anticipated.  I’ve always been a go-with-the-flow type of person.  I usually don’t have a problem adapting to any situation. But this was different.

For me it seemed like everything was more difficult. I don’t mean to over-generalize or suggest this is the condition in all of Uganda – but they are the circumstances specific to my lodging and environment.  Most of the items are petty, but it’s the small things in life that make one comfortable.  Suddenly I felt I had no comforts, neither big nor small.  Nothing seemed simple anymore – when I brush my teeth I can’t run my toothbrush under the faucet.  I can’t drink tap water.  Clothes have to be washed by hand.  There is no coffee machine.  To get hot water you need to flip a switch 15 minutes before you shower.  There is no light in the bathroom (I was told I need to “aim straight”).  There is a “pet mouse” named Juliet that occasionally keeps us up at night as she sifts through items left out, pads through the room at night and crawls around in the walls till the early hours of the morning.  Going to the grocery store requires a backpack and 2 boda boda’s.  When I was in Hoima I scratched my arm getting out of a matatu.  The scratch was small – but because of the hygiene difficulties (2 out of the 3 days I was in the hotel I didn’t have water) and a lack of basic medical necessities (there was no hydrogen peroxide or disinfecting ointments in the entire town of Hoima) my arm has gotten infected.

And while these inconveniences make my life difficult – my work has been fulfilling beyond my wildest expectations.  Looking at a young adults trying to start a business and knowing that my skill set will help them do that more successfully is exhilarating.

Tribe looked at the ground and shifted his weight back and forth on his two legs.  He looked at the ground and then back at me again.

“I want to be an entrepreneur and an economist.”  He said softly.

“I can help you achieve both of those goals.”  I said.  “I’ve studied both fields.”

“Can you teach me?”

I nodded.

I am in Kampala to help the Educate! students launch their social enterprises.  Specifically I have to help them figure out: how to get start up capital; how to get ongoing cash to sustain their business and how their business can address a social problem.

While there are many business principles and concepts that transcend all geographic and cultural boundaries – the more I learned about the students business plans the more I realized I had a long way to go in terms of understanding how businesses operated in Uganda.  Uganda is primarily an agricultural-based economy and many of the student’s ventures revolve around farming and livestock.  Already I’d visited tomato, cabbage, cucumber,  eggplant, chicken farms and goat rearing projects funded through the students, grown on school grounds and sold to students and community members.   The earnings were reinvested into the student groups to help defray the cost of school fees and even pay 100% of certain students schools fees.  I met one group, COBURWAS (which is made of orphan refugees from Congo, Sudan Uganda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania) that created simple businesses so they could afford to send themselves to secondary school.

Besides understanding the way businesses operate in Uganda I also need to understand the societal problems that afflict Uganda as a whole and thus compel students to start social enterprises to address them.  The problems in Uganda are far different than the ones in America – child sacrifice, school burning, terrorism, AIDS, children soldiers, government corruption, malaria, prostitution.

And my team and I can’t afford to make many mistakes.  95% of our students cannot afford to go to a university after secondary school.  If we are not able to help them start a social venture they will enter the work force likes the rest of the Ugandans.

Tribe looked at the ground and looked up at me again.  “Do you promise you’ll come back?”

I nodded again.

“When?”

“In a week or two.”  I said.

He smiled and walked away.

yS: Why did you choose to do a volunteer sabbatical?

Joe: I had always dreamed of volunteering in the developing world.  Working in corporate America for five years was rewarding and challenging, but I wanted to use my skill set in a more altruistic manner while I had the means to do so.

My decision to volunteer wasn’t completely selfless though – I knew that by volunteering in Uganda I’d be exposed to an extremely resilient, talented and diverse cross-section of people.  I wanted to engulf myself in a categorically different culture, because as Andre Gide said, “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

yS: How has your sabbatical impacted you so far?

Joe: When I told people I was volunteering in Africa for 6 months a common response was, “You won’t be the same person when you come back.”

I was fine with that.  I am continually looking to evolve and grow as a person.

Little did I know how much of an impact my sabbatical would have on me – it’s more than I could have ever asked for: increased confidence, renewed mental calm and clarity, a greater understanding of life, a more global understanding of the world and a vast satisfaction knowing my work is helping people.

Joseph Quaderer, a director at Morgan Stanley, is on a 6-month sabbatical teaching Ugandan high school students the necessary skills to start and scale social enterprises – financially sustainable organizations that also address important social problems.

yS: How has your sabbatical impacted your career?

Joe: Furthering your career and volunteering abroad are no longer mutually exclusive concepts.  Having a stint as a volunteer on your resume at once differentiates you and also conveys to your potential employer that you are more than an empty suit.

I am using the skills I garnered in corporate America to teach Ugandan high school students how to start and scale socially responsible businesses. I have met other people using their professional competencies while volunteering – someone using his dancing background to spread AIDS awareness among the youth of Africa, someone else using her ceramics background to teach people vocational skills.  Volunteering allows people to strengthen their skills and to apply them in unorthodox scenarios that encourage creative thinking and problem solving.

My sabbatical is also teaching me that life is so much bigger than what goes on in my world.  It is so easy to get caught up in a daily routine that we hardly ever take time to really live and experience life. For me, traveling, being active at church, trying new things, and connecting with others challenges me to step out of my small world and become more engaged with life.  So, my journey continues…

Inspiration – “Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.”  Braveheart

Ciao!

Tim O'Connor, his wife Treesah, and Dean Dipak Jain from Kellogg

When Tim O’Connor left his job as SVP Marketing for a $5B company in Atlanta, he chose to first spend six months serving as the non-paid Executive Director leading the renovation and relaunch of the EthicMark® Award for Advertising, an international advertising award that recognizes outstanding marketing, advertising, and public relations campaigns and communications designed to uplift the human spirit and society. Tim was featured, along with yourSABBATICAL.com, on Oprah.com in a recent article about sabbaticals. Here, in his own words, is his perspective on how the sabbatical made a difference.

As a businessperson and a marketing professional I know that marketers, communicators, advertisers and the media have tremendous power to shape social attitudes, values and behaviors.  We not only can and do create demand and pull for our company’s products and services; but we also can and do shape how we see and act in the world, and view our ourselves and each other.  In plying our craft, we not only reflect society, but we also shape the very societies in which we work in.  And so we have a great responsibility in how we ply that craft.

The Award’s mission is to foster a transformative shift in the advertising field by demonstrating the power of media campaigns to further the public interest while furthering legitimate private interests.  The media has tremendous power to shape social attitudes and values, and therefore to serve as a tool to empower individuals and society to find solutions to the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges of our times.

Dr. Hazel Henderson, the progenitor of socially responsible investing globally, conceived EthicMark in 2004 and nurtured it in conversations with Rinaldo Brutoco the President of the World Business Academy, Dean Dipak Jain of the Kellogg School, noted author Deepak Chopra, Professors David Cooperrider and Ron Nahser and myself.  However the award was languishing and it needed full-time attention to help take it to its rightful place.  I realized that my leaving my then employer offered me a unique opportunity to use my time and talent and treasure and devote it full-time for an extended period leading EthicMark®.  You can learn more about EthicMark® at ethicmark.com

Highlights during the last year included creating an alliance with the World Business Academy to supervise the awards on an ongoing basis.  The Academy’s Fellows include some of the worlds leading figures who are rekindling the human spirit in business, including Warren Bennis, Deepak Chopra, David Cooperrider, Stephen Covey, Hazel Henderson, Gay Hendricks, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Dean Dipak Jain, Jerry Jampolsky, Rosabeth Kanter, Amory Lovins, William McDonough, Greg Mortenson, Ron Nahser, Michael Ray, Dean N. Mohan Reddy, Lance Secretan, and Peter Senge.

We created an international jury of 30 marketing, media and academia professionals to vote on submissions, including Charles Firestone, Executive Director, The Aspen Institute; Joe Keefe, CEO, Pax World; Nancy Roof, Founder/Publisher, Kosmos Journal; and Simran Sethi, Host/Writer, Ethical Markets TV series and contributor of environmental segments to CNBC and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

We created a strategic alliances with the Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, to confer the 2009 awards which took place in June.  The Global Forum, convened by Case Western Reserve University, the United Nations Global Compact, with its 4,000 corporations from around the world, and the Academy of Management, with its 19,000 business school professors from over 90 countries, was the perfect place to announce this year’s EthicMark Winners.

This year, EthicMark received several dozen nominations from six countries.  The nominations were narrowed down to a group of five finalists in the for-profit category and five finalists in the not-for-profit category which were voted upon by the jury.  Pantene, a division of Proctor & Gamble, won in the for-profit category for its ad, “Chrysalis” (Thailand).  CARE won in the not-for-profit category for its ad, “I Am Powerful” (USA).  The presentation of the Awards at the Global Forum opening night reception included speeches by the Mayor of Cleveland; the President of Case Western Reserve University; David Cooperrider, Founder of BAWB; and Gunter Pauli, Head of the Zero Emission Research Initiative.  It was my distinct pleasure and honor to then announce the EthicMark® winners.  You can find the finalist ads at http://bawbglobalforum.ning.com/page/ethic-mark-nominees-1.

It was a special evening.  But even more so it has been a special and deeply transformative time for me during this sabbatical while I helped lead EthicMark® to the next level.  I believe business can be a spiritual calling.  And I believe inside every businessman and woman is a voice and spark that longs to apply their talents in incredible, remarkable, amazing and marvelous ways and create a world that is better than the one they came into.  A world which many generations forward will be honored and proud to say that their ancestors contributed to making.  And I also believe business, the most powerful institution in our world, can find solutions to the pressing social, political, and environmental challenges of our times and turn them into legitimate value-creation opportunities for their companies.  So business can do well by doing good.  I believe I’ve been able to practice that first hand during my sabbatical.

I asked Tim what he learned from his six-month sabbatical. Here’s what he said:

I learned how to lead a start-up from essentially scratch.  I also learned how to raise funding, and candidly I think raising money for a not-for-profit is harder since the “return” is not financial but rather “out come based”.  And I learned how to lead a team of volunteers; and this is key and the biggest most tangible lesson learned.  Too often in business, regardless of what says about empowerment, there is the underlying current of money and fear as the motivator, especially in these uncertain economic times.  So managers tend to talk in terms like I need you to do this for me, that is not important this is, why are you doing that, if you do this you’ll earn this more money, here is where we stack rank your performance (with the implied message that those at the bottom will get cut), we “took out” one-hundred head count (as if people were bodies in a war) ….  And candidly I’ve done some of the previous in the past.

But with volunteers the levers of money and fear do not exist.  So you really can only lead, you can’t manage at all.  Words like please, thank you, I appreciate your help, how can I help you, what do you think we should do, let’s work together on this … are in the conversation.  Understanding what your team is passionate about and helping them achieve that, making the experience fun and enjoyable, and building a healthy culture within the team become paramount.  And I would say these are all things that would make a for-profit team excel too.  I had to transform my leadership approach into one of servant leadership.  Now I don’t pretend to be an expert at it.  But I do recognize a good thing and know that in my work in the for-profit world again, I need to apply these lessons learned.  And candidly it makes my experience as a leader more enjoyable and fulfilling too.  So I’ve found myself to be more collaborative, inquisitive, appreciative and effective.

Shaniqua, the bubbly receptionist, was telling me about her work as a funeral director – the person charged with prepping the deceased before their open casket viewing.  It was her life’s passion.  She had accepted a position as a receptionist only because the funeral home she was working at didn’t pay her enough to support her child.

I nodded uneasily, but interested that someone could have a passion for such a morbid profession.

“Doesn’t it get hard?”  I asked.  “You know, to work with dead people all day?”

She laughed.  “Honey, I used to work as a receptionist at a Wall Street firm.  Now THAT was tough.  Dead people aren’t nasty.  The people that work at that firm are.”

I laughed, and sympathized.

“What are you doing in Africa anyways?”

I explained that I was going to work for an organization that teaches young adults how to become social entrepreneurs to pull themselves out of poverty.

“That’s nice.”  She smiled, “What do you do for a living?”

“I work for Morgan Stanley.”

“Really?!”  She screeched.  “Are you pulling my leg?”

“No.”  I said, confused.  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Because you’re so NICE!”  She laughed.  “No one in business is nice.”

“We’re not all monsters.”

“No, just most of you.”

I smiled.  It used to be a source of pride when I told people that I worked in Finance.  Now, after the market meltdown and public anger towards Wall Street, I felt like I had a big scarlet F scrawled across my chest when I admitted my profession.

I was sitting in the Cornell Weill International Medical Center to get vaccinations and prophylactics to prevent a plethora of scary-sounding diseases, some of which I thought had been eradicated a long time ago: yellow fever, polio, hepatitis A, typhoid, tetanus, meningitis, malaria…etcetera.

Shaniqua called my name and walked me down to a room at the end of the hallway.  She handed me a piece of paper with her name and number on it.  “Add this to your email list.  I want to hear all about your trip.”

I smiled and promised her I would.  I sat down on a chair in the corner of the room.

The technician walked into the room.  He was a nice Filipino man who had immigrated to the United States over twenty years ago.  He looked at the chart Shaniqua had left behind.

He looked at me, “You sure you want to get all six shots today?”

“Why not?”

“Well – there are really two reasons.”  He said, “First of all nobody likes getting stuck with six different needles in one day.  Secondly, people usually get sick after getting vaccination.  If you get sick we wont know which virus is affecting you.”

Lovely.  Cast between taking another day off from work and risking infection from one of six nefarious viruses, I chose the latter, a decision I’d regret a few days later when I felt like I came down with the flu’s meaner cousin.

“What about malaria pills?”  He asked me.

“What are my options?”

“The most common and cheapest is Chloroquine” he said.  He pulled out a map of Africa with different swaths of orange running horizontally across the continent.  He pointed at Uganda.  “But malaria is resistant to that drug where you’re going.”

He put the map away.  “Another option, which you only have to take once a week and is pretty cheap, is Mefloquine.”  He looked at me and tilted his head.  “But that has side effects such as psychosis, seizures and schizophrenia among other major psychiatric disorders.”

I shook my head.  No thanks.  I’m barely sane as it is, I don’t need any further nudging down that dark path.

“What else you got?”

We eventually settled on Malarone, a once-a-day prophylactic, which is expensive but has no bizarre side effects or efficacy gaps.

“Okay.  You’re all set.”  The technician said to me.  “You’ll probably feel like you have the flu for a few days.  If it gets really bad come back and we can do some tests, but most likely you’ll just need some Tylenol.”

I left the travel clinic and walked down the street amongst the people bustling and running and hailing cabs frantically as they made their way to work.  It will be weird to leave this world, I thought to myself.  I got a cup of coffee and sat on a bench a few blocks away.  I crossed “vaccinations” off my “to-do” list.  A list which included seventy-one items I had to accomplish before I departed for Africa, everything from paying my NYU matriculation fee (sigh) to shutting my cell phone service off to haggling with insurance representatives to understand my benefits in the event something unfortunate occurred abroad.

As I glanced over the spreadsheet, I thought of what my mother said after viewing my color-coded, incredibly nerdish spreadsheet: “You’re nuts.”

Maybe she was right?  In the midst of the worst economy since the great depression I was going to walk away from a stable job at Morgan Stanley, a luxury apartment, a network of family and friends, a half-complete MBA degree and all the comforts of the developed world to volunteer in Africa for people I’d never met.

It seemed completely backwards to give up a life to help others, and yet it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made.  There aren’t many opportunities in life to leverage your skills and use them to make a palpable difference in the lives of others.  But for me this journey was not completely selfless.  Quite the contrary – I was also going to gain perspective on life, to experience another culture and to learn who I am.  I want to experience raw humanity, removed from the prefabrications of contemporary life.  And while my main purpose is to share my knowledge of finance and entrepreneurship, for some reason, I know I will be doing much more learning than teaching.

My phone rang.  It was my best friend.

“You get all your vaccinations?”

“Yup.”

“How do you feel?”

“Excited.  Everything is getting more real.”

“You scared?”

“Yes” I admitted, “I don’t know what to expect.  This is the great unknown for a guy living in Manhattan.”

And I am scared.  My good friend, Shiloh Harrison, who graduated from the Wagner Program in May and has been to seven African countries gave me one piece of advice: don’t read the State Department’s report that details the safety and security, crime, traffic safety and road conditions among other ominous topics.  Being the hard-headed hack I am, I ignored the advice.  I wish I had listened to her: “US citizens residing in or planning to visit Uganda should be aware of threats to their safety posed by insurgent groups operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Sudan, and the potential for cross-border attacks carried out by these armed groups” ; “US citizens traveling in the area commonly known as Karamoja in northeastern Uganda should also be aware of ongoing conflict and armed banditry in this region” ; “American citizens should exercise caution when traveling in those districts of northwestern Uganda that border the DRC and southern Sudan and which could potentially be subject to LRA incursions” ; “Local officials in northern Uganda have expressed concern for the safety and security of foreigners visiting the area to assist with relief efforts, but without any specific arrangements with a sponsoring organization” ; “American citizens are advised to restrict travel to primary roads and during daylight hours only.”

And while these reports are disturbing, allowing them to dissuade me would be like not visiting Manhattan because someone got stabbed at a nightclub in Bayonne, New Jersey.  Kampala is said to be as nuanced as Manhattan and while you must be aware and exercise caution there is a wealth of beautiful and bountiful people, culture and lifestyle beneath the hard crust that deters so many.

There is no doubt that Uganda has its own problems.  That being said the “Pearl of Africa,” as it was nicknamed by Sir Winston Churchill, is a relative bastion of security in an otherwise unstable region.  Its surrounded by some scary countries: The Democratic Republic of Congo -  where rape, disfigurement and kidnapping are still routinely practiced by Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army; Sudan – where clashes between the Islamic north and the indigenous Christian Dinka tribes of the south have created a religious and civil war that has lasted decades and resulted in hundreds of thousands dead; Rwanda – where between 8,000,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi’s and moderate Hutu’s were slaughtered by extremist Hutu’s in April 1994; Kenya – once the apotheosis of a civilized African country that has fallen into disarray after a botched election, breakout of tribal warfare and infiltration along the Somalia border of Al Shabab, the African contingent of Al Qaeda.

While I’ve never been to Africa I’ve seen enough and read enough to know Africa has experienced challenges and difficulties most Westerners (including myself) cannot begin to fathom.  And yet, the continent is filled with an extremely resilient, talented and culturally diverse cross-section of people who have made significant contributions to all aspects of society – whether through literature, culinary arts,  music or any number of other benefactions – the African culture echoes profoundly through civilizations throughout the world.  They have left an indelible imprint on the fabric of this planet and now, in the year 2009 we have a President who is a scion of Kenya (and Kansas!).

There is a dichotomy here.  Africans are a profoundly talented group of people that has struggled to keep up with the challenges of a rapidly developing world.  The organization I will be working for is called Educate.  They seek to rectify this schism between actual and realized potential by teaching a two-year curriculum on how to lead social change, provide long term mentoring and create an alumni network geared at equipping students with the skills and confidence necessary to start and scale social enterprises, financially sustainable initiatives that address community problems. The people I have met in the organization, from all walks of life and all corners of the globe, are some of the most intelligent, passionate and committed individuals I’ve ever come across.  I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the team.

The Cornell Weill International Medical Center is located on 70^th and York.  I live on 34^th and 1^st avenue.  After finishing my coffee I walked home reflecting on all I was about to experience.  I walked past the United Nations on 42^nd and 1^st with the one hundred and ninety two flags flapping in the warm June air.  As I looked at them I pondered that which ties humans together, that which separates us and that which defines our idiosyncratic cultures and ideologies.  I know a large piece of that puzzle will be unlocked in the next couple of months when I experience life literally and figuratively on the other side of the planet.

I hope that you are all able to come along on my journey, and I don’t only mean my journey to Uganda – I mean my journey to higher plateau of understanding.  Perhaps it will also shed light on the fact that, contrary to popular belief, capitalism is one of the most powerful tools for positive social change.   And while the non-profit world is vastly different than the corporate America many of us work in these altruistic organizations are always in need of smart, educated people looking to dedicate a few months to making the world a better place.

Patton targeted India in particular because her company has several offices there. “I fully appreciate the importance of understanding China and India in the world we live in,” Patton said.

That experience has paid off. She said, “I have much deeper relationships with my colleagues in India now that I have shown some interest in their government, culture and way of doing business.”

Patton encourages her team members to take a similar break to step outside their own experiences. “Immerse yourself in another world and bring that awareness back to Edelman,” she said. “In doing so you become a more fully 360 degree employee.”

The experience, she said, provides three-fold benefit for the company by: 1) providing employees with new perspectives; 2) giving employees permission to be away from the daily barrage of communication and media; 3) and providing an opportunity for employees to foster creativity.

Claudia Patton at a school in Nepal.

While she was gone, Patton got job support from her executive colleagues as well as some department managers.  “It was a great opportunity for each of them to be more fully immersed in the Edelman network as I am on a regular basis,” she said. “They definitely built new relationships.”

All professional advantages aside, Patton’s sabbatical delivered one surprise benefit. “From a personal relationship with my husband, it was wonderful to be dropped into a totally different world and navigate together with him.  It was a real addition to our partnership,” she said. “That was something I didn’t expect to get.”

For Michelle and Jon Richard, 2008 saw the culmination of a long-time goal. The couple spent seven months circling the globe, stopping at 22 countries along the way. They swam with manta rays in Australia, toured Vietnam on motorbike, and took a Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai.

Just a few short years after establishing Coalesce, a Wisconsin-based marketing and design firm, Michelle saw the trip as an opportunity to take a break from the demands of business ownership and recharge-both creatively and emotionally. For her husband Jon, it became the first step to a new career in financial planning. Michelle negotiated an extended leave with her business partner and delegated responsibility to existing team members. Jon, an account manager in the technology industry, left his job behind knowing that he wouldn’t return.

“The forced separation from his job was a good thing,” said Michelle, reflecting on her husband’s break. “Otherwise it would have been easy for him to stay where he was at and not make the leap. As for Michelle, the trip provided invaluable perspective into her company and her team. “As the owner of a business, it’s really easy to get caught up in the day-to-day details and operation and feel like you need to be on hand for every decision,” she said.

By stepping away, she learned to rely on her staff. Now that she’s back in the office, delegating is easier-leaving her more time to focus on company growth.As proof Michelle’s hiatus didn’t damage company prospects, the SBA recently recognized Coalesce as Wisconsin’s Emerging Small Business of the Year for 2009. And if that doesn’t say ‘go sabbatical’ we don’t know what does.