Our Story
Our story began with an international assignment to Kandahar Afghanistan when our founder and CEO accepted a civilian expatriate contract to support a mission that returned a life-long impact.
Here, military and civilian members of the international security assistance force came together in Kandahar , where community was at the heart of all things commonly understood and the mission was fueled by the power of global connection, cooperation, and partnership.
During this time, a passion for international development turned into a personal and career endeavor to effect positive change for environmental, social and economic cooperation. Many more projects and country visits followed. While living and working across emerging markets and supporting hard to abate sectors, these 4 takeaways were consistent with every experience.
- An effort to communicate – to speak and understand the primary language and engage first on an interpersonal level is essential to forming community connections.
- Seeking to first to understand cultural influences on one’s way of life – A curiosity for how this guides relationship building, or shapes personal and business conduct and decision making is paramount to building trust.
- Demonstrated efforts to collaborate for social and economic well-being – Doing so in a way that is meaningful to the country, the community, and the fabric of its culture is, not only the right thing to do, but essential to gaining social license to operate; and
- Power of collective effort -That more could be done together through meaningful community involvement, than by the proponent organization, government, or individual parts alone. Community connection is paramount to sustain growth and investment.
These takeaways form the principles upon which Wesben Global is founded to help leaders operate responsibly and build healthy ecosystems to drive sustainability forward.