Tough Choices, by Carly Fiorina: on Foreign Policy

Carly Fiorina: Attended grade school in U.S., England, and Africa

We moved a lot because my father was working his way up the academic ladder. He taught at the University of Texas, Cornell, Yale, Stanford and Duke and took sabbaticals at the London School of Economics and the University of Ghana in Accra, West Africa. (Eventually he would become a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.) I went to elementary school in New York, Connecticut and California; to junior high in California and England; and to high school in Africa, California and North Carolina. In the course of all this moving around, I learned a lot about people and a lot about change. I was perpetually the new kid in class, and as the new kid, I wanted desperately to fit in, to be liked, to make friends.

Carly Fiorina: In Africa, experienced being only white person in the room

My father was teaching the new Ghanaian constitution to law students. Ghana in 1969 was experimenting with democracy after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. I listened to great debates at our dinner table when my father's Ghanaian students would visit. I saw how difficult building a nation was when smaller but more powerful tribal loyalties conflicted with the larger but more abstract idea of a nation.

Carly Fiorina: 1977: Taught English to Italian businessmen in Bologna

We lived in a shoe-box-sized apartment. I loved Italy, loved Italians and loved the whole crazy adventure that was our first year of marriage. I learned to drink coffee, learned to drink wine and learned to make Italian food. Todd was, in very real ways, my teacher. He had lived in Italy before, and I was following him as he pursued his studies and his career. While we were husband and wife, we were not peers.

Todd was studying full-time and we needed money. I didn't have a work permit, but I could work as a private language tutor. So I taught English to Italian businessmen and their families and built up a clientele by word of mouth. At ten dollars an hour, the teaching work supported us.

Carly Fiorina: Traveled extensively to learn international opportunities