I spent my early years amidst the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war, experiencing the political strife that tore my country down to its fabric. During my college years, I volunteered for the Red Cross paramedics and other humanitarian missions that got me closer to the common dilemma of the disenfranchised. My work in publishing called for many travels across continents, where my living experience with the poorest of the poor in Yemen, Sudan and Ethiopia impacted me the most. When most visitors stayed in Sheratons and Hiltons, I went on buses that toured the outskirts of hostile countries, handing out bread and chocolate to the destitute along the roadsides. My financial experience with global companies buckling under the pressure of bank credit during the post-2008 global recession was instrumental to my questioning of the global capitalist system -- it made me an advocate of fundamental economic reforms by giving economic powers back to the people.