Landon Romano established The Landon Romano Geography Textbook Scholarship in order to give something back to the department that made such a positive difference in his career. In recent correspondence with the editor, Landon discusses how Geography has shaped his life and continues to do so:
In 1995, I graduated from United High School in Laredo, Texas. After a year of biology at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, I moved in August 1996 to attend school at UCSB. I spent the first year at UCSB studying the hard sciences and realized they were not for me. When working at the UCSB Bookstore, I picked up a Human Geography textbook which radically changed my life. Medical geography caught my attention – how the Red Cross deploys people to natural disasters being pertinent to geography. The next day, I spoke with Tracy Rouge, the Geography Department undergraduate adviser, and I changed majors. It was one of my better decisions.
By making a simple decision, I was able to enjoy my education and follow through to earn my bachelor’s degree in geography. Urban planning and spatial behavior were my favorite courses taught by Couclelis, Church, Gollege, and Montello. I also enjoyed GIS taught by Goodchild and Clarke. Since then, I have applied my fundamental geography knowledge of “Everything is related to everything, and closer things are more related.”
Upon finishing school in March 1999, Couclelis encouraged my travels in Europe. As I had no immediate plans, I spent April-May 1999 in England, Scotland, and France. And there began my thirst for more travel and culture. Since then, I have visited 23 countries and 28 states. My grandparents and parents had already jumpstarted the travel bug by taking us to major US cities and into Mexico. Couclelis sparked an international fire, which has been ever-burning.
When I returned to Santa Barbara, I landed a local sales job, then was recruited by an Internet start-up company in the Bay Area. Soon thereafter, I found my position at Veritas Software where I worked for more than four years. I founded a textbook scholarship because books are extremely expensive, and I want students to have the opportunity to learn without worrying about one more book.
God has a way of creating our foundations from which we develop and only see with hindsight. My job at Veritas Software taught me business in a global world. Thomas Friedman wrote The World is Flat, and he is right. It is simple to send an email and have information transferred at the speed of light. Mobile phones shrank the world because people can talk with each other from any location. MagicJack and Skype shrank computer talk as well.
Veritas Software exemplified geography in business, from the geography of computer systems to business conducted throughout the world. We had to coordinate meetings across different time zones. People traveled daily to different regions and countries. Cultures needed to be understood and known better in order to conduct business in each geographical area. Much goes into the internal and external workings of a global company in terms of how it relates in different geographies, and, then, how people relate amongst the various geographies.
I left Veritas and represented clients in real estate transactions. Then I decided to earn my MBA, so I applied to Baylor University, a fair-sized Christian school in Waco, Texas – my home state! I wanted to integrate all my experiences and learn the mechanics and skills to manage a business. In August 2006, having lived 10 years in California, I moved back to Texas for my MBA. It is one of the best decisions I have made.
During summer 2007, I worked 10 weeks at an investor relations firm in Manhattan to experience the financial industry and New York City. Again, geographic proximities influence NYC and the world. The major global financial institutions play pivotal roles in the world and they have been primarily concentrated in NYC for over a century. These huge banks and financial powerhouses rule most of the world from one location which is about 24 square miles with eight million people living in the area.
However, that trend is changing. Banks are moving their operations out of NYC. For example, Bank of America has its headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, so much of its investment banking is now being relocated there. NYC is, indeed, a financial hub but not as much as it once was, due to computers and telecommunications allowing companies to manage operations from anywhere in the world.
Global business relies on geography. Computers and telecommunications shrink geographic space and time. I was driving California’s Highway 101, speaking on my BlackBerry mobile phone with my friend in South Africa who was calling from his computer using Skype. Since May 2008, I primarily reside in Johannesburg, South Africa. My business investor resides in Norwalk, Connecticut, and commutes by train to Manhattan. I work from wherever I happen to be. I use MagicJack – $100 for five years of unlimited minutes – to call the United States for essentially “free” and Skype to call anywhere else for very low costs. I have been on six continents since September 2008. (I pray I see Antarctica by the end of 2011 for fun – there’s a flight from Cape Town!)
Business takes me all over the world for what we do. I meet business managers, customers, suppliers, and whomever I can to learn about a company. We then buy mispriced securities of companies we easily understand. We use Fidelity online trading to buy and sell stocks with the click of a button and the speed of light, as well! Gone are the days for needing a person to broker the stock deal.
When Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger took over Berkshire Hathaway, in-person meetings and phone calls were the only option. Today, global travel and interconnectedness condense space-time travel. We can have virtual meetings via Skype with video cameras or in conference rooms that have walls that are projecting life-sized images of people sitting in a mirror-image room in Shanghai while we are in Windhoek. As I type this message, my BlackBerry instant messenger has had messages from Dallas, Palo Alto, and Sandton. My email messages arrive from Uerdingen, Maputo, and Bogota, within moments of each other.
Flights are simple. I can be anywhere in the world within 24 hours. I can pick up the phone and call anyone in the world within 24 seconds. The moment I send an email, it arrives at the speed of light. Whether I’m in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, or Europe I have my BlackBerry in hand and can access anyone I know with a few keystrokes.
In-person meetings are invaluable in terms of seeing and experiencing the other person. It is still very important for business to be conducted in this manner. However, gone are the days when in-person meetings had to be done day-in and day-out. My business investor and I speak via Skype or MagicJack once a day and/or email throughout the day as needed. We keep each other motivated and on track with our global business operations and investments. Geography is unlimited. We are unlimited, and the world is our neighborhood. (Landon can be e-mailed at landonromano@gmail.com.)
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