Transforming change into opportunity

WHEN I was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s, I spent a lot of time outdoors near our house, riding my bike and catching snakes by Bull Creek. My universe was small - school, the creek, my father's shoe store - and not just because I was 12 years old. By almost any measure, the world itself was far less complex and interconnected.

At that time, aspects of connectivity that we take for grant…