From Crisis to Calling

PREFACE

This is a very personal book for both me and my father and co-author, David Chanoff. Its origins are in a seminal experience I had as a young refugee worker in Africa. Early in the year 2000, a colleague and I were sent into the Democratic Republic of the Congo on a rescue mission to evacuate survivors of countrywide massacres. I did not anticipate that the experience would shape and change me as it did. But the unexpected life-and-death dilemma that confronted us there in a country torn apart by war has forced on me years of reflection. During that mission we faced a decision about whom to take with us, if we could, and whom to leave behind, if we had to. I’ve pondered ever since: Did we do the right thing? What if we had lost more people? ...