By Connie Baher (MBA 1980)

I was standing in New York’s Asia Society Museum when I saw it. A high school kid from Connecticut, I’d taken the train to the big city and was nosing around an exhibition of Southeast Asian art. Suddenly, I came face to face with a statue carved in gray stone—a woman, slim, narrow-waisted, wearing just a simple pleated skirt that almost floated down to the floor. The elegance and simplicity captivated me. It could have been a contemporary piece, but, on closer inspection, I saw that it was a “female figure, Cambodia, 11th century.” I wanted to know about the culture that had created such sublime beauty. But there was a train to catch, and life moved on.

Picture a calendar’s pages flipping by, the way they used to in the movies: high school, college, marriage, kids, HBS, corporate jobs, my own consulting business, a smattering of travels. On the horizon, I knew, was a departure from full-time work. In 2008, with no particular goal in mind, I took a trip on a riverboat down the Mekong River, from Cambodia to Vietnam.

Vietnam was exciting, but I lost my heart to Cambodia. Despite the devastation wreaked by Pol Pot and his followers (the Khmer Rouge regime killed nearly 2 million Cambodians), the next generation was building a new society. Their idealism and their hopes were palpable, and their enthusiasm was contagious. I wanted to help, if I could—maybe by offering some of the business skills I’d developed over several decades of consulting work. Yet I had no idea how to make that happen.

Working in Washington at the time, I cold-called the curator of Southeast Asian ceramics at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Museum, asking, who do you know in Cambodia? Well, she knew the director of the National Museum of Cambodia, and straightaway emailed him an introduction, telling him of my interest in the country. Within 24 hours, I had a response: When can you get here?

That was the question that changed my life. I immediately set up a trip to Phnom Penh, met with the National Museum’s director, and started small by simply updating the museum’s English-language entry on Wikipedia. That led to conducting strategy, management, and proposal-writing workshops for, among others, the National Museum, the Royal University of Fine Arts, and one of the grimmest places on earth, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, site of the high school that became a torture prison.

In his maniacal determination to turn the country into an agrarian utopia, Pol Pot killed off anyone who was educated, who was a musician or dancer, or who simply wore glasses. This created a mentor gap. There were few people, Cambodian or otherwise, to teach the next generation the skills to revive the arts, to manage cultural organizations, or to lead the country.

I made about 10 trips to Cambodia over 10 years. At the National Museum, I worked with a team to repair labels and wall panels in galleries filled with ceramics, bronzes, and, yes, the glorious stone statuary of Cambodia. I also assisted young archaeologists with grant applications to preserve ancient kiln sites from the encroachment of developers’ bulldozers. We brought traditional Cambodian musical instruments to international audiences, and helped a young musician to get her first-ever passport for travel outside of Cambodia. In a traditionally hierarchical culture, I showed younger managers how to speak up—and I encouraged their bosses to listen.

And what did I learn? I learned humility in the face of greater courage and resilience than I have ever been called upon to show. I learned to tread lightly and respectfully in a land that was not my own. I learned about a complex and often contradictory culture with a glorious past and an uncertain future. And I have made dear, dear friends.

Today a replica of a Cambodian statue stands in the corner of my living room in Carlsbad, California. It is she—the beautiful female figure who ignited my dream so many years ago. I continue to work virtually with organizations that nurture and promote the new arts of Cambodia and the Southeast Asia region. Maybe someday, after the pandemic, I will be able to go back in person. And my next journey may start with a question like the one that changed my life: When can you get here?

Connie Baher, president of US Business Communications, is an advisor to Cambodian Living Arts and the Mekong Cultural Hub, which works with artists and community activists in Southeast Asia. She was a board member of Friends of Khmer Culture, dedicated to preserving Cambodia’s cultural heritage, and in 2016 was awarded a royal medal for distinguished services to the king and the people of Cambodia. A former tech executive and management consultant, she currently writes, coaches, and lectures on career and life transitions. She is the author of The Case of the Kickass Retirement: How to Make the Most of the Rest of Your Life.

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