Those who meet me often quickly detect that I have a strange accent for someone who lives in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis / Saint Paul. Some people here think that I must have grown up in New York while others more accurately put my hometown somewhere up in the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota. The latter is closer to the truth but not quite there.

I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada and became a dual citizen after moving to Minneapolis for school and the weather. One of the advantages of growing up in Canada is that you realize better than a lot of Americans do just how intertwined the countries are and aren't. Culturally they're pretty similar but they have some remarkable differences. Economically they're even more similar yet are still and probably always will be remarkably separated.

An example of that economic separation are recruiting conferences. Few American recruiters or other human resource professionals have ever ventured north of the border for a recruiting conference. That's a shame because there are some wonderful conferences in world class cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. And the lack of northern exposure shouldn't be the case because those cities are so incredibly easy to get to from just about every American city.