Uroš Zivkovic is a professor of law at the University of Belgrade, the founder of Gastro Balkan food tours, and my local guru for all things Belgrade. One of my favorite things about Uroš’s story is that he is equally zestful when he talks about teaching his law students, and leading a new group of foodies around Belgrade, and that time he sat next to Stephen Hawking at a Cambridge dinner party. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

When you were 17, what did you want to be?

I always wanted to travel, and I thought of being an ambassador or a diplomat, traveling around the world. That was the idea. I was thinking about political science and international relations, and then I had this discussion with my parents. They said, “You know what, whatever you want to do we're fine with. It's just that the majority of diplomats we know actually studied something else, and they just speak languages and are very outgoing and understand international relations from another perspective, but they always had careers in something else.” And that was when I thought I should consider law - it's a good step to that.

​Jennifer Johnson-Blalock is a literary agent from New York (by way of Texas and Oklahoma), and another member of my We Roam tribe. If you made a Venn diagram of the two of us, you’d see a lot of overlap, right down to our presidential aspirations and hyphenated names. Listening to Jennifer tell her story, I felt like I was watching how some of my own what ifs might have played out, from publishing to teaching to law school. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I actually have proof of this, but when I was 17, I legitimately wanted to be President of the United States. It’s just hilarious looking back, but I was a debater in high school, and so really into research and policy and all of these things. I was very, very ambitious in kind of the traditional sense of wanting power, and prestige, and that sort of thing.

Laura Osmun is a travel nurse recruiter for Aya Healthcare, which sounds like an odd choice when you hear that Laura is terrified of hospitals. But it’s actually a perfect fit, thanks to her years of experience honing her top shelf people skills in event planning, rental car sales, and financial advising. Spending an hour with Laura, chatting about her career path, gave me a little peek into what makes her so good at what she does. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I always wanted to be in wedding planning, because I loved events management, and everything that goes along with it, the invitations, the decorations, the fanfare. Plus, I definitely am a sucker for romantic comedies. I love the meeting stories and the love story.

​Rachel Rife is a senior project manager with Cali One Services, a residential solar solutions company. She also has a side gig as a professional synchronized swimmer (and occasional mermaid). And somehow she manages to make that combination seem like the most natural thing in the world. She’s also one of the wisest and most insightful people I’ve ever met, with a crystal clear sense of her highest priorities. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
  
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
I wouldn't say that I knew. I knew that I was passionate about sports, and a career in something athletic sounded really good. But also, I always wanted to see the world. With synchronized swimming, from a young age I started traveling the U.S. a lot, and it just sparked my curiosity. I really wanted to go abroad, but I was doing sports so much that I couldn't even do a summer Europe trip or something, but the second I could get abroad I did.

Ruchie Farndon, more affectionately known as Roo, is the founder of Rood Media, a music consulting, promotion, and management company based out of England. Roo’s story feels straight out of a film, taking her from television to music, where she works with an enormous roster of incredibly talented musicians, including her latest project with Noah Slee. And her music credibility is legit – her Spotify station is one of my favorite places to find new artists who I can’t stop listening to. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
 
When you were 17, what did you want to be?
 
At 17, I was already doing what I wanted to be doing. My dream job was to be a music video director, combining my love of film with music. So for my first job, my mom knew someone who worked for one of the biggest TV production companies in London, and he got me an internship there when I was 17.