Your Mark On The World

Rotary International is headquartered in the United States and a plurality of recent presidents are from the U.S., but Rotary lives up to its monicker with a majority of its Presidents coming from outside the U.S. Rotary’s current president-elect is Holger Knaack from Hamburg, Germany. Fit and vigorous, Holger sports reading glasses positioned low on his nose, giving him the appearance of a skinny Santa Claus. The likeness doesn’t end there. Genuinely jovial, he seemed to delight in our conversation. Rotary is an international organization with leaders coming from around the world, operating in a representative manner. Holger shared with me some of the differences he sees between Rotary in Central Europe, including Austria, Switzerland and Germany on the one hand and the U.S. on the other. Differences are remarkable. One key difference is that it remains such an honor to be invited to join a Rotary Club in Germany that he jokes, we only leave Rotary “feet first.” Retention and recruitment are not a problem