Today's economic climate has made the world more aware than ever of our global interdependencies. Of course the challenge of globalization is nothing new for any of us involved in the manufacturing and process industries, but over the last month, a couple of complimentary events occurred that got me thinking even more about its significance to us all, both professionally and personally.

First, I was privileged to attend Diversity Best Practices' Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. recently. While there, several CEOs, including myself and two of my colleagues from Siemens, were honored to receive CEO Diversity Leadership awards in recognition of the work our organizations are doing to encourage and support diversity in the workplace.

Second - as you can read about in the Highlights section of this month's newsletter - we realized a tremendous milestone in our company history this month. Through the efforts of our GO PLM™ team, one million students worldwide are now being trained on an annual basis to use Siemens PLM Software solutions.

So what is the connection between these events? It is the fact that living and working in a global community adds value to our lives and surprising opportunities to improve our businesses.