In 1982 when war broke out again in Lebanon, I was the Assistant Dean in the School of Public Health at the American University in Beirut.  I sent my wife and our two little girls back to the US and remained behind to assist in a local volunteer clinic.  I did triage for injured men, women and children, some of whom were
elderly, mentally or physically disabled and hiding in underground parking garages.

My own life changed as I shared, in my small way, the danger, degradation and despair of people whose lives were invisible, expendable and unimportant in the grand scheme of power plays going on at the time.  But their lives were important to them.

I decided as a result of those days going between the clinic and those make-shift underground shelters that I wanted to devote the rest of my life to invisible people like these, to learn from them, take their viewpoints seriously, discover how I could help them, and find ways to put them first, in my life, in communities and in the minds of policy makers.

Most of the people I helped in the summer of 1982 died later in the fighting.  That steeled my resolve and set my heart to find a way to put the last first—that way has become Questscope.