🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 HAPPY NATIONAL TARTAN DAY 🇺🇸 !!

Today, April 6th, marks National Tartan Day in the United States, an annual celebration that honors the significant contributions of Scottish Americans to the nation's history and development. This year the day also marked the end of “Tartan Week’ in New York.

From Arbroath to Philadelphia, Washington and New York

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The date of April 6th was chosen specifically to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland on April 6, 1320, and was the inspiration for the 🇺🇸 US Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia in 1776!

Balancing Culture with Business

This year’s Tartan Week in NY, had SO many events that brought together Scottish talent, founders, companies, diaspora, politicians, and GlobalScots.

Tartan Week, however, is more than a celebration of our Scottish culture. It continues to become an opportunity to make a difference economically and commercially.

I had the pleasure of supporting the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Moray Chamber of Commerce and their trade delegation as they sought insights and inspiration for their US aspirations.

They were able to gain new appreciation of cultural nuances and opportunities with selling to customers and seeking capital in the US.

Making Andrew Carnegie Proud

Over the week, I couldn't but help to be reminded of the impact of Andrew Carnegie as a visionary, industrialist, and philanthropist, who was commercially driven but also believed in giving back, providing funding for education and culture. Wrapping up the formal events of the week at the prestigious and infamous Carnegie Hall (founded by the main man himself) couldn't have been more poignant.

In fact, seeing some of my fellow GlobalScot Founding Members (from way back in 2001!) such as Bob Creighton MBE and John Dick, and of course Lorraine Bell, CPA, CA, Lolita Jackson MBE FRSA, Ian Houston, Kenneth Donnelly, Allan Rooney, Rory Hedderly, Andrew Weir all being engaged throughout the week, underscored how passionate the Scottish Diaspora really is about giving back and supporting Scottish founders.

NET OUT & CALL TO ACTION

💡 Scotland has a marketing tagline “Think Different. Think Scotland”. I believe we need to match this with a new approach for Scottish founders and companies to think differently.

👉 As a result of Tartan Week we will be activating some new initiatives between Scotland and New York that may challenge the norms of what founders are told about the US.

👉 We need to leverage these transatlantic opportunities and Scottish Diaspora better, and our Scottish founders need to be prepared to open their eyes and LISTEN to different ways of working, and we all need to be prepared to SUPPORT others in TAKING RISKS.