The World Business Academy's President and CEO, Rinaldo S. Brutoco began contributing weekly columns earlier last year titled Perspectives, which have been published in the Montecito Journal's online and printed issues as well as on the Academy’s website.



As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe and affected each of our communities in ways both large and small, we wrote about what we were all going through week by week. Our first column was written the week before the first lockdowns in California caused us to move to all-remote work in an attempt to quell the fast-moving health crisis. The extraordinary collective pause and the surprising lessons learned as we adjusted our daily lives in an effort to slow the spread became columns on societal transformation, on the long overdue racial reckoning, on the intricacies of the federalist political system, on the post office, on relationships, on minority rule, in making a case against tyranny and in reiterating, again and again, our support of the democratic ideals that undergird these United States of America. 2020 was a year to remember, and we offer this collection of essays towards that end.