TED Community » Caroline MacDonald

About Me

Caroline MacDonald was born in the UK, and, since travelling to India at the age of four, has become a global traveller and communicator dedicated to language, communication, innovation, discovery and excitement. In the words of a fellow Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, “I travel not to anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move”. Her career has taken her to the East, the West and many places in between where her extensive linguistic skills have come into play.

A graduate of Paris University’s prestigious Oriental Language School (Japanese) Caroline has worked extensively in Asia, in retail tourism, marketing & communications for both French and Japanese retail and marketing companies. Her degree research was on Japanese political women in the 20th century, and while back in Tokyo, she took on the role of rapporteur and editor for the Asia Europe Forum conference “A Gender Agenda” dealing with Asian women and work. While in Sri Lanka, her passion for language went as far as studying basic Tamil and an English language guide book entitled ‘Sri Lanka for Kids’ and one of the first travel guides to the city of Colombo. With extensive press related work in Tokyo and Paris, Caroline has edited/translated a couple of books, notably 'Imagination 3.0', a book on new trends in consumer innovation and collective imagination in the Web 2.0 world. She joined several think tanks and networks dealing with online marketing and social media trends in Paris. Throughout her travels, she has been involved in non-profit organisations, from a Japanese municipal initiative to encourage children to read, to fund raising for Sri Lankan displaced women, and lobbying for European Foreign Service spouses.

Putting Miami on the map as a hub of innovative thought has become one of her current goals and led her to become a co-curator of TEDxMIA, a local initiative to harvest and honour Miami’s genius. She would like her blog “East, West and Everything in between” to become a platform for discussion on the idiosyncratic aspects of the cultures and peoples she encounters. Caroline is married to a French diplomat and has three children.