A 'TCK' Story of Belonging

When Marc Willebeek-LeMair (Class of 1980) arrived at JIS as a Junior, he hoped to find the sense of belonging he had been craving as a traveling third-culture kid, and an appreciation for multiculturalism that would stay with him through his life and career.

“It was my third high school in three years, [but] it was the best thing that could have happened. Everything about it was fantastic,” he recalls, remembering just how quickly his classmates embraced him. 

“I was sitting between the huts on my first day of school and I had people coming up to me, asking me, ‘Where are you from? What do you like to do?’ They were eager to meet me, to embrace me.” 

Almost immediately, he found a new footing through his passion for soccer, even being named captain of the Varsity Soccer Team in his very first year.

That strong sense of community was especially meaningful for Marc, whose third-culture childhood had been shaped by constant moves. Born in Washington DC to Dutch parents who themselves had a multicultural upbringing, he spent much of his life across South America, from Caracas to Asunción to Lima. By the time he returned to the United States, he spoke multiple languages and was fostering a growing passion for soccer. The move, however, proved to be more jarring than he anticipated.

“I was obviously American, but when I was young, we spoke Dutch at home, English at school, Spanish in the streets. When we returned [to the US], it was hard for me culturally — everything was just new,” he recalls. “My parents decided after a year that they would take one more tour overseas, and of course, the opportunity to go to Indonesia was presented.”

The decision came with mixed emotions. Marc’s mother, born in Bandung, West Java, had lived there the first 19 years of her life, with the final three spent in a concentration camp during Japanese occupation. 

“It was a very difficult end to what was, for her, life in the most beautiful, wonderful country.”

But once the family arrived, any feelings of concern dissipated, and “all the Indonesian came back to her after one week. She was 100 percent fluent; people just gravitated to her because she presented this deep appreciation and knowledge of the country.”

Marc approached their new adventure with the same openness and curiosity that had been second nature to him as a third-culture kid. Much of this, he attributes to his parents, who encouraged him and his brothers to absorb, learn, and appreciate everything that was wonderful about their new environments — not to recreate the world they were used to.

His father’s work as a civil engineer with USAID often took him deep into Indonesia’s interior to build bridges, dams, and other major infrastructure projects. 

“Occasionally, he would take one of us, one of my brothers or me, and we would go into the rural areas,” Marc recalls. “The psychological approach was that these places are all wonderful in their own way. So, I never knew anything different — this was the way I grew up.”

These enriching experiences made his time at JIS all the more meaningful. In just two years, Marc fostered friendships that, to this day, remain “enormous” in their depth. Meanwhile, his love of soccer gave him an added purpose and identity — “it was just a thoroughly incredible experience.”

The depth of those connections became even more evident after graduation. When most young adults would disperse and go their own way as they forged their own paths in university and beyond, Marc found that JIS Dragons made every effort to stay in touch. With the emergence of social media, they enthusiastically embraced the many ways they could stay connected and keep track of each other.

“When we do get together, it takes about 30 seconds and we’re back to where we were [at JIS].”

After graduation, Marc attended George Mason University, where he once again found community through soccer, becoming captain of the university team while completing his degree in electrical engineering. He went on to earn a PhD at Cornell with a full scholarship and was gearing up for a career in academia when he received an unexpected call from IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center. While they were unequivocal about wanting him to join their research division, Marc wasn’t so sure.

He shared his uncertainty with a department head at George Mason, where he had accepted a teaching position to fulfill his goal of becoming a professor. The department head’s response: “If you were my son, I would tell you to take the job at IBM and if it doesn't suit you we will welcome you back with open arms.”

And that was the best possible answer Marc could get. 

“I flew to New York [and] that was really where my career started,” he recalls.

The sudden, headfirst plunge into what was then a revolutionary field, surrounded by the “who’s who of experts on all sorts of engineering disciplines”, was daunting to say the least. But Marc quickly discovered that his multicultural upbringing would allow him to seamlessly carve out a space for himself.

“I was now in a room full of folks from different countries. It was very useful to have a background in international languages and cultures, so that was instrumental in my rise in terms of my management trajectory, because I could easily relate to people from different places.”

In New York, he also continued his passion for soccer, playing for various teams as a “gun for hire — I loved it!” It was soccer that brought him face-to-face with his future wife, a fellow third-culture kid who had been born in Boston but raised in her family’s home country of Mexico, who had tagged along with friends to one of his matches.  

Together, they would traverse the rise of Marc’s professional journey, from IBM to building successful cybersecurity startups based in Austin, Texas, such as TippingPoint Technologies, Click Security, and most recently, Spyderbat. Through it all, they raised four children with the same appreciation for diversity and cultures that had shaped their own childhoods. 

“We wanted them to have a broad view of the world. We did our best while being in Austin to raise them in a very open-minded multicultural way, so we traveled a lot,” he describes. “Their favorite trip to this day — and we’ve been to a few places — was going to Bali.”

In a full-circle moment, the family traveled to Indonesia for a vacation that coincided with JIS’s 70th anniversary reunion in 2018. A fellow Dragon had generously organized a two-week itinerary that included staying in a fishing village on the far side of Bali.

“My kids got to experience that and they loved it. To this day, that trip stands out as a highlight for them.”

To him, the experience was a beautiful example of what schools like JIS could provide; chiefly, the realization that, while we may come from different parts of the world, we are not that different.

“We are not afraid of our differences — we embrace them, we welcome them,” he elaborates. “I’m proud that [my children] have grown up to be very international in their outlook. The world isn’t as big as it seems, and that’s something JIS helped me understand.”