Citizen Diplomats Mean Business in SC

By Mike Switzer

Published October 24, 2018 at 5:27 AM EDT

After our next guest spent two years in Chile with the Peace Corps, he returned to South Carolina in 1970 wondering how he could continue that diplomatic experience here. Then he discovered that Columbia had a chapter of a volunteer organization that the State Department often refers to as citizen diplomats. He joined and has been helping them receive visiting scholars, students, journalists and foreign government officials on State Department fellowships now for almost five decades.

Mike Switzer interviews Jim Byrum with the Columbia Council for Internationals.

Tags

Mike Switzer

After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.

See stories by Mike Switzer