We live in a small world, where a rural Chinese butcher who contracts a new type of deadly flu virus can infect a visiting international traveler, who later infects attendees at a conference in a Hong Kong hotel, who within weeks spread the disease to Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and Ireland. Fortunately, the virulence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was matched by the passion and skill of a worldwide community of scientists, healthcare workers, and institutional leaders who stewarded a highly successful campaign to quarantine and treat those who were infected while identifying the causes of the disease and ways to prevent its spread. In such a world, we depend on expert practitioners to connect and collaborate on a global scale to solve problems like this one – and to prevent future ones.

Marshall McLuhan's assertion in 1968 that we live in a “global village” has come of age. During the past century, the world has become considerably smaller not only through the effects of the media – McLuhan's focus – but also through science, transportation, the Internet, migration, and the spread of global commerce. At the same time, there has been a proliferation of global problems: environmental degradation, the population explosion, increasing economic disparities between rich and poor nations, threats of biological and nuclear terrorism, disease pandemics, and breakdowns of financial systems. As the world becomes smaller, the problems we face are growing larger in scope and complexity.