Robert Brindley admits that when he first considered moving to Uzbekistan, he had to take out a world atlas to remember where it was.

“I didn't know much about Uzbekistan at all," said Dr. Brindley, a U.K. native who spent the last eight years as headmaster of the Atlanta International School in Buckhead.

After his tenure here, Dr. Brindley traded Peachtree Street for the old Silk Road, leaving Atlanta in August to become headmaster at the Tashkent International School in Uzbekistan's capital.

Some folks looked at him “quizzically” for choosing Tashkent, but Dr. Brindley and his Australian wife, Jan, had been seeking a culturally rich and professionally challenging new position. The Central Asian outpost had all the elements, including the advantage of being near the mountainous regions of northern India and Nepal, lands that had long enchanted him.

“We're empty-nesters, it's a big wide world out there, and I always wanted to go to this part of the world,” said Dr. Brindley, who recently spoke with GlobalAtlanta by phone from Tashkent.

He began searching for a new post last year, about 15 months before he would ultimately leave Atlanta. At the time, an unusually high number of headmaster positions had become available around the world.

Kevin Glass, the Tashkent school's headmaster at the time, was also seeking a job change after five years in Uzbekistan. Under his leadership, the student body had nearly quadrupled, and the school had upgraded from a dingy, Soviet-style office building to a brand new 15-acre campus.

Mr. Glass sent out six resumes, including one to Atlanta. Dr. Brindley, meanwhile, was eyeing Tashkent.

The educators met for the first time when Mr. Glass came to Atlanta to interview for Dr. Brindley's position in October 2008. Unaware that his eventual successor was coming from there, Dr. Brindley had scheduled his interview in Tashkent for the same month.

The schools had gone about their searches "totally independently, and that's usually how it works. There's no board-to-board conversation whatsoever," Dr. Brindley said.

Mr. Glass, likewise, didn't know that a swap was imminent.

“It was a complete coincidence,” he told GlobalAtlanta.

But perhaps not so unlikely, considering that the educators were looking for schools that met similar criteria. Only about 120 schools worldwide have International Baccalaureate curricula at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Atlanta and Tashkent share that distinction, Dr. Brindley said. 

"The odds might seem very remote, but in fact he and I have quite similar philosophical approaches to things, so really when you put it down on paper, the likelihood was quite high," he added.

When Mr. Glass brought his family to Atlanta, Dr. Brindley hosted them for dinner. Mr. Glass returned the favor when Dr. Brindley and his wife first traveled to Uzbekistan.

Both were eventually hired, and they moved across the world in time to start work at their new schools just a few weeks before the fall semester began. Dr. Brindley even moved into Mr. Glass' former digs, a home provided by the Tashkent school.

Dr. Brindley said it marked one of very few times in the history of a tight-knit global community of international schools that two headmasters have exchanged positions.

Fortunately, a mutual respect and a knowledge that they would carry on each other's work translated into an unusually easy leadership shift in both places.

"Because we got on so well together, we basically had one of the smoothest transitions from Tashkent and Atlanta in international school history," Mr. Glass said.

Dr. Brindley, who had schools in Italy and Australia and spent five years at a British school in Venezuela before coming to Atlanta in 2001, praised Mr. Glass' work, saying he was drawn to Tashkent because of its potential.

"It's a growing school,” he said. “Atlanta grew, but Tashkent, even this year we grew by 15 percent," which is the average growth rate for the past five years under Mr. Glass' headship.

When GlobalAtlanta spoke with Dr. Brindley, the school was working to acquire four nearby properties and shore up its medical clinic, which provides basic care and emergency triage for students and their families.

"Kevin did an excellent job," Dr. Brindley said. "He put everything in place that I would expect someone to put into place. It's the classic, 'OK, you've got a very good school; how do you really turn it into a school of excellence?'"

Atlanta and Tashkent

Although they're worlds apart culturally, Atlanta and Tashkent share many similarities. They're both growing as regional business capitals, and their international schools are increasingly contributing to their global flavor.

"Even though we are in completely different places, our niche is very important. If we did not exist in Atlanta or Tashkent, then the diplomatic and corporate communities simply would not come in the numbers that they do," Dr. Brindley said.

When he left Atlanta, the international school here had nearly 1,000 students. About 70 of them have parents working for Coca-Cola Co. Employees at big corporations focus heavily on education when deciding where to relocate, he said.

While Tashkent is less of a corporate hub than Atlanta, the city of 4 million people is growing in economic and geopolitical importance by nature of its location: north of Afghanistan and Pakistan, south of Kazakhstan and Russia and just west of China.

Dr. Brindley recently met with representatives from the World Bank, oil and gas firms and large Korean companies, all of whom are either considering moving personnel to Tashkent or already have. The Pakistan Embassy is adding to its presence there, which will bring Dr. Brindley five more students.

A quarter of the nearly 400 students are children of Korean businesspeople, about 20 percent are local and about half come from diplomatic families.

The Atlanta International School has students from 90 countries. The corporate influence is much stronger in the Georgia capital, but the day-to-day cultural landscape is more varied in Uzbekistan, Dr. Brindley said.

"When you walk in the streets it's full of Kazaks, and Uzbeks and Tajiks and Mongols and Tibetans and northern Indians and Pakistanis, Afghans, Chinese, Russians, Koreans - a totally, totally different demographic," he said.

Dr. Brindley thrives on the change of scenery.

“You probably couldn't choose a more different place to Atlanta. There's no Publix, Starbucks, what you'd normally expect in the states.” he said.

Dr. Brindley stays connected to his old school, talking by e-mail once or twice a week with Mr. Glass.

"We swap news, we swap stories, I'll ask him questions about stuff that has happened here in the past and that I want his perspective on," Mr. Glass said. 

2010 The Agio Press, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without expressed permission.