Fred Blanton got his start with Sister Cities International in 1983, through a summer business internship exchange between local businesses in his college town of St. Louis and companies in small villages around St. Louis’ sister city of Stuttgart, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.  After Fred returned from “the summer of a lifetime”, he took his first full time job with Boeing and decided to stay in St. Louis, so the local Sister Cities organization asked Fred to become their “first young board member”.  After several years of actively supporting various local sister cities programs in St Louis and in smaller towns around Missouri, Fred helped host SCI’s very successful annual conference in St. Louis in 2003.  Fred has served on the SCI Board of Directors and  Honorary Board and the SCI Virginia State Representative. In addition to supporting about 15 vibrant city programs throughout Virginia, Fred also supports SCI’s Membership Department with requests from member cities across the SCI network to help revitalize various aspects of their local programs.