Dr. Alexia Massa-Gallucci is a marine biologist, researcher, and the founder of Blue EcoTech.
Article by Allie Dalola, intern with the U.S. Department of State, currently studying Business Administration and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill.
[Malta, May 2023] Through her innovative startup, Blue EcoTech, Dr. Alexia Massa-Gallucci is creating value from marine waste, advocating for ocean conservation, and educating her community in the small island nation of Malta.
A former researcher and professor, Massa-Gallucci said she felt like a “fish out of water” when she first launched her company. However, after joining the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) — a women’s empowerment initiative launched by the U.S. Department of State in 2019 — Dr. Massa-Gallucci was equipped with the entrepreneurial knowledge she needed to realize her lifelong dream of finding an innovative way to conserve and protect the marine environment.
Dr. Massa-Gallucci was born in Naples, Italy and spent her summers vacationing on the small island of Ischia — just an hour away by ferry. She said it was during the sunny, carefree days of her youth that her passion for marine biology was born.
Massa-Gallucci has developed a lifelong passion for marine biology and conservation.
“When I was eight years old, my father got me my first mask and snorkel as a gift,” Dr. Massa-Gallucci said. “Since that moment, I have never taken my head out of the water.”
Years later, her interest led her to pursue her master's degree in Marine Biology from the University of Naples and a Ph.D. in Conservation and Fish Biology from University College Dublin. Upon graduating, she conducted research on local fisheries and ocean conservation and lectured at various universities across the Mediterranean, eventually settling down in Malta.
Throughout her time in academia, Massa-Gallucci said she was able to investigate the intricacies of ocean life. Time and time again, she said she was faced with the devastation to marine ecosystems caused by humans — she knew something had to change. Massa-Gallucci decided to use what she had learned to launch a business that would make a positive impact on marine health.
“The idea behind Blue EcoTech was to use my scientific background in marine biology and fishery science to bridge the gap between academia and industry,” Massa-Gallucci said.
Blue EcoTech’s mission is threefold: creating value-added products, expanding conservation efforts, and educating communities about the threats to marine environments.
Blue EcoTech focuses on repurposing marine biomass, which includes fish waste and washed-up seagrass. Currently, the company is exploring methodologies to isolate and extract the usable compounds within marine waste. Though their products are not for sale yet, Blue EcoTech has already developed the technology to transform the waste into components used in textiles, 3D printing materials, and pharmaceuticals.
Blue EcoTech isolates and extracts compounds found in seagrass to use in products that are used in a variety industries.
Besides helping to upcycle marine waste, Blue EcoTech is also finding other ways to improve marine conservation in the Mediterranean region. Recently, Massa-Gallucci and her team have conducted research into underwater reforestation: the restoration of areas of seagrass that have been destroyed by human activities like anchoring boats or fishing. The large quantities of seagrass in the Mediterranean are critical for producing oxygen, fighting climate change, protecting against coastline erosion, and supporting diverse underwater ecosystems.
“Blue EcoTech is also committed to raising awareness about the importance of marine habitats,” Massa-Gallucci said. “Even though Malta is surrounded by the sea, many people don't know the importance of what they see.”
Blue EcoTech hosts multiple events throughout the year to bring the community and researchers together to discuss the importance of marine environments and how to best care for them.
BlueEcoTech hosts events throughout the year to spread awareness about marine conservation.
Before she took the plunge and left academia to start a new business, Massa-Gallucci said there was a “steep learning curve” she had to surmount, but participating in the AWE program in 2022 gave her the knowledge she needed to set herself up for success.
“Coming from an academic background, I realized I needed training as an entrepreneur,” Massa-Gallucci said. “AWE provided that training and gave me access to a network of other women entrepreneurs who were in the same boat as I am.”
As a part of AWE, Massa-Gallucci was also given access to DreamBuilder, a learning platform developed by Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and Freeport-McMoRan Foundation. She said that DreamBuilder proved to be an invaluable resource for understanding the practical steps that needed to be taken to get any new business off the ground.
“DreamBuilder broke business planning down into bite-sized pieces of information,” Massa-Gallucci said. “It not only gave me a general sense of what a business plan was, but also helped me to practically create one.”
As a part of the AWE program, Massa-Gallucci had the opportunity to pitch her business to a panel of judges. Out of the 42 participating businesses, Blue EcoTech was the runner-up for Best Overall Pitch, winning $5,000 in seed funding.
Massa-Gallucci (center), graduated from AWE in 2022, receiving her certificate of completion from U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Gwendolyn “Wendy” Green (left) and Marisa Xuereb (right), President of The Malta Chamber of Commerce
Now equipped with funding, knowledge, and a powerful network, Massa-Gallucci said she is excited for Blue EcoTech to bring their products to the market in the coming years and to launch an underwater reforestation program in collaboration with the University of Malta.
“If you have a dream or an idea for a business, try to make it real — it’s a thrilling experience,” Dr. Massa-Gallucci. “Resources like AWE help make your dream a reality.”
The Academy for Women Entrepreneurs equips enterprising women with the skills they need to launch and scale successful businesses. In partnership with Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and Freeport-McMoRan Foundation, AWE has empowered more than 25,000 women in 100 countries with knowledge and networks. Since the U.S. Mission to Malta launched the program in 2021, AWE has helped empower more than 60 women in the Maltese archipelago.
For more information about AWE, visit: https://eca.state.gov/awe.
Hellen Beyioku-Alase, an exchange alumna of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program and a grant winner of the 2022 Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF), knows the importance of being active within a democracy. It means making sure every voice is heard and every vote is counted – especially from marginalized communities like deaf women and girls in Nigeria.
As a deaf person and disability rights activist, Hellen knows how crucial it is to involve the deaf community in the voting process and how vulnerable they are to being taken advantage of, and misinformed about the political system.
Hellen has dedicated her time to improving how the deaf community participates in the voting process in Nigeria, along with providing them with the education and tools necessary to have their votes heard. As executive director of the non-governmental organization Deaf Women Aloud Initiative (DWAI) and the chair of the Deaf Women Association of Nigeria, Abuja Chapter, she strives to amplify the voices of deaf women in Africa whose voices have been drowned out by the convention and status quo.
“We have over 30 million deaf people and only a few vote,” Hellen said, adding: “We decided to organize this [project] on our own to sensitize them on the voting processes.”
Her project - “Promoting the Inclusion of Deaf Girls and Women’s Participation in the Political Process in Nigeria” - was funded through AEIF, a U.S. Department of State grant. It involved a variety of activities, including voter registration drives, voter education, sensitization campaigns, and media advocacy for balanced election coverage. It was carried out in collaboration with local organizations and stakeholders, and assisted 40 percent of the participants with getting permanent voter cards. The project also brought more media advocacy efforts, which increased media coverage of deaf women and girls in the election process.
As a result, the project was a major success, with one participant noting, “With the sensitization [training], I was no longer afraid to go out and vote.”
Hellen knows that her work is ongoing, noting that there is still a need for accessible communication methods in reaching deaf women and girls, partnerships and collaborations in ensuring sustainability and impact, and for continued advocacy efforts to ensure the political inclusion of deaf women and girls – and she’s making it happen, one project at a time.
The year was 2015. At the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, with thousands making the dangerous trek to Germany and Europe, Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Exchange Alumni Sarah Sexton was on her international exchange program, teaching in Hamburg, Germany.
“While I was there, I remember reading an article with a quote from Angela Merkel saying that Germany had once been a place that refugees had fled and now refuges are coming to Germany as a place of hope and opportunity,” says Sarah. “That really resonated with me.”
This was Sarah’s third time in Germany. When she was just nine months old, her family had moved to the country for her father’s work, and she would remain there until the age of 12. She returned in her undergraduate years as a press office intern at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin in 2013. But it was during her Fulbright ETA in 2015, witnessing the history of the Syrian refugee crisis unfold, that changed the path she thought she’d take.
Fulbright ETAs teach for 12 hours a week; the rest of the time, they’re encouraged to get locally involved. For Sarah, that extra time meant joining a gospel choir and volunteering at the German-American Institute (GAI), a bi-cultural center that was hosting an American Center, which was how she got involved in launching and teaching the English Access Microscholarship Program in Hamburg- and met several refugees and migrants, who were participating in the program.
“Working with those students really sparked my interest in refugee response work,” she says. “I had already been interested in education, doing the English Teaching Assistantship, but now that mission of offering hope and opportunity for families who fled their homes became what I wanted to do with the rest of my career.”
That work led to her eventual position as the Senior Manager of Advocacy and Communications for Humanitarian Programs at
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind
Sesame Street with a mission of “helping children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.” In her role, Sarah supports Sesame Workshop’s programs reaching children affected by the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises and advocates for increased investment in early childhood development in humanitarian settings globally.
A big part of helping children grow kinder is modeling, she says. The Sesame Workshop programs she works with – Play to Learn and Ahlan Simsim (“Welcome Sesame” in Arabic) – do just that. When asked about how, Sarah lights up and talks about her favorite characters on Ahlan Simsim, the award-winning locally produced Arabic-language version of Sesame Street airing across the Middle East and North Africa. The cast includes - but is not limited to – Jad, Basma, and Ma’zooza, a baby goat who eats everything round just like Sesame Street’s ’s Cookie Monster,.
“Kids relate to these characters and see themselves reflected on screen,” Sarah says. “Jad’s a yellow Muppet. He’s quite shy and very artistic. He’s new to the Ahlan Simsim neighborhood, just moved there, and it’s hard to make friends when you’re a little bit shy, but he meets Basma, who’s a purple girl Muppet. She’s gregarious, she likes to sing - she’s a born performer, and they become fast friends and go on adventures together. And that’s intended to model the spirit of welcoming newcomers into a community and celebrating our differences. Oftentimes, Basma will jump into an adventure without thinking it through first, where Jad is the planner, and will make sure they have a plan for their day’s activities. So it’s really celebrating what we can bring to the table and [how we] benefit from one another.”
The Ahlan Simsim initiative is a partnership with the International Rescue Committee and independent evaluators at NYU Global TIES for Children that was made possible by the MacArthur Foundation’s inaugural 100&Change Award in 2017 with $100 million to bring critical early learning and nurturing care to Syrian refugee children. This investment It was followed by a matching grant in 2018 by the LEGO Foundation to launch the Play to Learn program, which supports Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh and expands the impact of the Ahlan Simsim program in the Middle East.
Building on Ahlan Simsim and Play to Learn, Sesame Workshop has also expanded its work to support children affected by conflict and crisis globally through the Welcome Sesame initiative reaching children across the Middle East, Latin America, East Africa, and most recently Afghanistan and Ukraine.
Language Access as a Way Forward
Sarah was not only inspired by the words of Germany’s former chancellor during her international exchange. She was also influenced by one of her students in the English Access Microscholarship Program -- a refugee twice over from Afghanistan, whose upward trajectory Sarah has followed in the years since.
Zahra Yaqubi, an
English Access Microscholarship Program ExchangeAlumni, had left two homes by the time her family made it to Germany. Her family fled Afghanistan in 1998, when the Taliban took over the city of Mazar-e-Sharif and started killing most of the Hazara people.
“The main reason[s] why we left our home country are several: first, we belong to a minority group called Hazara,” Zahra says. “They were killing most of the Hazara people and arrested my grandfather while the rest of the family escaped the city.”
The family escaped through Pakistan and made it to Iran, where they remained until 2014 only to go on the move again, this time bound for Germany. This is
where, at the age of 15 and alone, Zahra enrolled in the English Access Microscholarship Program and met Sarah.
“The English Access Program taught me to believe in my strengths and do my best until my dreams are no longer a dream, and this is what made me the person who I am today,” Zahra says. “It’s a great opportunity to learn a lot, to experience a lot, and to bloom.”
Inspired by the German doctor who was volunteering in the Morea refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece and who healed her ankle that was injured during Zahra’s crossing from Turkey to Greece, Zahra finished her initial schooling in 2019 and then volunteered in Greece as a medic with Medical Volunteers International. Then, in 2022, she co-founded No Border Medics to support refugees in Calais and Dunkerque in France. Zahra is also now studying to become a doctor herself to bring healthcare to people despite borders.
“Someone like Zahra, who had to flee home and come to a new place, what she wants to do most is help others like herself and her new community by providing healthcare,” says Sarah. “And I think that’s incredible.”
It’s clear from the work of both ExchangeAlumni that 2015 was a fateful year, one that continues to shape the trajectory of the humanitarian advocate and the soon-to-be doctor of medicine.
Gilman Scholarship ExchangeAlumni Ryanna Miller went abroad before the age of social media — before Instagram Stories were ubiquitous, before TikTok dances went viral, and before Reels comparing how people do or say things in one country versus another became ubiquitous. So she was frequently asked questions that now seem mundane, like what she ate and what being in South Africa was like. She was also questioned for even traveling to a place as remote as Africa:
“I was an anomaly,” she says. “People thought I was interesting and a little weird, and [that I was] different that I went to Africa.”
But the main comment she received when she returned home was: “I would love to study abroad, but I don’t have a passport.”
At the time, Ryanna — who grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, where she describes her school experience as a “mini United Nations” with 51 languages spoken and a place where you could get every kind of cuisine — was attending Alabama A&M University, one of the 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States. In Alabama, she had her first experience of being surrounded only by people who looked like her, which she says when she arrived as a freshman was its own kind of culture shock. As a senior, when she returned after her international exchange, she told everyone what they needed to do to start the process.
Now a real estate agent and the co-founder of the non-profit, Diplomatic Perspective, Ryanna has set out to change the equation, starting from a realization she had when she returned from her international exchange program.
“Within my community, the Black community in America, we have faced different travel segregation,” she says. “And what travel segregation looks like, stemming from Juneteenth, to directly the year after Juneteenth in 1866, vagrancy laws appeared. There was unsafe conditions for being Black and traveling in America. If you were seen to be going from one place to the next, and were perceived not to have a home — even if you had a home, you could spend three months in a work camp.”
That fear, and then Jim Crow Laws, have shaped the way that Black Americans participate in travel, she says. Those laws, which started after the Civil War, were locally upheld but dominated much of the United States for over 70 years, systematically affecting everything from schooling, to where one could spend their free time, and especially travel.
“As a Black American, you were kept with the livestock,” Ryanna says. “There wasn’t the opportunity to stop and use the restroom. You were not able to stop and eat in the same restaurant. You had to rely on others and pack your own food.”
It’s no surprise then that the legacy of Jim Crow and racism persists for Black Americans traveling today. According to Ryanna, the number of Black Americans who have passports is in the single digits, compared to the 46 percent of Americans overall who have passports. The long-lasting trauma and enforced culture of the past are still here to this day, and Ryanna wants to change it, saying that the low percentage shows a tremendous need to spread the message of the possibility of accessing the world and of the safety of travel.
“For me what I see is that the numbers are not there of African Americans having that passport,” Ryanna says. “To me, what that tells me is that there is a huge need for not only access to our global world, but in understanding that it’s okay to get out, it’s okay to travel. There [are] so many systems that are set in place for safe travel, not only by the State Department, but you can do it as a family, or you can do it as travel buddies, or you can do it as solo travel.
Ryanna started Diplomatic Perspective with the goal of reaching HBCU students and high school students, and to provide an education about the world that previously hasn’t been available. Her organization gets the participants their first U.S. passport for free and teaches them about international affairs, conflict resolution, intercultural communication, and humanitarian affairs, as well as provides international development with the opportunity to work with a real international non-government organization (NGO).
In 2021, Ryanna applied for and won a Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund (CDAF) grant from the U.S. Department of State for her “REACH: HBCU Global Institute” project. The project involved a virtual, three-day conference that was organized by Ryanna and Jacquelyn Shipe, the CEO of Global Ties Alabama. Nearly 400 students and faculty from Alabama’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), international exchange professionals, and U.S. exchange alumni participated in the event, and heard from more than 30 speakers from different international careers and backgrounds, including Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley. .
Diplomatic Perspective, meanwhile, just graduated its second cohort or class of students who are from the DC public school system and Prince George’s County in Maryland. Like any strategic business owner, Ryanna has plans to expand their operation to Baltimore County in the coming year and beyond, all while maintaining balance with the non-profit, her real estate and consulting career, and her personal life. She says her secret to staying centered is a mix of meditation, exercising, family and friend support, but also the mantra that “one percent better goes a long way.”
“Each day I wake up, and I work, [and think,] ‘How can I be one percent better? How can [I] make Diplomatic Perspective one percent better? How can I make this particular project one percent better?’” she asks. “To not just think that it has to be 100 percent perfect all the time, but setting those expectations for myself and for my organizations that I work with and of course, Diplomatic Perspective, has been very calming, to know, that it might not be 100 percent better, but one percent better today is a win, and I’ll take that.”
Her work making the global world more accessible through her relentless drive doesn’t end with her mission with Diplomatic Perspective, though. Ryanna will soon add another international exchange to her experiences with a tour with the U.S. Speaker Program, which will give her the chance to continue to inspire audiences around the world. More locally, ExchangeAlumni will have the chance to hear her speak as well in an upcoming Career Connections seminar held in Washington, D.C. at the State Department as Ryanna conducts a fireside chat with the newly confirmed Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Liz Allen, proving that her perspective is an important one both domestically and abroad.
From sweeping floods across Pakistan to devastating wildfires in California, climate change continues to advance, weaving its way throughout daily lives.
“There are nearly two billion people in the world whose lives have been affected by climate change. The challenge is in front of us. It’s right outside our window,” says Dr. Adil Najam, a global policy expert and International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) ExchangeAlumni who is stepping into the role of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) President.
But all is not lost. Dr. Najam believes that people understand the gravity of the climate crisis, and the challenge now isn’t convincing people that something ought to be done – it’s about empowering them to take accountability.
“There’s a lot of despair – we understand the gravity – but I hope we can take the energy of the anger and turn it into action,” he says.
It has become a personal mission of Dr. Najam – throughout his tenure as a longtime WWF board member, as the inaugural dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and with his most recent appointment as WWF President. By stressing the urgency surrounding the current climate crisis, he hopes to help position the issue as a present-day challenge we can collectively work toward addressing.
This involves looking at the role we, as individuals, play – while Dr. Najam is sure to not overlook the role of business and government, he acknowledges it’s a multi-faceted effort that requires us, as consumers, to lead first.
For example, we can decide not to drive ourselves, but if we instead decide to take an Uber, “those emissions are not the Uber driver’s, but still ours.” By being conscious of the impact of such decisions, Dr. Najam explains, we can show business and institutions we are ready to make a change – and when business and institutions see this consumer behavior change, they will be encouraged to take action.
Dr. Najam completed his IVLP in the early 1990s, during the height of his career. With his prior experience in Pakistan, the IVLP exchange gave him a chance to study democracy and elections in the United States as he traveled to numerous states and met a slew of interesting people, including then-governor of Arkansas, President Bill Clinton.
What was most rewarding, he says, was being exposed to the value of networking and community. Since his exchange, he’s met with numerous IVLP groups who have come through Boston, and he’s had the chance to continue to learn from these exchange participants. He sees the power of exchange in “meeting people, seeing their work in action, and then translating this work into a personal context.”
Additionally, as a former journalist, Dr. Najam says some of the most valuable life lessons he’s gained have been through people – during unexpected conversations on a bus ride, for example, or other spontaneous moments.
On his recent appointment as WWF President, Dr. Najam says he is humbled, adding that he hopes “to leave the planet no worse than when I came into it, and hopefully better.”
Dr. Najam steps into his new role as WWF President July 1, 2023.
The U.S. Department of State in collaboration with World Learning is pleased to announce the Spring 2023 Professional Fellows Program Alumni Impact Award (AIA) winners: Mr. Brian Malika (Kenya), Ms. Raluca Negulescu-Balaci (Romania), Ms. Phan Thi Hoang Hoa (Vietnam), and Mr. Brian Clauss (USA).
With backgrounds in inclusive disability employment, civic empowerment for women, technical education for children, and legal aid for the disadvantaged, these four AIA winners joined the Spring 2023 Professional Fellows Congress to accept their awards and share their experiences and achievements with current Fellows.
The Professional Fellows Congress is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by World Learning, an international nonprofit organization.
The Professional Fellows Congress took place in Washington, DC from June 6-8, 2023. To learn more about the AIA winners, read their bios below.
(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Kenya) Mr. Brian Malika, hosted by the Association of University Centers on Disabilities in fall 2018, believes that the UN's Agenda 2030 for achieving a fairer, inclusive, and safer world for all can be accelerated when traditionally marginalized populations such as women in rural areas, persons with disabilities, and youth from informal settlements are meaningfully heard and involved in the development of their communities. Currently, Mr. Malika serves as the Director at One More Percent, a grassroots non-governmental organization that advocates for digital rights, inclusive disability employment, climate change, and sex equality. Mr. Malika is also a civil society advisory board member with Tech for Democracy, an initiative of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he actively participated in drafting the 2021 Copenhagen Pledge that gives digital rights recommendations to leading tech companies such as Google and Meta. Previously Mr. Malika served as a Youth Task Force Member with the British Council (Nairobi office), where he spearheaded a series of qualitative and quantitative research activities that were crucial to the drafting of Kenya's National Report on Youth Employment. He is a trained social worker who loves going on long walks in the forest and is a passionate defender of wildlife. In 2022, Mr. Malika was named a Dalai Lama Peace Fellow because of his role in creating a safer, fairer, and accommodative work culture for youth with disabilities.
(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Romania) Ms. Raluca Negulescu-Balaci, hosted by the Great Lakes Community Action Partnership in spring 2013, is the Executive Director of UiPath Foundation, a global nonprofit organization that enables underprivileged children from Romania and India to reach their potential through access to 21st century-oriented education. Ms. Negulescu-Balaci has 14 years of experience in designing and implementing innovative programs in vulnerable communities, linking education to technology, arts, sport, and community organizing. In 2013, Ms. Negulescu-Balaci was a Legislative Fellow in the Professional Fellows Program, focusing on building grassroots democracy in minority communities. She subsequently received the Human Rights Award of the Embassy of France in Romania for her local women civic initiative, the Mothers’ Club. Ms. Negulescu-Balaci has written extensively about structural racism against Roma and ethnic profiling in European reports commissioned by the European Network against Racism in Europe and the European Roma Grassroots Organizations Network. From 2017 to 2019, she was the Board Chair of the Fare network, an international organization with more than 150 members in nearly 40 European countries that works to advance social inclusion of marginalized and disenfranchised groups via football and to engage policymakers, key players, and governing bodies in the anti-discrimination movement. She is an alumna of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, and a 2015 Fellow of the Young Leaders Program of Aspen Institute Romania. Currently, Ms. Negulescu-Balaci is also a member of the board of the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), an international, Brussels-based nonprofit organization with a pan-European membership and nearly 30 years of experience, with the mission to empower citizens in order to create a more inclusive and stronger European Union by promoting and defending citizens’ rights and by developing and supporting mechanisms to increase citizens and citizen organizations’ democratic participation in, and engagement with, the EU.
(INTERNATIONAL AWARDEE, Vietnam) Ms. Phan Thi Hong Hoa,
hosted by Portland State University in fall 2013, worked as an educator and business leader at Apollo English from 1996 as their first employee to 2021 as Director of Operations. During those 25 years, she contributed greatly to Apollo’s growth from a small team with no students to 2000 staff, over 50 schools, and nearly 30,000 students. She considers her biggest achievement to be that she built a very strong team through the Talent Development Program. During the last 10 years, over 80% of managers and leaders at Apollo English have come from their internal team; many of those were directly recruited, trained, and coached by Ms. Hoa. The Talent Development Program has proven to be the number one contributor to the sustainable growth of the organization.
In early 2022, after an acquisition and rebranding, Ms. Hoa was appointed the Managing Director of a new venture during the pandemic with complex Covid regulations. Since January 2022, what is now Sky International Preschool has coped well and has been able to offer creative and innovative programs for the learning community. These programs enabled the kindergarten to not only survive the school closures and retain all staff during the pandemic but thrive as they reopened to expand and recruit and celebrate in 2022.
Throughout her career, Ms. Hoa has been a passionate and active learner. She gained Distinction in her MBA from Solvay Business School in 2003 and was awarded “Alumni with Most Potential.” In 2016, she was awarded the Australian Leadership Award by the Australian Government.
(U.S. AWARDEE) Mr. Brian Clauss is an arbitrator and mediator of Labor, Employment, and Commercial disputes. Together with his attorney wife Andrea, they own Clauss Alternative Dispute Resolution. His legal background began as a prosecutor in Chicago, Illinois and then he later defended county government in employment and labor matters. Understanding that disputes can be resolved outside a courtroom, he started a dispute resolution practice in 2004.
Mr. Clauss travels the United States resolving workplace disputes and throughout the world as an educator. He has spoken to hundreds of groups in the United States, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In addition to founding one of the nation’s free legal clinics for military veterans in 2006 at the now University of Illinois Chicago Law School, he recently co-developed a master’s program concentration in dispute resolution for the University of Arizona Law School.
As a placement host for the Professional Fellows Program, Mr. Clauss has hosted a number of Fellows at the University of Illinois John Marshall Law School in Chicago, and has since remained in touch as a mentor, friend, and collaborator. Under Mr. Clauss’s guidance, Fellows have worked with various legal-aid and pro-bono programs, developing the legal frameworks needed to establish similar programs for vulnerable people and underserved communities in their home countries.
The Professional Fellows Congress is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). World Learning is administering the event in collaboration with ECA and 12 partner organizations.
On February 6, 2023 two earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude struck regions of Syria and Southeastern Türkiye. They were followed by more than 7,500 aftershocks and two more earthquakes, resulting in more than 54,000 deaths, and the displacement of 2.7 million people in Türkiye and 500,000 people in Syria, according to USAID.
But amid the incomprehensible destruction and loss of life, there is hope, brought by the efforts of one Exchange Alumni who wants to maintain the collective culture of the region.
Immediately after the first earthquakes struck, Ebru Baybara Demir, an award-winning chef, business woman, and an alumna of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), set up soup kitchens in the student dormitories of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in the affected regions of Osmaniye, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, and İskenderun, called Gönül Mutfağı (Soul Kitchen) with the help of a friend. In the first two months, she and her team cooked and distributed close to 10 million meals.
“From the first day on, all operations are conducted voluntarily and by volunteers,” she says. “Every stage, from food to logistics, proceeds on a voluntary basis. Around 200 people work in the kitchen for cooking, cleaning, managing, distributing, carrying, and other needed positions. Volunteers who have different professions just as engineers, academicians, doctors, or housewives come from different cities of Turkey [sic] and abroad.”
Her team is also still carrying out a few of Chef Ebru’s many social projects, like championing local agriculture and traditional food to her native city of Mardin and training close to 200 local Turkish and Syrian women in her kitchen at the Cercis Murat Mansion.
One project she cites that has contributed to the earthquake aid is her “From Soil to Plate Agricultural Development Cooperative,” which produces 200,000 meals daily through sustainable farming practices and has been offering a way for donors to buy local products for victims online.
The Road to Mardin
Even though Chef Ebru’s work has become synonymous with Mardin, she didn’t start off there. She grew up and was educated in Istanbul, Türkiye’s most populous city, on the Western Coast. Her father migrated to the city like many others for the opportunities there shortly after her birth in 1976, including to educate his three daughters at a time in which Chef Ebru says it wasn’t seen as an advantage to have a daughter.
But 23 years later, her roots called to her, and after finishing a degree in Tourism Guidance from Marmara University, she set off for Mardin where she was determined to break ground.
“Unfortunately, Mardin, where I returned at the end of the 1990s, had no tourism businesses except a 3-star hotel and a small restaurant. However, with its different cultures, cuisines, rituals and historical texture, Mardin was truly [made for] tourism,” she says.
Indeed, the city and region is part of the larger cultural and culinary richness of the Southeast that has been affected by the earthquakes, including Antakya, the capital of the province of Hatay, whose history dates back to the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, as well as Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Malatya, Adıyaman, and areas in Syria. Estimates on the damage to these important cultural centers are still ongoing, but many of the sites hold meaning across faiths in the two countries. The Earthquakes Recovery and Reconstruction Assessment (TERRA), which was carried out by the Republic of Türkiye with support from the UN, the European Union (EU), and the World Bank, reports that more than 60 percent of the 2,863 cultural heritage structures in the region examined by experts were damaged.
The U.S. response to the earthquakes has been focused on humanitarian aid first, with nearly $235 million in humanitarian assistance provided to date and an additional $115 million in private funding pledged to help victims, as well as the establishment of a 100-bed emergency “Turn-key” field hospital by the U.S. Department of Defense in Hatay. But beyond the pressing humanitarian needs, there is also the awareness of the importance of preserving the area’s rich culture, including the intangible cultural heritage to which Chef Ebru has devoted enormous effort.
The Cultural Heritage Center (CHC) in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has been tracking the damage to cultural heritage from the start and is working with regional and international partners to assist.
“Recovery of tangible and intangible cultural heritage plays a vital role in bolstering the resilience of communities following a disaster,” the office says. “We are working with partners in the region to identify opportunities to aid heritage recovery and demonstrate U.S. respect for the rich history, traditions, and diversity of the affected communities.”
CHC’s Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has supported earthquake recovery efforts following past disasters like those in Nepal (2015), Mexico (2017), and Albania (2019). International expertise developed in these and other projects will be an asset for recovery in Türkiye and Syria in the coming years.
What Happens Next
When Chef Ebru thinks about what makes Mardin and the region special, she of course goes back to the food.
“Each cuisine has its own unique flavors, stories, and rituals,” she says. “But I think it is the blending of local products and traditional methods that makes that cuisine unique. The best material to give the flavor of the cuisine is the local products of that region.”
It is that blend of local products and tradition among the people she’s been helping and the ones she’s helping now that makes her latest social project so important. She credits her IVLP exchange on “Addressing Refugee and Migration Challenges” in 2018 with giving her best practices to apply to her ongoing work on social gastronomy to projects with refugees, which no doubt is more vital today.
“This is the disaster of the century,” she says. “We have a lot of people lost. People’s lives changed overnight. We face a process that cannot be easily recovered. However, the important thing is that we learned what solidarity and nationality mean here. Despite that we are overcoming this challenging time together, as a nation.”
