SEASON 3

How can you be a rock band without instruments – and connect with people through song? Tune in to the next episode of Voices of Exchange and discover how one a capella group, The House Jacks, created a pitch-perfect connection through song and how their music has struck a chord with audiences across the world, most recently in Latvia and Estonia.

With a special holiday treat at the end, this final episode of Season 3 is one you won’t want to miss.

Catch Voices of Exchange on all major podcast platforms. Subscribe at https://voices-of-exchange.captivate.fm/listen.

Transcript
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Transcript

Emily Rand

As the “first rock band without instruments,” The House Jacks aren’t like an a capella group you heard in college. The group leans into the texture of sounds made by the human voice, and has shared the stage with iconic artists like Ray Charles, LL Cool J, and James Brown. 

Asha Beh

But it was on their first cultural exchange when they found themselves a stone’s throw away from Russia that they had unexpected moments of pitch perfect connection and speaking to the heart through song.

Maria Eliades

From Britney Spears to Michael Jackson, Queen, and Prāta Vētra, this is even an episode you won’t forget. There’s even a “holiday treat” at the end, courtesy of The House Jacks to you…

Austin Willacy

So my name is Austin Willacy. I am an Exchange Alumni, and in the band The House Jacks, which is an acapella band, I sing high tenor, and that's, that's most of what I do in the band on stage. And I will pass it to Colin.

Colin Egam

Hello, I'm Colin Egan. I am [an] ExchangeAlumni, and I am also a member of The House Jacks. I mostly sing tenor in the group. I also arrange quite a bit and help facilitate some of the music for us. I would take my [turn] and pass it to Greg. 

Gregory Fletcher

My name is Greg Fletcher or Gregory Fletcher, whichever you prefer. I too am an Exchange Alumni... I also sing in the group, The House Jacks, where I primarily sing low bass. I’ll pass it off to… Let's go with Tracy. 

Tracy Robertson

Hi. My name is Tracy. I am a member of The House Jacks, and also an Exchange Alumni. And in The House Jacks, I am primarily a vocal percussionist, making drum sounds on my face.

Yes, yes, passing it off to Grayson.

Grayson Villanueva

Um hi! My name is Grayson Vinueva. I am an Exchange Alumni, and I'm also with The House Jacks. I sing high tenor, um, and outside of that I also, um, record secret videos of the guys so we can post it on social media.

Austin Willacy

Yeah. And one thing I'd also like to just add to Greg's... Greg seems to be the person in the group who sings all of the leftover notes, so like when we're- when we all have the songs that we sing that have the melodies through this and that, and Greg is very creative and very musically adept, and so just finds all these beautiful notes and adds beauty to everything.

Asha Beh

So what was your inspiration behind becoming the first rock band without instruments?

Austin Willacy

Um, started having groups that were offshoots of the Glee Club or the choirs at their respective schools, and would have Octet of up to like 16 to 20 people, and the repertoire of the group evolved such that they were doing more popular stuff or jazz stuff, um that would benefit from a smaller ensemble approach than trying to get 120 people the same ‘Toxic’ and have it sound like Britney Spears. And what happened with that is that the type of arranging that was done became not so choraly derived and became sort of textual, so that there was a focus on replicating more instrumental textures, and so based upon that I was like, “Well, wait if we can sort of do textures that aren't recognizably vocal and map in people's minds, like keyboard sounds or guitar sounds, or horn sounds. If we have somebody who is also doing drum sounds, beat boxing, then we could actually have a pretty lean lineup and have something that sounds more like a vocal band, um than a small, a cappella ensemble.” 

And so that was where the vision came from. The group was founded by a guy named Deke Sharon, who was in The Beals Above at Tufts University, with three other founding members of the group, and the founding beat box was a guy named Andrew Chaikin, who was at Brown University in The Jabberwocks, a phenomenal vocal percussionist, and he was the one who really did the most beatboxing in this group at the founding and, and really sort of launched and helped to sort of gel that sound in that concept.

Maria Eliades

Yeah, I mean, I heavily associate a cappella with my time in college, and it feels very American to me, at least in that style, right not being the class tradition. So I was wondering how audiences overseas reacted on this tour to the music.

Austin Willac

I'll take this one, too, and at least first, and then see if other guys have something to say. One thing that was really gratifying for me actually on this tour of, both in Latvia and Estonia, is that we were told, often very gravely, “You know. So, House Jacks, we just need to let you know that you're in Eastern Europe, and people here are very reserved. … We know that you have traveled to different parts of the world, and you've been to very wild places, like Germany. Um, and over here, you know, you really shouldn't expect the audiences to respond to you the way that they do to Germany, so they're probably not going to clap along. They're probably not going to sing along, but just know that even though they're not doing that, at the end of the show they will probably give you a very enthusiastic reception, and that way you will know that they really liked what you're doing.”

It's like, OK. So we were notified. And then, after the fourth song on our first show we got a standing ovation. The audience was singing along with us. They were clapping along with us. Some were dancing in their seats, some were dancing on their feet, and that proceeded to happen at every show in Latvia and every show in Estonia. So, ah! It felt great. Um, and what, what I remember hearing from the promote- the promoters or the people who are operating the- um, I'm sorry, directing the performing arts centers is, “We've never seen this before like this is or, this is a unique thing, like we didn't know that this could happen here.” So yeah, I don't know if there are other guys who want to add more of theirs, but that was far, in a way like a very strong impression for me. 

Colin Egan

I think one of the really special things about us traveling to Estonia and Latvia specifically, was the fact that both countries have such strong singing cultures. Um so Estonia, you know, has their song festival. Every I think it's like, ah, every two years, and then every like five years or something, they have a very large gathering of people in pretty much every town, and then a, a big song festival ground in Tallinn, where we stayed, and having this singing culture around us, I think, really struck a chord. You-- we were able to connect through our voices and through harmony, and that really aligned with the culture of those countries, which I thought was really special. Whenever we sang, we sang a song in Latvian and we sang a song in Estonian, and the response to that was immense. Like we, we got standing ovations in both countries, just singing in their language just something as simple as speaking in their mother tongue reached them in such a way that they felt so moved. 

Um, one was Spogulīt, Spogulīt, which is from you know, a band called Prāta Vētra. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, and we adapted an arrangement from a local group, Cosmos, and it's a slow ballad, so like you wouldn't expect it to get a big raucous applause. But we got standing ovations at almost every show that we did, and then, whenever we sang Maripidu in Estonia, which is a traditional folk song, we just saw them swaying back and forth in the audience. It's a song about the sea. And seeing that joy was amazing. We, we had no idea that the response would be that strong, especially to the, to the songs in their native tongue.

Grayson Villanueva

Yeah, I think a big part of our show, too, is like audience participation, and also like the fact that we got to sing with a lot of different, like, local choirs as well was super impactful for us, and I'm sure for everyone watching. And yeah, we have- we don't have a show without audience participation. So even though we got the, the grave news of, like, people not being able to react to, to us in the way that maybe we are used to, like, we didn't find that to be the case at all. And I think one of the most impactful comments that we got at the end of the show was, I think, in the best way, they said, like, “Your sound is bigger than the spaces you perform in.” And I just thought that was so, like, beautiful, and we carried that through the rest of our shows.     

Austin Willacy

I think there's one last thing that I want to add to what Colin shared, which was about the the reaction that we experienced from, and the reception to the audience by the audience when we were singing in Latvian and Estonian, and I think, in Trevor Noah's “Born a Crime” [book], he refers to, I think, a Nelson Mandela quote, which is something to the effect of: “If you speak to a man in a language he understands. You speak to his head. If you speak to him in his language, you speak to his heart.”

And I think that one of the things that's so beautiful about the the AMA program and getting to be a part of the Voices of Exchange program is having that be an explicit ask, right? And actually being an explicit part of preparing us, like we - Colin and I - were working on an arrangement of La Bamba. You know it was like, “How is it for you to do something in a different language?” And it's a different challenge. It's their different musical idioms. You know there are different ways for us to stretch in our craft and learning how to make our mouths make different shapes; and as a cappella singers, particularly contemporary a capella singers. That's a challenge that we embrace, um, and it really paid off because the connection that we built with the audiences was not a head connection. It wasn't like, “Oh, wow! That is technically difficult. We really appreciate that you were able to do that, and those arrangements are so so clever.” It was a heart connection.

They felt honored that we took the time to learn those songs in their languages, and even if our pronunciation wasn't great– Anyway, the point that I was trying to get at is that, um, by putting in that time, and really investing ourselves in that the audience deeply appreciated it in a way that was not just like technical applause. It was really like, Wow! And we got to, you know, to learn a bit about the history of the, the various occupations. And how, um, how important preserving language is um, both um, just for itself, and also as, as it interweaves with the cultures there. So yeah, that was really amazing.

Emily Rand

I wanted to kind of follow up on that and touch on a story that I think you had shared previously about your time,... when it was during the morning you had taken a walk before performance, and you know, realized that just across the bridge was was Russia, and you know, kind of gave you this sense of the sort of geopolitical significance of, of your exchange. Can you kind of take us back to a moment - either this moment or another - when you had that sense?

Austin Willacy

One of the things that was really wonderful, um, ah, about Tiu is that she really made sure that we were learning about the places that we were going to, and she was providing a lot of context for us. Um, I learned that she - um, back in the day, she was a teacher. Um, and she did a really beautiful job for me of making sure that we got our needs met, and that we had enough time, and also that we were carving out time to see things that were significant, and learn about things that were culturally significant. And so, um, we did get a chance to go to a place that was right on the river bank.

Directly across the river from that is a bridge – I'm sorry, there's a bridge that spans the river rather and that's called The Friendship Bridge. Ironically, I think. And for me I live in, I live in the Bay area, so I'm like a good long way from Russia. Good, long way from Latvia and Estonia, and I've been watching some video clips of and following, like, news articles about what's going on in Ukraine or the war in Ukraine, and I mean, I guess, working with the sort of head versus heart, peace, or body, level like intellectually, and even like to a certain extent at the heart level. I understood how messed up it was, and how, how challenging it was, how confronting it was. I could almost throw a rock to Russia from where I was standing.  

That's when it hit me at the body level how close we were and what it might and or must be like for people who were living in Latvia and Estonia to be that close to Russia when Russia was doing what they were doing in Ukraine, knowing that those places have been formally occupied by Russia. So that was kind of, that was kind of, what happened for me.

It was really important too, I guess, you take the understanding to a deeper level to let it seek, sink in viscerally.

Colin Egan 

And following up on that, yeah, so we performed at the Narva Fall Festival. So it's basically in Estonia. They have different cities as different capitals of the season. And so we performed at the, the kind of, start of autumn in Narva, which is the autumn capital. That is a border town. It is, I think, over 90 percent Russian speaking. And it was a lot of gravity just being that close to the border, and like literally looking across the river and see – seeing Russia, knowing, knowing what everything that that has been going on, you know, in recent history, but also the- knowing that Estonia only got its independence from the USSR in the late 80s, so they're still kind of patching some of those wounds in in many ways, you know. Families separated a lot of –you, you know we, we encountered this mesh of humanity in that part of the world. I think, one of the things that was a common thread, though, was everyone's kindness. They- It was really a beautifully kind culture, from... There was a lady in the theatre in Narva that insisted on ironing my show uniform - like, would not let me touch it. She was like, “This is my job. I'm the costume manager here,” like, kind of like forcible hospitality, to a Russian, an older Russian lady who must have been in her, like, 80s [and] has clearly seen it all.

We, we were gathering in the lobby after after the performance, and you know, just mingling, mingling with everyone and saying, “Hi,” taking pictures, and I kind of was surprised because she just like grabbed my hand without making eye contact first, and I just kind of looked over, and she just said, “Spasiba, Spasiba. Thank you.” Um, and just having that human connection when I wasn't really expecting it really kind of hit me hard, especially being where we were in navva kind of feeling that shadow looming a little bit, but knowing, you know, knowing that the these everyday people are just kind, and they just want to be kind to one another.

Speaking to the ability of music to warm a space, a specific kind of call out, memory, was from our performance in Vinci in Estonia. One of the hosts of the cultural center did a speech at the end of the performance. And, thanked us for being there and said something to the effect of, “Today you have shared your warmth, you have shared this American music, and we will carry that warmth with us through the long winter ahead.” And that really, really got me. It was uh, such a powerful reminder of the power of spreading joy. Just spreading musical joy and not knowing where that’ll lead but knowing that someone will hold onto that, and carry that into hardship is a really powerful thought.

Asha

Speaking of spreading musical joy, what’s your favorite part about acapella music? 

Austin Willacy

Sure, um, the thing that's so fun about um, a capella music for me, and I think for us safe to say is that um, it's so relatable because everybody has a voice. And so, even if everyone you know isn't like, I can sing my beyonce because who can um, it's, ah, it's incredibly relatable. The mirror neurons in you see another person singing on stage, and the part of you that's like, “Ooh! I want to do that, and like I have a voice.” There's a part of me that can aspire to do that right. And so that degree of transparency and relatability really pulls people in, and what I experienced is discovering that there are actually a lot of - I don't know if this is the right term to use, but maybe - underground a capella fans who actually work for the American Music Abroad program, or at the embassies.

Um, because it turns out that we met one who sang in an a capella group in college and another person who dated someone in the a capella group and went to all their shows and all that. And so, um, apparently it was an extra treat, you know, for those folk to get to see us.

Having recognized that we kind of did grow out of that collegiate acapella tradition, and then sort of changed it right, updated it, and made our own thing of it. And so, getting a chance to connect after the performance, we were, you know, sharing like college acapella stories basically, like you know, touring this and pizza parties and all of that, which was really fun. And then also being told by both her and another representative from the Embassy in Tallin, saying: “You know you guys are actually amazing. You're doing incredible cultural diplomacy here, um, ah, at the musical level. And also the way that you are relating to the audience, and the way that you were speaking about what the experience means to you, is exactly what we're hoping will happen in terms of an exchange.” You know, we're, we're learning and growing by being there, and we're able to offer warmth. We're able to offer insight. We're able to offer, and encouragement and just laughter and joy by way of continuing to, to nurture ridges that have been built, and one hundred years ago I mean, we were celebrating one hundred years of friendship between Latvia and Estonia and the United States.

It's a huge deal, and we're really really honored to be there in that capacity, and that the cultural diplomacy element of it kind of slowly sunk in is like oh, workshop by workshop. When we're working with the students at the schools. It's like, oh, okay. Um, yeah. And so it kind of came to a beautiful conclusion. You know It'd be beautiful head at the at the end of the last night of the tour, which was our final show in Vimy and Estonia.

Filling in the song potholes

Asha Beh 22:08 

So, I'm just curious. Do you... How do you prepare for these shows? I mean, if they could just request anything. And, I mean, there's a pretty wide range of different songs that people can request...

Colin Egan

Well, we don't promise that they're ever going to be good. We will do them, and we will make them entertaining. So you know, we start with who can… Who, who remembers the most words? The - we kind of like, look around, make eye contact, see? Like, okay, do you- do you have this? Okay? And then someone just steps up, takes a crack at it. We kind of fill in the holes, you know. Tracy, Tracy will often offer a rhythmic motif on the drums - some, some kind of groove pattern. Greg will hop in on the baseline, kind of provide the foundation. And then whoever is not singing lead just kind of hops around and tries to identify the elements of the song that they remember that are sticky. And then using music theory, we just kind of come together on cords that make sense, and sometimes they don't. And that's okay, too.

I think we got “Toxic” about three or four times, so some secret Britney Spears fans in Latvia and Estonia. Um, we got a- we got a, a “Frozen” request, so that was adorable. We made a little girl's day. It was so sweet. A lot of, a lot of Michael Jackson, a lot of Queen. Everyone wanted to hear “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

And “Don't stop me now.” Um, but it was, it was fascinating. Just kind of here, you know, fielding requests and, and also realizing how much American music has permeated other cultures. That was really fascinating the, the breadth of knowledge of American music that they had.

Tracy Robertson

One of the best things that happens, I think, is something that's whatever ends up. Being powerful for the audience to see is like Sometimes they will say the name of a song, and, and it's either a song that we don't know, or for whatever reason the file is just not, it's not coming up. We're not. We're not able to pull it up. And so we end up taking whatever the sounds are that came out of their mouth occurring for us as a word or something, and that ends up being a prompt for something to happen, and that ends up being, you know, I think, those moments that the moments of us, like quote unquote, failing like completely falling flat, um, are probably you can easily justify that they are the most important moments that happen in the entire set. They contextualize the whole rest of the set in a totally different way.

Yeah, um, and the the reality that, like, “Oh, those are five humans like me, and we're- but we're doing this thing together right now.” That's, that's different than than the experience that most of us are having when we're going to um, especially in musical performance, we're really expecting that to be polished in a certain way. So I'm really grateful that, that this group does that, and that we were able to share something like that. That's so like, that's just so grounded. It's so down in the roots of what it is to be human, and that we got a chance to do that. There, that's really I'm grateful for that.

Maria Eliades

Yeah. I mean, that feels like a really important lesson to anyone who is is learning to be a musician or learning how to sing. And you mentioned that you were, you were seeing you were teaching kids, right, is part of the tour was that one of the things that you were importing on them? Or, were there other lessons that you were trying to give them while you were there? Aside from technical things about music…

I think one of the most fun things for, for me to do in an educational setting, and you know the whole. Everyone in the group has such a such a cool, rich- a history of educating it in our own ways. One of my favorite things is taking the technical stuff and breaking it down into small enough pieces that the way it's being taught actually just feels like we're playing, we're just. This is kind of a game, and, and for me being the book. For when I'm teaching people who haven't necessarily made drum sounds with their mouth before to teach that in such a way that it feels like there's, there's a conversation about it. Um! There is this - just this exploration of understanding my own capacity to create something, my own creative. Like there’s creative energy or something that comes out of me, too, like oh, interesting! And then there's this body, awareness, thing, and this awareness of, um, everything just everything that goes into like a, uh, in the moment, a very present interaction. And for me it's like the joy of that. So we come out of this. We come out of this thing. And now there's a room of 50 kids who know, really know and have experienced themselves making all the basic sounds, for example, that are necessary for me boxing, and the process that occurred by which that was achieved was this process that felt like a game, and that's, that's just super. That's just super fun for me. And uh, and I answer- lasting, it ends up having a lasting effect beyond them just now, knowing some technical thing.

Colin Egan

Yeah, I think Sorry. Go ahead, Austin.

Austin Willacy 

I was just gonna say that I feel like for anyone who's trying to learn anything, it doesn't matter if it's music or, like, how to make cookies or whatever. If I'm going to actually learn, I have to step into territory where I might fail. Um, that's, that's, you know. They say life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Right? And so I think about it like I have a comfort zone, a stretch zone in a panic. So, Panic zone, I'm too freaked out to pay attention and learn anything or retain it. Comfort zone, I'm not challenged, so I don't learn it and grow. And so that zone in between, that stretch zone - the edge of my comfort zone is where I can learn. And so one of the things that I think is powerful about the workshop that we got to do is, I think that just about all of them we did something where we did, uh, ah, involve the students in the school, and a little bit of percussion beatboxing right. We also did that in the audience– at, at our performances, and so, both with the students and the audiences we're inviting them to go on a journey, like, to stretch.

It's in a way learning how to beat boxes like learning a new language, making sounds in ways that my mouth or our mouths are not trained to do um, and discovering new new barriers or new challenges that I need to sort of break through or move around or over, and so I think that that was another aspect of both the workshops that we did with the students and the show. That was both a cultural exchange piece a piece of inviting people to go on a journey with us, and a journey within themselves to of exploration and and challenge, and then also something that made the pieces that were prepared like the pieces that weren't like the request that was like, and nobody really knew that one, you know. But it's under the umbrella of entertainment, and you can see for sure that everything here that we're doing on stage is happening for real for you right now, you know… Um, so I think that the thing that was highlighted again was that the the pieces that were prepared like there's a beautiful arrangement of a Billie Eilish song that Greg did that, that we were doing on this tour, and like there were some moments where, like I was almost overcome with emotion by how beautiful it was to be a part of making that, you know. And so, if I compare that to like one of the rockier requests, there is a huge gulf between the level of musical polish and cohesion and intention behind that, and so inviting them in, you know, to ah to basically like, “Hey, come on into the woodshed with us and see what happens.” And I really enjoyed getting to do that, and it felt great to be able to do that there and with these guys.

Colin Egan

I think, too, with the workshops. It was an interesting challenge that we had kind of a mixed bag of skill level with some of the different workshops, some of the workshops We were talking to a lot of non-musicians, and then some of the workshops. We were literally in a music school, you know, talking to kids that were really serious about music as a skill, and maybe developing into a career. So we adjusted how we structured it a little bit based on those different audiences. You know, kind of giving an introduction to what it is. We do what it is. What is a cappella? How do we build that? And then kind of showing the structure of, of how we kind of build on an arrangement, how we build out a song, um, and then inviting them to kind of be a part of that play with, you know, Tracy did a wonderful job of curating this kind of playful space for both percussion and we often did a lot of, like, singing and harmony, because we knew that it was such a singing culture. We wanted to bring them into that, and really, like, tune into that. 

And then for some of the you know, more musically-focused classes. Some of them were asking us about careers, right? Like we all do other jobs within music. We're all freelance professionals within the music world. So, being able to share some of that knowledge of, like, there are multiple paths here to become a musician. There are multiple paths to include music in your life every day, some of which you can make as a career, but also what are some of the ways that music is a part of your life, and in strengthening who you are. So I thought that some of those insights with, with some of those kids were really, really special. 

There was one kind of kid in particular at one of the music schools that was really interested in music technology, and I'm a recording and audio engineer, and seeing his eyes light up when I talked about a DAW, right, a digital audio workstation. He had never heard of that software before. And then he comes up to me afterwards, and I write down like all right. So, Ableton is a great place to start. There's also Pro Tools, and like just being able to see the light in his eyes, just tick of like. I love to write music, but I don't know how to start. I don't know how to get these ideas out, and just giving that seed, and like, who knows? Maybe a famous DJ will be coming out of Estonia in a few years. But his - the, the light in his eyes, was just like incredible to see that connection being made in his brain. It's wild.

Grayson Villanueva

I think that's the through line with all of the workshops that we did, is that, like whether they were like a music school that was like, you know, maybe a little more on a career focused, and or whether it was just like an extracurricular activity. For some of these kids the through line is, there is joy in music, and that's where we can connect together. That's what sustains a long career, or even just a long hobby that, like the-- fulfills you in all those capacities.

Colin Egan

Snaps to that.

Colin, Tracy, Austin

Happy holidays from The House, Jacks

Colin Egan

And a happy New Year.

“Last Christmas” sung by The House Jacks

Thank you to The Housejacks for sharing their exchange journey in Latvia and Estonia, and for a wonderful rendition of Wham!’s Last Christmas. 

And thank you, dear listeners, for tuning in to Voices of Exchange this season and this year. 

If you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until we meet again…

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! 


Everyone has a story to tell. On Voices of Exchange, tune in for stories of people, places, and international exchange. This podcast features many voices, all of whom are alumni of U.S. government exchange programs, including cultural and sports envoys, exchange visitors, U.S. Speakers, and more.

On Season 3, hear how augmented reality can redefine a place and its inhabitants; see American identity through non-immigrant eyes; explore climate activism in tribal nations and elsewhere; and, experience how hip-hop artist-educators are promoting multilateral relations.

Missed Season 2? Travel with us to Sri Lanka, Switzerland, France, Turkey, and even the International Space Station as we speak with the grandson of a famous oceanographer, a former NASA astronaut, a diplomat whose poetry draws on themes of the immigrant experience, and an architectural engineer/cultural preservationist.

And, on Season 1, hear how one student’s exchange program led him to pull the plug on a career as a doctor, how a non-profit founder is mobilizing “sea-citzens” to take action, and a paratriathlete inspires himself and us, and much more. New episodes of Voices of Exchange are released every two weeks on Spotify, iTunes, and wherever else you get your podcasts.

Voices of Exchange is brought to you by the Office of Alumni Affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). Join us on Instagram at @voicesofexchange to get the latest on our podcast.


SEASON 3: PREVIOUS EPISODES

Voices of Exchange Podcast
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Episode 9: Pivoting to in Person - Hip-Hop Diplomacy, Part 2

Description

What happens when five musicians who have never met before and haven’t performed in person since the start of the pandemic get together in Abu Dhabi and Dubai? In the second part of this hip-hop diplomacy story, the ExchangeAlumni team of Next Level artist-educators dive into the magic of connecting in person and serendipity. For more Voices of Exchange, visit alumni.state.gov/voicesofexchange. Subscribe at bit.ly/SubscribenowVoE.

Transcript

Aaron Myers
Yeah. I think the one thing the pandemic has taught us is that w- we can pivot and do things virtually. As we learned during the orientation process for Next Level, we can even do cyphers virtually, where people are playing music and free-styling with rhymes at the same time, but I've gotta say, there is no substitute for an in-person experience.
Asha Beh
Welcome to Voices of Exchange!
I’m Asha Beh…
Maria Eliades
and I’m Maria Eliades… We’re back for Part 2 of Hip Hop Diplomacy, when Team UAE – Aaron [A-ron] Myers, DJ Dirty Digits, Jazzmyn Red, Brown Jewel, and RTST - talks about the pivot to in-person learning and exchange.
Asha
With a touch of serendipity…
Asha
What was it like being in person at the U.S. Pavilion at Expo Dubai?
Eric - RTST
… surreal. It was really, really surreal.
Uh, I mean, up until that point, I, I, I just started deejaying, uh, like, at bars and clubs, like, aro- around Ju- July of last year, so I wasn't ready, kinda slowly dipping my toe back into it. But you know, I, I didn't expect to have, like, a hands-on, like, teaching experience like that anytime soon, so you know... And I think it's key to have, you know, you know... having it in person to, to d- ... to a degree because, like, you can learn this all online, for sure, but, like, having someone there, like, show you, you know, this is a two-click flare, this is a, you know... this is how you mix on beat. And just to see it directly in front of you, I think it's more impactful that way as opposed to just rewinding YouTube and... over and over again.
Brown Jewel
I think for me, like, uh, I... 'cause I already work in education and have to go into the schools, during that year, most of it have been virtual, and so making the transition from, okay, I'm typically at home and not in those spaces to taking this flight overseas, and just considering all of those things, it was... it was, you know... it was... it was a pinch of some nerves in there. (laughs) But once getting there, and because they did have so many things in place, like with the testing and just the mask, everything was just so... it felt like more, uh, safe, I guess, than being in New York. (laughs)
Brown Jewel
And it felt more comfortable, and I... also I feel like it was something I know that I needed 'cause, you know, like, having those in-person interactions, especially in learning, to... is really important and... for beat making. And like RTST was saying, like, there are certain things, yeah, you can watch it on YouTube and do your tutorials all day, but to actually have, like, in-person engagement on learning how to, like, use the tools to create is really important.
Aaron Myers
Yeah. I think the one the pandemic has taught is that w- we can pivot and do things virtually. As we learned during the orientation process for Next Level, we can even do cyphers virtually, where people are playing music and freestyling with rhymes at the same time, but I've gotta say, there is no substitute for an in-person experience.
Aaron Myers
I, I think it, it really, it allows us to see one another in a new different and more positive light. Uh, we recognize against the backdrop of some of the global conflicts happening right now, think about Russia, Ukraine, and other ones that have come before this, is that sometimes governments can't always get along, but when you connect in person and around a shared mutual interest, whatever it might be in, in the arts category, more specifically hip hop and, and our respective crafts, um, you start to, I, I think see one another in, in a different light. You have a greater appreciation for the people, for the culture, for the place, independent of whatever differences exist in the geopolitical context.
And you have relationships from which, at least in my case, I continue to say, not only from the other members of the team UAE, but from the student collaborators, you continue to derive inspiration and feel like you're part of a bigger community, uh, off of which you feed and allows you to continue to grow and thrive as an artist for whatever your ambitions are at being, uh, a part of this, this beautiful culture.
Jazzmyn Red
I'll jump in, too. Um, you know, u- uh, for me, like, I've always grown up with this notion of, like, music is the universal language. Um, it was actually, like, intentionally incorporated into my name, Jazzmyn, with two Zs, um, and music very much is the universal language. Like, music is something that connects us a lot of the time when words fail us, and hip-hop is, is based very much in community, right? So when you have programs like this that, not only take you into a different landscape, like take you to a different, you know, country to, to meet different people who come from a different place than you, but when you also have the ability to be brought there with people who are from different places from the same place you're from, right? Like, we are... We are from kinda all over the place here in this one group.
Um, you're, you're really creating bridges between so many spaces, and I think, like, right now, um, you know, with everything being on Zoom I think sometimes we can be really disconnected. Like, I- I've been online, basically, since early 2020. Like, I've been working from home. I've been in my house. Like, (laughs) you know, um, and having the experience where, like, you're, you're able to have cultural exchange, um, you're able to exchange within people who are within your same, you know, craft, uh, people from around the country that you're from and from other countries, it's just, like, the... it's everything. It's everything, and I think that, you know, with more programs like this with people who do get to meet more people and travel to more places and have more of these experiences, um, there can be more understanding. There can be more cultural acceptance. There can be a higher level of coexistence, um, so... Yeah.
Eric - RTST
Kind of bounce off that like, you know, there wasn't much of a language barrier in, in Abu Dhabi, um, and predominantly, you know, people spoke English, but you know, even if there, even if there was, even if they did speak, you know, Arabic for majority of the time, like we would've connected just via the skills itself. And I think that's the beauty of hip-hop. Like it's, it's an oral and like a visual experience and like, and I think people just are, you know, generally attracted to that. And I think it helps connect, you know, people of, you know, different, uh, you know, politics and different like, you know, uh, you know, different nationalities just, just, just on the four elements alone. So I think that in itself is a very beautiful thing and it's not, uh, often you get to see, uh, you know, uh, a music genre transcend past, you know, just the music itself.
Asha
For a team that initially connected virtually, you seem like you’ve known each other for ages. Was this the first time you’d all met?
Dan - DJ Dirty Digits
We were really connected first time through Next Level. I think there were some outside connections before that happened. I know myself and RTST are both DJs. Uh, we originally met in Cincinnati in 2016 at a DJ battle. Maybe it was 2015. I forget the year, RTST, you might have to help me out with that one, bro.
Eric - RTST
2014.
Dan - DJ Dirty Digits
'14. My God.
Eric - RTST
Yeah.
Dan - DJ Dirty Digits
Um, so we've actually battled a couple times before, so we know each other from the DJ battle circuit. And so, um, we had this rapport that we were fortunate enough to be able to continue and, um, spread throughout the, the UAE residency as well. Um, I'm not sure if the other artist had any previous connection. I was under the understanding that we really didn't, we just initially connected for Next Level and kinda used our background in hip-hop and what it has taught us and, you know, had this common vision from the very beginning we were able to spread throughout. But I want everyone else to speak, if you want to chime in as well.
Aaron
Yeah, I just wanted to add that while Jazzmyn Red and I are based in the same state, I had to go all the way to UAE to connect with them. (laughs) But it was worth the trip. Now, I feel like we're forever bonded in a unique way, as I am with other members of this team. And I wanted to compliment Jazzmyn Red in that she's continued to be an ambassador for hip-hop. She recently organized an event through, uh, Big Brothers Big Sisters, an organization with which she works that focuses on hip hop and how it can be a tool for healthy lifestyles, uh, and engaged me along with some other standout artists from, from our state here. And so from a worldwide level to a local level as she continues to put in that work. And so I had talked to you, Jazzmyn Red and thank you.
Jazzmyn Red
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, I'll also, you know, jump in. I, like Aaron said, like he was the closest in proximity to me 'cause we live in the same state about 45 minutes from each other, but we had never met before. I hadn't met anybody. Um, but I think like from the initial, so, so Digits did something that I really appreciated, where he had us meet a couple of times on Zoom. And the first time was a little awkward, I'm not gonna lie, low key somebody, I'm not gonna say who, did tell me that I looked mean. (laughs)
Brown Jewel
Yes, I said it. Yes. I said it.
Jazzmyn Red
(laughs) It was Brown Jewel. Brown Jewel was like, "Ooh, I looked at you and was like, I dunno if I'm gonna like her." Um, but we're mad cool. Um, so, you know, I think that was interesting like getting everybody on the Zoom and like getting, uh, a feel for everyone. Um, and then we had a, we had a second Zoom meeting I believe, uh, where we got to connect even a little bit more. And then we, like we had all gotten each other on socials, so I was able to follow these folks before like we left. I, I found out like RTST was also like a pit parent, a pit bull parent. So I was like, "Okay, we're locked in." Like Aaron lives near me, we're both from Boston. He knows what's going on. Like me and Brown Jewel were just connected from jump, I felt like so it was, it was cool to like get through social media and get a background on like who you're going to be spending time with, and then through the Zoom meetings like kind of break the ice with each other already and get a feel for each other's like personalities and how it's, how like it feels to be within the group. Um, and I just thought it was really interesting because, you know, when you take this many people who don't know each other at all and you put them together, anything can happen, right? And it just so happens that like for us, like I don't, I don't wanna speak for everybody else when I speak for me, it just so happens for us through my lens like it just-- it worked out so seamlessly and so perfectly. Like we are all, like, really friends for real now.
Jazzmyn Red
Like I already told Brown Jewel and Digits, like I'm pulling up to Boston, uh, to, to Brooklyn. I'm gonna grab Aaron and we just gonna go, and RTST you're gonna have to meet us via - family reunion. You know what I'm saying? Like so, um, yeah, I mean it was just really interesting how that all kinda, uh, came together.
Dan - DJ Dirty Digits
Can I quickly shout out Jewel, speaking to selflessness. We have artist days, we have this, we have schedules and we have days off. We have rest days. That's, that's part of my job as a site manager to make sure the artist can enjoy the experience as well. I remember, I think it was like our first day off, like I'm checking out on the team, seeing what everyone's doing, I can't find Jewel. Jewel thought the best thing to do 'cause the students really wanted to get more time in, is she, she took her day off and went back to teach. So she's back in with the students to give them everything. That's like, Jewel, amazing. So like, I just wanted to shout out Jewel for that. Like speaking to selflessness, that has to go noted, you know, like super inspiring.
Brown Jewel
Thank you. Yeah, to add to what Jazzmyn was saying, like I really didn't know anybody out of all of them. And I think I started connecting with RTST on Instagram 'cause I saw he was from Chicago and I'm from Wisconsin. So Chicago's like one hour drive from my hometown. So I was like, "Okay, at least I got like a little connection with RTST before we get there." But as Jazzmyn said, I thought she was mean and (laughs) I mean, just, she looked so serious, I, I couldn't figure it out.
Jazzmyn Red
I'm not.
Brown Jewel
Yeah, we all know that now, but at the time, like, I was like, "Oh, I don't know how this-
Jazzmyn Red
No.
... how, how this group is gonna be, you know? And I think I expressed that I think to Dirty and Junious as well. I was like, I was really shocked really at how much of a synergy we all had. You know, we would have dinners and lunches together and talk for hours, and we would like literally shut the restaurants down just with conversation, you know? So it was just really a great experience, you know, that we all, you know, despite not really knowing each other, was able to connect so strongly overseas.
Yes, shout outs to the great Baklava awakening (laughs) of 2021. (laughs)
Yeah, no, I mean, i- it- it's, it's funny because like, uh, my, my wife and I have been watching a lot of Love Is Blind this past week, and I think we all had that moment going into, uh, Abu Dhabi. Like I, yeah, we never met outside of me and Dan knowing each other through battling. Uh, it's wild how serendipitous that, that worked out. And it was all through just a shared love for hip hop and just kind of like there wasn't a day where we weren't quoting like random hip hop songs just out of the blue and everyone was cool with it and just, were just making puns, shooting 'em left and right and not like, it was, it was cool. I felt, like I felt almost comfortable just like stepping out of the airport and just being in the car with like, you know, all of us just, and we already just kind of like, you know, parlaying off each other like right at that moment. So yeah, it, you know, it was great. It was like, that was like one of a kind of experie- one of a kind experience. Uh, you never hear anything like that, that often. (laughs)

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Episode 8: Music and Mutual Interests - Hip-Hop Diplomacy, Part 1

What happens when five musicians who have never met before and haven’t performed in person since the start of the pandemic get together in Abu Dhabi and Dubai? Music, magic, and lifelong connections through “hip-hop culture.”In the first part of this hip-hop diplomacy story, the ExchangeAlumni team of Next Level artist-educators and Next Level Director Julian Brickhouse chop it up on music and mutual interests, and the breakthroughs they made in the United Arab Emirates.For more Voices of Exchange, visit alumni.state.gov/voicesofexchange. Subscribe at bit.ly/SubscribenowVoE.

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Episode 7: Breaking the Silence

Marie Christina Kolo wasn’t trying to be Wonder Woman when it came to the secret she kept for many years. But in her work as a climate activist, she wanted to be strong for her community. It wasn’t until she became a Mandela Washington Fellow that Marie Christina found the courage to get vulnerable, which allowed her to make a deeper impact.

Transcript

 

Marie Christina Kolo:

Hi. I'm Marie Christina Kolo from Madagascar. I'm an ExchangeAlumni.

So, first of all, if I have to describe myself, I say that I'm actually an ecofeminist in Madagascar. I'm a climate activist. I do mostly work about mobilizing youth on climate change issues. Madagascar is one of the most vulnerable countries regarding climate change impact. And thanks to this fight, let's say that, thanks to this fight, I got many recognition at the national and international levels. I was able to represent Madagascar at different international organizations. I was able to interact with the UN General Secretary, but, as I often say, I live in a very patriarchal society.

In Madagascar, women, we are even called, you know, here we say [foreign language 00:03:26]. It means that women are weak furniture. We are even less than animals. So, yes, I live in a very patriarchal country where youth are not considered. And when I was able to participate to the Mandela Washington Fellowship, I learned so much more about my ... I had this opportunity to think more about my leadership journey and how I should improve it, how I can do better. And then I realized that, of course, many people consider me as a leader in my country, but I still felt a bit incomplete because I wasn't sharing something that was very deep and personal, the fact that I was a rape survivor.

I am a rape survivor, and it really, it truly affected me in many ways. I tried to be ... I won't say that I tried to be a Wonder Woman or a superhero, but I… I wanted to be strong and to prove to other people that I wasn't only a victim, that I was able to build, to bring a positive impact in my community. And I keep this secret for so many years, but, after the fellowship, few months after I came back to Madagascar, I decided that, even if people know me for my activism -- activist for climate, that I had to do something more. I had to feel complete. I think, as a leader, it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to not be seen like this superhero  person.

Marie Christina might not see herself as a hero, but she has made so much of an impact in her community that she was selected for the 2022 Leadership Impact Award in her work as a social entrepreneur, eco-feminist, and climate activist –and for leading the fight against rape culture in Madagascar. Her efforts to tackle gender-based violence started shortly after her Fellowship –-- and went even further after she won a State Department -funded grant known as the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund, or AEIF...

And so, yeah, I think it was six, seven months after my Fellowship, I decided on a public speaking event. I was invited to share about my personal story, share about how it affected me and, little by little, I start building a movement fighting against rape culture. And I think that it - actually, it was the first time that someone known in the civil society shared publicly about this taboo in Madagascar. And then I got support from other alumni, and together, we decide to apply for this Alumni Innovation Fund, Engagement Fund, and fortunately, we won.

It was the beginning of a new leadership journey for me because it started at the beginning of the pandemic and a period where the violence against women were even increasing. And yes, it was very important personally for me, this. When people ask me, "What is your greatest achievement?" people would think that, oh, maybe it's because you had the chance to meet the UN General Secretary twice, or I don't know. But for me, it's actually the fact that I was able to break this silence, to be more myself, and to help other rape survivors, to support them, to fight against this rape culture.

It is still not easy when I say that we are fighting for abortion. Actually, I'm among the national...I'm a member of the national coalition fighting to get access for abortion, for therapeutic abortion, at least for rape victims, because today we do not have the choice. When I was raped, this happened when I was six until 12. I had my period that time. I could have been pregnant. So, yes, today, I, with our movement, we are trying to promote sisterhood. We are trying to promote also this ... We don't want a rape victim to be ashamed anymore of what happened to them, even if, in this society, where everyone looked down on them. And I got so many comments about what I'm doing.

Many people do not understand what I do, why I do this. They think that I should be ashamed of sharing my personal story, but now I'm quite proud because I'm able to share about it without crying. Usually I cry, but no, no, no, it's okay. And I also, and thanks to the Mandela Washington Fellowship, I also learned that it was okay to cry, to accept your emotions, and this is really an experience. This was really an experience that changed me. I'm also glad that other fellows in my cohort, not only Madagascar, but those who were with me at University of Maine, they're supporting what I'm doing. They're sharing about what I'm doing. And yeah, that's it.

It's still not perfect, but I'd say that, today, one of the specificity of our movement is that many of our volunteers are actually rape survivors themselves. And so, that was also something important for me to bring most of them into this fight, into this battle, supporting each other. And another thing is that, with the movement, we try to mobilize artistic tools in order to sensitize on rape culture, against rape culture. And so, we are using videos, comics, drawings, poetry, theater, many tools actually, to advocate, to sensitize the population, and also to help rape survivors to, yeah, to feel better.

So, for me, I'm an ecofeminist because I think I started my environmentalist activism when I was eight. It was very early, I know, but later I didn't know how it started actually. And, but then later I realized that this domination that we have, this patriarchy, and the capitalism that exists today in our society, they are above the causes of the domination on women and on nature and on natural resources. I do not say that nature and women are the same. We are not the same, but we do face exactly the ... We are both victims of this patriarchal society and the capitalism society that are exploiting the nature and women. And that's why, for me, when we talk about women's rights, it's also a question of environmental rights of climate change.

We need to fight both of them, and I started being a climate activist. I started by being an ecologist, but then I realized that I cannot talk about environment and climate without considering women's rights and the fact that we, as women, we are the first victims of climate change impact. We are victims of different prejudices from [the] society, and that's why, today, I define myself as an ecofeminist. And another image that can also illustrate why I'm an ecofeminist is, we have this ... It's a picture. We have this picture of the planet being raped when we just ... Sorry for my broken English. I'm trying to do my best. When ... Trying to find the word because actually I have the words in French. When we just destroy all the forest, we just cut down all of the trees, and you do exactly the same violence when you destroy the body of the woman. When you rape this woman, you consider the planets, and you consider a woman body or a person from a sexual minority's body as an object, and you just want to dominate this nature, dominate this other person's body. And this culture of domination is what we want to fight as ecofeminists. 

 As I explained, I'm already known in my country as a climate activist, and I thought that I didn't need to prove anything regarding my leadership in that. In the U.S., I'd be able to just network and learn more about climate and be able to increase my knowledge, learn new things. And indeed, I learned new things, but more at a personal level. As I said, I learned more about ... I had this moment in the U.S. where I had the opportunity to think more about my leadership journey, to think more about myself, my weaknesses, and how I could feel even more complete, or I could bring even more impact.

And that's how, when I came back, and I had to think about how I could think, how I could do things better, how I could bring this more positive impact to my community, I thought about all the people I met in the U.S., all the other fellows I met in the U.S., how I learned from them, how much I learned from them, how much I felt empowered by them, because, as I said, when you're an activist, when you are considered as a leader in your country, people expect so much from you. They think that you are unbreakable, and they could rely on you on everything. And in the U.S., I was with other leaders who felt the same. And together, we were able to share about our fears, and it's okay to share about our fears, and it's okay to share about our vulnerability and how much it's important to empower each other.

We need to find this safe place where we can breathe, we can rest, we can be understood. And at least in this safe place, we are not seen as superiors. We are seen as normal person. We’ve - normal needs, you know, talking about friends, love, family, whatever, have fun together. And I think this is also something important that I learned from the fellowship, this importance of having a safe place. Yes, it's important to be a leader, to lead, to mobilize people, but it's also important to have this personal place, if you want to be more impactful, if you want to be more efficient. And this is what I learned from this exchange.

And I think that, thanks to that, I'm able to do ... I think that it's actually thanks to this fellowship that I was able to think more about, okay, think about you now. For so many years, you tried to do things on climate change, supporting vulnerable communities, and, but, now, what can make you feel, you, yourself, better? How can you heal your own wants and how we can also help other people, and yeah, that's what I did when I came back, and I don't regret it.

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Episode 6: Books, Beer, and Nature-Based Climate Solutions

Description

To some people, dealing with climate change might seem like an uphill battle and even be depressing. But to Melissa Low, an ExchangeAlumni who has been working in the field – and participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties, or COP – for over a decade, it’s not a zero-sum game.

In Part 1 of our two-episode series on climate action, Melissa talks about why she continues to do her best to tackle climate change, the importance of risk taking, the merits of nature-based climate solutions, and her love for books and beer.

Transcript

Melissa Low

Hi, my name is Melissa Low. I'm from Singapore, and I'm a YSEALI Professional Fellow of Spring 2016. I'm an ExchangeAlumni.

When I applied for the YSEALI or the Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative some years ago right back in 2016, so this, if my math is correct, six years ago now, I didn't think of myself as a leader. I was, I was a young researcher in a career where, you know, I wasn't even sure whether I was gonna be an academic, but you know, you, you, you follow your heart. I took a risk, I applied anyway, uh, and obviously in order to get to, to be selected, you would have to beat out the rest of your cohort, right? Who's who? Um, and I took that leap of faith and I, I went for it and I, I've not, I've not reg- regretted a single moment of it because, um, for a lot of us women, we also have something called im- imposter syndrome.

And I think it's important to realize that ev-- no matter what contribution you make, it's still a contribution. It may not matter to other people as long as it matters to yourself, right? So you make that decision to do something, to, to click submit that application, right? To do an exchange program, or, um, you know, something like the YSEALI fellowship, whether there's a CAT or professional, just, just do it, right? Because you're doing it for yourself at the end of the day. Every experience counts. So as somebody who has, uh, subsequently been nominated for things, right? For leadership positions. So if you realize that in order to get to where you want to be, you need to take risks, first of all, you need to, to do the applications and you come to, you do come to a point in your career or your life where people then, um, have expectations of you and then you're called on to contribute again, more and more.

So the reward for doing a good job is more work at the end of the day, right? But I think, um, I like to think of it as a meaningful contribution back to society and, and for myself, right? So, um, even though it's quite tiring, it's exhausting, to be honest, um, to be, to be someone in the space, dealing with, you know, um, que- questions about how to ad- address climate change, but someone's gotta do it, and I quite often get upset when people say, you know, we need to do more of this or that, but at the end of the day, it's about us taking that s- first step, right?

So if we don't do it, you can't count on somebody else. So for those of you aspiring leaders out there, I would say, um, pretty much just get over yourself and, uh, just go for it. Uh, whatever you wanna do in life, you, you only have one life, so live it. Um, as long as you stay true to yourself, um, for me, as long as I wake up every day and look myself in the mirror and say, I've done, you know, something with my time and I've contributed back, um, to people and initiatives and, you know, things that I feel strongly about, I feel happy about that. So, um, you create the leader you want to be. Yep.

While Melissa’s interest in climate action can be traced back decades ago, her time at the UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15, in 2009, opened her eyes to how countries come together to address global issues. She was fueled not only by the need to address this crisis, but also by a desire to keep learning…

Well, I wouldn't say it was a “eureka” moment. Um, I felt depressed enough, I would say, 'cause, uh, it was- it was a two-week long conference in Copenhagen. Uh, most of it was, uh, for us in the NGO space, nongovernmental organization space, we were kept out of the negotiations in week two. Uh, some may remember that, uh, NGOs had to get two tickets in order to get in, and the tickets just kept getting smaller and smaller, the numbers of tickets. So in week two I was- we were literally camping outside of the Bella Center in Copenhagen, or we were back in our accommodation, trying to follow up. And this was way before we had hybrid, you know, platforms where we could participate online.

So it was very depressing. Uh, we came- I came home, uh, to Singapore, and I missed the following COP meeting the- the next year in, I think it was in Cancun. It was also very far to travel for- for us in Singapore. Uh, I think it's more than 30 hours to get to Cancun, so we didn't go. Um, but I realized that I didn't have proper mentorship when I went. Um, and so I went to COP 15 feeling completely unprepared and overwhelmed. And if I could help and through research and through my work at the National University of Singapore, offer that capacity building, offer that knowledge to people, even marginally, to prepare before they even go to a COP meeting, um, that's what I wanted to do. And so I built on, um... So in order to do that I had to develop some expertise, right? So I read up, I went to the UNFCCC website, I have it as a bookmark on my browser, just so that I get updated on everything relating to COP.

I don't consider myself an expert, there's just so many moving parts. And of course, uh, the issues under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have become pretty nebulous. Uh, anything from mitigation, adaptation technology, capacity building, we've even got loss and damage, so on and so forth. Um, so with all these issues, no one can really be an expert in everything. But I think just doing your best, um, keeping up to date, just making sure that you are kept, uh, on trend. Making sure that you know what's going on at the negotiations, and then making sure that any young person, or you know, someone who wants to go to a COP for the first time, they go prepared.

And so what we do, um, and what I've been doing with, uh, not just our university, but with the research and independent NGOs. So we call ourselves the RINGOs, uh, as part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We are the constitution. Uh, we- we are one of, uh, I think, nine different constituencies. Uh, there- there are others like business organizations, trade unions, farmers, uh, gender, youth, and so on. So the RINGOs, um, I'm part of the steering committee. I think we are now- we've expanded, so I think it's a 10- or 12-member committee right now. And what we do is that we offer free webinars, and we, uh, we- we've done one with Second Nature in the U.S., where we up- uploaded a YouTube video, uh, of ourselves explaining what COP is like, what shoes to wear (laughs) for example, 'cause you're walking around the COP venue.

And, um, I think, I'd like to think that this information has been helpful for people, especially when they go to COP for the first time. And I certainly felt that- feel that I could have benefited from something like that when I went to my first COP, COP 15 way back in 2009. And so I wanted to present that, uh, to the world, and to my community, and I think, um, I- I think I've done s- something with it, and, um, I've inspired some people, and that keeps me going.

Melissa has pursued a unique approach to climate action. It’s a “nature-based” strategy, which takes into account conserving, restoring, and better managing ecosystems to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

So nature-based climate solutions... Uh, and I'm very new to this, so please, please in- indulge me in- in my really bad explanation. Uh, I understand them to be forestry, and you- you could- you could, for example, preserve forest, you can conserve forest. And these avoided emissions end up potentially becoming, uh, options to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. And so, uh, it results in a lower amount of s- carbon dioxide, uh, concentration in the atmosphere, which is the cause primarily of climate change and global warming. Because the excess greenhouse gas, uh, results in heating of our atmosphere. So the more trees we have, um, the more forests we keep. And especially with the ecosystem services that forests provide, we can actually sequester a lot more carbon. But let's not forget also the blue carbon aspects of nature-based climate solutions. So mangroves, sea grasses, coral reefs, and so on, also contribute to sequestering carbon dioxide through the oceans and through the coastal areas. So these, uh, nature-based, or natural climate solutions, are really important in the way in which we fight climate change, because they not only provide sequestering opportunities, so removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but of course, going out into nature is always beneficial for the mind, for the heart, for the body. Um, and enjoying nature is something that we all appreciated during, uh, the pandemic. I'm sure we all went out to breathe fresh air. And nature-based climate solutions have the potential to provide all of that benefits to society and to countries, especially in our fight against climate change.

I think everyone's trying their best. So the nature-based climate solutions advocates, they are mainly people who have been trained in the sciences in field ecology, in bi-, uh, biological diversity. And I think the fight to protect biodiversity is also something really important. Um, and, you know, in- in this part of the world in Asia, there's a lot of illegal wildlife trade, there's a lot of, uh, interest in, uh, certain species of animals and plants, and we exploit them because of medic- medicinal use, uh, or other sort of traditional forms of medication. Uh, which is- which is quite sad. And I think what we need to do is to protect all species through nature-based climate solutions that have the potential to do that.

Living in Singapore, Melissa has seen how climate change has affected her community *and* how it poses an existential threat to the global environment… I think, I think one thing that us Singaporeans feel very strongly about also is we know that we're probably not getting it as bad as other countries in the region around the world. Um, because we're urbanized, uh, we live in, we live in comfort, thermal comfort in general, um, but not so much for other countries and even our neighbors to the north and south to Malaysia, Indonesia, we know, um, we get these videos, uh, from the news of when, when flood, floods happen, they happen. And these are floods that we can't even fathom because we don't have major rivers or mountains in, in our country, a tiny little country. Um, so, so I think what, what I, I have generally experienced is just higher temperatures, it's uncomfortable, but it's definitely not as much, um, you know, of discomfort compared to, I wouldn't even call it discomfort for some of these other countries. It's existential. Yeah.

They definitely should be doing something about addressing climate change 'cause it's gonna affect us one way or another, prices are gonna rise because crops will fail. Um, we're not gonna get these, you know, vegetables and meats and things that you've enjoyed, we've enjoyed all these years at the same prices because there'll just be a shortage of it, uh, all around the world. Um, you know, temperatures will get higher and higher, there'll be more frequent flooding, drought conditions and it will generally get more and more unbearable. And if not for us, for the future generation as well. And I think one thing to be really concerned about is that young people that I've spoken to are starting to think about whether or not they should even have children because they're worried that they're bringing in innocent lives into a world that's uninhabitable for them, for their, their own children and grandchildren and that's really worrying.

So we're not actually saving the planet, we're saving the human race if you think about it, right? So it's, uh, the human species has done so much in contribution to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and causing climate change and we're effectively killing off ourselves, and bringing down all the other species of flora and fauna while we're at it, which is very unfair. So we should absolutely do everything we can to reduce consumption, have more mindful consumption, uh, of products, services, uh, and we have the power, right? Those of us who live in an urban setting and we have the purchasing power as we call it, right?

So you can make conscious decisions about what you buy, uh, what you, what you eat, what you contribute to, um, in every aspect of your life, what kind of banks you go to or, or bank with. Um, when you go out, bring maybe a receptacle like a Tupperware or a, a bottle so that you can refill it instead of buying single-use plastic, you know, and you can also bring your own bag, uh, especially with, you know, a lot of places now charging for plastic bags. You definitely don't wanna be spending the extra money anyway, so you can save money and save the planet and save the human race while you're at it. I think that's a really compelling reason to address climate change.

From her YSEALI exchange program, to COP15, to her current work in climate action and policy, Melissa is dedicated to raising climate change awareness. But the work doesn’t stop there, and she is now pursuing a PhD at the National University of Singapore's Department of Geography.

So while I'm doing all this work in nature based climate solutions, so having just switched jobs, uh, from one space to another, um, in addition to, you know, helping to, to build executive education courses for, for our center, um, I'm also trying to finish my PhD (laughs). Uh, so I'm halfway through, more than halfway through now and so the next step was really to get the qualifying exam done and become a PhD candidate officially, from a student to become a candidate and get that thesis written and submit it so I can finally call myself a doctor (laughs). Yeah. But, um, it's been a long time coming. I started the program when, uh, COVID hit, when the pandemic started. So I've been so very sheltered and, uh, but I realize that now, with social gatherings starting up again, uh, there's a lot of demands on my time so I've had to be a bit more selective and protect my time, set boundaries and so on. So, but, but I think, I think it'll work out. Yeah. I'm just looking forward to contributing where I can and while, you know, pursuing things that I find meaning in.

There's never enough knowledge about, uh, how to address climate change. And the honest answer is that I've been pressured, you know, a lot by colleagues, by people I, I consider as mentors as well. And I think the reality in, perhaps even this part of the world, right, out here in Asia, um, qualifications do matter. People perhaps don't see you as a qualified expert if you don't have the paperwork to show for. I know that sounds very superficial, but it is a cultural thing. Uh, I would say at least in my experience. Um, and so, you know, having a master's degree, you sit in rooms where people have, have years and years of experience where they don't perhaps look at you, um, as an expert because you, you're not a doctor, you don't have a PhD. Um, and I find that, um, you know, quite, of course it's very uncomfortable for me and I do, I obviously am not doing the PhD because of that only, but the pressure is one thing, and I've only decided to do it now at this time in my life because I feel ready for it.

So even though the pressure, uh, was there, you know, five, six years ago, you know, it was always on my time, right? So I decided to pursue it only in 2020 when I felt ready for it. Um, so again, you know, don't, don't let people tell you what to do, what you can't do or what you can do. Um, just know that because you're gonna have to get through it yourself, um, for the most part and it's, it can be a lonely journey, but you find support in, in, in things, you know, in people around you as well. So, um, the PhD, I suppose, is really more for me to, um, you know, also fulfill the academic qualifications to, uh, get better at my job, um, and to move up, uh, where possible in, in, in the ranks, right?

Uh, but you know, I think one of my passions is really teaching, also in capacity building and having a PhD would open some doors potentially for me to teach in, at the university level. Otherwise, typically at the master's level, uh, with that qualification, it only allows you to teach, um, at the pre-university or lower. So I think the universities are a great space to, to, to cultivate, uh, leadership and to cultivate better knowledge and if I can, I'd like to do that.

So being in the policy space is tricky because, uh, quite often you want to produce research and outcome, findings of your research in accessible, uh, platforms or through accessible platforms like, um, newspaper commentaries or policy briefs that quite often don't count towards your academic credentials, right? So these are journal, peer review journals, internationally ranked, uh, top tier journals as we call them. So, um, I find that, you know, I had to make a conscious decision and I constantly make this decision to publish, um, shorter, more accessible pieces and obviously your career trajectory takes a hit because, uh, you know, without peer review journals, it can be very challenging for others to put you up for promotions and so on, especially if you, if you conform to a traditional, sort of, academic setting, but I think things are changing and I'm hopeful that, um, you know, non-academic work and contribution back to policy making and society, uh, will count for something.

So it's really important to have a supportive network of colleagues where possible. It's not always the case, of course. Um, but do find mentors and do find colleagues who, who can, you know, sort of, prop you up instead of bring you down. Um, and I think what the pandemic certainly has taught all of us is that wellbeing and mental health is so important.

Um, so on top of all these work responsibilities, it's also about being true to yourself and being true to what you feel strongly about. And I think universities are, you know, they may not be changing as quickly as we would like them to, but I think in order to get the word out about public health and climate change and, and, and how important it is to address both, uh, at the same time is going to come from, a lot of it has to come from the universities, working together with doctors and public health professionals. Uh, and so we've got to work together and, and figure out how we can best, um, support both academics, but also medical practitioners. Yeah.

In addition to being an environmental advocate, Melissa is also an avid reader. Before the global pandemic put a pause on in-person social outings, Melissa ran – and continues to run – a book swap to encourage recycling and reading.

Back home in Singapore, before the pandemic of course - we had to pause it, but I run something called Books & Beer.

Uh, so it's a book swap where we swap books while drinking beer. And the idea really is to encourage people to read, outside of their go-to genre's. Obviously, right. Because you've- you've not purchased the book, you don't feel pain because it's really expensive. Um, and you can just pick up things that you wouldn't normally pick up at a bookstore, and while supporting local businesses. So, we go out to different bars and pubs, so it's a- sort of a pop-up traveling style. Um, so pre-pandemic we used to do it every month. And then when I, you know, got busy at work it's every quarter. But it- it works right, and people show up with a bag of books. And they trade them, and whatever is left, I just bring- keep them at home or donate them and organize the next event.

It's a not-for-profit initiative and it could be that in Singapore, people always think of extracurricular activities as a side hustle, right? And everybody wants to be able to make a quick buck of side hustles. But for me, it's really not about that, you know, it's about encouraging people to, to read and to read widely, um, and also recycling of books, right? One man's treasure is another man's, uh, well, one man's junk is another man's treasure as it, as we, to, we say.

So I, I like doing that very much and, uh, one of the, the, the c- co-founders of Books & Beer, uh, you know, we, we always like to joke that it's also a bit of a, a dating, sort of, platform. People can come and meet, uh, folks who read, uh, broadly similar genres to you, uh, could be very nice, could be exciting. And, uh, this obviously helps with the low birth rates in Singapore (laughs) - we like to think. Um, but yeah, so it's been quite exciting, we, we, we've been running it since 2011. It's been a number of years, um, say for when the pandemic was happening, but yeah, we're looking to restart it very soon.

Melissa’s exchange had a meaningful impact on her career and life, providing her with a new network of people from which she’s been able to draw inspiration and share ideas as she works toward her goal of addressing climate change.

So when I mentioned earlier, when I applied for the Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative [YSEALI] back in 2016, I was really afraid I wouldn't get it. Um, and I, I also had to ask for time off from work, right? But thankfully, you know, I had such a supportive boss at the time, um, who said, you know, because I told him it was, it was a, you know, an important leadership program and it was fully sponsored for me to go to the U.S. For five weeks. And he said, "Go. Take your academic leave. Um, you know, as long as you just check your emails once in a while, it'll be fine, but don't worry. Just go." And I, I, I can't thank him enough because if I had another person, uh, who was leading this in- the Institute, who said, "No, you can't because it's eating into your time at work." I would've been devastated. Um, so personally I feel like I now have the responsibility to where possible if I have colleagues to support them in, in their, in their interests, right? Especially when it comes to exchange programs. And I've benefited from, not only the, the, the, the U.S., uh, exchange, but also in, in exchanges when I was in school, when I went to London to King's College, as part of my undergraduate degree, um, when I came back at the time, my dad said I was a totally different person.

Um, I've always felt that exchanges are really important because it exposes you to a different culture together, whether it's work or social, um, cultural experiences are so important because it opens your mind to possibilities. It opens, um, you know, all sorts of doors for you, especially professionally as well. And, you know, the networks that I've made and friends that I've made from around the world, uh, whether it's from the U.S. or from Southeast Asia, uh, because we have regular gatherings, whether it's on Zoom or in person, now that the pandemic is, we're at the endemic stage of the pandemic, um, has just been invaluable, right?

And, just this morning, we were at breakfast and we saw some, some friends that we've not seen in ages and it was just so nice and it just reminds us that, that what, this is all about, is about fellowship, right? And it's about community and making sure that we, uh, we understand each other and we can tap on our each other's expertise and networks to, you know, drive at a certain goal that we all want to achieve, a common goal, which is to help address climate change.

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Episode 5: Race, Belonging, and Reclaiming Your Story - Part 2

Description:

Mathew Holloway and Cornelius Finley have a few things in common: they are both Black men. They both come from Southern United States. And they are both ExchangeAlumni, who attended a seminar on American identity with other exchange program alumni in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But that’s where the similarities end...

In our two-part series on American identity on Voices of Exchange, Mathew and Cornelius talk about race, belonging, reclaiming your story, and why American identity is not just “black and white.”

Transcript:

American identity isn't necessarily the identity that always uplifts, encourages, nurtures, fosters, and takes care of the identities who have always been there for me, and that is black women. This is essentially – and it kind of goes back to what my brother Mathew was saying in a sense of discovering oneself through the unpacking of the historical significance of not only who you are, but also to who you are connected to, and oftentimes that connection is based off of your last name or the histories that's connected to your last name. American identity has done nothing for black folk in the 'hood, and so therefore it hasn't then done anything for my grandmother.

I want to comment on something you just said, Cornelius, is the black life experience and how it gets told on a national level. That's something that I've had to do some deeper thinking, because it seems like in our national discourse, in our national understanding of what it means to depict black life, we depict it in one or two ways. We depict it in extremities. We either tell the trauma story, or we tell the heroic story of just achieving beyond insurmountable obstacles. We don't tell the in between story, and that's the story where most people just live, is in the between. Then, the danger of just telling the story, the trauma story or telling the heroic story, is that people think that we're exceptional. Either we're exceptional in our suffering, or we're exceptional in our achievement, and we're both and neither. We're just human.

I think the time where we can allow black life to be depicted as messy, as complicated, as nuanced, as textured, that you can be both going through oppression, trauma, hardship, difficulty, and still find time to laugh, for fellowship, and dare I say love. It is almost shocking to individuals that those two worlds can coexist, but that's all there actually is, is those two dynamics of the rhythms of life and the blues of life intersecting. When we talk about black life, either we de-tangle them and hyper-focuses on the blues or the rhythms, and not try to put them together to tell a more complicated story about who we are. That we're not exceptional to our pain, and we're not exceptional in our achievement. We're just human.

That's nicely said, brother, I think. Yeah, so for me, American identity isn't necessarily an identity that I would even want to subscribe to. I wouldn't want to subscribe to it because of the fact of the contributions that America granted to not only my family, but the families within the neighborhood that still exist to this day. That, often at times, or always at times, is the most neglected, and I don't think that's a form of trauma. That is how capitalism worked. Someone has to be poor, and you just hope and pray that that someone isn't you. If it is you, then you hope and pray that you can have a story of victory.

When I look at my identity, my identity is the complexity of what black masculinity is supposed to be. It isn't supposed to be confined to any room, to any space, to any idea, to any notion of what society deems a black man can, should, or ought to be. My identity is the identity of what a person in the 'hood is said to be. It shouldn't be confined to my zip code. It shouldn't be confined to my race. It shouldn't be confined to my sexuality, but it should be more confined to my ability to not only uplift, but also to encourage and modernize what WEB Du Bois created so well back in the day, and that's the talented Tenth, to whereas we go back and we bring this funk, and we're not just talking about the P-Funk. We're not just talking about the blues. We're not talking about R&B, and we surely ain't talking about rap, but we're talking about a funk that's committed to our community and a form of uplift, to whereas you go back and you reach and you teach, and you just pray and hope that those seeds that you planted, that somebody else will come back and water because of what you have done. My identity is complexity, and I want America to understand the beauty of complexity and not the beauty of wearing the mask that grins and lies that hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

When you mention what is American identity, without any ego and without any pretense, American identity is Cornelius Tyrone Finley, and we won't never forget the Tyrone because even though the Tyrone may have been what put me on First 48, or what may have put me on probation, or what may have made me, put me in the circumstance of whereas I was shot and that I was placed under an investigation for two murders that I ain't commit, that is the same identity that makes me understand that if black English isn't a language, then tell me what is? As Baldwin said. That is American identity to me, is understanding the complexity of self, the absurdity that's connected to self, and then being able to saunter in a room and be unapologetic about yourself.

I was talking to my Spellman sister this morning after a call, and I was telling her about the email that Oxford sent to me. She was like, "You know what? You really never talk about when you were in London, your degrees, you really never talk about that stuff." I think what happens, especially with the bourgeoisie black folk, is that we are in a state, in a world, not just in America, but in a world to whereas we are always competing, competing with oneself, competing with the other people, competing with isms – racism, sexism, all these forms of isms – that seek to really destroy and take away our existence. We're always having to fight. We're having to go, as Baldwin said, for broke, and sometimes literally.

One of the poems that always sticks out to me, it's with the writer who was so genius with the four colored girls. It talked about how this woman got connected to a man, and he almost walked off with all her stuff, and what she meant was that he almost walked off with her being, and he almost took everything from her, whereas she would have been existentially bankrupt. When you talk about American identity, I think sometimes with black folk or with people of color who are educated, we are sauntering and walking and entering into space with our credentials and not understanding that that's not who we are. Our identity and how we should walk into a space is through our story and our experiences, because once people see those complexities, then degrees will speak for themselves. I like to always enter into a space, and I haven't always been like this, because I have previously been an egotistical fool in the sense of, to whereas I am entering into the space and I'm telling you all of my credentials and all of the things that I have and all of my assets, but that also too brought me into the company with people who wanted to strip my being away from me, who looked like me.

It's like, okay, I'm getting this from society, but then I'm also getting this in my personal life, and so how do I change that? The way of changing that is entering into spaces with vulnerability and with the level of modesty, to ensure that you come in with no pretense, and you're sauntering and combining the brilliance of Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois, to whereas, we can speak to the common folk, but we can also speak to the folk who also want to think that they're a little bit better, to bring in the resources for our most vulnerable folk.

Yeah. I agree with that wholeheartedly. It reminds me of just sort of it ... I feel like to tell the story of American identity, it's to tell a story of a country always in search of belonging. It goes back to sort of, you think about the people who founded the United States and the original premise, they were looking to find themselves outside of themselves, right? That frontier mindset, the voyager, the person who was going to go out and seek opportunities. I think we've retained that culture and heritage to this day, where we are convinced culturally that who we are is somewhere outside of us, and so we have to go find that person. We're going to find it in our jobs. We're going to find it in our spouses. We're going to find it in our careers. We're going to find it somewhere, because it could not exist where I am right now. It just can't. That's too simple.

I think right now, as we're going through this social dying, is people are recognizing that maybe who I was and who I can be was already within me, and that the stories that I've told, that I have to play it by the society's rules, on their terms, I actually have the [inaudible 00:40:23] to actually define it for myself. I think it's revolutionary that you can make an argument, the first time in human history, people can actually be paid to be themselves. There's some kid right now who's on YouTube who just wants to play video games, and there's people all around the world who just want to watch him play video games. It's revolutionary where people now have the ability to be complex in public and not have to somehow compartmentalize who they are in order to survive, in order to fit in.

We learn this early on in childhood. We learn quickly, what do I need to say or do and act in order to feel like I belong? We develop certain personalities. I'm the smart one. I'm the funny one. I'm the pretty one. I'm that one, because I've learned that's what gives me love. The danger of that is that that's really not rooted in belonging, deep belonging. That's rooted in fitting in and just adapting to a traumatic experience to find your way through, and somehow we've carried that over into adulthood, if we don't do the process of de-tangling how we had to adapt to a lack of fitting in and to a lack of belonging, and how we have really created an ego or a mask, a social mask that allowed us to fill a false sense of belonging in order to get what we want out of society.

I think it's revolutionary when people start to realize that there's a cost to fitting in. You lose yourself, and so before we can belong to any social construct, we have to know what it means to belong to ourselves, wholly, to be a whole being who is both profane and profound. What does that mean? I think that's the work that we're doing right now in the 21st century, is going through that dying process and coming out through a transformative experience. I think, to Cornelius' point, in the African American experience, one thing in terms of the cultural inheritance that we have inherited that can make up Cornelius or make up Mathew comes from this situation and this circumstance, being here in life, is that that's the way of our ancestors. You have to understand that we have had to go through so many transformations, from the fact that you take enslaved folks, put them on a middle passage where they don't know each other, they get to a land unknown, they don't speak the same language. They don't even speak the language of the person who's taken them, and somehow have to find a way to rebirth themselves.

Our journey of impression has actually made us quite magical at shape-shifting, at reinvention, because we know that when we're limited and constricted in who we can be, it forces us to create a deep sense of imagination that allows us to take slops that we were given and make cuisine. That allows us to take the inability to not learn English and make a vernacular and make a whole language out of it. It's that we created a culture where we weren't allowed to, and somehow found ourselves again and again and again, because we've learned the process of how to restore one's self when trauma hits you. I think one of the deadliest things that, the story that people believe is that in violence, where there is violence, that's the only thing that can happen, and the beauty of the human experience, that you can go through the most traumatic things in the world but they still don't have to define you as a person, because of the capacity ... We have an innate and really amazing capacity to transform ourselves even under the most arduous circumstances. (44:00)

For me? It was, God. It was powerful in the sense, I grew up in an all black world, growing up at home when I was a child. I never thought of myself as a minority. I didn't know I was a minority, because I saw black people around me. I saw black professionals. I saw all the spectrum of people. They were just black people, so it was just sort of normal to see black people in complexity and normalcy. I think as I went to college and recognized that that wasn't the experience of many other folks ... I was the president of my black student union, and so seeing how being in predominantly white spaces had really affected the black development of many of my black counterparts really took a number on me and it started to affect how I began to conform myself to standards that weren't germane to who I was.

I think when I went to Panama in a country that's majority sort of brown and has a lot of sort of Afro diasporic history and legacy to it, it was the first time in my adult life where I didn't have to be black. I just did it, and I didn't need to say it. I didn't need to perform it. It just was, which allowed me, at 24, to then explore other aspects of myself. I think William Cross, who's ... He did work on black identity development in psychology. He says, one of the things about racism is that it strips a person who is multi-dimensional into a single identity marker, and so much of the politics of belonging in America is stripping complex people into single identity markers and having them hyper-focus on that one aspect of themselves while neglecting all these other parts of them.

In Panama, I got the opportunity to explore just Mathew. What was that person like, irrespective of the external identities that I had agreed to take on? Who was that person? What came out of that was recognizing that I just belong to myself, and before I am black, before I'm American, before I'm all these external identities, I have to be clear on who is Mathew? When I got back from the Fulbright, I went through a really bad case of reverse cultural shock because I hopped back in Chicago, I got back into the working world, and I saw in the most subtle ways, the way I had aligned and sort of confirmed my identity to please white folks. I saw it. I saw it more clearly, and there was a negative resistance to wanting to be like that again.

I spoke differently. I acted differently. I moved differently, and that wasn't always received well, and I had to go to therapy to really understand, how do I fit into this place where I don't really feel like I'm wanted? There's a difference, we know when we feel wanted, versus when we just feel sort of brought in and accepted. It was like, you know the difference. When I was in Panama, I felt wanted. I didn't feel like I had to convince people that there was a desire in knowing me and experiencing my company. I feel like in the politics of belonging in America, sometimes we have to prove to people that we're worth it. I didn't want to prove to people that anymore. I had to find a way to turn this frustration to something, because I was considering leaving the States and just going back to where I felt wanted.

I mean, it makes sense. Why would you be somewhere where you don't feel like somebody wants you there, and they're just accepting you, they're placating you? Then I realized I had to do something about that, so I joined the Obama Foundation's community leadership corps, and through that experience of seeing black and Latina ex-Chicagoans fighting for this place of Chicago, fighting, feeling entitled to this place, being like, "I belong here and because I belong here, I'm entitled to feel like I'm worthy, and you need to see me and you need to feel me and you need to hear me and I'm not going away. This is my land." I needed to hear that story, because I think this is also another side of black racism, is that it convinces you that, "You're right. This isn't my land, this place isn't for me."

They win. They win when you believe that you don't have an entitlement to this space, you don't have an entitlement to feel dignified in the country where all of you, all of your ancestors are from. That this country is just as much theirs as it is yours, and because of that, there's a responsibility. There's an obligation to keep moving it forward, and had that experience not happened, I think I would've allowed them to convince me that this is not my own, that my story too matters, and that rather than them let me write me out of the story, I'm just going to write myself a new story.

(49:46) Gilman is what really helped me see that there was so much more to life and that was so much more to me. It kind of goes back to what Mathew was saying, and before you can be anything for anyone else, you have to get yourself together. What that means is that you have to kind of understand how to navigate spaces, and navigate those spaces by understanding that you are a complex individual, and being unapologetic about those complexities. My time, my Gilman, literally happened the summer after I got shot. I got shot that summer and I went to the UK in the fall, and that was something that I needed. I'm ecstatic and grateful that Morehouse took a chance on me and didn't give up on me because of my past and because of my current mindset at the time. That opportunity, I was able to meet so many different people, so many different people in the sense of feeding my soul, but also too, challenging my very narrow and very, very, to be honest with you, ignorant perspective about life, about identity, and because of those challenges, it made me diverse in perspective.

I think when we talk about diversity, we're talking about bringing in a whole bunch of people who look and have different shades of pigmentation, but at the same time, they're often agreeing on the same ideas that are keeping certain individuals ... Is that diversity, or is that again another personification of wearing the mask? I think it's the latter. What diversity is, is changing perspective and honoring perspective, so much so that if you hear a different form of thought, if you see a different understanding, you don't condemn it, you don't disown it, you don't dismiss it. What you do is you allow it to challenge you differently, and to be unapologetic about your ignorance, so that you can continue to be educated on various things and various identities and various perspectives. That's diversity. If you have a whole bunch of people in the room who are of a different race, who look differently, aesthetically, but at the end of the day, all of these individuals have these ideas of what I call Trumpisms, whereas diversity is that you have people who come in with different experiences and those different experiences begin to shift thought. And that's when intellect begins to penetrate these walls that we put up that often at times keep certain people out.

That's what Gilman did for me. I think Oxford was an opportunity for me to understand the danger of being a token, but also, too, the beauty of being a token, because that was my stage to show my colleagues, my professors, that this idea of black male identity via the fabric of being African American doesn't look a certain way. It's very complex, and I had the opportunity to use my intellect or my intelligence via this great honor of growing into a great barrister, to show these folk[s] that a black man from America, a black man from the inner city of Dallas, doesn't look the way that you see on TV. That was a challenge for me. I didn't always win with the challenge, but as Douglass said – Frederick Douglass said, there is no progress without struggle.

That was a different form of struggle for me, and my experience at Oxford led to me going to Middlesex, which is a university in, I think it's North London. Whereas, I got my LLM in international human rights, well, minority and rights, and I specialized in international corporate law. A lot of people would say, "That's such an oxymoron, Cornelius. You're focusing on minority rights and how to finesse the law to ensure people who are of vulnerable groups can get some things, but at the same time, you want to be a part of a law or a system that deprives those actual people who you are advocating for access." What I was able to do was to show that when you amalgamate two things that often at times conflict, and you have the right heart, because that heart is dictated by purpose, you have now the control to grant opportunity to the folk who are always dismissed and neglected.

My international experience, again, had the essence of equity, diversity and inclusion, and that for me is what we need to push more, push forward a little bit more. I had the opportunity recently to speak to someone from the U.S. Speakers program, with the U.S. Department of State. And so, they have welcomed me into this program, the U.S. Speakers program, to, to meet with people on a political level, to talk about this thing. And that came from the opportunity in Minneapolis. Some people, I don't know if it was you guys, but some people from the Department of State, and if it was y'all, thank y'all. Some people from the Department of State said, "Hey, this brother, he has it, and we need him to be a part of it, and we need him to travel around the world and to tell this unique story." That is what Gilman did, and that is the essence of transcendentalism meeting culture. And so, I will always be forever grateful.

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Episode 4: Race, Belonging, and Reclaiming Your Story - Part 1

Description:

Mathew B. Holloway II and Cornelius Finley have a few things in common: they are both Black men. They both come from small towns in the Southern United States. And they are both ExchangeAlumni, who attended a seminar on American Identity with other exchange program alumni in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But that’s where the similarities end...

Transcript:

I think, one of the crazy things I find as adults is that we tend to get landlocked in the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, about ourselves, and about the world around us. I think I'm sort of taking a more childlike approach, coming with wonder, coming with curiosity and saying, "Maybe if I tell a different story, I have a different meaning, and if I have a different meaning, then I have a different sense of identity and a different relationship to my upbringing."

Host: 

Mathew B. Holloway II and Cornelius Finley have a few things in common: they are both Black men. They both come from small towns in the Southern United States. And they are both ExchangeAlumni, who attended a seminar on American Identity with other exchange program alumni in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But that’s where the similarities end...

Mathew B. Holloway II: 

My name is Mathew Holloway. I am an alum of the Fulbright ETA program. I did my ETA in Panama in 2018. It was a great experience, and it transformed a part of my life. Currently, now, I am a graduate student at University of San Diego where I study conflict management resolution, with a particular emphasis on intercultural dynamics and relations. I'm also the founder of Conversations by Courage, which is a social practice that rewrites the story of who we are by reconstructing our sense of belonging.

Cornelius Finley: 

My name is Cornelius Finley. I'm an alum of the Gilman Scholarship, and I recently in 2020 became a Fulbright specialist. I'm a lawyer by trade. However, I am the founder of Access Unlimited. Essentially our goal is just to revolutionize education throughout the United States. We currently have a contract with the New York City Department of Education and Dallas ISD, too, as we do turnover work. That is essentially going into schools and ensuring that those schools don't get shut down and don't fail. We have been lucky enough to turn that turnover work into becoming our own independent charter / private school organization. And so, we are opening our first school in Dallas, the Mary Finley Early College for Boys. That will lead to our second school in Atlanta, which will be the James Baldwin Early College for Boys.

Host: 

Cornelius grew up in Texas in - as he calls it - “the hood.” He was sent to juvenile detention in high school and got shot twice in college.

For Mathew, it was only when he stepped outside of his small town that he had to face the internalized cultural messaging of what it meant to be a Black kid from rural Mississippi.

In Part 1 of this two-part series on American Identity, Mathew and Cornelius join us to talk about race, belonging, and why American identity is not just “black and white.”

Cornelius: 

I think what started my work, to be honest with you, is the fact that I'm a first generation high school graduate. I think education saved me, and what I mean by that if it wasn't for my undergraduate experience, and that undergraduate experience was at Morehouse, the best institution for Black men. If I wasn't at Morehouse and if I didn't attend Morehouse, then I definitely know that you guys wouldn't know me and I wouldn't know you guys,

Cornelius: 

There's a difference between people being from what we like to identify as the 'hood, and then there's one thing to have a 'hood mentality. I was deeply rooted in that. What that essentially means is that my loyalty was to my neighborhood, and my loyalty was to and committed to ensuring that my neighborhood was the best 'hood. Whatever that means, that's what I did and that's how I got down.

Cornelius: 

Education was not only my token and my ticket out, but it was also an opportunity for me to find my voice. My work is essentially the essence of what a lot of these people like to talk about now, which is equity, diversity, and inclusion. That is my work. We're very unapologetic about being revolutionary. As John Lewis said, getting in good trouble for our most vulnerable people. If you don't have education and you don't have an equitable educational system, everything else fails.

Host: 

It was with the help of his great grandmother, grandmother, and an unlikely mentor that Cornelius could finally begin a new chapter in his life. But first, he had to escape the toxic masculinity surrounding him…

Cornelius: 

My junior year of high school was my first year in real school, and so my ninth and 10th grade year, I was in juvie – that's the juvenile detention center. Once you get out of juvie, you go into, in Dallas, what is called a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program. That's JJAEP, and JJAEP - through that program, your judge or your probation officer gives you a mentor and they put you in a program that essentially hopes to rehabilitate you. Typically, it doesn't work. I think, however, because I had a great grandmama and a grandmama who didn't play, it worked for me. I had a mentor who, surprisingly so, was a right– white Republican. Ain't nothing wrong with white Republicans, but he was a white Republican, and he loved me and my grandmother unconditionally. It was a love that was new to us, especially given the fact that I was in a household of women – my grandmother, my great-grandmother – and it was a love that was new to us because we were in a community whereas we didn't receive a lot of aid and a lot of support from people who didn't look like us. Even those who did look like us, they all had a similar struggle of fighting poverty.

Cornelius: 

And so, because of that mentor and because of the Dallas Urban League, I was able to receive a new idea of what this life may entail. Even when I was at Morehouse my sophomore year, I got into some trouble, to whereas I was placed under investigation for two murders that I didn't commit, and I was shot in my arm once and I was shot in my back. I think what the transition was, was more so the exposure and more so that systems took the chance of a young man who was just trying to find his way, but was so deeply rooted and deeply stuck in the 'hood.

Cornelius: 

Nah, to be honest with you, everybody in my family, every male in my family has been shot before. Every male in my family has been to prison. All of my homeboys, I think that was a code, that you go to jail and you get shot, so it wasn't a wake-up call. It actually gave me more street cred, and what you have to understand about that mindset is that you ... It's toxic masculinity, but that's rooted in a form of, quote-unquote, ghetto-ism in the sense of, you're so deeply connected to poverty and the sense of street cred and the sense of street scholarship that your honor comes from making sure that the world ... What I mean by the world is that that community essentially knows that you are loyal and that you are committed to them.

Cornelius: 

And so, me being shot was actually like a badge of honor. I think what really woke me up is that the morning that I got shot, it was essentially like at two or three o'clock in the morning, on a Sunday. I left the investigation room. I went back home. My grandmother said, "Hey, we're about to go to church," and when we went to church, the pastor at the time, of the church that we were going to, spoke so ill about me because it was all in the paper. It was all on the news. When he did that, it's something that clicked in me, whereas it's like, "Hey, something has to change. I have to prove to these people that I can do better." In the beginning, it was more so ego that saved me versus being shot. Then, after I got out of the fact of showing other people, I then had to show myself. That goes back to the work. The work is, if we're really talking about equity, diversity, and inclusion, we have to exemplify what that is through our practice and through our actions. From those exemplifications, there should be some form of complexity that goes out and transcends and then revolutionizes whatever it is that we're trying to change. I think that's essentially what happened to me.

Cornelius Finley: 

My idea of education was to finesse the system, like how you finesse the streets. You finesse the system, you just do it in a legal way. That's essentially how I ended up at Oxford, is that you learn the test. You take the test, you do well on the test. You do so well on the test that no one can deny you, and then you have the position, you have the tools, and you have the ability to not only perform well, but outperform those individuals who often, at times, they don't think that we can perform. When I say we, I'm talking about Black folk from the 'hood. That's how I ended up at Oxford, and that's how I ended up passing the bar…

Host: 

Cornelius redefined his identity through education. For Mathew, who was a panelist at the alumni thematic seminar where the two met, it was all about redefining his story and what it means…

Mathew Holloway: 

So I grew up in the South too, so we have a lot of connection points, and I grew up in a mostly matriarchal system as well. I grew up in rural Mississippi, a small town called Como, Mississippi, where there's one main strip where you've got your post office, a really great steakhouse, and a public library. It's a lot of connection in terms of those cultural messages around sort of family, around community, around mothership, around grandmothership.

Mathew: 

For me, I think the origin is sort of ... What I do now, in terms of why I'm in graduate school and why I've been sort of over the last three years, really since my time with the Obama Foundation where I was working in Chicago on community development projects and I prototyped this concept, that I looked to explore a community's DNA. Even though I've been in a small town, Mississippi, since college, I went to school in New Orleans. I lived around, abroad and here in the country, and I've always been fascinated about how people create a sense of life for themselves, and what is power in one community may not be a sense of power in another community. And so, I always found myself always reconstructing my identity whenever I found myself in a new environment, which in a lot of ways allowed me to expand myself, but I never really felt rooted, in part because there was so much of culture, internalized cultural messaging of what it meant to be a Black kid from a small town in rural Mississippi…

Mathew: 

And I inherited a lot of negative stereotypes that people had about that, and conformed myself to not be that, so much to the point where I think I lost sight of the beauty that came from my experience. And only in the last years of ... I'm 28, turning 28 next month. Only within the last three years of my life have I really been able to look back at my memory, re-story, tell a different story to myself. And I think, one of the crazy things I find as adults is that we tend to get landlocked in the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, about ourselves, and about the world around us. I think I'm sort of taking a more childlike approach, coming with wonder, coming with curiosity and saying, "Maybe if I tell a different story, I have a different meaning, and if I have a different meaning, then I have a different sense of identity and a different relationship to my upbringing."

Mathew: 

So that's been the work that I've been doing, and I think as apropos right now, because as I've begun to understand the ways in which racism, colonialism has affected and constructed all of our identities and how that we have inherited certain notions of what it means to belong, what it means to be powerful, what it means to be seen, and how in a lot of ways we've fit in and adapted to a model that may not be true to who we are. The work is really helping people, one, notice how they construct their sense of belonging, who helped them construct that, what messages did they inherit about what it means to be this, that, and the other? Then, how does that juxtapose with who they really are on the inside? Making sure that there's an alignment between who they project out in the world, the goals they seek in the world, the types of people they want to be in the world, and who they really are.

Mathew: 

It's grounded in this theory I've been developing called restoration therapy, which is a play on the word restoring, because it's grounded in narrative therapy and other social theories that really take it into account that our identities are multidimensional.

Mathew: 

You can't really tell the story exclusively on your own because it's a continuous, continuous streamline of moments and events that are constantly shaping and reshaping the fabric of who you are. So first acknowledging that we are environmentally constructed, and what that means, that you have to take in account the cultural and sexual and personal aspects of belonging, to really reveal the legacy and the aftermath of historical trauma and cultural trauma upon all of us. It's that we are not divorced from this history as if we read it and it's just information that happened in the past. Those notions, those belief systems, those messages follow us and they follow ... They eventually come into how we see ourselves and how we see others. In my talk, it was really giving an examination of how I've been able to really detangle the messages of what it means to be a Black kid from rural Mississippi who grew up with people who don't always use subject-verb agreement. Right? What does that mean, and how do I re-language that in a way that gives beauty to that experience and not always see it from an angle of what it lacks.

Mathew: 

Then it becomes, whose model of culture, whose model of acceptance, whose model of belonging are you using to apply to your own sense of belonging? If that's the case, if the measurement by which you look at yourself and you define yourself is someone else's, then you're always at a deficit. You're always trying to keep up and catch up, and so helping people realize that, see the beauty in the experiences that we have, see the beauty in the messiness of your own lived experiences, and helping us find a deeper sense of purpose in that.

Mathew: 

When my grandmother passed away in 2020, it was the start of the pandemic. I think it was an aha moment, that I never realized what a blessing it was to have grown up with my grandmother living right next door to me, which meant everybody lived next door to me. All my cousins and the whole family lived next door, and then also having my great grandmother live 10 minutes down the road, walking distance.

Mathew: 

So just growing around them and sitting on the porch picking peas, or just sitting and playing crosswords with my grandmother, or teaching my grandmother how to read, because she was going back to school to get her GED, or thinking about memories of my grandfather and I, teaching me geography and state capitals because he was a North Korean vet, and it just dawned on me that something, I lost a part of myself that I didn't even know that I was going to lose.

Mathew: 

And there was so much heritage and history and memory and knowledge that was connected to her, and when she passed, I saw how my family and myself, we didn't know who we were anymore. We had to go back into ourselves and look at ourselves as a family and say, "What's our story now? Who carries this story?" I think oftentimes in families, and I think this is a story, many families have been happening because of COVID, it's like, "Well, who's going to tell the story? How are we going to access that knowledge now that it's gone?" And there's a saying, an African proverb, that when an elder dies, a tree burns, or something like that. Right? And so, recognizing that... I really saw that firsthand, where my grandma knew certain recipes to make homemade wine or homemade this and that and other, and no one in the family knew because we just never bothered asking the questions about our heritage.

Host: 

What does American Identity mean to these ExchangeAlumni whose ancestors were forced to come to America? Tune in to Part Two to hear more from Mathew and Cornelius, the demons and difficulties they’ve faced, and how their exchange experiences have shaped their journeys towards self-discovery and truth.

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Episode 3: Monumental Moments, Part 2

Description

In the second episode of our three part arc on ExchangeAlumni working with augmented reality, or, AR, we spoke with Julia Beabout, the CEO and creative director of an award-winning AR creative studio.

We continue our dive into the transformative power of the technology with ExchangeAlumni Grady Hart, Julia’s partner on the augmented reality project, Monumental Conversations. Grady - an ExchangeAlumni of the Mandela Washington Reciprocal Exchange program and a community partnerships coordinator in Richmond, Virginia - talks about learning about systemic racism in his own community for the first time and how that spurred him to right some of the wrongs of the past by raising the voices of those who have traditionally not had a voice.

Transcript

So, uh, yeah, my name is Grady Hart. I am the Community Partnerships Coordinator for Richmond Public Schools in the City of Richmond, Virginia. Um, I have been in this role for about three years now and my journey to come and be a part of this role with Richmond Public Schools has been really just such an intentional journey to get here. Um, I was born and raised in the Richmond area, so I certainly claim RVA as my home. Uh, in particular I grew up in Hanover County, which is one of several counties that borders the actual City of Richmond. Uh, and I remember growing up that despite growing up just outside of the city proper, just outside of the actual City of Richmond, I never really learned about Richmond's real history until many years later when I was actually teaching about Richmond neighborhood history at, uh, Virginia Commonwealth University.

And so I never learned until then, for instance, about the highway system that was built, uh, you know, just very intentionally to destroy Jackson Ward a, you know, at that point it was known as the Harlem of the South, the Black Wall Street. It was a thriving African-American community that up until the 1950s, uh, or in the 1950s was just destroyed by this Interstate Highway system, Route 95, Route 64. And to me, you know, the fact that I didn't actually learn about that, I didn't learn about, you know, Richmond's real history until years later when I was actively seeking to learn so that I could teach that is just something that has never sat right with me.

Um, it's something that really has cut to my core. And so for me, that is really when I just kind of came to the conclusion that, "You know, I can either be a part of the solution here. I can, um, you know, try to sort of, you know, right some of these wrongs or be a part of righting some of these wrongs or I can, you know, stick my head in the sand." And I mean, for me just thinking about specifically that highway system, you know, I was born, like I said, in Hanover County and my parents used to use that highway system every day to get into the city where they would earn their living and then to get back out of the city. And because of the way that we fund our schools, primarily through local property taxes, that meant that the money that my parents were earning in the city was in, was ensuring that I was getting a strong, good education while doing relatively little or nothing for the students and the kids that lived in the city proper.

And for me, that is something that just over the last few years I've been grappling with and have come to understand that that is exactly what systemic racism looks like. And that in so many ways, I am the picture of white privilege from an unjust system. I have benefited directly from an unjust system. And so that's really what brings me to this work and what brings me to Richmond Public Schools and why this work on monumental conversation on bringing this placemaking experience, this Augmented Reality experience to bear was so incredibly important for me.

I think my first year working with VCU with Virginia Commonwealth University. And, uh, there's a gentleman here that almost everyone will know his name. It's, uh, Reverend Ben Campbell. Uh, he is really one of the local historians, Richmond historians that has uncovered so much of Richmond's history. He's written a book called Richmond's Unhealed History, which I would highly recommend. And I was leading a group of students from VCU to, uh, meet with Ben Campbell to hear, uh, sort of a 90-minute version of basically what his book entails, which is from the very first landing of European settlers in Virginia, all the way up until our present history, really seeing the arc.

And, uh, in many ways the arc of injustice that we've seen in our city, that really is a microcosm for what we've seen across the country for what systemic racism has looked like. Um, you know, starting right with the fact at, you know, uh, there was, um, you know, early on this sort of definition of the white race as being, you know, being something superior. Um, and in some ways that was used as a way to kind of drive an additional schism in the, uh, sort economic hierarchy of our country and its founding and just the way that he drew that picture and the way that he was able to literally from where we were point out the window at the highway system and how that really was such an emblematic and tangible example of systemic racism at work and of the state government, uh, and the local government really working together to just desecrate a community that was thriving, uh, specifically because it was a thriving black community.

I, I just remember that. I mean, there, I don't think there was a dry eye in that room and that was myself included and that really changed things for me.

I think when I started learning about this, you know, Richmond has, uh, for many years now been a more progressive city that, uh, than most. Um, and certainly I think if you go into the counties around Richmond, you'll hear a different narrative, um, at least from some of them, but in the city itself, uh, there hasn't been, you know, even in recent months, too much pushback. Uh, you know, our, our superintendent and has, you know, come out and been very clear that, you know, first of all, critical race theory to, to name, you know, that term, that's getting overused a lot nowadays, you know, that's a, a graduate level university course, right?

That-that's an incredibly complex subject. We're not teaching that in Richmond Public Schools, what we're doing is we're teaching real history and we're teaching the positives of it. We're teaching the negatives of it, we're teaching all pieces of it. But what we know is that we do not learn history by memorizing names and dates as I did growing up, right? That is not history. History is learning about how the past impacts the present and how what we do in the present can impact the future. And so, uh, we really, I have not had a lot of run-ins with folks who don't understand that here in the city proper. Um, but when I do, you know, it, it is a welcome conversation for me because if folks are really willing to listen, the facts speak for themselves. You know, the, just again, to stick with the example of the highway, you know, people, you, you could argue, uh, that, you know, the highway was built there because it, we needed a highway and that was this place that made the most sense, but that's untrue.

Uh, you know, I think we, the first part of that may be true is that we needed a highway, but if you look just a, I mean, literally like less than a mile, about a half mile, if that north there is a natural alley where a, um, where a train track currently is. And if you look at what that looked like in the 1950s, I mean, it was, you know, it was basically open space ripe for a highway to go through. That highway was put there, not because we needed a highway and that was the best route, but because that was a black community that the state government and some of the local powers that be wanted to get rid of.

And that was in the 1950s, right? Like, we're, we're not talking about that long ago. This was very recent history. And what happened as a result of that is that families were displaced. Folks were moved from their communities into, they were a lot of, in a lot of cases, they were forced into public housing communities, into areas that really were just much more likely to be heavily concentrated with poverty and to have all of the issues that come with that. I mean, it, it, it, it, it completely changed what life looked like in that area, and it was done intentionally. And there's no argument that you can make to say that that was not done intentionally. Look at the facts, it was absolutely intentional. And that's an important part of our history as a state, as a city and country.

but what this project really was about at its core was sharing the voices and really raising the voices of folks who have traditionally not had a voice, especially in places like Richmond's Monument Avenue. Um, and that's something that we heard very early on from the community. They said, "You know what, we've heard the stories of these folks on Monument Avenue, right? We know about Robert E. Lee. We know about J. E. B. Stuart. We know who they are, we know what they stood for. Stop telling those stories. Like let's, this is an opportunity to tell all of the positive stories, the stories of resilience of the black community, the stories of how the black community has contributed to making Richmond the great city that it is today and making the United States the great country that we are today." And that's something that we really set out to from the very beginning.

Richmond was certainly, uh, a change that took place during those months that followed. And at that point, Julia and I had just identified, "Well, you know, we would love to just spark conversation about Monument Avenue about this avenue that is made up of statues of Confederate generals and Confederate, um, you know, Confederate, uh, essentially it's a, it's a monument to the lost cause narrative that-that's basically what Monument Avenue has been." Um, and so what we did at that point was we identified, "Okay, here's where we want to do this." We were able to get a grant from the Alumni TIES and from the U.S. State Department to help give us some seed funding to get started on it.

And, um, we were able to then go back to, you know, well, so I should say, then the pandemic hit (laughs) and we had to step back for a little while, right? The start of 2020 working in the public school system, it completely turned everything on its head for us and we had to reprioritize for a while. And so really it wasn't until August or September 2020, that we were able to kind of come back to the drawing board and say, "Hey, this is now more important than ever, you know, Monument Avenue looks different. Some of the statues at that point had been torn down by protestors. Some had been removed by the city themselves." And so what we said is, "This is a, this is a golden opportunity to use this space to create more conversation, right? To have a conversation about what Monument Avenue looked like in the past, what it looks like now, how we got here and what it's going to look like in the future."

And I think the most important thing that we did at that stage was we looked around and we said, "Who needs to be at this table? Who needs to be represented here?" And so we spoke with several, uh, museums, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, uh, the Black History Museum, which is located right here in Richmond. And we also looked at, "You know, we need our students to be involved, right?" Our peer students played a central role in this project in shaping what it was going to look like, and then in actually building out some of the components of it. Um, and then even beyond that, you know, we worked with local artists, local activists, local historians.

And ultimately we looked around the room and we said, "You know, if you know, this room needs to look representative, it needs to look like folks, uh, like more folks here who have not traditionally had their voices heard than frankly, than, you know, white people." And so that really was the core goal at the start of this was to make sure that we had the right people at the table. And by doing that, we were able to get such real, authentic stories and such real feedback that, you know, again, at, at the start we had thought about, "You know, do we focus on J. E. B. Stuart and Robert. E. Lee and try to put context around them?"

And what we heard loud and clear from the community was, again, "No, we-we've heard enough about those folks. Let's talk about Maggie Walker, the first black woman to own a bank in the entire United States. Let's talk about Bill Bojangles Robinson and other amazing performers that came into the Robinson Theater that came into Jackson Ward over the years, and just did absolutely amazing things to make Richmond, Richmond." And hearing that from the community and not just hearing that broadly, but then hearing the details, hearing the specifics of those stories, you know, pulling in quotes from people like the founder of Richmond... Of the, um, the Richmond Planet, one of the first black owned newspapers in the country, and being able to bring in the voices of our students and of community leaders, literally to be the narration in the Augmented Reality App and be able to be the ones that you hear speaking through the app.

I mean, that was just such a core tenant for everything we did was literally and figuratively making sure that we were hearing from the voices who traditionally have not had a voice in places like Monument Avenue.

When I was working at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016, um, somebody told me about this amazing opportunity where there were these fellows coming from various different countries in Africa, uh, who would be a part of the Nelson Mandela Washington Fellowship Program.

And I was... I, I still remember at this point, I, I think I was working full time. I was doing an internship and I was working on a, a master's degree all at the same time. It was like, "I don't have time for this, but it sounds amazing. So I'm gonna do it anyway (laughs). And I am so glad that I did. I remember, uh, you know, meeting with, they basically, they were looking for peer collaborators, just someone who could help show, uh, show an individual around the city and, you know, just have conversation and see where, see where that conversation went. Uh, and I remember the gentleman was from Mauritius, uh, which is a small island kind of, uh, close to Madagascar that I didn't really know anything about until then.

And of course, now I know much more about it. Uh, and so working with this gentleman and just getting to show him around my city, learn more about the, you know, the struggles and some of the issues, and also some of the amazing assets that his community and his country has, uh, that was really an amazing opportunity for me, that was followed up by, you know, just one of the best opportunities I've ever had when several months later, uh, we found out that there was a reciprocal exchange program. And so one of the things that we had talked about a lot during his time there was, you know, my role with the university and now with Richmond Public Schools is really all about community engagement. And particularly a lot of my work is centered on how to work with university communities, as well as other community partners to support K-12 education.

And, uh, we basically framed a project around having conversations and events and, uh, programming with universities and Mauritius to help encourage them to, you know, develop student programming and student engagement opportunities to work directly with the community, especially in support of K-12 schools, which is something that, to that point was, um, pretty new for Mauritius. That, that wasn't a real common theme at the universities there. And so that's really what we got a chance to do when I went to Mauritius in the spring of 2017.

Uh, and that was, you know, to this point, I still talk about that as like that that's just been the gift that keeps on giving, because that also enabled me to then go to the Alumni TIES event at, uh, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in December of 2019, which of course is where I met Julia. And I remember just the energy there and just the variety of people, right? We had all come from different programs. Uh, we were all from different parts of the country and just bringing all of that together, blending all of that group together and then asking us to just, or giving us the space to just collaborate and just step outside of our day to day for a few days to just have conversations about what is possible, right? "What, what is it that we can still do that we can, you know, that we can do to accomplish together?"

And that's really where this idea was born. It was Julia and several other colleagues talking about their capabilities with Augmented Reality. And I don't wanna understate this enough, Julia, and you know, her team at Novaby, the work they're doing with Augmented Reality and with placemaking. And I know at, at its core, it's really about creative placemaking and about sharing the stories of community, it's absolutely cutting edge. Everything that they're doing right now is just, it, it is right on the cutting edge of things that we couldn't even imagine years ago. And so being able to work so closely with Julia and with other folks like that, and just being able to bring my community together, you know, the public school system, the city government, major museums, uh, major community partners, historians, artists, students, families, just none of that would've been possible without Alumni TIES.

None of that would've happened. And I just think about how this is, you know, Julia and I are just two of the, you know, of the folks who have participated in these kind of events, right? And this is just one project that has come out of it. It really is absolutely amazing. And then, you know, just to take it a step further on this one project, we've had so much success with it. And the community response has been so positive that we are now in talks about bringing an Augmented Reality, experience, a placemaking experience, just like this to Jackson Ward, uh, and we've received grant funding, um, you know, a small amount of seed funding, again from the State Department from a separate program, but related, um, the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund has given us seed funding to bring this to Jackson Ward, which as I mentioned, Jackson Ward is, I mean, that's, that's the center of Richmond, right?

Like that, that is if you wanna learn Richmond history, you go to Jackson Ward. Um, and for us to be able to bring something like that work with the Black History Museum, which is located right in Jackson Ward and center them as really the, the owners of this work as the owners of the story, that's going to be told about Jackson Ward, along with a number of other community partners. We have several local historical churches is, uh, the Maggie Walker House is located right there. It's a, you know, historical location that's run as a museum now. uh, the, the history there is just bursting at the seams to be told and to be able to now have a chance to do that using Augmented Reality in Jackson Ward, I, I just, it's amazing the things that have come from this opportunity and all from... You know, I tell my students, I still teach a little bit at VCU.

I tell them, "You're gonna get so many opportunities to do things that you're gonna think I don't have time for this, right? Or this isn't a priority right now, if it is a priority, if it's something that you want to do, if it's something that you find interesting, do everything in your power to find and make the time for it to happen." Because it would've been so easy for me to just say back in 2016, "I don't have time for that right now." None of this would be happening. None of this would be happening if I had just not taken the opportunity that was presented to me, and then not taking the continuous opportunities that the Alumni TIES and that the State Department has continued to make available for me. I, I just keep saying, "Yes," and amazing things keep on happening (laughs).

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Episode 2: Monumental Moments, Part 1

Description: In Richmond, Virginia, ExchangeAlumni Julia Beabout and Grady Hart teamed up to create Monumental Conversations, an augmented reality project that centers on the undertold stories of Black resilience and excellence in Richmond. Little did they know how the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd would transform their project.

In this second of three episodes on the power of AR on Voices of Exchange, we hear how Julia got a deeper look at racism and its effect on a community, how her international exchange experience in China through the Critical Language Scholarship led her to the Monumental Conversations project with Grady, and more.

Transcript:

My name is, uh, Julia Beabout, and I'm the CEO and creative director at Novaby. Uh, we are an award-winning, um, augmented reality studio, specializing in AR place making, um, space activations and tours. And really my career today can be traced directly to my, um, U.S. State Department exchange opportunities, um, in particular my Critical Language Scholarship, uh, which I did in 2012.

Um, it was for Mandarin and I got to spend eight glorious amazing weeks in Shiyan, China, um, with an amazing group of, uh, US, uh, co US scholarship winners. We [Grady and I] met actually, um, at a TIES conference. I think it was December, yes, December 2019. So, um, pre COVID and we, uh, really just hit it off.

And, uh, so we were in a breakout session and I heard him mention a project that he had in mind, and I just loved the idea and our eyes met across the room (laughs) and, and it was a, a magical, magical project moment. So, um, after that we started, um, talking about, uh, you know, what the project could be, and he was interested in AR, what, what I was had been talking about.

So the project, um, can, it's, it's an augmented reality tour, um, kind of slash, experience. It's a little bit more of a tour, but conceptually it's a traditional kind of audio visual walking tour, but many of those visuals are actually augmented reality elements, 3D elements that you can, um, interact with. So it kind of, if you interact with the 3D content, um, it takes you kind of to deeper levels of story, um, additional stories, additional visual content, such as historic photographs, um, that kind of thing. And, uh, yeah, I would say the, the most exciting part to me was, a, working with the community.

Uh, obviously COVID slowed things down and everything, but even regardless of that, you know, we really worked with the community for a good year and a half to kind of understand what, what stories they felt should be told. Um, and so really the, the content that is in there, the histories that are in there are just so exciting.

They're literally, um, stories of Black resilience and Black resistance that have un, gone under told – some even untold – for 150 years. So it really, just time li-, timelinesss of the project ended up being right on with all of the protests and concerns and everything like that. So the project was really kind of reconceived, um, as, or needed to be reconceived as a result of everything that was happening, um, in 2020 and 2021.

And we did even actually consider initially once the, um, statues came down because the original idea of the project was to kind of contextualize the confederate statues that were along, uh, Monument Avenue. And of course they started coming down in June of 2020. Thank goodness. And we kind of felt well, do, should we even just continue with the project?

And, we, everybody that was involved decided, no, it's actually a more important project now to kind of contextualize why these have been so contentious, why they've come down and, and all that.

So it ended up, we kind of had to re conceptualize stories, the whole idea of what we were trying to achieve. Um, but it ended up being a much, much, much better project.

And, uh, to me the most, um, interesting example of that is actually the first stop on the tour, which is at the entrance to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. Um, I'm sorry, Virginia Museum of Art, excuse me. Um, Virginia Museum of Art on Arthur Ashe Boulevard, where there is an amazing statue, um, uh, by Kahinde Wiley of a young black man in dreadlocks on a horse. And that, uh, statue was inspired by the JEB Stuart Statue that used to stand at the far end, the other end of Monument Avenue.

And it was really meant to be kind of a, a replica in a sense, but changing out, uh, JEB Stuart with this young black man in dreadlocks and Nike sneakers and the hoodie and the whole bit. And, um, and so once the JEB Stuart Statue was gone, it kind of lost that visual conversation that it was intended to be in.And so in AR we are able to... Uh, and we actually recreated the JEB Stuart Statue in AR and the user, um, doing the tour is able to place that next to the Rumors of War Statue and actually see it in the visual conversation that it's intended to be.

So I think that's, to me, the most exciting part is like AR and that this tour enables us to really bring things together that there's no other way to, to do that, so.

I would say, you know, the lessons learned were really about, you know, bend and flex with what the world gives you, right? There's, um, really, it sounds trite, but you know, just whatever challenges kind of come your way, like just transform them into an opportunity.

And I, I would say every project I've had, um, even my, even the hackathon project, um, back that we did, um, a few years ago, uh, in the Tenderloin as well, just again like our, our, we lost our venue, we thought we'd have unexpectedly, um, you know, same kind of thing with the Blackhawk project.

Uh, we were working on a component and it just COVID blew that apart and (laughs) we couldn't do that anymore. And so, you know, both, both those instance- instances and just like I was talking with Monumental Conversations, the statues went away. I mean, like literally the baseline of our project disappeared literally.

And so really thinking like, you know, looking at those and being like, "Okay, is that forcing you to, um, come up with a different solution?" And every single time that has happened on each of these projects, it has led to a better project.

I think what I've learned is that, um, and that I have applied to both of those projects, is anytime that happens, it becomes a wonderful opportunity to engage additional stakeholders in your project. Which then builds more relationships and strengthens the community.

Um, so I think... And that really, um, for me what, what we do in AR and I think Grady, you know, as outreach coordinator that is really at the core of what we're trying to do. This is project based learning. In this case, augmented reality was the, was the medium.

Um, but it's really, you know, project based learning, project based, um, community building. And so as long as you keep that goal front and center is how do we center the people? How do we help them get to know each other and wrestle with this content and, and develop bonds that'll outlast the project. Um, I think there's many ways to, to meet that goal. And, um, yeah, so I'd say those are kind of the lessons learned, um, between the two, you know, or three really projects.

One of the first things I really was surprised by was the level of distrust actually between the black community and the white community. I certainly expected that.

But, um, yeah, and that's... Like it's not universal, like it doesn't, it doesn't filter down to the individual level. Like people, everybody's very respectful and people get along. And, but, but at, you know, when you kind of back up like, and we start to see these stories like that, that depth of mistrust. And I think what I really gained, um, from the stories, because a lot of those... Obviously the stories weren't stories I knew, and I thought I knew what systemic racism was going into this.

And, oh my gosh, like the rabbit hole goes so deep, you know? And so it was really a real education for me. And I began to really understand that, um, you know, lack of trust within that context. And I think what was interesting too, is that people don't... What we found is that it, you know, most people didn't know these stories, right? They knew how they felt, they knew, they knew, uh... Like we had, we had one.

So we worked with, uh, had some focus groups with students and parents and all of that. And, um, you know, the level of hurt was really eye opening for me. It's kind of one of those things, like, you know, in, in, in, um, the abstract, but when you're talking to somebody and you see it operationalized in their life, you know, that's just so much more impactful.

And so we had, um, one mom mentioned that, um, you know, she wasn't sure that she would want her son to go on this tour because she didn't... This was at the beginning, right? So, but even though she's like, "I will not make him go." Because that space along Monument Avenue was so hurtful for her. She just knew it just rocked her to her core and she didn't want her son exposed to that, right? Or forced him to be exposed to, to do that.

And, um, and so you know, I don't know if he, he has or will be going on personally, but, but, um, you know, I... Like to me that really told me volumes of how deeply hurtful, um, you know, personal it can be for folks. Now other- others, uh, you know, in the community didn't feel that way. So just again, understanding those different perspectives of how it hits people differently, um, you know, was really eye opening.

The other thing, again, this kind of, you know, in the abstract that seen operationally is that, uh, you know, a number of the, uh, black parents understandably were concerned about their, their black children, particularly young black men walking in a traditionally white space, you know, just for their safety, you know?

And, um, so we had to really think about those things because, um, the, initially we were thinking that the way this would be implemented within the students 'cause the, uh, the students curriculum in a sense or part in this is that they would just kind of go to that space on their own at their, on their own time and do the tour, um, on their own. And, um, what we kind of learned through that in particular was a factor that, that is probably not the best plan. It is not unfortunately a safe plan for young black men.

And, um, and so then we moved to, okay, it probably needs to be a field trip situation or some sort of chaperoned situation where there's, you know, it's, it's, we know that it's safe for them and we need to let the police know that, you know, there'll be people, uh, uh, uh, young people walking along as well as the public. But, um, so, you know, just, you know, discovering and thinking about those things, which, you know, me as in Seattle, as a white woman, um, you know, not, not usually having to think, um, that deeply about those things.

And so, yeah, I think, uh, it was really, you know, e- eye opening and learning, um, a lot of learnings that way and seeing how these things play out.

The significance of AR and place-making can be distilled into two parts: it can be used to connect residents to their heritage and it can showcase the city to those outside so they can begin to understand and get to know it in a new way. But how do you reconcile histories that conflict with one another, are painful, or involve the subjugation of one group under another?

One of the main things we, we do in that tour is, um, monumental, Monument Avenue has been a, was an exclusively Whites Only space for over 100 years, pretty much 75 years. Um, and it was intentionally designed to be that way. Um, those statues were, um, intentionally put there and intended to be billboards at that time of oppression. Um, the, they were also just part of... That's, that's kind of one string.

They were also part of just developing that area, right? Like the, um, the commercialization of the buil- building a new development and how do I appeal to, to people that I want to live there? And that's really what started the Lee statue, right? So, um, and then how, how, how that what's called the Lost Cause narrative that developed around this really drove and shaped that, shaped that, and that kind of gets to the, the, the, the core of why I feel, why I love these things.

I think they're just so fascinating how we conceptualize and imagine our environment and overlay our culture onto the physical landscape.

To me there's kind of the, um, imagined space and the physical space. So our imagined environment and our physical environment are not necessarily the same. And, you know, I've actually just run into that on a project we're working on right now and talking with the client on that and trying to help them th- th- this lack of alignment between the physical environment, the historical env- environment, and the cultural environment, or landscapes. And those are three different things. The boundaries of those are different.

And so to me, that's really like, that's, I just, you know, I, I don't know why (laughs). I just love that, those kinds of conversations about how our imagined world, our pers, our worldview is overlaid onto the physical landscape.

in that situation, this Lost Cause narrative, or what came, came to literally be called the lost cause narrative, they named it themselves (laughs), um, uh, in the late 1800s, um, was really people wrestling... I, I, I don't wanna make any excuses, but, um, there were, and there was a few strains, but i- if we look at it that there was people wrestling, um, particularly quite Southern elites, um, wrestling with a tremendous amount of loss, both people physical, everything, wealth in their lives.

And, um, they began to... Um, that's part of what we do as humans is create a story to justify our losses, to explain our lives. Um, and so that story that was developed and not, you know, it was co, certain degree and that situation contrived, but a lot of it was just, again, natural human instinct to, to justify was that, you know, this... The war wasn't really about slavery, that it was about loyalty and states's rights. Now, there was definitely going on at the same time, um, deliberate political, uh, um, intentions behind that story as well, the late 1800s, early 1900s.

And that story, um, I think that was the part of that, the history that I did not know is the intentionality of the politics behind it. And just like literally the Virginia State constitution was rewritten and not put to vote (laughs). And that constitution, um, they just instituted it in 19, whatever 07. I can't remember the date right now. Uh, instituted. And it literally circum- circumscribed blacks from voting for the next 7- 75 years.

And to give an example, in Jackson Ward, where the historically black neighborhood, um, was and has been in Virginia, um, there was, uh... I'll get the num, exact numbers wrong, but there was, um, over almost 3,000 people registered to vote in Jackson Ward, um, before the constitution. Um, after the constitution was put in a place, there was only 98 eligible voters left that met the criteria.

So, you know, you have these kind of things coming together of this re-imagining of, or, or trying to reconcile their losses, coming together with these political intentions and that literally being engraved into the landscape there, um, through the statues, through the zoning, and then ultimately in mid century through the urban renewal process of putting I-95 in.

You know, in this situation, what we were trying to do is kind of come at and uncover like this meaning, this history and, and, um, help bring another narrative a more truthful, inclusive narrative to that space.

What I loved about, um... Or what... Yeah, I mean, what I loved about what ended up happening with 2020 and this project in particular, um, was that there was a lot of organic place making occurring.

So place-making is something we all do naturally just like we all, you know, developed stories around our memories and, um, all of that. And so, um, there, there was a lot of organic place making going on on Monument Avenue, which is many of the, um, the, the photographs that you saw from 2020, um, with the George Floyd, um, projection art and, um, you know, Breonna Taylor and Harriet Tubman and all that on the Lee statue, that was all happening right where we have, um, where the tour is today.

So many people kind of coming in and just being together in that space and redefining, reclaiming that space for, um, for black Americans, as well as white Americans. Um,

And so, you know, it's a very, um, powerful, potent process, I would say, that we all do naturally and what... Um, and it influences all of our lives and we are not necessarily very conscious of it.

And so, you know, what you try to bring through AR place making is a more conscious effort, um, on that or conscious understanding, um, that you could look at the Monumental Conversations Project as one as kind of a deconstruction project, but what we've done in the Tenderloin is kind of the other direction is a construction project. So, uh, with that, um, the Tenderloin, as an example, um, has, you know, was a very underappreciated area.

Like all of the challenges we have in America are on full display there. Um, but the, but... And so it's, has a very, it's a problem. Like that's the way it's thought of in, in San Francisco. And it is. There are many, many deep, um, pro- complex problems going on there. But it's also an incredible neighborhood. Um, I always say there's two Tenderloins there, there's the Tenderloin you see on the street, which is what most people think of. Um, and then there's the Tenderloin behind closed doors, which is a wonderful community.

I mean, it reminds me of, or I shouldn't say reminds me of, it's kind of the way I imagine in some ways like a 1950s neighborhood would be, it's a very tight neighborhood. Um, there's wonderful play spaces behind, um, the closed doors and courtyards and, um, just lots of community, um, support.

And, um, but what... So, what we wanted to show with that project is that, that there is this other side to the Tenderloin, but also that there's this incredible history in the Tenderloin, um, of... You know, Te- Tenderloin has been very much like, uh, you know, engine of radical inclusion from day one that San Francisco is now known for.

Um, and so there was kind of a two-pronged goal with, with that project, again, kind of using the, the, the construction side of place making of reconnecting the residents with this rich history, um, of their neighborhood, and then also showcasing that to people outside so they begin to understand the nei, the neighborhood, um, and see it in a different way.

Um, so that's kind of what's behind place making, is that, um, understanding, um, you know, how people relate to the places around them and understand themselves in light of that. And then we overlay kind of the collective memory theory on top of that, of bringing in the historical stories and helping people to kind of, um, uh, you know, meld those together, um, in a, in an intentional way.

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Episode 1: The Power & Connection of AR

Description:

For Isabelle Foster, her return to the U.S. during the pandemic could have marked an end to a budding project. Yet the physical distance from her team created a new perspective that was perfect for those pulled miles apart: TavAR, an augmented reality (AR) app that brings communities closer to their roots and welcomes tourists to new places and stories.

In the first of three episodes on Voices of Exchange, we hear how Fulbright ExchangeAlumni Isabelle Foster, David Franco, and Tania Vargas are using AR to build resilience and preserve culture, and the ripple effects of their efforts.

Everyone has a story to tell. On Voices of Exchange, join us this season to hear how augmented reality can redefine a place; see American identity through non-immigrant eyes; explore climate activism in tribal nations and elsewhere; and, experience how hip-hop artist-educators are promoting multilateral relations.

Transcript:

Tania Vargas

I am Tania Vargas.

I'm an industrial engineer, and then I got the Fulbright Scholarship, uh, for Paraguay in 2017. I, uh, to the States. I went to Northwestern University, and I did a master's in project management. Then I came back to Paraguay and started to work, um, for the government. And then I switched to the private sector, and I'm currently working as a project manager at a tech company, and we work with clients, like, worldwide. We have clients in the U.S., in Australia, in Mexico, and in Paraguay as well.

And, well, I met Isabelle h-, uh, in Paraguay. Um, and we worked together for a bit. And yeah. 

David Franco

So my name is David, but I go by Davo.

Um, I did, um, master at a program at University of Washington in Seattle in, uh, technology innovation. So after, uh ... That was through the Fulbright program. After that I came back to Paraguay and continued working in, in the tech area. So currently I'm working for a tech company that is in Paraguay.

Isabelle Foster

My name is Isabelle Foster. 

I grew up in the US and am from the US originally, uh, was out in California for school, and then after graduation actually went to Paraguay on a Fulbright fellowship from the US to do a research project. So I was looking at country development through innovation and entrepreneurship, and while I was in Paraguay was working on the national innovation strategy in the government,And as Tania mentioned, that was how we met each other.

Tavar is a project that Tania, Davo, and I started actually back in 2020. We were discussing the power of augmented reality for helping increase awareness of the culture, the heritage, historical sites, architecture, and history of communities. And through these conversations, came up with the idea of creating an app in which it would make accessible the stories and history of different community sites within Paraguay to start.

Uh, part of the impetus of this was realizing that there's so much rich cultural heritage and, uh, history that has happened in a lot of the small, rural towns in Paraguay, but it's not easily accessible. Oftentimes, these stories or photos are within the community, and they're not always readily shared or publicly accessible.And particularly, uh, we had a lot of interesting conversations as, uh, you know, Tania and Davo are from Paraguay. Davo in particular is from San José de los Arroyos, which is a kind of small town outside of the capital city, and my perspective as somebody, as a visitor to Paraguay eager to learn about the history.

So through these discussions and realizing that there was kind of a mismatch of such rich history and culture, but the inability of someone like myself to be able to learn that history, um, was really a driving force to find kind of a solution that included both technology but also citizen participation to be able to document this history and make it more accessible.

Um, so don't know if Davo or Tania, if you want to add anything to that..

Tania Varga

Yeah, I like to tell about, like, the name.

Tavar comes from the conjuncture of two words. One of them is Tava. Tava comes from Guaraní, which is an indigenous, uh, language and also an official language in Paraguay. And it, uh, means home or town, and there is A-R from English, Augmented Reality. So TavAR comes from Tava and A-R.

David Franco

Yes, exactly.

So adding a little bit more to what Isa said. Uh, one of the major issues in Paraguay is that we don't have many libraries. So most of the stories or the history of towns and cities in Paraguay is that l-, they live in the, in the people who, who, uh, lives on- on- on the city, on the towns. So that's why generation after generation, most of the story is following time. So that's also one of the, of our model with this project, to- to preserve and- and share these stories to the, to the youngest population, engaging, uh, engaging them with the use of technology.

Tania Vargas

this was, uh, an opportunity we had because we applied, uh, to a grant from the U.S. Embassy and Associón Paraguay. And working with Isabelle and, and David was a motivation because, like, we are, like, young, uh, Fulbrighters, at that time meeting in Paraguay, and having this opportunity of doing something for rural communities, like bringing new technologies and working with the community. So, uh, that is something that I really like about this project.

David Franco

Exactly, and, and as a Fulbrighter, with this commitment to, to, to the, to our countries o- once we come back, to kind of, um, do something for a- show what we learned. 

And in the same way, and if in the same way, we can help people, uh, like creating this kind of project. Uh, so that was. one of our, uh, also one thing that, uh, make easier for easier for us to, to work on this.

Isabelle Foster

Absolutely. I think Davo and Tania nailed it perfectly. But kind of. One of the driving interests on my side for participating in TavAR was really helping to share that culture and history. I was excited to be part of that opportunity because I think coming from the U.S., I was very eager to learn about Paraguay, its history, and see different parts of the country, learn what that context was and how it varied outside of Asunción where I was based.

Uh, so I felt like this was a really exciting opportunity to help, uh, participate in that with Davo and, and, uh, Davo and Tania. And also just when I was in Paraguay, so many people were asking me from the U.S., "What is Paraguay like? I've never been. I'm so excited to learn more and hear about your experience there." So I think, to me, this also seemed like an opportunity to help share those stories and insights with people in the U.S. who might want to visit Paraguay in the future or previously had very little exposure to the culture of the country. So I think as Davo said, this was a cool opportunity to tie in some of the ethos and values of the Fulbright program that really drew all of us to this program, um, and was something we were excited to carry forward even after our time on the grants or, uh, scholarships.

David Franco

One of the most interesting things about this project is that the data is collected by, by the people, by the, by the community. So, uh, that kind of gives a sense of belonging to, to the project, and it's, it's interesting to, to see what, what they can, uh, afford, what they can provide, provide to the, to the project.

And, and see how they, they realize this can kind of be a sort of, uh, touristic guide and, and things like that. To, to r- ... Uh, to revalue the story [inaudible 00:12:50] of their community.

Isabelle Foster

Mm-Hmm (affirmative). Exactly. And just to add on to- to Davo's point, uh, we've had a lot of people interested from other parts of the country wanting to come to San José de los Arroyos, which is our pilot. So as a quick kind of context, right now we've launched our first pilot town or community in San José de los Arroyos, which is where Davo is from, kind of building off of the community connections he has with the local government, uh, with historians there to help, as Davo said, really build up that, uh, the data sources, the stories, and photos that are being shared on the app, which are collected by community members.

Isabelle Foster

And so we've actually had people from Asunción, the capital, which is over two hours away reach out to us and say, "We drove on a Saturday morning to go to San José de los Arroyos to see the stories and hear the culture." Uh, we've had people from other cities and communities say, "Can you bring this to our city? We're really excited to try to share stories of our heritage and my part of Paraguay, uh, on the app."

Tania Vargas

And there were also people, like, abroad or especially Paraguayans living abroad that contacted us, and they were wondering how they can be part of this project, how they can also learn and scan the stories and use the app, uh, to learn more about the cities. So now we are working on a new version of the app. I mean, to put this information available also on our website. So no matter where you are in the map, where you are in the world, you can also have the TavAR experience.

David Franco

Yes, so, uh, I grew up in that city, and ... (laughs) I- I didn't know that, uh, the, the park th- where I used to play when I was kid, uh, it was actually, uh-

Tania Vargas

Graveyard?

David Franco

Yes. I think it was a graveyard, so ... (laughs) So …

Tania Vargas

(Laughs) In the-

David Franco

In the past. So it was kind of interesting to me to know that now. Uh, but yeah, so that, that was, uh, that was something that I didn't know. And in the same way, other places, l- I think the park now is like, uh, a marketplace.

Tania Vargas

Yeah, it was a market. And, like, for me, like, I was born and grew up in Asunción, the capital city, and when I was a child, we used to travel through a different department called [Gawasu 00:38:54] and to go to Gawasu, you have to through San José de los Arroyos, which is the city of the [inaudible 00:38:59]. And I used to, I wonder, like, "Okay, w- what is it like to see San José de los Arroyos?" So if you are not from the community, you most like, w- you will not know, uh, what you can do at the city.

That's my case. And can you imagine, like, Isabelle's case, uh, if there are l-, no, like, touristic guides or information of activities that you can do in San José de los Arroyos?

And now I feel that with TavAR, we are putting the city on the map, uh, by having this attraction, uh, and Isa mentioned before, like, people from Asunción travel to San José during a week, a weekend just to, because of TavAR because they've heard of TavAR. And there are also lots of people who, who travel to the countryside during Saturday and Sunday, so this is a great opportunity, um, to, to give visibility to San José de los Arroyos and cities like San José.

David Franco

And, yes. And one important thing, th- this histories, this stories that we want to share, they are not only for locals because we, we create those stories in three languages.

Tania Vargas

Oh, yes.

David Franco

Yeah, so one, one of the, the, of the languages is Spanish. The other one is English, and we also put those stories in Guaraní, which is, uh, our native language.

Tania Vargas

Yeah, so it's very accessible, an accessible platform.

Isabelle Foster

The kind of support or interest that we've seen from other people within Paraguay has been a really exciting, um, opportunity or signal to us that this is something that has the potential to expand to other parts of the country. I think once we've built out a strong, uh, kind of case in Paraguay, seeing how it works in different communities and different parts of the country, we're hoping that we might be able to expand to other cities and towns in different parts of Latin America, uh, in neighboring countries and, and really just other parts in South America to start, I think is our initial scope or kind of intention right now.

Tania Vargas

Yes, and we also see, uh, that TavAR is a very, um, crazy, like, flexible project in the sense that we can work, like, with cities and within Paraguay or other countries. But we also see a lot of potential, for example, working with businesses. Um, in Paraguay, for example, there are, like, major industrial activities within the country, like in different areas. So we can also, uh, use TavAR to help them, like, tell their story of what they are doing, for example.

Uh, so tell the story of businesses. Uh, there are lots of, like, family business, for example, that, uh, grew w- w- with time, and-

David Franco

Local producers.

Tania Vargas

Local, local producers. So you can tell the story using augmented reality with TavAR.

David Franco

I think Fulbright, uh, the Fulbright program changed my whole career. Uh, it provides me with tools and experience that in - otherwise I think I couldn't learn. And especially in this project, I put some of the tools that I learned during my program. Uh, w-, I put in practice, and I, and I use it. Like, we did some, um, some rounds of user experience. Um, uh, and, um, and other, like, tools that I had learned doing the program. So for me, it was definitely a life changer.

David Franco

If, if I look at myself five years a- ... Well, maybe eight years ago, uh, it's like, I can't recognize that David. And, as I've said, if I have to mention one of the things that mark by life, uh, i- it's going to be the Fulbright program. So that's why we are actually involved in programs in our home country that, um, kind of promote this kind of experience.

Tania Vargas

For Me the Fulbright experience is more than what you can learn at university, is more, like, about culture. Uh, the people you get to know, uh, the friendships you form, like I have friends from all over the world thanks to the Fulbright program. And what I realize while I was in the, in the States is that I wanted to be, like, an ambassador for my country. And people, people from other countries, like, they have the same feeling, that they want to put their countries in the world, and show to the world and share with others what they are doing.

So, I, I formed this bond with other people from different cultures, from different nationalities, and I started feeling that we are all, like, the same. We all have, like, dreams and goals and that we can cooperate and work together, uh, to achieve our dreams and our goals.

Isabelle Foster

I don't think I can say it better than Davo or Tania. 

But.,I think similarly, um, the Fulbright was a really transformational experience for me. Having grown up in the U.S. and living in the United States, I think I was really eager to go to a different part of the world and get a different experience and a different geography. And so the Fulbright program was definitely an unparalleled opportunity to do that, to really be immersed in a different country, a different culture, try to understand kind of the culture, the nuance, the people, the heritage, um, something that you can't do when you're just traveling somewhere for a few weeks. It really requires deep immersion, and so I think that was something that I was able to get through the Fulbright experience. 

Um, even though unfortunately my Fulbright was cut short due to the pandemic. I was there for about half of my grant, which was just truly such a phenomenal experience, um, and something that I'm even more grateful for, having, you know, seen the inability that we all have currently to travel. 

As you know, a lot of the world shut down and closed their borders, I think Paraguay and my experience there, if anything, taught me the importance of still being connected, um, having that open communication stream, working together and collaborating. So being able to continue remotely working with Davo and Tania, even though we weren't in the same place anymore, I think was kind of a symbolic, um, kind of gesture or, uh, activity that really showed the importance of international relationships, uh, and the power that they have too. 


SEASON 2: PREVIOUS EPISODES

Trailer
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Episode 10: Brains, Bindi, and Braids

Description: Join us for the season closer of Voices of Exchange, featuring Dr. Swati Mohan, NASA aerospace engineer and U.S. Speaker Program ExchangeAlumni, this Thursday, February 10 at 8:00 a.m. ET. Celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science with Dr. Mohan’s journey from Bengaluru, India to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, her viral moment as the lead for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover landing, and why she is a big proponent of encouraging other women to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Swati Mohan:

Hi, my name is Swati Mohan. I was the lead guidance, navigation and control system engineer and operations lead for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, uh, and the mission commentator during landing day on February 18th, 2021. So as part of, um, that awareness, I was invited to do a inaugural diaspora dialogues talk that was sponsored by the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in India as, uh, voices of exchange to try to bring awareness of how the, uh, Indian diaspora is, uh, operating and succeeding in the United States to foster interest and collaboration discussion, basically between the U.S. and India.

I did a single session for them the inaugural session and it was a, basically a 45-minute talk or so, uh, where I kind of talked about my life journey and how I went, you know, I was born in India and how I came to the U.S. and, uh, and my career path. And then there was time for question and answers that they took from, uh, multiple different places. Uh, it was co-streamed throughout the different embassies in India simultaneously. So in Delhi, in Mumbai, uh, Chennai and a couple of other places. So I think the whole event lasted for about an hour, hour and a half, um, and the, uh, audience was primarily Indians in India, I believe, but there were also some, uh, you know, dispersed from the U.S., uh, through their connection with me or through the State Department.

You know, it was really interesting. And the... I think because of the pandemic and we had to do this in the middle of the, the pandemic, it was all virtual, which gave it the benefit of being able to be, you know, simultaneously broadcast across multiple different centers. But then also the downside where I couldn't actually go to India and I couldn't actually see, you know, the, the people asking the questions. So there's kind of pros and cons of, of having to do it over a Zoom platform.

The question that I loved best was at the very end of, "What do you miss about, about India?" And it's, um, been so long since I've actually been able to go. We were actually planning to go, um, this year after landing day, 'cause I finally have vacation that I can take, you know, in a big chunk. Um, and the, the COVID pandemic has just prevented that. So that kind of sparked this, "Oh, I miss so much about India. You know, the street food and the culture, and the festivals and visiting my family there 'cause I still have a, a lot of family that I haven't seen in years just 'cause we haven't been able to make it over.

My family primarily lives in Karnataka. Um, I was born in a city called Bengaluru. Uh, so I still have a lot of family there specifically and actually my husband's side of the family. Um, hi- they're also from Bengaluru, so when we go there, we, that's kind of our, our home base and we ha- feel like we're related to half the city. Um, but I, I have some family also spread out a few in, in North India and in, in Tamil Nadu, but primarily in, in Bangalore. Uh, how many times have I been able to go back? It varies over the, the course of my lifetime. You know, when we first came to this country, uh, I was only one and um, my parents couldn't afford to go back very often. You know, plane tickets back then were, were super expensive and they were still students and trying to pay for a family afford to, to go over to India, it was a, it was a big ordeal. So we went every five years or so.

And then, um, around the time that I graduated from high school and during undergraduate and graduate school, then it was a, a bit more frequent. You know, we were comfortable then and uh, we were able, I was able to travel by myself and um, we went every two years or so. Actually right after my college graduation, I went and lived in India with my grandparents for two months. And you know, I took them all over South India to, to travel and to see the different temples, which was a very, um, unique experience that I'm, I'm glad I got to do with them before my grandmother passed. Uh, in the recent years, it has not been too often. Um, I have two young kids, so to try to work it with school schedules is, is very di- very difficult. So we've only gone once, I think, in the last 10 years, unfortunately.

So someone must have asked me when I was really little, "What are you gonna be when you grow up?" And I said, "Uh, I'm gonna be a pediatrician." 'Cause I just came back from the doctor's office, I needed help and you could tell what they did. They made you feel better. So that's a noble profession. So I had gotten it stuck in my mind of, "I said it. So that's what I told everyone, that's my goal. So you have to go do that goal." And I did everything from, like, candy striping and volunteering at the hospital to shadowing my aunt, you know, during her rounds, to taking anatomy. Um, and it took me a long time to realize that "Yeah, I could do it and I like the idea of it, but it just didn't, it wasn't for me." Like the, um, smell of the formaldehyde from the dissections and like, I was not good with my hands to be able to do the dissections. The memorization of just learning the parts of the cell, like it took me forever to, to memorize that 'cause it didn't come easily.

Whereas the physics, you know, the first day of class they're like, "Okay, F equals MA. That's all you're gonna learn this whole semester." And I was like, "Oh, okay, I get it." And then as long as you get that, you can do everything and you don't have to memorize. You don't need your books. Like that's, that's all you need. And just kind of fit how my brain thinks a lot better than the uh, than the medicine did. So, uh, I gave that up, but I did end up marrying a pediatrician. So I see some of it vicariously (laughs) through him.

I happened to be watching Star Trek with my parents and my dad was actually a pretty big science fiction fan. And uh, my first episode was, I was really little like seven or eight maybe, probably too young to really understand what the plot line of the story was. But I remember the visual impact of that first episode that I saw where the, the spacecraft gets kicked out into the middle of nowhere. And then they had shown the scenes of, you know, where they were and it was just so beautiful, like the purples and the blues and it was all like flowing. I was like, "Wow, is that what space is like? That's so cool. Um, I wanna go there, like I wanna be on the, the bridge of a ship that goes to travel in space." Uh, and that just kind of got me hooked first into science fiction, you know, watching things like Star Trek or Star Wars.

Uh, but then, it got me more curious about what real space was like. So I would start checking out books on, um, on the planets at first like in the solar system and the moons and then kind of dabbling in, uh, the cosmology and astrophysics part of it. Like how did the universe form? And these were the books that I was checking out from the library for my fun reading, you know, uh, in my, in my spare time. But that was always my hobby. I didn't, I didn't translate that over to, to having a career 'cause it was very hard for me to understand what that meant in terms of a, a career. It wasn't until I was a junior in high school and I had a really great physics teacher that I, that I was able to understand what it meant to, to do engineering, like what, what it actually was to build these things for a purpose to go out. And that was when I was actually confronted with it, "Oh, maybe I can make this a career. Oh this is what NASA actually does or what it means to, you know, build a, a spacecraft to go to somewhere else."

And that's, that was kind of my right angle of, "Okay, maybe I should go pursue this and figure out where my place in this space industry would be." I still love Star Trek.

I don't know if I can say that there were others that influenced my decision directly, but I will say I had, um, an aunt who was, uh, really smart, like PhD in computer science and was working in the field. So, uh, she, along with, you know, my parents who were both in the STEM field and in more engineering-ish, um, fields, they, they served as examples, right, of, "You can be a woman going into this field. That's, you know, that is something that our family has some examples for. So you should go and, and try that." It didn't, um, it wasn't a direct correlation, but I think just having them in those fields and working in those fields helped to open the door as a possibility.

And then once I, I made the decision to go into engineering. Um, there were a lot of teachers, uh, professors at undergraduate and, um, my graduate advisor, especially and, and my PhD that were, uh, super influential in helping me define my path and where I can succeed and helping me along that journey.

* So I, I'm a big proponent of encouraging women to go into STEM. And I think part of it, um, stems from my experience of, uh, going through the engineering field and, you know, in undergrad, I was one of 10 women in my, in my graduating class of about 100, 115, right, so it was about 10% and you could, you know, you felt the difference, right? Like you could feel that you were in the minority. I had the great fortune when I went to grad school. Um, in my lab, there happened to be a confluence of, of women that just joined at the same time. So for the first time, there was like five women out of a, a graduating class of like seven. And that was the first time that I felt, "Oh, this is what it could feel like if it was actually, you know, equalized." Like the conversations in the lab were just different and suddenly it, it didn't make engineering one-sided because it wasn't all just about, uh, just about the work or, or that.

Like it became more overarching and we were able to trade, you know, life's experiences that were similar and encouraging. Um, and it kind of just made me flip the switches to understand what it could be like if it was fully equalized across the board. Um, and that kind, that spurs it for me. Right? Like I had, um, we had an admin in graduate school who was really, uh, invested in like seeding us all into the same cubicle. Right? And while I was there, I was like, "Oh, that's silly. Why is she, why is she doing that? That doesn't matter." Um, and it wasn't until, you know, maybe six months in that I realized why that was. Because no matter how, how much, um, we say, when you're in the minority, it does somewhat stifle your, um, willingness to put yourself out there and fully be yourself, no matter what type of minority you are in, uh, in that field. And finally being able to be in my field and not feeling like I was the minority kind of opened it up for, for all of us. And we were able to be more free with each other and discuss more and had more communications and more, more open.

Um, and being able to bring that feeling across the board, whether it's for minorities now in women or, uh, race, or, you know, gender preferences, like the more you can equalize the fields so more people are able to be free to be themselves, you open up that potential and you open up communication. And, uh, by doing that, you're able to listen to everyone. You're able to hear these ideas. And that's really when you're utilizing the, the group at a maximum. And that's when you're really unlocking the potential and, uh, able to leverage that, to solve these hard problems, right, to, to solve what needs to be worked on, to have the creativity to think outside the box, to, um, to solve these big problems.

So if we can, you know, support getting to that stage, I think we'll see a huge benefit from it that we're not necessarily able to see, to see right now. [21:50] And, uh, so I'm right now in the supervisor position. So I have hiring authority, but from my perspective, like there are some basic qualifications to hire into my group. And by the time you get to that, like the, the pipeline just gets so small. By the time you can get to, to hiring to my group, if you need a PhD, I can't make the job not need a PhD in that discipline. Right? So it's a matter of keeping women or keeping minorities through the pipeline long enough to, such that there is enough of a pool at that final stage to hire into these professions. 'Cause if they drop out, you know, at every, every sector, right, they drop out by not taking the classes in high school, they drop out by not going into the fields in undergrad, they drop out by not pursuing it for graduate school and going into, you know, business or econ and something instead. So by the time you get to my level of someone who wants to hire to get a diverse group, the, the candidate pool is just not large enough to be, be, to be selectable.

So I'm all about helping to increase that pipeline in every, every dimension, all the way down to, you know, my daughters of 5 and 10 of getting it in front of them enough, you know, through various means whether it's through, uh, box kits that we, you know, work on together, like these snap circuits or, or the KiwiCo Crates or summer camps or, you know, making 'em do science fair, just enough that they realize that it's an option, that it doesn't have to be closed to them just because, um, because of their gender. So that they do have the interest to, to nurture it, um, above and beyond because society itself will not do it for you.(23:34) Sorry. That was a very long answer. (laughs).

I, I feel like the best option is to give them a glimpse of what it's like. Like even my daughter who, who like, likes science when we do it at home, she comes back. She's like, "Oh, I don't think into science, it's kind of boring at school." And that's because they, they focus on what they can kind of teach at that age. But you know, the stuff that I do, you need so much math to understand what it is and how to do it, that you don't get that until years down the road, right, but if you lose the kid already in fourth grade or in fifth grade, they won't even get to that point to learn about that career.

So, um, being able to show them examples, right, of people who are in the field, who are doing that end thing and what it kind of means in layman's terms will at least give them something to reach for, even if they don't necessarily understand, uh, how to do it at this age, at least it'll give them something to hook onto for their imaginations, to keep them going to the next, to the next level until you can, uh, interest them. And then you gotta find what, what hooks the kid, right? Every kid is different. And just because you like one aspect of science doesn't necessarily mean you like the other aspects of science.

Like, I like oceanography and like, Marine biology, like I could care less about that. Like I don't, you know, like being in the ocean, I don't like animals or touching animals to say, but some kids are really into that and they're not into space. Right? So, but if you just focus on, like, a blanket only this much of it for any particular kid, you can't inspire their passion and get them interested in -- augment what they're already kind of biased into and, and use that as a, um, hook to, to increase their interest.

 So the day of landing, the, because of the whole COVID, they didn't actually let any of the photographers or videographers in mission control. So they just had this like tiny camera that was mounted to the top of my, my station. And it was just this tiny little, like less than hand size camera. So it, it was kind of easy to forget that that was there for the most part. And I kind of went through what I had to say. Um, I was surprised at how big it got. I mean, I, I knew that, you know, the internet could do that for certain people, um, but it's always a hit or miss. Like just because you have a certain role or, uh, a certain position doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna be you, right? Like the, the guy who was the face of the curiosity landing, I mean he had some aspect, but it didn't necessarily go viral for him.

Uh, the one that it did go viral for it was a guy like sitting two rows back because he had a Mohawk, you know, and that was new and interesting for the internet to see at, at, uh, a JPL mission control room. So it was quite a surprise that it went that, um, that viral. And I, I only watched the video feed of the landing, um, just a month ago when we had our, our six month landing-versary. And that was the first time I actually saw it. I had kind of, still was in a little bit of trauma and hadn't been able to watch the whole thing through. Um, but that was when I realized, like, how much it was focused on me 'cause that's not what it felt like for me in mission control. I had, um, so many people like talking into my ear, uh, constantly calling out exactly what had happened that I was repeating on, you know, on the, the mission commentary side that, um, it, there were, there were so many voices in my head that were going on that it, it definitely didn't feel like a one man show, but the way they, uh, they cut it in that sense, it, it sounded very much like a, a one person show, which it, it was not.

It was a huge team effort to, to get to that point, um, not just with the people on the phone, but there were so many people on WebEx and people that were, matter most with that. It was a, yeah, for me, it was a, a huge team effort with everybody in my ear and we were all kind of talking at, at once.

I think so. Uh, you can never say how much. I mean, I think Perseverance came at a time where everyone really needed that, you know, positive light. There had been so much that had been on with the pandemic and the election and the, the protest that this was something positive that had very little negative connotation that could be attached to. Right? It was solely for the purpose of knowledge. It was this amazing team effort that literally persevered through all of the obstacles over the last year to, to get to this moment. Um, and it gave something for the whole world to, to kind of latch onto. So I think we got more attention and then people were at home, right, so they could, they, they could watch it in addition. And it was, uh, it was in the middle of the day for the west coast. You know, the period is, uh, curiosity landing was at like 10:30 at night or something. 

So, um, this time we had a lot of school who could watch. It was like in, in the school day, they all the, the kids could, um, be aware. And then, uh, I don't know, with the whole #MeToo Movement going on and with, uh, Vice President Harris also with the, the Indian diaspora kind of was a confluence of events I think that led to the spotlight.

And so leadership and teamwork have, are two big aspects. Um, let me tackle the teamwork first. Uh,-- teamwork is absolutely critical for, for everything we do. Because everything we do is so complicated, so much scope that there's, there's no way you could do it without a really excellent technically savvy, tight knit team. And not just, uh, a team at JPL, like for Perseverance, we had team members all across NASA. I mean, for the entry, descent and landing, the core team was Ames, NASA Ames NASA, which was in Northern California, NASA Langley in Virginia, people at NASA Johnson Space Center in Texas, as well as the, the crew here at NASA JPL. And that was the core team because that's, uh, you needed all of those different expertise to make entry, descent and landing work.

So I think from the very start, when you come to JPL, you realize that everything you do is in these huge teams and, and how to work that in. And, you know, you have sub teams and teams, and, uh, you really rely on everyone to do their part, right? Like the team is only as good as it's, it's weakest link and you really rely on everyone, um, to, to get their part done so that you can kind of build from, from there. For the leadership aspect of it, um, it is something that NASA values, because as I said, when you have these large teams, um, keeping them focused is a real challenge, right? Like you're, you have this like massive barge heading down a river and it's up to the, the leader in the front to make sure that it doesn't, uh, hit anything and you still stay on course.

Yes. Uh, there was a time after, whe- when I was getting ready to graduate from my PhD that I was considering multiple options. And one of the options that I was considering was to go into academia, you know, to, to be a professor and to do research, uh, in the space field and, uh, versus industry. And I, I kind of knew I could do industry because I had worked at JPL before going to grad school. So I, I kind of knew what that was like. Uh, but the, the academia, I faced a lot of imposter syndrome of not being sure whether I, I could do it or not, or not being sure whether I'd be good at it. Um, so I, I doubted myself a lot for that and probably talked myself out of that even, you know, you know, which I don't know if it's a good or bad thing 'cause I'm, I'm very happy where I am now. But, uh, a little, a bit of a regret that I, um, talked myself out of trying.

So I never even applied to any, um, positions 'cause I kind of convinced myself that, "No, no you better off going here 'cause you're better at that" as opposed to, to even trying to, you know, to see if I would've, could have done it.

Yeah. And it's really hard because you have to get out of your own headspace a little bit. And, uh, [45:50] the thing that I regret is that if you never try because you convince yourself you're not gonna do it, then you're not gonna do it 'cause the, the first step of anything is to try. So in some sense, uh, you, you need to put the onus on the other people and saying, you, you just have to try if it, and accept that you maybe, uh, won't get it. And it's fine if you think you won't get it, but at least try because then, uh, you won't, you won't be limited to what you think of yourself. You know, your evaluation will be met by, you know, people who are in the field who are making that decision based on what's best for them, for the position. And if you get it, then at least you wouldn't have sabotaged yourself. And then that's one aspect where, like, you really were good enough for that position.

Uh, and just that little effort of trying and leaving it to them to decide, um, didn't cost you that position, uh, in the future.

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Episode 9: Tolerance Comes From the Heart

Description: A chance encounter during his International Visitor Leadership Program, or IVLP exchange, gave Imtiaz Asin a new perspective on life. While traveling in the U.S., Imtiaz experienced tolerance, cultural awareness, and diversity within the melting pot of cultures. When he returned to Canada, Imtiaz brought these lessons back to his community where he is the Vice President of the largest Muslim organization, the B.C. Muslim Association .

In this episode, we hear how Imtiaz is re-energizing old ideologies, how he is empowering women and the next generation of leaders, and why he believes tolerance comes from the heart.

Transcript:

Imtiaz Asin

My name is Imtiaz Asin. Um, I was a IVLP alumni in 2010. I actually went on the program on, uh, inspiring young leaders, uh, to be involved in civic engagement. And I'm actually the Vice President of Youth Development Services for the British Columbia Muslim Association, which is the largest Muslim organization here in Western Canada. Our organization spans over 15 branches and we also have two elementary schools. We also provide social services to the less fortunate, as well as funeral services, social development, and - a big thing in our communities - youth development services. So this is something that I have been doing since I was a young person, and now I'm getting older, so I'm not considered a youth anymore, but we're still trying to instill those tools that we have gained, um, previously from our exchanges and our, um, uh, individuals that we came across onto the younger generations.

So, uh, just a little bit blurb on how I actually got involved in this IVLP Program, um, we received an email from the U.S. Consulate office here in Vancouver, um, talking about, “Is anybody in your community interested in taking exchange programs?” and what it entails and what you can benefit out of it. So at that time, I was the Vice President of Youth Development Services and um, our head office brought this email from the Consulate office. So, um, the President of our organization got a hold of it. And I said, "Hey, you know what? Um, I would be interested in it." Then our Executive said, "Hey, listen, you're at the top of the pedestal. You should be giving everyone else a chance before you can go." Right? So I said, "Okay, that's fair."

So we actually ran the ad in all of our Muslim Community newspapers, and uh, we put it through all of our branches and not one person applied, because they did not know it was something that was new and uh, they did not know anything about it. So on the three days before the deadline, the whole association actually agreed to send me. And me not knowing what it entails, what I'm getting myself into, uh, the, the U.S. Consulate office invited me over, um, to, you know, say what type of programs do you want to get interested in?

And at the same time, I did not know that how much of an impact this would have on the future of my life and my dealings with the community. So the, we went and I, I went the first day, uh, when I had hit DC, uh, there was nobody there because I traveled some of the farthest and I had my flight was a day after.

I came, uh, on my own from the airport and everyone was sleeping. Uh, all, all of our, aides and everyone was sleeping. So I was like, am I at the right hotel? So I sat in the lobby for at least a good 45 minutes and there was not even the front desk person there.

I have all my bags there and I'm thinking, okay, this is gonna be, this is gonna be something that I'm gonna have to start to do. So actually an individual came, um, he was a tall individual, um, and he had an accent and he said, "Oh, how are you brother?" And then I assume, because, uh, he presumed that I'm Muslim, he called me brother, that's the greeting that we give, cause in Islam we consider all of everyone our brothers and our sisters. So then right away, I said, "Oh, how are you brother?" He said, "Oh, um, I'm from Sudan." I knew, okay, fine. This is from the same exchange program. And then we just started talking and for like a good 15, 20 minutes, he never asked my name.

So he said he called and somebody, and then the person came down, bought me, checked in, we went in, sso that was a start of my program. It was really, uh, difficult, but then I thought to myself like, look how destiny works. I come from one side of the world, this guy comes from the other side of the world, and we meet in a lobby to help each other. And how did that happen? It happened through IVLP. That was like the number one thing.The smallest things happened with IVLP and the exchanges that we have with individuals, a lot of us take to heart and we keep it, uh, always.

The exchanges, um, were so different for other people, but people thought because I was Canadian and it was all almost the same and we think of ourselves as our nation, as a big diverse and cultural nation, building from newcomers. But I always had that notion that the United States wasn’t like that. And it was something that was, I was naive about. But when I went into the exchange programs and seen some of the programs that are being done in the most rural parts of the United States and how diversity plays and how based on that diversity, we have cultural awareness, I was mind blown.

I was in Pensacola, and as you know, uh, in Canada, we have a large First Nations, um, group here and large First Nations here that we support through government. And right now working with truth and reconciliation. But when I went to, uh, Pensacola, uh, I actually went and we went to one of the - um, uh, re- reserves there and we learned about the Highway of Tears.

And I, I was just mind blown that this is happening here and, uh, what people went through, um, our First Nations there. And that was something that I could connect with, because it's happening at home. So then, that's when I started to realize, hey, you know what, this, this is a big melting pot of cultures.

In his role as VP of the B.C. Muslim Association, Imitiaz engages both Muslim and non-Muslim youth, and has made a platform for women within the community. But it isn’t just equity or acceptance that motivates him.Through his work, Imtiaz tries not only to make his community feel safe but also to answer the question: How can we instill understanding and tolerance in the wider world?

Now that the community is made, those mosques are becoming empty. Why? Because the younger generation is not having a connection between the, between our organization and our elders. So we, me myself thought, how can we change that? How can we do something where children and youth want to do something and be happy of who they are? They don't have to choose one or the other, being global citizens or being Muslims, or being any part of ethnic - they shouldn't have to choose. So we started, uh, sporting programs where we would integrate a little bit of religion and more sports. So whereas we would have, um, one thing is that we had a, what's called a, a, a Young Ummah BCMA, which is the organization that's subsidiary of BCMA.

Uh, and it's been around for about 12 years. It's operated fully, and we're a nonprofit organization that runs solely on, uh, donations. So this group of young individuals and myself at the helm thought on how different ways that we can engage our youth - Muslim and non-Muslim, because at that time coming back 2010, 2011, 2012, there was a big, uh, big influx of hate crimes. And there was a big influx of Islamophobia, even within Vancouver, where I live, where there are predominantly Indo-Canadians here. Uh, in Surrey, which is just 15 minutes away from me, has the largest influx of Indo-Canadians, uh, of Sikh origin other than India. So now that can give you a grasp of how diverse this area was. And at the same time we were having hate crimes here.

People, women, young, uh, women as early as 17 or 18 were scared to go on the bus or the sky train because they used to have their hijabs pulled. And you hear this in bigger, bigger parts of, uh, you know, Canada, Eastern part Toronto, Ontario, but not on, around here in these Western parts. And that really startled us as, uh, young leaders. And that really startled us as, um, individuals. So we started to say, "Hey, let's give these attainable goals and to create a basis of understanding between each other." So the first program, some of the programs that we did, because forgive me, we have over 15, 10, about 10 years worth of programming.

But to start off, e thought sisters are the number one, um, targets, uh, as victims of his Islamophobia. Why? Because if you look at me right now, you can't tell I'm a Muslim, but you can tell a woman she's a Muslim by her hijab. 

So this was the number one issue.

We created a self defense class where

we created, um, a self defense program, um, organized and instituted by certified trainers and to... It was over a six week program where we taught them how to feel safe in their surroundings, understand their surroundings at the same time protect themselves. And I thought it was gonna be a big flock. Why? Because we have a lot of, um, families that are from predominantly, uh, uh, Asia, Asia, where Pakistan, India, Arab countries, um, and we thought that because, you know, not trying to take away, buta lot of these families are very conservative when it comes to interaction, uh, between men and women and it's, it's, it's perfectly understandable, but we want it to break that barrier that, "Hey, you know what? Our tolerance comes from here. It doesn't come from our eyes and our head, it comes from our heart."

So I had to pitch this to my executives in my association. And the first time, it got shot down - that, “oh, we're gonna get women jumping around in the mosque, trying to learn how to fight,” but they didn't understand because this is a new concept. They did not know that this is something that's needed, but when we went the second time to preach it to them, they said, okay, let's try it. We tried it. 120 women attended, um, that session over six weeks. And, and it was so, um, so mesmerizing to see 120 women, uh, well, I wasn't allowed to be there because it was all women, but the, the, the gist that I get from it is that all of these women were so empowered, right?

So empowered that a Muslim organization would give them these tools and, uh, to go and to be and feel safe. And that was just the beginning, the rest, it just shot off. We started doing, uh, soccer tournaments where we would invite what we would called guest players, guest players are individual of, um, who are not Muslim.

So the reason why we would invite non Muslim is for propagation. Not to kind of brainwash them where people might think, but it was to give them an understanding of what Islam is, uh, to see how we actually interact. We bleed just like you do. We laugh just like you. We, we eat the same Netflix and chill. We do everything. We wanted to create this understanding to say, "Hey, we're, we're the same people." And it really, really kicked off from there. Some of the programs that we continued to do was something that's called spirit of Islam.

And we would invite all of our interfaith leaders, our priests, uh, from the synagogues, from the, among theirs, from the guars, all of these ethnic groups would come and they would come to understand Islam for what it is.

And we would invite all of our interfaith leaders, our priests, uh, from the synagogues, from the, among theirs, from the guars, all of these ethnic groups would come and they would come to understand Islam for what it is, and this was coming from being a global leader, having those attainable goals. You, when going back to what I was telling you of understanding how tolerance and diversity needs to occur, and that training is what I got from IVLP, that's what I got on how to initiate and how to bring those, those traits out in to individuals.

But now when we create change that the community started to see, these guys actually know what they're talking about and it's, we have it tough, but the women have it tougher.

And they're not given a platform. Once you give an individual a platform to excel, they're them being excelling is what's gonna show that, hey, you know what? This person can do it. And now we started to change that. We started to bring women into the organization, uh, until I think about eight, nine years ago, women weren’t allowed to vote for, as we have a total  different wing of, uh, of, for the women.

So the women were independent, they did everything on their own. They had their own president, they had everything, but the executive officers were men. So we changed that. We had women being able to vote. Now, what we're doing is now we're actually having women to come into the council, to sit shoulder to shoulder with - between men and women, keeping in part of that religious context, but understanding we all are leaders and all of the issues pertain to all of us.

Because like I said, once you give them a platform to excel and it's not, uh, I shouldn't say them, I should say anybody give, uh, give anybody a platform to expel, uh, excel. You are based on your performance. So when they see the sisters excelling to say, “Hey,you know what, we, we didn’t know what we had.” So now our organization is excelling. There's still, like I said, a lot of work in progress, but that was the main component for change.

The community’s mosque is located on what’s known as the “Highway to Heaven” - a one mile road that has 20 places of worship, including a church, a Buddhist monastery, a Hindu temple, a Vedic cultural center, and a Sikh gudwara. But it took a mundane infrastructure change to bring these communities together, and Imtiaz believes there is still work to be done to create tolerance and to fight Islamophobia. 

So I think 50% of combating Islamophobia is our responsibility as Muslims, our responsibility as global leaders, we need to show the beauty and what, what our religion is all about and how it intertwines with the everyday occurrences of everyone else that we have here.

I think that was really a productive session that we had. We've created, uh, a lot of programming where we, um, educate the media about Islamophobia. We educate community leaders, even, uh, police officers on when they attend on call to the mosque on how to deal with, uh, Muslim individuals. And if you recall, we had, uh, the New Zealand shootings that happened a couple years ago, and mind you, us, our family being from Fiji --New Zealand and Fiji are neighbors -- so we actually knew one or two people that perished in that mosque during those shootings from, uh, being priests in the local cities in Fiji.

This is the, this is something that I learned, uh, when dealing in, during my IVLP Program, it's okay to be mad. It's okay to be sad, because having those feelings inside is what's gonna break you, but we need to have interaction. We need to communicate to understand each other's feelings.

10 years ago, uh, I would never see, um, a priest or a rabbi or, um, a guru, or have any, any ethnic background in my mosque.

(48:54) And this happens with a lot of organizations - like we think within the box, we're, we're in a different mindset. We're thinking about constructing religious infrastructure and not thinking about the community outside of our, of our box. And once we had all of this put together, then you said, "Hey, you know what? We can't be always in our box together."

And we, we in our main office in Richmond, British Columbia, which is the same city as where our airport is, is on a street and you can Google it. It's called “The Highway to Heaven.” On that street, you have every single ethnic group’s places of worship. “Highway to Heaven” in Richmond. So you have a synagogue, you have a church, you have a Sikh gurdwara, you have a Hindu mantra, and you have a Shia mosque and you have a [inaudible 00:49:42], all on the same block. So, this is what, uh, created and broke the ice. It just so happens in the area. And this is so weird that in that area, um, they were running, if you know, a little bit about plumbing, they were running on septic tanks. So every couple of months, a truck would have to come and take the sludge out of all of the people’s tanks.

And what happened was the city wanted to change that into a full sewer system. But in order for us to change into a sewer system, the pipes needed to go through each other's properties, right? And we never spoke to each other. And when this initiative came and we had a community meeting, that's what broke the ice, something so small, and it created a, a, a connection and it created an interfaith dialogue. It created a lot of awareness. (50:35)

Um, now, uh, its comes nowadays. It's like, we have a church, a Fijian church, uh, right next to us. And during, on Friday prayers, they give us their full parking. And yeah, we're, we're bad about it. Some people park like they're parking, uh, you know, uh, like on the middle of a dark road, and they're tolerant because they understand.

When we had the, uh, New Zealand Massacre, there were individuals that were coming to our mosque with flowers, me growing up. I never experienced that. I never saw that, that someone would be coming to my mosque with flowers. Um, and, uh, these were the changes that we seen, that the people around us actually understood who we are. And, uh, they tolerated us. They might not agree. We might not agree, but that doesn't mean that we should be able not to coexist.

Ultimately, Imtiaz believes that change has to come from passing the torch to the young. Part of the challenge of that is in old modes of thinking and in opening up mindsets of the older generation to listen to new ideas and to new people, further adding to the rich mosaic that is Canada. Even though Imtiaz continually works to increase tolerance inside and outside the Muslim community, he knows that one day, he too must pass the torch along to the next generation of leaders and that society needs the young to succeed.

We have to be able to integrate the old and the new, right?The old, always things that we're coming with, new vibrant ideas, and they're threatened by these new vibrant ideas that might shape the very existence of what this organization or what the society was built on. But, the only thing it is, is that, to be honest with you, ideas become stale. I-ideology become stale. All we're trying to do is to create those ideologies and re-energize them.

For example, um, we have a lot of young intellectuals in our Muslim community, and it was always older people becoming part of committees, whether it's, uh, a grant committee, whether it's investigation committee. Um, the PAC that we have, like I said, we have two schools and board of education. They would always be predominantly older people. Accounting, the finance department, older people. So we actually sat one day and I said, "Did you guys ever think why nobody ever applies?" They're like, “Why?” and I said, "Because you've created such a big gap between the old and the new that, when they wanted to be heard, you weren't listening. And now when someone else is listening to them, you're asking them, ‘How come they're not talking to us?’" And that's shed - that put a big light bulb into our organization and all organizations in the Muslim community and abroad.

Um, this happens in many uh, organizations where people are very, uh, hesitant about passing on that torch, uh, to the younger generation. And it's still work in progress for us.Um, you know, like I had aspirations to become the president of my association, uh, a couple of years ago. And, uh, the first thing that someone asked me is like, you can't become president ‘cause he's not married. He doesn't know what being, having a family is about. So then I thought for a second, I said, "You know, what, if an organization, uh, dictates my, um, social life compared to my contribution to society, then that, that doesn't, I don't deserve to be part of that organization nor do I want to be part of that organization."

But then I thought to myself, “Hey, it's an ideology, it's not a person that dislikes me. It's not a group of people that hate us, or you actually will use the word hate, understand this.” It's something that's a social norm in society. And, when I say this, particularly speaking in my organization, people got married early. People were developed early. People had a lot more to think about when they were early on how to feed their brother in or how to feed their parents coming from third world countries. So they're trying to put those, instilling those, uh, um, attitudes into us where we are thinking, hey, a part of this Western culture, we should, like I said, we shouldn't have to be able to choose between religion and government or, uh, ourselves and religion. We, we should be able to integrate all of them. And this creates an identity and creates a mosaic.

The next generation of leaders need to succeed. Patience, patience is number one. Um, number two, understanding, and number three, the biggest thing, I think, as being a leader is compassion. Uh, compassion for yourself, compassion for your neighbor, compassion for your friend, compassion for the community. Because one person who, when I started in this organization told me when you're doing community work, you can never do enough. There's always gonna be more that you have to do. And, uh, this is something that I think of every single day when I feel like dropping everything and leaving, because it's so exhausting. Uh, I think of that, that, hey, you know, what, if I'm not gonna be doing it, someone else will be doing it. You know, destiny finds somebody to do the work that we need to do in order for this world to continue.

Some of the strong things I think leaders need to have is patience, understanding, compassion, and, um, love what you do. You know, love what you do.

So having that mindset all the time, knowing that you're held accountable for something, and at the same time that you might not tomorrow be able to do this is something that we should, that should drive us to continue to excel and continue to give those next leaders, uh, the goals and the tools that they need to succeed, because if they don't succeed and if we don't succeed, the society doesn't succeed. And if the society doesn’t succeed, then we’re in trouble.

Now that I advice that I can give somebody who's doing, um, who wants to do, or is doing one, or is planning on doing one, is be prepared for a life changing experience.

(55:06) Programs like this change lives. Programs like this change attitudes, and it changed my attitude, it changed my way of thinking and my life. And, uh, I still talk about it like, you know, uh, 10 years after, like I still think of the day that I went and stepped into DC and I saw, I saw the White House for the first time. Um, the first time I went and saw the Lincoln Monument, and I got to there and I had seen this on TV. (

I don't think people really know how much of an impact it has on you until you leave the group and your back into your regular, current, your daily, your daily grind on what you're doing and how you're doing it. And you take those lessons that you learn, um, from the visits that we've done to the individuals that are from different countries, uh, from having that cup of coffee and just, you know, on a, on a day that, uh, if you, as you know, being part of the IVLP Programs, they're very excruciating.

You're doing something every hour of the day. And, uh, having some down time really meant a lot to us and, uh, this is where we get to engage each other. (02:49)

So all I can say to the future of individuals that want to be joining IVLP or have, uh, willing to join, uh, be prepared for life changing experiences.

 

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Episode 8: Fueled by Curiosity

Description: A chance meeting led EdTech founder, entrepreneur, podcast host, and ExchangeAlumni Nidhi Nidhi to her first experience with the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). But it wasn’t the first time curiosity led Nidhi to new experiences.

In this episode of Voices of Exchange, travel with Nidhi from India to Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.S. to discover the ties that bind us, how Nidhi challenged societal norms, and how she is empowering young girls to take risks.

Transcript

Nidhi Nidhi

I had taken a five-year break before, after having my kids. So when I wanted to restart work, I found myself with an outdated resume. And my, my degree was already five years old by that point.

And I was applying for jobs, but I was not getting any kind of response, no interviews or whatsoever. So I was feeling a little bit disappointed that this whole idea of taking a break has backfired on me. And I went back to my Alma mater, which was a national university of Singapore. And I asked my professor and he was kind enough to offer me a research position at that point.

And during that time, I came across Coda, which was a coding training camp for people to train young students, primary and secondary school students in coding. I had no experience in coding, but I thought it was a great opportunity to give back to the community. And I just joined that program. And at the end of the wrap-up event of that program, I happened to be at the wrap-up event. I realized that the program was funded by the U.S. Embassy in Singapore. And there was, there was a lady there and she was taking pictures of the ambassador and I thought, “She's from the media.”

And I just happened to speak to her.

And she asked me, what do I, what was I doing at this point? And I explained to her that I'm working on this project about the Singapore salary system, and I'm documenting the journey of how it has been developed and so on. And she said, oh, that sounds very interesting. Why don't you send me more details of what you're doing? And I so I did. And after a few days, you're back to me and she said, would you be interested in this program, the IVLP program? And because IVLP is not mentioned on any of the websites, I had no idea that such a program existed. And she said, I would like to nominate you as, okay. And it was so, so much of a serendipity because I never expected, I really thought she was from the media because there were other people from the media.

And I just happened to start a conversation with her. And I said, okay, so which publication house are you from? And, and she said, no, I just happened to work with the U.S. Embassy and because the ambassador is here, I'm here to cover her for, for our website. And so I, and she, so sometimes I feel that it was really meant to be that I had to get this opportunity and be with those 20 bright women in that, in that reframe of time. So I was really glad to have gotten that opportunity, firstly, because it gave me the confidence that mothers can get back to work.There are people, or there are people who are out there to support you, to give you those opportunities to get further in your career.

By default, when you go for an exchange program, you are surrounded by bright minds. You know, these are either creative entrepreneurs who are, have the best ideas or these are academically inclined, people who are coming out with great research. So the moment you step into that room, it's, you're going to be challenged. You are going to be shown in the deep end, where you have new ideas coming at you and it's up to you, what you want to do with them. And I was so amazed by the energy, by the idea, by the possibilities that these women had. And I embraced that fully and we enjoyed interacting with each and every one of them.

So for me, the highlight of the program was this, the cohort of these bright minds and being surrounded by them. It was like being scattered with seeds of possibilities. And those seeds took [and] germinated at a certain stage later in my life.

And often we hear people saying, oh, that was the best experience of my life. And it has been truly the best experience of my life.

We had people from the private sector, from the public sector, from the grassroots. So it was a very well home, whole development kind of process that I really enjoyed integrating into.

Nidhi’s global interest links back to the childhood trips her father took her family on. Learning independence and a cultural awareness at an early age, Nidhi eventually began working for Singapore Airlines, where she discovered new possibilities in the sights, sounds, and smells of each new city. 

My father and my, my father was the traveler in the family. He loved to take us for holidays to different parts in India.

We spend most of the time in India, but I think it was the need to be independent. That really fueled me to go out and discover what lies beyond the borders of India. I really wanted to discover the world on my own. A given, given that we came from a very conservative family, where though my parents always encouraged us to study and work hard that there was no real need to become independent, financially independent. So for me, I felt that I wanted to do something which was not done before.

Go ahead and discover new possibilities for myself. And when this opportunity came by, I decided to give it a try and see how it goes. So once I reached Singapore, I was on my own. It was a very different experience. It was the sights, the sounds, the smell of this very multicultural society, highly cosmopolitan, very different from India in many, many ways.

And the best part of it was probably realizing that the common humanity, the emotions that people feel no matter what your skin color is, what your race is, are the scenes.

So when I used to fly, I used to observe the fact that people are just drawn by the same emotions. Airport is such a melting pot of cultures. You see people hugging and that really gave me a lot of energy, but I used to see people bidding farewell to their friends or family.

And you could see grandparents flying all the way from Canada to India to visit just the newborn child or some, some other story. Or maybe sometimes somebody has passed away and a friend is flying from a really normal part of the world to see just bid farewell to the friend.

And all those emotions really were more exciting to me than the actual travel itself. I look forward to interacting with people, that was probably the main highlight for me really – so I, I was with Singapore Airlines for seven years and I became a trainer at some point. And later on, I, I really was intrigued by Singapore's development in contrast to developing A Isiha because Asia, Asia being a melting pot of different cultures and economies, it's a place where you see a huge disparity in economic status and how the economic development process has really played out. And coming back to India, where I was from, I rea  - I really felt that this the Singapore is doing something right. And I really wanted to figure that out what that is, what's the secret sauce for Singapore's remarkable economic prosperity. And that was their public policy, which is, which is the foundation of the Singapore system. And the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy is one of the well-known institutions around the world. And I thought if I want to learn about public policy, Singapore is really, it's, it's an example to many countries in the world, and that would be the best place to learn that.

And that was the motivation to go, to go back to school and study. Once I was there, it was, it was clear to me that this public policy requires navigating a very delicate space because creating policies is happening in the midst of a lot of stakeholders and how you're going to do that. How are you going to manage that is a very tricky process. The jury and the practical aspect of it can be really different. And that aspect came out very clearly when I interacted with the civil servants who were present, were there in the cohort with me, so that I learned about not just public policy aspects of how public policy is done, or what's the best standard practices in public policy, but also the fact that there are so many limitations when a civil servant is working under a minister and how they, you learn certain things in school. And when you have to put them in practice, it can be a completely different ball game.

There are many favorite moments, but the one that really stands out is, is the time when we were invited to, to dinner at, at the, at the homes of different American families. So I went to this, this person's house and her husband was -- her name is Mary and her husband was just recovering from cancer.

And despite that she invited us and a group for us to a home. And she had a couple of her friends over to help her cook dinner. And that was, that was very touching for me that despite the fact that she has her own complexities to navigate, she was willing to share her home, her time, with somebody else and show them the American way of living.

We made some food together and we, we had conversations about everything that we could possibly think of. And it was, it was a very memorable evening.

While she didn’t originally envision herself becoming an entrepreneur, Nidhi saw a piece in the educational system that was missing – self-confidence. 

She set out to add this element into children’s education through writing and self-expression; and her podcast, Brainstorm, which offers the chance for girls to express themselves freely.

As I mentioned a bit earlier that, at the end of the IVLP program, was just soaking in many possibilities in my mind. And those seeds sprouted later on in my life.

In 2018, when I attended the program, I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur, but when I came back and I started because I had moved countries, I had come to Switzerland at that point. And I was wondering what lies next for me. And I, I found a gap in how the Swiss system, because English as a second language in, in Switzerland, Germany, German being the first language, most of the English speaking community here feels that the, the level of English is not at par, that they would find in their home countries. That was one aspect of it. And the other aspect was that I always found too much emphasis on theory and very little emphasis on actually being creatively, expressing your voice.

So I thought what I could do was bring in a creative expression, being confident as a public speaker. That was the element that I wanted to add to this picture. Not just give them a great foundation in writing, but also being able to express those thoughts and ideas very clearly. And that's where I started my, my educational initiative for creative writing and public speaking.

And the pandemic has really given me this opportunity because earlier sitting in Switzerland, I wouldn't have had that chance to conduct what you will workshops, which has become possible now. So I, I think it's, it's just an amalgamation of all the things that have come together, my experience with IVLP my, the fact that the pandemic came and, or my, the possibility of opening up an offering workshops in Singapore.

Every day. I look forward to getting up and getting dressed to go for the new workshops or the new ideas that I'm gonna soak in today and learn not just from the people who are, who are going to conduct the workshop trainers, but also my cohort.

I think in the Zoom calls and Clubhouse, the power of voice is undeniable. Everybody recognizes how important it is to express yourself clearly and effectively. And as I touched upon earlier, when I was growing up, my father used to write newspaper headlines with some short details and ask me to share it in the morning assembly in my school.

And my teacher was kind enough to give me the opportunity every time, every, every week, once a week, I used to get the opportunity to go ahead and present the news. And as, as a young girl, I developed that habit of going up on stage and presenting something. And later on debates, elocution and poetry, poetry competitions came by and I took part in them openly because I never had that barrier. My - at a young age, I was introduced to that and I never thought it was something difficult or I never, I never was stage shy.

But on the other hand, I feel that many children don't get that opportunity because they have so many extracurricular activities to go for that these things do not take any kind of prominence, grasping and retaining information is what we are trying to make our children could add, which is, which is important. But I wouldn't sideline the importance of being confident and articulate with the ideas. So at the same time, I want children to have an in, in the current generation. What we see is children are plugged into social justice, climate change, and they want to express their voice on all important topics. But what happens is that they, they do not have a chance to ponder and think over them or express what they want to do. And through my workshops, what I end to do is to get that, that moment of calm, where a structured writing activities there, where they think about what what's happening around them and give them different writing prompts to go through so that they can actually think what they are passionate about and also have the right medium of expression.

So for maybe for somebody, it is poetry for the other person. It might be a stand-up act that they want to do. And the other person might want to do a podcast episode on that. So that is what I want them to do. Be creative think and come up with their own creative form of expression.

And now that I have been making these creative expressions into podcasts, what cast for last nine months, I've seen that they have come up with the most creative, most different, unique ideas by themselves. And I don't have to initiate that or give so many inputs anymore.

Once we got the hang of podcasting, I, I decided... first we started with Brainstorm because Brainstorm, the kid's podcast, is about integrating very well with the format of my creative writing and public speaking, because it gave the children a very safe audio platform to express themselves. 

They don't have to be on a visual medium. It's an audio medium, which is very safe for children to put their ideas out there. That was the whole intent of starting Brainstorm. And the second podcast is UNstoppable by Nidhi, which is a woman's podcast.

Oftentimes we see that important issues that affect women are highlighted during women's history month, equal Bailey women's day, or this is the gender gap. This is what's happened with domestic violence this year, all these topics just come out on particular days or particular months in a year.

And I really wanted to bring them to the front because I wanted to start conversations on these topics because I feel if we do not talk about these issues, they do not. They do not take priority in public eye.

For example, 39% of GDP is contributed by moms who stay at home. So if you calculate the economic contribution of stay-at-home moms in certain countries, it reaches the level of 39% of GDP, but does a policymaker come out and say, I want to create a policy that helps stay at home. Moms, get access to finance so that they can start their own business. Do you hear of a government scheme where women can return to work more often than not? This is started by the private sector and all these conversations do not happen because these, these issues do not have weight.

And I wanted to merge research and storytelling and have real women share their perspective on these issues, whether it's why husbands, who do household work are given that crown of being the best husband in the world and the most supportive spouse in the world.

As Nidhi pursued her career path in storytelling, she began to realize that success wasn’t just about passion – but about a willingness to learn and become curious. 

And while her proudest moment may have yet to come, she seeks meaning in new experiences, including: in conversing with people with different perspectives and beliefs. Which, Nidhi believes, is how we can foster productive dialogue and appreciate the common humanity among cultures and people.

I think my proudest accomplishment is yet to come because, and, and if I, if I divided into three categories of proud of what I'm proud about, the first category would be my physical ability. What have I go on beyond my physical limitations and Danzel, and then would be the second category of being mental and the mental and emotional area of what have I gone ahead and accomplished beyond my mental strength or in my emotional ability in the physical category?

And, in terms of my mental and pushing myself and mentally and emotionally to go ahead and break the barriers that I wanted for myself, I, I guess the most important accomplishment for me was to be the first woman in my family to be financially independent because I, I, my, my mother and my grandmother, none of us, none of them ever had the opportunity to work. And I don't think it's because lack of it was not a lack of capability or capacity. I think it was just lack of recognition that they are equally capable of doing what they, whatever they set their mind to do. And I think I I'm fueled by their dreams for me and their dreams for all the daughters in the world.

I'm not fueled by passion so much as much. I am curious to learn. So if you put me in a situation where, or in a room, I would be very curious to learn about all of you. I would like to, I would like to listen more than to contribute because I really want to know your story. So that curiosity leads me to all different sorts of areas, which I haven't explored before. I just want to, I'm just curious to see if I am able to do this.

If you're considering going for any of the programs sponsored by the U S department of state or any other exchange programs that come your way, I would highly recommend it. And my first reason for that is there is no harmony without a dialogue. If you don't start the conversation with somebody across the table, even if their views are completely diametrically opposite yours, there is no possibility of having a common ground to recognize the common humanity. You need to have a conversation. So the importance, the fundamental importance of an exchange program is to create a dialogue, to appreciate the common humanity between different cultures, even different, different ideologies.

That's the first fundamental reason why I would recommend somebody to be on exchange program. Number two is the possibility of interacting with a very bright group of people who are being selected from all over the world. They have done their part to be there, and they are there to add meaning to your program as well. So keeping an open mind and going there to learn as much as we can from that program is, is the whole idea or the whole mission for that. So it's not just the program in itself, the reputation or the prestige attached to it, but the people who are going to be there with you, who could add value to it. And thirdly, I would feel, I would say the third reason for that is your career is especially in today's day and age. It's not a static, or it's not a one path to success.

We have very different ways to get to our destination. And only when you go for exchange programs, like IVL B you get the opportunities and those ideas that you would never thought were possible possible for you because those pivots, those ideas sitting in your country, in your community, in your hometown, you wouldn't be able to experience what you can in a room full of bright minds, who would suggest something new, which might be a new future career for you. So I would highly recommend anybody to apply for such programs and work towards getting an opportunity and building that opportunity for yourself.

I think for somebody answering the first part of your question, that somebody who's younger and wants to apply for such programs, what advice could I give them? The first advice I would give them is that go beyond your goal of duty. So it was because I was at a community project event that I met the us counseling person had. I just stuck to my research role in office and I not taken the chance to just contribute to the community project and try and learn something new. I wouldn't have gotten that opportunity. I wouldn't have met that coordinator who said that, oh, maybe your application in wisely program was not selected because you were already past the age limit, but Hey, you have this opportunity to apply for. So if there is a project that really speaks to you, that you feel you might be able to contribute to, even if it is small, we, it might not be a very important or difficult or very challenging project.

But if that speak to you in some way, shape or form, go ahead and devote your time. You never know what that would lead you to. That would be the first thing I would suggest to somebody who's looking to try out something new or apply for any kind of exchange program, because it adds not just to your, to your color, your experience and everything else, but it's also a way of exploring possibilities of what you want to do and what you like to do. And, and advice to my younger self would be to be bolder and to be more assertive because I have been in rooms where I have been in the discussions where I thought I was correct, but I never had that confidence to go ahead and serve myself. And I let go of opportunities because I was not assertive enough. And I think that that would be something I would tell my younger self that you have more than you can, you have more to offer, then you can paint. So don't undermine your possibilities. Don't undercut yourself and just be assertive and bold, and put your foot down,. If you truly think this is correct, I would often let the other person win when even though I thought I was correct, just because I was not confident in my, my ideas and my capabilities.

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Episode 7: Year in Review

Description: We’ve learned a lot in 2021 since we launched Voices of Exchange, and this special episode is dedicated to our favorite moments from seasons one and two.

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Episode 6: Ambassador for Exchange

EPISODE 6

Description: Social entrepreneur and ExchangeAlumni Ian Tarimo likes to call himself an Ambassador for Exchange. That’s how strongly Ian, winner of the 2021 Mandela Washington Fellowship Leadership Impact Award and co-founder of Tai Tanzania, believes in the power of exchange programs. Ian also believes in democracy and fighting corruption, but it was his visit to the U.S. for the Mandela Washington Fellowship program that gave him a deeper understanding of the global issues we all face and more.

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Episode 5: Giving and Gaining

EPISODE 5

Description: Poet, Foreign Service Officer, and U.S. Speaker Program Exchange Alumni Indran Amirthanayagam was born in Ceylon, a country that -- in name anyway -- no longer exists. In this episode of Voices of Exchange, Indran recalls how this feeling of loss for Sri Lanka’s former way of life inspired many of his writings and led him to call himself the “border-crosser.” To Indran, it’s all about shedding old skin and learning new things - or, giving and gaining, while pushing linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Transcript

 

Indran Amirthanayagam:

My name is Indran Amirthanayagam. I'm an exchange alumni. 

I was born in a country that no longer exists. It used to be known as Ceylon and the name was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972. And so it's funny to belong to a place that, and aware of life that's gone or somehow changed actually, you know? Um, and so I, I write out of that sense of loss also. A loss of the way of life of a certain nostalgia, I mean, everyone, I think has nostalgia for what's gone before. I mean, some people have had very difficult childhoods and, and, and traumas and, but, but still, uh, generally there's a sense of nostalgia for the past or for the, for home or for where, uh, one comes from. And, and I think that bridging the gap, you know, I mean, I'm an American now. uh, uh, an immigrant and I celebrate that and I've become, uh, not only an American, but an American diplomat, a bearer of the people, American culture, carrying it abroad and, and sharing it with the foreign cultures and foreign peo- nations.

And, and I think that's a great responsibility and a wonderful task. So I've, I think of poetry, in, uh, in the way that I think of diplomacy as a bridge builder between cultures, between countries that no longer exist and countries that have greeted the poet or the, the poem, you know. Um, so, uh, my poetry when somebody once [inaudible 00:08:34] his name was, a great poet and translator. He called my first book, a welcome addition to the poetry of migration. And so that's always stayed with me that phrase, the poetry of migration. What does that mean? What is the poetry that's born in the crossing over the crossing over boundaries? I, I've always been a border crosser, you know. (laughs) I mean, I don't mean only geographic borders, but linguistic borders as well. I mean, I've crossed over from writing poetry in English to writing in Spanish and French in Creole and in Portuguese. I've... I guess I don't see any limit to the imagination or to the poetic act and I, in that sense a poem is, is a bit rebellious. You know, it doesn't want to exist under one set of laws. It wants to create a kind of lawless and yet, uh, a free world. You know, the, the notion of freedom is, is an obsession of mine. I mean, how... To what extent can one be free in one's expression? Uh, you cannot control the mind you, I've always thought about that because I've, I've experienced enough. Come from places where, uh, control is an obsession. You know? There is, uh, there places where civil war has been, unfortunately, sadly, the, the bread and butter of existence, having the many years of the Sri Lankan civil war, for example, was just whether you lived on the island or lived away. It was part of your, uh, imagination, it was part of your, your memories, it was part of your inspiration for your writing and it needed to be resolved and solved.

And, and... It's if you're a poet, you write poems to help bring people together, you know, to make peace. Um, that's ultimately, I think the goal of poetry writing, it's not an, a violent act. It's rather a pacific, uh, expression, a nonviolent expression of essential human truths. And, you know, we want to be free. We want to respect each other. We create laws to enable freedom to, to thrive, and these are ideas and we struggle with them in every society on the planet, you know, in every country. But, uh, Mari- Mario Vargas Llosa, uh, the Peruvian writer once said, "A democracy is the least bad systems." You know, I mean, it's enough to last, it's, it's the best we have, but let's, let's promote it. And, and, and poetry can play a role in that, uh, in that, uh, in that promotion. Yeah?

I think, I think it's a, it's a kind of exercise, like physical exercise. You, you go for a walk, you go for a run and you get into shape. I mean, you need to li- be limber, you know, and, and limber and free your mind and, and get it moving and, and get thoughts flowing and, and move about the day and move about the page in the same way with your, with your pen. Um, or with your, or, or typing. I mean, I do, I admit, I write a lot of poems directly on a, on a laptop or an, or on a phone and then transfer them to the laptop. But of course, traditionally I used to write on paper and I still do occasionally. The, the advice I would give is just, is, is to, is to, if, if you feel inspired to write poems, um, don't limit yourself, you know, don't feel that this is a, a minor matter or a minor art or something that, um, is just helpful for yourself. It's, it is helpful for yourself, but it also helps heal the frayed bonds that have been, that have been broken, or that have been, uh, challenged within the society, within the social fabric.

I listen to the music outside in the, in the birds song and in the air, the movement, the rustle of the wind, uh, I mean there are, there are rhythms and, and, and, and echoes that all around us as we go about our days both inside the home and outside walking. Often my poems come from walking. I'm walking and the lines, um, start to come to me to the rhythm of the, the steps, you know, so it's a walking rhythm that I, that I find, um, writing in. Um, I write about anything and everything. I mean, I write about love and war and loneliness and, and, and God, and I, I write, um, because I think, you know, once I also used to say that poetry is not only useful for the funeral or for the commemoration, but it is very helpful there. But it goes much beyond that, I mean, poetry, um, I believe does make something happen.

W.H. Auden used to say, wrote once, poetry makes nothing happen. It exists in the valley of its saying, a way of happening, a mouth... I've always railed against that phrase. I mean, I love Auden's poetry, but I railed against the idea that poetry is essentially useless. I think poetry is, uh, uh, a kinda word music, just like the guitar interprets music, creates music or the piano. So the voice and, and the, and the mind writing through the fingers creates, um, uh, taps into the music that, of, of ordinary speech. Um, I, I'm very much connected to music, uh, word music in poetry

I do believe that, uh, rhythms and rhymes and melody and so on are all part of the poetic utterance, yeah, or poetic speech. So I write about everything, and ev- anything. There isn't a subject I haven't tried writing about. Sometimes I write a poem about a subject that I know a little about, and then I have to research and I learn more about the subject. And then, uh, and then it becomes part of the poem. Um, so it's a act of discovery, it's a movement towards discovering something about the world you want to share with your fellow man or woman, or, um, in your community. For me, a poem doesn't have any importance if it's only written for myself. It, it belongs, it, it no longer belongs to me once it's written, once it's shared once it's published once it's broadcast, once it's read. Yeah.

And it's, it's, uh, it's almost has a religious function, you know, uh, of, uh, uh, you know, the, the notion of, of doing good works. Well, I mean, you, you, if you're engaging with the, with the muse and writing down the stories of your tribe, of your people, of your country, of your, of your world, um, you're helping, um, uh, towards each other, towards readers, listeners towards a deeper understanding of where they, who they are, where they come from. And I think that's a great, um, blessing to be able to engage that. And, you know, for example, um, when I write a poem, um, about... The other day I wrote a poem, it was in my book, Migrant States called the Migrants Reply and it, and the subject where the, uh, the migrants were coming to our borders and, and, and, and what they bring to the, to our conversations, to our cultures.

Okay. Um, this from the Migrant States, which, um, let me see the Migrants Reply. We've been running for so long. We are tired. We want to rest. We don't want to wake up tomorrow and pack our bags. We've gone 10,000 miles. We have boarded a row boat, tug boat, bus, freight train. We have a cell phone and some bread. Arise, a dry, our breath needs washing. What next? You're putting up a wall on your Southern flank. What an irony. The country that accepts refugees does not want us. We qualify. We have scars and our host governments hunted at least some of us; the rest fled in fear. Gangs do not spare even the children. White vans took away our uncles, our cousins. Do you think they'd been made into Ploughshares?

Aye what are you saying too easy, too easy to wear our hearts in these words, in slings, on our faces, furrowed perplexed, what happened to kindness to strangers? Why do we have to be herded like prisoners held in a holding camp? We are human beings and like you in safer countries, we have the same obligation to save ourselves and our children. Oh, the children look at them, give them food and school and a new set of clothes. Give them a chance, whether you are red or blue, the eye of the hurricane does not discriminate. We are your tumbling weeds, hurling cars, flooding banks, and we are diggers of the dykes. We can teach you so many languages and visions. You would learn so much. You would never ever say lock us up. The Migrants Reply.

I was going to say it comes from a book called The Migrant States and, and it's a book really about America, but a very broader America than the United States, you know. Because when you think about the America[s] and I think about America, I think about, about Chile and about Canada. And I think about, um, Haiti, you know, I think about the continent and all of its peoples and cultures and languages. And, and so it's a celebration of this America, uh, and it's an America that I've learned about through diplomacy, you know, the, the chance to work and live in different parts of the continent and in, in Peru and in Argentina, in Mexico, in Haiti. And, uh, so it's inevitably, I've learned a different, underst- have a new, developed, a new understanding of America through the, uh, through this experiences, these life and different cultures, American cultures, and work. So in that sense, diplomacy and poetry have gone hand in hand for me.

I was appointed in New York, uh, first and I was, uh, writing there and I was a journalist as well, writing to the small newspapers in, in Manhattan and writing theater reviews, writing, uh, columns, uh, cultural, um, culture

And so my life as a writer, as an artist in New York, you know, New York is a very friendly place if you, if you're in the arts, you, you really do get a lot of community support from your fellow artists in your field and, and others. And, uh, so that was the life I was living in New York. And then I took the foreign service exam. Uh, my elder brother - also a diplomat - had, had encouraged me to do that, and I did. And I, the second time I, I got through the first time, but not the final stage. I, there was the in-basket test that, that stayed with me. I think my handwriting was to blame. And then I went to the second, I did it again. And then I got through the second time and the se- and then I had to say goodbye to New York. It was not easy - for about a whole year I was saying goodbye to every place I loved in that city, which I loved so much. Um, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and, and, and ta- taking leave. And then I went to Washington, um, to join the US Information Agency, which no longer exists, but at the time you could be a Foreign Service Officer for USIA or for the State Department.

And I, and I joined USIA, uh, and I was posted, uh, initially I was supposed to go to Caracas and then follow up in Mexico City. I ended up in, in Buenos Aires and following up in Brussels. (laughs) And this is, these are the vagaries of the Foreign Service. You know, you, you have to be flexible. I love Buenos Aires, I learned a lot from my first experience there. But, uh, so you have to be flexible, patient and, uh, and, and, you know… Look, it was hard to say goodbye to the poet's life in New York and the relative freedoms one has to write about what you want and think. And I remember I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about Sri Lanka, which, which is a not easy thing to get an article placed there and meant a lot to... But then I, then when I joined the Foreign Service, I realized I couldn't just do that. I, it, I would have to let certain things go. Um, and then I, I had some anxiety about that for about three years. I didn't write a poem. I, I did a lot of reading. I learned languages - Spanish, and then French, and when I was in Brussels, I taught myself French through reading La Monde everyday. And, uh, and I had a bit of instruction as well at the Foreign Service Institute...

But the point being, I had to break through that understanding of, learn how to balance the poet's life and the diplomat's life. And I had to learn from experience that you could do both, you know, for a while, I thought I had to give up one for the other and I did for about three years. And then, and then I, my son - about to be born - uh, the night before his birth, I wrote a poem about that, about that, about this, and then that unleashed a whole, the poetry that had been stucking up, you know, for, for years.

You know, I, I felt there was so many stories that I had to tell and that I was learning about as well in my new work as a diplomat that I wanted to, to share with the world. So, and my mean, preferred means of sharing was the poem as opposed to a novel or, or a short story or, or, or a play.

Um, you know, so, um, life is about learning, uh, new experiences and learning new things and also, uh, shedding old skin and giving up certain things. I mean, when I was in New York, I was a, a great fan of the theater and I would go and write reviews of plays. And I was really engaged with the theater. When I started to go abroad that I, I had, I sort of gave that up, you know. Yes, there is theater in, in Argentina, especially, and there's theater in Mexico, and so on. But, but it's a different relationship. Um, and so, um, and when you learn a language, it changes the way you look at your own original language as well. And I think that's one of the great, uh, benefits of, of working as a diplomat. It's just, it's the learning of languages and how those languages have improved me, my conscious conscience and consciousness, you know? I've become a broader, more global person as a result of the language learning and the engaging with different cultures. So it's a, it's a privileged position to be a diplomat. It really is. I mean, you, you have this, um, opportunity not only to represent your country and your people...

When I say represent, I mean, I'm not talking only about the, the policy of the government. I feel that you're a representative of the culture from which you come and, and you, you're a bridge between the culture of the host country and the culture of your original in this case, the United States. So, uh, whatever your job in the embassy, you, you promote that, that conversation, that traffic across that bridge, that cultural bridge. And so, um, and so, yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't, and there were moments in my career when I regretted something because I couldn't, I, you know, I remember when I was writing for the Hindu newspaper in India as, and I was the PAO in Chennai, and I was promoting American culture in a way writing about American. I wrote a piece about Martin Luther King, for example, or about [inaudible 00:26:29] and then Agha Shahid Ali, who were poets of Indian origin, who were writing and working in the States.

But, um, but then when I, when I left India and I, and the newspaper asked me to write a regular column for them, and then I got into some hot water (laughs) internally. Because I was told, ‘you know, people know you as diplomat, they know you as coming from Sri Lanka. I mean, it, it's not helpful for us, for you to be, to be writing these pieces.’ So I had a choice to make, I could either challenge it internally and say, well, look, I, I'm not, I'm not questioning government of our, our foreign policy opinion or anything, or I can let it go. And I ended up deciding to let it go, you know, let that offer go. And just because I was, I wanted to respect, uh, keep my career flourishing and keep moving. But so you do, you do give up things and you gain things.

I continued to write poetry and I was writing poetry in Spanish and it was in the Spanish world and Latin America. And so people started to know about my work and I, and I got an invitation to read from my poetry, um, in, in Chile. And, um, and then I, then, you know, then I can't remember who contacted whom first, but, but, uh, our embassy, our public affairs section in Santiago um, learned about my poetry and want- and then reached out to me asking if I would, I would come as a Speaker to, to the country. And I, and I was delighted to do that. And, and I was at the time working in Monterey, Mexico, uh, as I was a PAO there. So I took some leave and I went to Santiago to do this program for the embassy. And it was a lovely program, I mean, I, I read poems, I talked about American poetry.

You know, we, I think we tell stories to each other. We tell, we talk about our feelings to each other, we talk about our, our experiences, our traumas to each other, we share. And then in the sharing, there is healing both in for each of the teller and for the receiver, you know? And so I think there's a inevitably our understanding of, of each other improves, deepens through the sharing, whether it's in person, speaking poems in a, in a group, uh, whether it's virtually down through, through video and, and, and radio.

Um, but it's, um, it's basic to diplomacy. I think if we don't understand the other, uh, that person remains the other, and that's the basic, uh, recipe for war and for division and conflict, you know? We have to eliminate the concept of the other. And the only way we could do that is by promoting, uh, unions and meetings. And so spoken word is a way of uniting, uh, peoples and, and eliminating or helping to eliminate this notion of the other, you know?

I, I um, it's a very sensitive subject as a migrant, uh, in the United States. I remember during the Iran, uh, it was a long time ago now, the, the hostage crisis, um, under Jimmy Carter's presidency, when I was in, um, I was in Philadelphia, a college student.

Uh, and I, I had to run out of a bar to escape a group of people who saw me as a, as a threat to, as an Iranian as somehow a, who assumed that I was somehow part of this, um, violence that was being committed against those diplomats and others who were held hostage in Iran at that time. So how do, how can poetry help with that? I don't know. I just think we have to, we have to do our best to share and keep sharing by all means necessary.

And so, um, I think mutual understanding and spoken word are uh, uh, bread and butter of our work and I, and always need to be, I mean, it's hard to know how to measure necessarily the impact of a program on somebody's consciousness, but if you, but, but that's the fact that it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do that program.

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BONUS Episode: Self-Sacrifice, Belonging, & The Wishing Tree

BONUS EPISODE

Description: As a Pakistani-American immigrant, Mariya Ilyas grew up outside of Washington, D.C. before attending Bowdoin College. After leaving a corporate job to pursue a career in public service and then receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to teach in Istanbul, Turkey, Mariya discovered the power that lay in her hyphenated-identity.

This episode is a story of resiliency, self-sacrifice, and belonging. Join us to hear how Mariya’s exchange led her to become more open-minded, and how it also led her to a pivotal moment in her time abroad – an encounter with the “Wishing Tree.”

Transcript

Mariya Ilyas
My name is Mariya Ilyas. I was born in Pakistan and I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia.,

I went to school with students whose parents were in the military and immigrants from places like Afghanistan and Sudan. And as an immigrant myself, it was an incredible experience to be surrounded by so much socioeconomic, linguistic, ethnic diversity.

And growing up, I always thought that that's what America looked like because that's where my family settled and that's all I knew. Um, I ended up going to go on and study at a small liberal arts college called Bowdoin College in Coastal Maine, uh, which was a unique experience. Not only because it was very homogenous, um, and not as diverse as the D.C. aArea where I grew up, but it also turned out to be one of my most transformative life experiences. Um, it taught me a concept of community and resilience, um, and giving back.

I first heard about the Fulbright Fellowship, uh, as a sophomore in college in 2010. At the time I remember pinning that for something in the near distant future because, you know, it wasn't, I was a, you know, busy sophomore with a lot on my plate and, uh, couldn't think straight about what, what my life after college looked like. Um, but while I was in college, I was fortunate to have various unique internship experiences.

But I would say that some of my favorite experiences from college, uh, were the opportunities when, uh, when I got to do international work. Uh, in summer of 2010, I received a small grant from college to go to my native Pakistan and voluntarily teach English at an underprivileged, uh, middle school. I loved my experience there so much that I actually, I went back in summer of 2011, um, but this time with a bigger grant. Um, it was a national grant called the Davis Projects for Peace.

And, um, what I did was initiated a journalism program to help students learn the power of words, um, and in creating peaceful and democratic societies.

We had field trips to the national newspaper done. We had news trips to a radio station, um, in India and my students published their first newspaper, um, it also came at a time, um, when the world's most wanted, uh, terrorist Bin Laden, uh, was found in that same town where I was teaching, Abbottabad.

And so, um, I felt that the impact that I had on in the community that I was working on, um, was, you know, far-reaching in helping, um, my students understand how journalism could be, uh, used as a tool for, uh, for creating peace And so both of these experiences expanded my perspective that professional work doesn't have to be a 9:00 to 5:00 job in an office. That it could be in the field, it could be in a different country, it could be while navigating unique experiences and challenges, connecting with people, um, adapting to environments.

After completing her undergraduate degree at Bowdoin, Mariya moved to Boston to pursue a corporate career in finance. However, after realizing that her interests lay beyond the walls of her 9-5 desk job, she began exploring the possibility of a career in public service. 

So I ended up, uh, you know, moving to Boston as, um, most Bowdoin graduates do. And I thought, you know, "Let me try my hand at something new. Uh, let me give the corporate world a try." And so I was working for a big insurance industry. I loved it actually. I, you know, I majored in math, so numerically, quantitative stuff was, was fun for me.

So from a skills perspective, it was incredible, but I just knew in my heart that that's, that's not what I was meant to be. Um, especially since I had such great formative experiences in college that I knew that I had a calling for, um, you know, something more, something different. Um, and growing up in D.C. As well, you know, that heavily influenced my, uh, career choice in public service.

I remember on my commute to, you know, every single day to Back Bay thinking, you know, "Is this what life for me is gonna look like for the next 40 years. Until I retire?" And I remember just that thought daunting me and thinking, um, you know, "What w- w- am I happy climbing the ladder?"

Um, and so while I enjoyed the skills I had just missed, I, I had a craving for something more. I had a craving for, um, interacting with people and seeing my work, um, have a more direct impact and a more immediate impact.

So I grew up as a Muslim in Pakistan and of course I brought my, you know, cultural and religious identity to the United States and I spent a majority of my life growing up in United States. So I was eight when my family immigrated, um, to the United States.

And at that time, um, I had no idea what was happening. I felt my two worlds were clashing. I was adapting to, um, a new place, a new language, a new school, a new social life, um, and a new way of lifestyle. And so for me, when I, uh, was reflecting on, "Why was I applying to, to Fulbright and where did I want to be," um, Turkey felt like a natural place because Turkey is a country that is, uh, geographically situated, uh, where the East meets the West. And I felt that my entire life has been the East meeting the West.

And so it was an incredible experience to be in Turkey and, re- uh, you know, go as a cultural American, you know, educational ambassador while being in a predominantly Muslim country. It was, um, the first time where in a long time, um, you know, I would listen to the call to prayer five times a day, um, and feel comfortable, uh, with my hyphenated identity. It just, it felt, um, that I could be both Pakistani and American in Turkey, um, because oftentimes growing up, um, and actually as my experiences in Pakistan demonstrator, the two summers that I went, I felt very American.

You know, I even had a hard time connecting with my Pakistani students. They thought that, um, you know, I, um, I was, you know, this government official coming and I was like, "I have no affiliation with, with the U.S. Government." Um, but you know, just the way I dressed, the way I carried myself, the way I spoke, um, they were untrusting. And so everywhere I went, it was like the American, the American, the American. And then conversely growing up even in the U.S., um, in Alexandria, gro- you know, studying in, in, in Bowdoin in Maine, working in Boston, I was kind of, you know, the South Asian, the Pakistani, uh, woman. So, um, I found that, that complex identity of mine, um, to always be something that I had to reconcile with and [inaudible 00:11:45] Turkey, I found peace at that.

While Mariya was thrilled at the opportunity to explore a new culture and country on her Fulbright Scholarship, convincing her parents of the value of exchange was a different story. 

It took a while for my family to warm up to the idea of, uh, a career in international affairs, um, but at the same time, um, I'm the third out of five in my, um, family, five children. I have two older sisters and in my entire family and my l- entire life actually, I've always been the person that, you know, push the envelope further and further and further. Um, what I mean by that is that growing up in a South Asian Muslim household, um, with, you know, four girls and my brother is the youngest, um, my parents were very protective of us, um, very conservative in our upbringing.

My father, um, did not want me to do the Fulbright Fellowship. Um, he wanted me to do, go to law school as is typical in immigrant, um, households, um, to finish my education, to get married and then, and then start my career.That was kind of, uh, what he expected of me, but I knew that having gone the Fulbright was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I. Think after they saw how much I loved my time in Turkey, they came and s- ex- visited me and I, and I don't think that ever would have visited Turkey if I weren't there. And I remember the day when they, you know, landed at, in Istanbul, I picked them up. I showed them my, um, you know, uh, the amazing places in Istanbul. We went, we flew down to Antalya where I was living. They got to meet my students. They could just see how happy and how meaningful this experience was for me.

I feel very proud to be an American because, you know, the United States has allow, allows, uh, you know, many people like myself to pursue the American dream. The fact that as an immigrant, I can represent the most powerful nation on this earth. And, you know, when I walk into meetings and say that I am a diplomat of the United States of America, is, is just in, it feeling, um, that, you know, uh, uh, that you can't describe in words. It's, um, it's true what the, what America can, uh, stands for and delivers on.

When I reflect on my life, my first eight years of my life in Pakistan, um, I see a small girl growing up in a small village in the mountains in Northwestern Pakistan, um, an unmotivated young girl. I did not enjoy school. I loved learning to knit from my grandmother and cooking from my mom. And I just wanted... I couldn't wait to be a wife. I wanted to wear earrings. (Laughs). I wanted, uh, you know, like have kids. That's the, because that's what I saw around me.

Mariya Ilyas (20:08):
And so, um, when we moved to the States and all of that was taken away, that, you know, that, that, um, that, uh, model, um, and then my father, um, emphasized education, um, I, I knew that that meant f- what that meant for him. It meant that he made a sacrifice for us. So at the time it was, you know, three, my three sisters and I, so four girls. And in patriarchal Pakistan, um, as you might know, it's, um, it's [inaudible 00:20:41] to have a boy in the family. And so for my father, our only hope was education. And so he was an economics professor in Doha, Qatar.

And when he, we, when we moved to the States, he gave up on his dream to pursue a PhD and to teach at a university and take up a job so that he could support us. And so he, um, every day when we, you know, we're going to school, in elementary school, he would say that, you know, "I will always be the person that works in the family. You guys study. You know, if you need books, if you need supplies, I want to see you succeed." And so, um, you know, the fact that he prioritized education in my life and that has opened up so many doors for me, that's where I got convi- my conviction from; is, um, I can't let him down.

I felt that this constant identity c- uh, conflict that I had carried with me or always do carry with me, um, was just, you know, it was as if somebody had, um, unlocked a cage in my soul and let it roam freely. I was so happy, um, you know, to be able to, um, connect with people through Turkish.(25:15)

And when I think about also, you know, why I chose to pursue foreign, foreign service, I think about, um, that experience as well because the way you can connect with others, um, by speaking their language, um, is, uh, you know, breaking down barriers, um, that you, you know, otherwise may not be able to do.

While she had a number of experiences during her exchange that shaped her spiritually and professionally, perhaps the most notable one was Mariya’s encounter with the” Wishing Tree.” A tradition in Cappadocia, Turkey, the “Wishing Tree” offers visitors a chance to wrap a piece of cloth or fabric around the branch of a tree before making a wish. 

So while hiking in Turkey, I stumbled upon, um, a, a tree that was wrapped in. 

just clothes of, of, of, uh, things written on them. And so I felt deja vu, uh, when I took this photo, uh, of this tree with white clothes wrapped around it, um, because I had seen a similar tree near a cemetery, uh, while growing up in, in Pakistan. 

And so the clothes that were tied to this, um, I remember represented prayers and dreams of people from around the world, hoping to connect with a spiritual being through nature.

And I was so captivated, uh, by what I was seeing because next to the tree were these colorful pottery hanging by a dried up riverbed, there were two horses that were roaming in search for grass or water. And then there were these deserted caves that were longing for inhabitants. And yet there the s- stood this mighty tree reaching towards the clear blue sky as it's branches so heavy, uh, with wishes and dreams. And so what appeared be an abandoned site, um, was actually home to a beautiful spiritual life. And I got to recreate this wish tree in graduate school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where, um, the librarians helped me find a, you know, an, an, a small tree, um, and we invited students and faculty and staff members to come and write a wish or a hope or a dream on a piece of cloth and tie it to, uh, the tree.

And within weeks, you know, it filled up with so many, um, wishes kind of floating and it was such a beautiful way to build community.

It makes me smile because one of the most, um, one of the most profound things that might international experiences have had on me is my, um, spiritual growth.

Um, I had wished for my family to experience what I was experiencing. Um, it sounds perhaps, um, you know, a, a throw away wish, but while I was in Turkey, um, and even though I had a roommate and incredible colleagues with whom I was traveling, um, there were times where I felt very lonely. Um, and there were times where I, um, was filled with so much joy and a little bit of guilt that, "Why was I having these amazing experiences? Will my siblings ever get to, you know, hike this hot air balloon like I did or climb at the top of this mountain or, you know, pray at this beautiful Blue Mosque or, you know, lay, um, you know, see these centuries old, um, uh, ruins from the Greek and Roman times?"

And so I just wanted to share my experiences, you know, with, with my family. Um, and it was a craving for both, you know, um, company and it was a craving thing for a desire to make, uh, my experiences available to others.

When I was in Turkey, uh, on this Fulbright Fellowship, um, we had some State Department officials come and talk to us about careers in international affairs. There was also a meet-and-greet with the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. Um, and both of those two things together helped me realize, "Huh! So you can live abroad and get paid for it and, you know, learn different languages and not sit in an office? This sounds really cool. Sign me up."

Um, when I ran across the Pickering Fellowship, um, I, it was ironic because I, I remember knowing or, you know, being familiar with that name. And so as it turns out, um, Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering is, um, not only a Bowdoin alum, also a Fletcher alum and a Fulbright alum. And, um, now is a mentor to me.

And, um, before coming to Jordan, I had the unique opportunities to sit down and interview him. And I'm hoping to publish that, um, interview soon, um, because he had actually been, the, he was ambassador Jordan and here I was a young, um, you know, entry-level foreign service officer going to Jordan as a vice council. So, I wanted to get his thoughts and experiences about his reflection on his journey, um, to become a seven time, you know, uh, dip- uh, ambassador.

I would say that, um, my Exchange experiences, um, have allowed me to, um, understand what it means to be an American more. Um, when I'm abroad. Um, I am cognizant that I only represent a very small part of what the, you know, the American story. I hail from Alexandria, Virginia and I can, you know, speak to my times in, in, in Maine and Boston, but there's a whole other part of the country that I'm not familiar with.

And so when I have conversations abroad, um, you know, with, with people abroad, I am humbled by my, my own, uh, you know, learning process. I learn often, um, more sometimes from, um, others that have visited the United States and from their experiences. And, um, it's, it's, uh, you know, it's, uh, I feel very proud when I get to paint, um, United States, but also here, um, you know, different views. And so, um, it's really, really allowed me to redefine over and over again, um, what it means to be an American, um, and what it means to be an American diplomat abroad.

For those that's considering, uh, going on an International Exchange Program, especially for the first time, I would say to be open-minded and to say yes to every experience. Say yes to the person inviting you to their home for dinner, say yes to, you know, drinking shai and playing backgammon tavla in a smoky café, say yes to going on a hike. Say yes to everything. Um, every single experience that you'll have, you, it'll challenge your thinking, it'll challenge your understanding of, of what the concept of home means, what the concept of belonging and family means. It'll expand, um, you know, your, uh, your sense of, um, being a human, um, and it'll humble you, um, so say yes, be open-minded.

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Episode 4: Choices, Consequences, and Cause for Hope and Optimism

EPISODE 4

Description: A tragic, yet fortuitous car accident changed the course of history for U.S. Speaker program ExchangeAlumni Philippe Cousteau, Jr., his family, and our planet. It led Philippe’s grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, to become a pioneer whose legacy still inspires Philippe - a TV host, producer, author, and social entrepreneur - every day.

Transcript

I’m Philippe Cousteau. And I am an exchange alumni.

Well, you know, for me growing up was, was -- it a challenge in some ways I, you know, not knowing my father and, and having this big legacy, you know, that that was ever present was a little intimidating. You know, my grandfather Jacques Cousteau, 70, about 77 years ago, co-invented scuba diving and, you know, really opened up the world to the wonders in the ocean. He was someone that was not only a, an inventor, but also a filmmaker and storyteller and author. And, you know, for, for a long time was, was considered one of the most famous people in the world. And, and was this larger than life individual who had an enormous impact on the world and, you know, opening up the ocean. I think it's hard for people to imagine that prior to his work inventing, you know, initially co-inventing scuba diving, um, the world knew very little about the ocean.

Most of what we knew was that the pollution that we dumped in and the, and the seafood that we pulled out, you know, the ocean of course, has been a crossroads of civilization for millennia. But what existed beneath the surface was always the mystery. And it wasn't until, you know, my grandfather and, and an engineer named Emile Gagnan, they co-invented a valve, a regulator, which we still use today. It's the, that we, that we use to scuba dive and then created underwater cameras and, and began to film documentaries. It wasn't until that time that that people really began to, to know what coral reefs look like, schooling, sharks, walrus, whales. I mean, again, hard to imagine today, but all of that was virtually mystery to the world just literally a lifetime ago, 77 years. And so my grandfather was, was an extraordinary individual.

My father Philippe's Senior joined him on expedition through the 60s and 70s as a young man and tragically in 1979, six months before I was born, he was killed in an airplane accident. And so I never knew my father, but I did have the opportunity to, to know my, my grandfather, he passed away when I was 17. And so growing up, certainly trying to connect to that legacy, getting to know my father. And in some ways I was fortunate in that I, I had his films and, and, and, you know, dozens of documentaries that he did and books, et cetera, but it was still certainly challenging to try and find my path and, and understand my place in what is truly an amazing legacy that, that that's changed the world.

Uh, my passion for these issues wasn't really solidified or crystallized until I was in my late teens. I always knew, you know, growing up with my, my grandfather's stories from being a little boy, hearing about his exciting adventures all over the world. And, I mean, it was, it was like a real life, Indiana Jones in many ways. And then, when I was 16, I had the opportunity to go to Papua New Guinea with a woman who, who inspires me to this day one of my heroes, a woman named Dr. Eugenie Clark, who was, uh, one of the, the first, uh, female oceanographers ever, was a, a leading researcher and in particular shark advocate and, and scientists. And she was conducting an expedition to Papua New Guinea out to Millbay not in the, uh, southeastern part of the of, of the country.

And I was able to go along and spend a few weeks with her out in, uh, these remote islands, uh, where we would be, you know, trading, we brought school supplies to the small little villages and we'd be trading rice and flour for fresh fruit that people would be coming out on, on small dugout canoes to trade with us and, and we were just days and days away from, from the nearest kind of city or, or, or town and, um, we would hike up into the mountains and they had caves there that were filled with human skulls going back for centuries and centuries of, uh, uh, un- undocumented unknown religious significance. And it, to me it, it also felt like Indiana Jones, I mean, I, we were in this remote amazing place diving and filming and having all these experiences and, and meeting all these people and, and, uh, that was the moment that I said, "My goodness, like you can do this for a living, why would I wanna do anything else than be able to travel and more than just travel and see these places, share them with others and, and use those experiences to inspire others."

I, you know, my grandfather always said those, those people who have the, the opportunity to lead amazing lives and have amazing experiences have a responsibility to inspire others and share with the world. Um, you know, he was big on that and, and so it's not something we can keep to ourselves, but, um, I, I never wanted to and being able to be a storyteller and, and share that with the world is, you know, was, was quickly, quickly became my passion as well.

Yeah, you know, my grandfather, again, kind of taking a page from inspiration. My father and my grandfather, as storytellers, they always look for, you know, what are the different types of mediums that we can create, uh, or leverage, I should say, to, to create content that, that can reach lots of different people. And so they did books, and they did radio, and they did TV, and, you know, the internet wasn't a thing back then but, uh, they would have been doing that as well. And, and so, um, over the years, we've, you know, we always look to various different platforms, as a way to reach different audiences. And so, you know, from documentaries, and BBC, and Discovery, and CNN, all the different shows I've done, um, to two, two books, um, to virtual reality, to radio things, to podcasts that we're working on, to the animated projects, um, it's been really looking at how we leverage lots of different tools to reach different audiences. And when you know, when my grandfather was, was making the, you know, television programs, there was half a dozen channels on television. And so, if you had a, a show on Sunday nights, you had 10s of millions of people that would be watching your show.

So, so, you know, for me, I always like to share a story about my, my grandfather that I think sums up my inspiration when my grandfather was a young man, he dreamed actually of flying - of going up, not going down. And he joined the Navy at the time, the French Navy, because he, because he wanted to fly, and at the time there was no separate air forces, right before World War II in the late 1930s. And the, the, the, any aviation programs were, were operated through the Navy.

So he joined the Navy and sailed around the world and then enrolled in the Naval aviation program. And this is towards the end of the 1930s World War II started to heat up and tragically, in some ways - I like to think fortuitously in others, he was driving on the windy roads of Southern France and had a car accident. Missed a curb and had a pretty bad car accident, and broke his back. And because of that, the doctors weren't sure if he would be able to walk again. So he was washed out of the Naval aviation program. And for him, this was a terrible tragedy at the time. However, it would change the course of history because every member of his graduating class of this Naval aviation program was, was killed in the early days of World War II. And so I think it's very, very fortunate that car accidents for a very personal reason, because it was before my father was born.

So I certainly would not have been in the picture if he hadn't had that car accident and neither would he, and, and indeed he was told to swim in the Mediterranean every day to rebuild his strength after the accident. And it was during that time that a man named Phillip Danielle, or excuse me, Philippe Tailliez gave him a pair of homemade goggles and fins because, you know, again, at the time exploring the ocean was not a thing. And so you couldn't just go down to the corner store and buy a mask and snorkel. You had to make them yourself out of ground glass and rubber from inner tubes from tires. So my grandfather started free diving and started to explore this world - um, breath hole diving, you know, for a few minutes at a time and was fascinated by this, that this incredible whole other universe that existed just offshore of the, of the south of France.

And over time, he became quite frustrated with the fact that he could only spend a few minutes under water. And so if I think of my grandfather and in many ways, his legacy, it's a legacy of problem-solving. And for him, he eventually was able to meet an engineer, a man named Daniel and they've tinkered, and worked and developed a valve, a regulator valve that could take air under pressure and, and convert it to ambient air pressure on demand. And they attached that to a tank of air that they could breathe through in a mouthpiece with this regulator in between. And while off scuba diving was invented, but he didn't stop there. He went on to invent underwater cameras and underwater documents, you know, film, underwater, documentaries. And so every step of the way, when I think about my grandfather, I think about him as a problem solver.

He wanted to spend more time underwater to explore this world and swim freely like a fish for the first time in history. So he worked with an engineer to invent a valve, and then he wanted to share those images with the world. And so he worked with again with engineers and they tinkered and they created underwater cameras. And so by the 1960s, when he'd been doing this work for a couple of decades, and my father joined, they encountered a new problem that the places that they had explored in the 1940s, right after world war two, and through the fifties places in the south of France, in the Mediterranean, maybe in the red sea, they were already witnessing a terrible decline in the health of those ecosystems, you know, places where the 1940s and move old films like the silent world and my grandfather, one of his first films, you see healthy reefs and giant grouper in schools of sharks.

You go back, you know, just look at film from the sixties and seventies. And a lot of that is already gone. And of course today, much of the Mediterranean is essentially a dead seat. And so it was my father actually in the 1960s who said to his father, you know, that this is no longer about, you know, just exploring the world and exploring the ocean. This is about protecting and conserving the ocean. And so they encountered that problem and embarked on a journey to try and solve that problem. And started making documentaries focused on conservation, became a global speaker and statesman, and, and, you know, began as, as Ted Turner, he referred to my grandfather. He was really the, in many ways, the, the father of the modern environmental movement. And so that was another problem. And when I was searching for mine to get back to your question, when I was searching for my purpose and in my direction, I took inspiration from that sense of problem solving and looking around after university, I recognized that there was a lot of work going on in, in the ocean and environmental space in direct conservation, very important work, you know, passing laws, protecting land, or, or, or C whatever, maybe, but there was an underinvestment in education.
Something that my father and my grandfather were both big proponents of. And I realized that if we're going to solve this problem, this global sustainability problem, that we must broaden the constituency of people who understand these issues and care about these issues. We have to create a broader foundation in society that supports the kind of political and economic changes that need to happen in order to build sustainability on this planet and combat the climate crisis and biodiversity decline. And I realized that in order to solve that problem, we needed more education. And that, that was a space that was underdeveloped in the environmental movement. And so an inner problem that needed to be solved in one that I said about to help solving. And, you know, so it's a chorus of voices that do this work, but I'm proud to say that Earth Echo the organization we founded, it's become a leading global environmental, particularly with a focus on, on ocean education and youth leadership organization over the past 16 years, and is really helping to lead the charge of, of recognizing the importance of education and building this movement for us to kind of have the, the, the momentum in the, in the, in the social will to see the kinds of pretty frankly dramatic changes that need to happen, if we're going to maintain a, a livable planet.

You know, for me, the opportunity to work with the State Department, it represents an opportunity to both share these, this information and share my passion around sustainability and particularly the ocean with a broader audience, and also to collaborate with some really extraordinary people who are doing extraordinary things around the world. You know, this is a global crisis that we face and the State Department, as that, you know, arm of the U.S. government, that, that conducts that diplomacy around the world. It's so important to be at the table and at that table and having the discussions with countries and cultures and people everywhere, because we're all in this together. And, you know, I think I believe climate change is, is one of those things that perhaps more than any other crisis in human history is going to require a unified global response. And, you know, and, and with respect to the United States, that's, you know, that's the State Department, State Department is on the front lines of that work. And, and that's why I'm always thrilled to be able to work with the State Department.

Um, uh, so the ... Our Ocean Conference, yes, was 2016. And that was the opportunity to work with Secretary Kerry at that, at that event and I was honored to open that, that event. Uh, and it really demonstrated first, Secretary Kerry's, uh, work now, I guess, Special, uh, Climate Envoy Kerry's extraordinary and visionary leadership on ocean issues in particular, and environmental issues in general, uh, and, and was a tremendous honor for me to, to, to be able to kick off that event and, and be part of that initial that which has now gone to have several iterations around the world, which, um, I think is a- again, a testament to his leadership and, and the State Department's leadership on, on these issues. Uh, and I was able to share some, some films with my grandfather and some of the work that we've done, and, and hopefully set the stage for, for, for, uh, hopeful and, uh, positive and, and productive event. 

Finally, too, right, it's one of those things that, you know, I, uh ...we always tell folks, you know, one of the challenges that we face with I believe the, um, uh, the, the current conversation about climate and you know, conservation is that, is that we have forgotten the central role that the ocean plays in that. Indeed, climate change, the climate crisis is an ocean crisis. And, and up until the, the, the ocean, Our Oceans Conference, and, and still unfortunately, today, it work, it, it plagues us. We are, you know, underestimating, I believe, um, the, the important role that the ocean plays, in fact, you know, we cannot solve the climate crisis until we restore the oceans to abundance, and we cannot, you know, solve the, the precipitous catastrophic decline in biodiversity without elevating and putting the oceans at the center of that conversation. And, and that was a, a tremendous step forward. Um, the Our Oceans Conference, uh, towards achieving that goal and reminding everybody, just how important the ocean is to regulating our climate, to providing food, to, uh, you know, so many of these vital functions that make life on Earth possible.

So, we have a saying, at, at, at Earth Echo, "It's not that you can make a difference, it's that everything you do makes a difference, all of your choices have consequences." And, we like to think of that as a really empowering message because it means that every day, every one of our choices, we have an opportunity to do something good and build the kind of world that we want for ourselves and for our children. So, we never tell people what to do, but, but certainly the kinds of things that we do, and the kinds of things that we're inspired by the youth leaders that we, that we work with and what they do, is thinking about our choices, everyday in our, in our homes, thinking about the cleaning products that we use, thinking about the, the containers, there's a lots of innovation out there, if you wanna reuse plastic, there are, um, great companies to create now, um, tablets that you can mix with water, they become cleaning sprays, um, and reuse containers or use glass containers that are, um, you know, thinking about bar soaps for shampoo and conditioner and eliminating plastic out of your shower.

There's little things, you know, reusable, clean film, from, from cloth and, and beeswax, there's, you know, there's all sorts of different things that we can do, on innovation that's happening out there, that that's really exciting in our, in our homes, thinking about our, our clothing, um, you know, fashion is a massive polluter when top three polluters in the world and, and thinking about the clothes that we buy and, and, and where they come from, and the food that we eat, you know, 40% of the world's food is wasted, which is a massive climate crisis problem. Um, and so being very conscientious about our food, um, reducing or, or possibly eliminating, you know, uh, um, um, um, animal based protein. Um, but certainly reducing, uh, and having a more balanced diet would be, you know, tremendous.

And so, all of these different places and, and pieces and parts and choices that we make have an impact. Uh, who we vote for certainly, um, it's a tragedy in the United States that, that environmentalism continues to be a, a partisan issue. Um, it wasn't always this way. Think of Richard Nixon, who passed the Clean Air Act extension, the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, he started the EPA he founded NOAA, um, you know, uh, uh, Uber Republican administration did these things, because conservation environment was not a, a, a partisan issue, really, until the Reagan era. Um, and so, uh, you know, we need to get back to that and recognize that as, as voters of, of any party, anywhere in the world, you know, we all need clean air and clean water. Um, we all need a stable client ... uh, excuse climate. Um, and so, thinking about you know, who we vote for and advocating, um, that the politician set aside those differences from an environmental perspective.

I think, you know, one of the problems that we face that needs to be solved is that the bread and butter for the environmental movement has been doom and gloom, which is a, a great short term motivator, um, but not a good long term motivator. And we need long term motivation, we know psychologically, that, that doom and gloom will perhaps get you to make a donation or take a short term action, but in terms of inspiring people to change their behavior and, and, and take long term action, um, it, it, it has its limitations. We're big believers that while we face extraordinary problems, and you know, listen, that, that we are headed pell-mell towards, um, a, a catastrophic climate change, we have seen a 50% decline in, in biodiversity on this earth in the last 40 years, a, a decline of over 60% of living creatures on this earth in the last 40 years. Um, you know, coral reefs are collapsing, 90% of our fisheries are over fished, or fished to capacity, lots of bad news out there, plastic pollution, etc, etc.

Um, but I do believe that there's also cause for, for, for, for hope, and optimism. Um, we have the tools, for example, that we know work, to help restore the ocean to help restore the environment, and that nature is extraordinarily resilient. We know that as well. I saw it, uh, my wife Ashlan and I were co-hosting a, uh, special for discovery Shark Week, a few years ago, and we went to the Marshall Islands in, you know, often the far middle of the, the Pacific Ocean. And we, um, we did this documentary, because we had heard rumors that the, and a particular area called the Bikini Atoll, which had been the site of, of, of extensive nuclear, uh, bomb tests by the United States in the 1950s and '60s. That, that 60 years ago, of course, after dropping 23 nuclear bombs, everything above and below the surface was destroyed.

But we'd heard rumors that there was life and schooling sharks and healthy reefs around Bikini and we thought to ourselves, "How can that be, it's only been 60 years, since literally, everything was devastated by all these bombs that we dropped?" And, um, and so we, we chartered a, a boat for this documentary, and we went up to Bikini Atoll, um, and from the first moment we set foot in the water, we were astounded at the abundance of life. Now there's still radiation on the islands and the Atolls in the area. Uh, but the radiation in the water has dispersed. The name of the documentary was Nuclear Sharks, which was catchy, but no, our number one question we got from people was the sharks were not glowing, the sharks were not radioactive. Um, but what had happened was, that area had essentially become a de facto marine protected area. No one had been there for decades. No fishing, no exploitation, nothing.

And so, because of that, nature had rebounded in an astounding way. And it was so inspiring to see these schools of 60 to 70, you know, a great reef sharks swirling around giant grouper and clan giant clams and, and healthy coral and, um, in a place that, that just 60 years ago had been completely devastated. And so, you know, we know tools like establishing marine protected areas work, we know that nature is resilient, and we know that, that if we give it a chance, a- amazing things can happen. And so, uh, the other thing that, that really gives me hope is, is that we see, finally, a global recognition of these issues and, and finally some, some, uh, very real momentum towards solving them, but more than that, the young people that, that we work with or that go around the world every day, are truly an inspiration, the optimism, the determination that they have, uh, to solve these problems, to not give up in the face of, of what are certainly daunting challenges and, and to frame a, a different future for ourselves, uh, and to build a better, better future for ourselves is, is something that, that I see regularly and that, that gives me tremendous hope. 


So, we met, um, 10, 11 years ago, now. It was the summer of 2010. I was covering the BP oil spill, uh, quite extensively for NBC and CNN and several other news outlets, um, because when the oil spill first happened, and I was watching the news a few weeks later, um, as everybody was, you know, is the biggest environmental disaster in American history, I, uh, I was appalled by the coverage of all networks, that dispersant was being applied to the oil, and the oil was going away. This was a common refrain on CNN, on Fox, on you name it, the oil was going away. Well, we all know, there's no such thing as away. Uh, rash doesn't go away. Oil, certainly ... the pollution doesn't go away, go somewhere. And so, I contacted a friend of mine, Sam Champion, who was a correspondent for, uh, Good Morning America at the time. And I said, "Listen, Sam, you know, no one is telling the story correctly, the oil isn't going away. The dispersant is insidious, because it's doing exactly what BP wants it to do, which is make the oil out of sight, make it look like it's going away. So we can't see it."

But in many ways, when you apply that dispersant, that oil breaks up, and it's a surfactant and a solvent and breaks up the oil into small droplets that then disperses into the water column, and almost becomes more difficult to manage. At least at the surface, you can burn, you can skim you can collect, um, but when it goes into the water, it's, uh, extraordinarily toxic and it is, um, it is very, uh, uh, it's i- impossible at that point to, to collect. And so, uh, long story short, Sam and I went down, um, as part of for, for, for ABC News and we went diving into a spot where the if this person had been deploy ... applied, we had to wear hazmat suits, 'cause the dispersant is a neurological toxin as well as the oil being toxic. And, um, we demonstrated to the world that the oil isn't going away, it's just sinking, um, and, and actually suspending in the water column. And, and what we witnessed was just this thick red soup that we were diving into with dead fish floating and jellyfish and, and seaweed covered in, in these globs of oil that were slowly dispersing into the water.

Uh, and it was global news. And it kind of lost a lot a year of my time down in the Gulf spending, covering this story for, for several news outlets over, you know, repeatedly in the developments. And I went to LA to give a speech to folks in the entertainment industry. My wife at the time was a filmmaker for E! News, more in the entertainment side of journalism. And, um, we met through a mutual friend at that event. And, we're, we're talking until they shut the bar down at 2:00 in the morning around us and I changed my flight, we had dinner the next night and, um, we've literally been together ever since. And she always had a passion for traveling, for animals, and for nature.

And after a few years, um, putting out a contract with E! News, she then has joined me, um, and, uh, she was actually in, in Hong Kong a few years ago, um, and we, we, when we gave a presentation, uh, for the State Department and, um, she, uh, uh, she was with me to Expo, it was 2012, I don't remember that the Yeosu Expo re- represented, uh, the United States, um, at that Expo and, and has spoken at the origin conference as well. And, um, she, uh, uh, is now with me on, on this journey and, and, uh, we've documentaries and films and, and get to work together which is, which is terrific because so much of our work is travel and you know, going all over the world. And if we didn't have a chance to work together, I think we'd never see each other so, and we like each other. So, (laughs) um, so we get to do that which is, which is amazing. So, in many ways, it was one of the, maybe one of the very, very minuscule, tiny, not terrible, in this case for me, for us a very, you know, a good thing that came out of BP oil spill was us getting a chance to meet each other.

Yeah. Uh, uh, you know, I never believed in love at first sight, um, until I saw Ashlan across the room, and, um, I, I was just, uh, an, an amazing experience. The daughter we have, a little girl, Vivian, um, just over two years old, and another one on the way and just about three and a half weeks. So, the family is growing and, and our ambition, uh, is to, is to grow, help them grow and, and see all these places and just come with us on these adventures and, and expeditions and, and do it as a family. So, uh, we're, we're, we're extremely fortunate, you know. I never knew my father. And it's been so meaningful and, and such a privilege for me to be a father. Um, it's, it's the joy of my life.

Narrator

A tragic, yet fortuitous car accident changed the course of history for U.S. Speaker program ExchangeAlumni Philippe Cousteau, Jr., his family, and our planet. It led Philippe’s grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, to become a pioneer whose legacy still inspires Philippe - a TV host, producer, author, and social entrepreneur - every day.

As world leaders gather for this year’s global climate summit, Philippe talks about why there is cause for hope and optimism amidst the climate change crisis, what it was like growing up with a real-life Indiana Jones, fatherhood, and falling in love.

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Episode 3: When Anne Frank is Your Talisman

EPISODE 3

Description: A pivotal moment on her Fulbright exchange and a realization about Anne Frank shifted the course of Stephanie Zhong's life, leading her to find her true calling. On the next Voices of Exchange, Stephanie talks about drawing on her Chinese American background in Hong Kong, soul searching and setbacks, and the power of storytelling.

Transcript:

Stephanie Zhong:

So I was in graduate school at the time, I was at UCLA, I was on the track to be a professor, that was my dream job and I'm sitting in a class and, um, my professor said something that just literally lit up this idea in me of I gotta go to Hong Kong.

I have to chronicle these stories of what's happening culturally there and then when I met up with my professor at office hours and I told her my kooky idea, she said, you need affy- apply for a Fulbright. And so that's basically what I did, you know, I'd heard about Fulbrights before and the truth was I thought to myself I'm not qualified (laughs) for, I'm not qualified, I know that I was looking at some statistics, uh, that they were showing of many applications per country, per territory and I thought, well everyone's gonna go to Hong Kong this year.

So I almost didn't apply, but, you know, I went for it and they chose me and then next thing you know, I'm on an 18 hour flight to Hong Kong for the first time in my life.

So to put it in context, I am 26 years old, it's my s- it's my third time abroad, um, I had gone on exchange for a month in high school to the UK and then at 22 I had a Joy Luck Club moment where I- I was thinking I need to understand who my parents are and where I come from so I spent two years living in Taipei trying to discover myself.

Okay and then- and then now I'm grad school and now I'm on- on this research study project and I'm going to Hong Kong. And you're really, like, since this was 23 years ago, I had to really think about what were those first (laughs) 72 hours like, they were bustling and hectic and, um, it felt like mission impossible. Why? Because I only had three days to find a place to live, that was the first thing before I actually had to go on a family trip to Taiwan and, um, and Hong Kong, if you've been to Hong Kong, at least back then for sure and I'm sure it's still true now, the real estate market is a lot like New York or San Francisco.

It's really, really tough to find an affordable apartment of any size bigger than a bathroom (laughs). So, here I was, you know, I got- I got plopped down in a city that is, you know, lit up in lights, it's open 24 hours, I don't know the place, I, um, can barely read some of the signs, um, you know, that are up. I don't know what neighborhoods are around there, everything is by subway, I've got all my gear, you know, packed up on my back and there's so many people. It's just so densely packed and, you know, even the subways it's, you know, it- it's sort of like your sardine that's getting squeezed into the train and you hope when your stop lands, you'll be able to get out (laughs) out of there.

And so there was a lot of I just went straight for some English papers and looked at the apartments and started making phone calls and jetting from this place to that place and then, um, realizing that the place, you know, was too small or had, you know, um, or it was too far away of where I was gonna be working. And it was just a mad dash and I was with two other Fulbright, um, folks, we had exchanged, um, information beforehand, this is- this is 1997 so the internet does not exist yet, so I want you to imagine that too, so there's no apartments.com.

This is really, like, go get the newspaper, take out a magic market, circle the ones you can afford of which there's only two out of maybe 38 postings that I can afford on my grant, you know, as a student. Go to those place, you're hiking up a hill that was, like, three miles long, you had no idea you were gonna hop, you know, hike up and it's 98 degrees and 90 degrees- 90 percent humidity.

And, um, I was- I was house hunting with, um, the other two Fulbrighters and every place was a no go, um, an- until we landed on a place, it was at a top of a hill, this was the big hike. Basically the first two days was nothing but house hunting and maybe getting a little bit of food and getting to know the other two Fulbrighters that I was house hunting with. On the third day, I called, um, a woman who was looking for a roommate and she had promised it to someone else. Um, but the two of us on the call, we had this kind of connection and she said why don't you come see the place anyway and if for some reason the other, um, girl doesn't show up, you can have the place.

Three months in, um, we're a surrogate family doing a lot of things together and I'm learning a lot about communist China from my roommate Dawn while we're in Hong Kong (laughs) with a count- with a territory being returned back to China and she had left China. You know, so I think one of the things I- I really appreciate about the international experience is, like, I was there for academic research and I can share a little bit about the stories that came out of there as well too and the opportunities I got because of the international exchange.

And the same thing that happens when as, um, you know, as somebody who's living abroad, like, where you choose to live and who you choose to live with also, um, helps you determine, like, how deep of an experience you're gonna have, you know. We were exchanging a lot of stories. I was hearing a lot of firsthand stories of what it was like to be a young girl growing up in the cultural revolution firsthand from my roommate.

And she was telling me stories about, we were sharing stories about how we both fell in love with books and she, I still remember this, like, she was telling a story to me and her daughter at the same time and her daughter grew up in New Zealand. She has no concept of communist China whatsoever, she had never heard these stories from her own mother. So, Dawn was telling us about how she was maybe 13 years old and she had fallen in love with reading, but there was a lot of censorship going on and so what was happening was, you know, a lot of books were getting confiscated.

And her job in her home was she was the one that took out the garbage. And all the garbage would end up in, you know, these houses would be in a square, like a quadrant of four houses with a courtyard in the middle and everyone would dump their trash, you know, in the center. Um, so there was, like, rotten lettuce and this what she would talk, I still remember this, like, she talked about how she found one of their neighbors had been someone who had a library of- of books.

And, um, I wanna say it was- it was actually an American novel that was written in Chinese, but it was, like, shoved into the rotten lettuce. And she dug in there and every time she took out the trash, she would, like, read a chapter when no-one was looking and then shove it back, you know what I mean. Like, so that was how she was reading books and I'm thinking about my experience (laughs) as an American and here I am going to the public library with stacks and stacks of books, my mother's a librarian, um, we have TV, all these other things, you know.

And she's talking about the- the literal stakes that she has to take just to read and her daughter is rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably. She, like, totally can't handle the story that her mother's telling her, you know, because she grew up in New Zealand. And I was just watching them, you know, like, she's hearing this stuff for the first time about her mom, she's never seen her mom in her communist life.

And so th- these were the kinds of stories we were having every single night and then we would go out together, you know. And so on the one hand, so part of my international experience was the surrogate family and what we're learning and talking about in real time about how we're each affected by our governments, how we're each affected by our cultures and then what was happening in- in Hong Kong and what we were seeing.

She was someone who, she was a young doctor in, um, 199, is it 2, when Tiananmen Square happened, she was in Beijing when it happened working in a hospital and guess what, she didn't even know the massacre happened. You know when she found out about it? Four years later when she immigrates to New Zealand and everyone finds out she's from Beijing and they ask her, oh my gosh, what was that like and she's like, what are you talking about? And it was in her same city.

So on the one hand at home, I- I was getting this exposure and then out on my project, I was meeting writers and filmmakers and, um, artists and photographers who were of Chinese descent who are Hong Kong Chinese, but English is really their language and they- they write and create art in English. And I had never been part of a writers community before, I had never seen myself, I had, you know, here I am, the closet writer like I said, right, like, I was always writing in secret like Emily Dickinson, like, nobody knows I'm writing anything (laughs).

Because who am I, I'm not a published writer and here I am spending, um, I'm having lunches and I'm at the, um, there was this club where all the writers hung out on and I was interviewing people, they were saying yes to my interview, um, requests and I am following their s- you know, their lives for a year. And then I meet a professor, [Alex Quow 00:21:03], who's a Chinese American, um, professor here in the States and he is an American Studies professor who was one of the, I mean, he was someone, you know, he was someone, you know, you would study in an Asian American Studies class.

He was somebody who was part of the renaissance of Asian American literature in the '70s and here he is on his grant and we meet, um, at one of these events and then I start working with him to organize the first literary fis- festival of Hong Kong Chinese writers writing in English. It was the first literary festival of Hong Kong Chinese writing written in English by Hong Kong Chinese writers, still a mouthful.

I went and pretty sure I was gonna be a professor and live a Dead Poets Society kind of life, that was where I was at, right? And I had my lane of research that I wanted to bring to the table and, you know, so Alex Quow, the professor I worked with, I was- I was- I was honestly struggling in academia personally. There was something I was resisting and I couldn't figure out what it was and one day, you know, we're in the middle of doing all the festival activities and Alex who is a pr- he's a professor, right, he's a tenured professor and he looks at me and he says, "Stephanie, I don't think you should be a professor, you don't wanna be an academic."

And we ha- it was the beginning of several conversations he had with me, he had felt really strongly about it and I realized that those conversations that he was right. In my heart, I loved to teach, but I'm not an- I'm not so- I'm also somebody who cares deeply about social impact, it gets all the way back to reading Anne Frank's diary. Um, I'm not just interested in stories, I mean they're entertaining, but I wanna be on the ground and I wanna be affecting culture somehow, right?

And- and building bridges, like, fundamentally I'm a storyteller, I'm a storyteller and I'm a bridge builder and that's how I build bridges is through stories. And so his come to Jesus conversation with me helped me take off probably a curtain of denial that I was really still trying to muscle through. So I knew by the time I came back to UCLA, I knew I was gonna leave with a master's degree and I knew I was gonna do something that was a lot more hands-on.

And I knew I wanted to be a storyteller before I could write. I remember being around three or four years old and sitting at the coffee table with a pen and a piece of paper and pretending to write cursive. It's just a bunch, it looks like an EKG, right, it's just these squiggles going up and down and loops and this, but I just really, there was something powerful in there.

I was very, very early on was really interested in other people's lives because of that. I was also really shy and terrified of people back then, so this is in elementary school. And so this, it was a place to retreat into where I could be myself and I could make friends and experience different worlds. And over time, um, basically around the time I was 12 years old, I had some allowance and I went to the book store with my dad and bought the first book that I ever had with my own money and it was Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl.

And I saw this girl's picture on the front and if you see the picture, she looks a tomboy and she was a bit of a tomboy, you know, she had short hair and I was a tomboy. And I saw a girl looking back at me, you know, that reminded me of me and I didn't know her story, I just knew it was a diary and I was like, oh, this- this sounds interesting. Um, and that book changed my life forever and it began my journey as a writer and a storyteller.

I was really devastated after creating this deep bond with her, you know, in her life and then to find out that she died, um, at the hands of the Nazis and that was quite traumatizing as you might imagine. But the impression that she made on me was that here was this ordinary girl at 13 years old who owned her voice, who found her own experiences valuable in a country that did not value her. And that her words and her story when she owned it changed the world.

And so I started a diary at that point and I started really realizing I could write for myself and I wrote for myself in hiding for a very, very long time, just for me. And then when I got into my 20s, um, you know, like I said I've had so many people tell me fascinating stories where on the outside you might make an assumption about them and then they tell you this other story and suddenly, you know, everything goes technicolor and what you thought you believed (laughs) about the world or people changes. And I've had so many experiences like that, that to me, um, my favorite, favorite thing and it's still true today in my work and in my personal life is to listen to people's stories.

As a storyteller from a young age, I was always, I was that person that was fascinated by people's stories, I'm that person that people tell their life story to on a subway, you know. Um, hold family secrets that they never told anybody else, um, and I felt like, you know, I wanted to learn something about myself and I also wanted to be there to capture as many stories as possible and then be able to step back and look at these stories side by side and see what we can learn about, you know, ourselves as a civilization.

So when I found that study in 2012, I was like ding, ding, ding, ding, like, this is the lane specifically I need to be in and I evangelized that with Teach for America for two years and then I left because I wanted to help small, medium sized change making organizations tap storytelling if you don't have Superbowl budget. The first name of the company was called Create Groundswell because that's what I wanted to do, but my spirit wasn't in it and this is part of my story.

I was- I was as much as I was passionate about this, I was a shy person and hiding out in my business and, um, it took me two years to get my website off the ground because you're like, it has to be perfect and people want to understand what you do because you're trailblazing and you're doing the thing. And, um, literally the- the- the day before I launched my website, I do one more Google search and six months prior, another company in Los Angeles is called Groundswell Studio and they're doing marketing stuff.

And instead of seeing that as a major setback which probably would have been the way I normally would think as a perfectionist, I was like that wasn't meant to be your company anyway. You chose it because you needed to get out of the gate, right, with something and, um, it's not meant for you. And I did some soul searching which is part of what I help entrepreneurs do, right, and so I spent a month and I took myself through some exercises that I would do as a journalist and as a podcast producer and, you know, marketing director, all these things to figure out what is the essence of this company and I'm building and who am I really.

And I looked, so after I wrote down, I remembered Anne Frank and then I looked on my bookshelf and there's the diary and then suddenly I realized, oh my gosh, this book has been with me everywhere I've gone. It's the only, it was the book that went with me to England when I was in high school, it was the book that went with me to Taiwan and I couldn't bring a lot of books with me to Taiwan, but it was there, it was like a talisman, like, she was with me all along. She was with me in Hong Kong, she has literally ba- been with me everywhere.

And I realized then when I connect the dots backwards, right, I realized okay, the way I do marketing and the way I do storytelling is I believe it's not about a top down approach where it's like let's listen to the CEO and the founder and how great they are and let's find out this institution was created in this date and year, it's not that. It's who are the hidden heroes in your organization and your story, right, and so it's the Anne Franks we wanna hear from.

It's the Anne Franks that change culture and mindsets and I realized that her diary, even the way she wrote her diary because she writes early in there, she starts out writing it like a diary and then she quickly, you know, turns it into a friend that she names Kitty and she specifically says I'm gonna start writing to dear Kitty because it's not about me talking to myself. She wanted a relationship and I realized that she had actually taught me how I mark- how I am a marketer to people which is I'm always looking for the invisible people and bringing their stories to life and their agency.

They're the ones we wanna hear from, they're the ones whose transformation moves us to donate, right, or to take a step forward in our lives the way somebody else has. And so Dear Anne Media's the name of my company in tribute to Anne Frank and the Dear is very important because it's always a reminder that marketing is not pushing a message, it is about creating a community in a two way conversation.

I really believe this, I believe every single person who ha- who, um, is a professional wanting to make a difference, you're gonna make a bigger difference when you own your difference and you have to understand it.

And the international exchange is one of the most different thi- different things you've done, not to mention immersed yourself in difference and it- it's made you a more innovative thinker, it's made you more creative, it's made you more empathetic. You have stories to tell in there that can be translated into your work experience in ways that add value that your employer or your client would never have thought of on their own.

Narrator

A pivotal moment on her Fulbright exchange and a realization about Anne Frank shifted the course of Stephanie Zhong's life, leading her to find her true calling. On the next Voices of Exchange, Stephanie talks about drawing on her Chinese American background in Hong Kong, soul searching and setbacks, and the power of storytelling.

As an ExchangeAlumni of the Fulbright Scholarship program, Stephanie is part of a network of millions of ExchangeAlumni worldwide. Learn more about ExchangeAlumni at alumni.state.gov.

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Episode 2: Heritage That Belongs to the World

Description: When you think of Egypt, images of pyramids, statues, and mummies likely come to mind. But these iconic monuments and objects haven’t survived millennia on their own, and they’re not the only elements of cultural heritage Egypt has to offer. On this episode, Dr. May al-Ibrashy, an exchange alumna of the Middle Eastern-Western Dialogue Program, shares her trailblazing approach to preserving Egypt's cultural heritage, why these values are universal, and how funding from the U.S. Department of State is making it all possible.

TRANSCRIPT

May al-Ibrashy

I’m May al-Ibrashy. I’m the director of the Imam al-Shaf'i Conservation Project. which is what we're gonna talk about today. I am an architect, and I specialize in heritage and conservation. And for years, I've also been studying the historic cemeteries of Cairo, which are very special, because they're very old, but they also have a very old tradition of being multifunctional. So they're not just funerary, there are also places where people live, and where there's commerce, and where there are markets.

And there're also sites of visitation. And, arguably, the most important site of visitation in the Southern Cemetery is al-Imam Shaf'i, uh, Mausoleum. This is a mausoleum from the 13th century that houses- that has within it the ... Al-Imam Shaf'i who is one of the fa- one of- a fa- the founder of one of four rites of Sunni Islam. So it's a very important building, both spiritually and historically. And also art historically, because it's almost like a, like a record of all the styles, uh, from the Islamic period that you have in Egypt, from the 12th- from the 13th century onwards.

So we have been, uh, starting in 2016 until 2020, 2021. Uh, we have worked on the conservation of the building with funding from the Ambassadors' Fund for Cultural Preservation. And right now, we have the opening in April 2021. And now we have a second grant from the U.S. Embassy, uh, uh, for a visitor center, and a training program there over the next year to, uh ... Both to, uh, train people and how- to introduce the visitor center, actually set it up, to train people on how to run it. And also to, uh, raise the profile of the building so that we get more visitors, whether within the local community or also within Cairo or internationally as well.

Understanding the different types of significance, uh, for the building for the different kinds of users. Because it has so many meanings, different meanings for different people.

You are dealing with a- with a cemetery, and so you are required to- to, uh, deal with it, the kind of respect that a cemetery deserves, especially a cemetery that is that historic, and that also has a number of shrines and burials of spiritual significance.

You also have to take into account the fact that al-Imam al-Shaf'i is the center, not just the spiritual, but also the residential and the commercial center of al-Qarafa, or the Southern Cemetery.

So you have residents living around you, and you have to take those into account- uh, into account as well.

Then, you also have to, uh, work with the understanding that it does not just belong to Egyptians. Uh, it belongs to Muslims in general, Sunni Muslims in general from all over the world who ... Especially those who are, uh, uh, who adhere to al-Shaf'i as the Sunni rite, as a Sunni- as a branch of Sunni Islam, if you will.

And you also have to take into account, the fact that because it's such a beautiful building, because it is such a- a- a- a work of art, because it's such a- because it is such a feat of structural engineering, you also have visitors from Egypt and from all over the world who come to it because of its cultural significance. So a good part of our work is balancing between all of these different considerations.

We had a concern about the relationship between monuments and heritage sites, and the community around them, especially in densely populated living cities like historic Cairo. And we felt that the- the best way of preserving and safeguarding the heritage of cities such as these, is to bring the community in as a- a main actor, a main player in the process of conservation.

We felt that historically, this had not been the case, and that people's connection to these heritage sites had been- had weakened, had lessened through the years.

In 2012, from, I think, July to December, we o- we met with different stakeholders, whether from the community, or from, uh, uh, from the government, or uh, different kinds of- of- of uh, professionals, for example, academics etc. To ask that question.

Is it true that if people have a sense of, uh, ownership of their heritage, they will take better care of it? And if it is true, how do we, strengthen this, uh, sense of- of ownership? And at the end of- by- at the end of the six months of discussion, we felt that this sense of ownership is strength- strengthened through benefit, that if, uh, people feel that there is, uh, uh, that there is a link of mutual benefit between them and, uh, heritage sites, and that if they feel that they benefit from these heritage sites, whether spiritually or socially, or economically, or culturally, they will take care of.

And this is how we came to the general mandate of our initiative, which is heritage as a driver for development. So in the case of a place like al-Imam al-Shaf'i, um, this is a very specific kind of building. We cannot really drive very- um, kind of functional uses out of it, you cannot adapt it- adapt it for another re- use for example. But what you can do is, uh, to uh, amplify sp- spiritual benefit at many levels, for different kinds of people, to amplify cultural benefit, and, uh, also, at many levels. And to also figure out ways where the local community feels that the building serves them in some way.

So in our case, the visitor’s center also incorporates an activity room for children, and the training includes, uh, training for, uh, the people who will be running, uh, the visitors center from the government, to run, uh, regular activities for the children of the neighborhood, maybe to incorporate women as well, so that there is an educational benefit that people feel connects them more, uh, to the building.

In other neighborhoods where we work, we kind of open it up a little bit more. So for example, in the neighborhood of al-Khalifa, which is the city proper, we investigated the problem of groundwater, and drive the solution to de-water heritage sites, but also use the water extracted to irrigate, uh, gardens around. And so to introduce gardens for the benefit of the community, and also in the process, lower the water level for the benefit of the heritage site.

So these are the kinds of things that we try and investigate in order to, uh, um, to create stronger links between the community and their heritage, so that they feel out of their own accord that they want to take care of these buildings and safeguard them and protect them.

I have worked on cultural preservation since I was a student in architecture school. So I have a passion for historic cities. I have a passion for Cairo. I've worked in Cairo and historic Cairo almost all of my professional life. But, um, in- from 2009 to 2012, I stopped working on conservation, and tried to explore, uh, working, uh, as an academic full time, because I felt that the work that we do is ... There's something missing in it, that we- we kind of lovingly conserve a building, we lovingly restore it. We have this- it's just such a wonderful thing to do. But then the building is closed up. It is not used. It is not maintained, and maybe 5 or 10 years later, it reverts to its original- to- to the condition it was in before we did the conservation project.

I kind of took the time off to think about it. And to be honest, when we sta- first started investigating this idea of linking heritage to the development, we didn't really know where we were going to land. I mean we started off with a- had a theoretical question question, if you will. But by the end of it, we found that we were on to something that has potential, and we started off with conservation and heritage education. Then, that extended to, uh, heritage industries as well. And then it ex- it extended to working on an urban, uh, level, an urban regeneration. And we started off in one neighborhood. In, uh, in the municipality.

Of al-Khalifa where we work. And now we work on t- in three different neighborhoods.

And as we do that, we- we develop more and more techniques to create these kinds of links. And it's very gratifying because it has taught me a lot, because it has taught me that heritage is not just about what is 600 years old, maybe even more importantly it is about the heritage that we are making today for the future. And to make heritage, you have to create this link, because you want this continuity. And it does not happen without people feeling that they have a strong relationship to, uh, their heritage.

The idea of the school is to educate children about their heritage in a manner that is relevant and that is interesting. And to create this link between the past and the present that shows them that they are part of this continuum, that puts them in the place where they understand that they themselves are creating their own heritage and their own culture.

And the idea of relevance, it's not just, uh, in terms of connecting, uh, them to the past, but also in connecting it to real needs now. So at the beginning, we were kind of very, uh, um, strict about only teaching heritage. But we found that we are in a neighborhood where maybe some kids go to school, but can barely read or write, that they need help with mathematics, they need help with languages, they need help with science.

And so we started to expand the program so that it teaches basic skills, but always from the perspective of heritage. So if I'm going to teach them about geometry, then I'm going to teach them about the geometry of a dome.

If I'm going to teach them science, there is a link to the history of science, and how it relates to buildings that they have, they see around them that are also historical.

Uh, this program developed after to include a heritage industries component for teenagers where they start to investigate, uh, vocations, and, uh, and professions that they could pursue that also are, uh, related to heritage, but from which they can actually derive a livelihood. And this has been very interesting, we- the- our teenagers are now designing products, they're running tours, and quite a few of them are now interested in pursuing, uh, vocations and professions that are heritage-related.

Uh, we also have a program for women that does the same thing, but with women so that they themselves encourage their children to do that, and they're able to educate their children. So we expand bit by bit according to kind of the terrain and where it leads us, but also with a very specific mandate in mind.

I think the most important thing I would say is that.

To do this, you have to have first of all, a passion for the place where you're working. But you also have to have the ... You have to be willing to, uh, to explore different kinds of dis- disciplines. And [inaudible 00:23:29], you have to understand that you're at the intersection of many disciplines. So, uh, you are obviously at the heart of the discipline of conservation. And that is a technical s- uh, it's- it's a technical discipline. It's a technical know-how. And it's, uh, it- it- it requires running a site, the way you run a construction site. It requires understanding structure, understanding the qua- the- the properties of material, understanding chemistry. Uh, it's- it also requires people skills, because you're running a team.

In parallel to that, you have to have the, you know, the spirit of a researcher, because as you conserve, you learn, and you do more research, and you learn more, and it's an- it's an intern- uh, an in- there in- in- it's interchangeable. So you have a question, you investigate it in one way, and then you're cross-referencing with something that you find on site, and then you go back and investigate again. And it doesn't end.

So it's important to keep that kind of spirit. But then you also have to have, um, a passion for understanding the socioeconomic context, the urban context, and for connecting, uh, between the- these different kinds of disciplines.

So it's quite tiring, but it's also extremely gratifying. And it's never boring. (laughs) And- so we get a lot for people who are- who hear about us and are interested in training with us or working with us, and a lot of people- some people drop out, because they feel that it's overwhelming, or it's, uh, not the field that they're interested enough.

But those who stay, they stay, because it's almost- there's this ... No day is the same as the next. It is not a boring nine to five job, it is an extremely stimulating and gratifying job. It's also extremely tiring, and at times, extremely frustrating. So it is not for the faint or the weak-hearted. (laughs) This is what I'm saying.

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Episode 1: Dan Tani: Citizen of the Planet



Description: To Dan Tani, becoming an astronaut seemed unimaginable. And yet, for 16 years, Tani lived his dream as a NASA astronaut, going on two space expeditions. In this episode, Tani reflects on his pride in the U.S., his love for planet Earth, and his passion for sharing his experiences with others. Among all of his identities, Tani is proud to be a good “citizen of the planet.”

TRANSCRIPT

Dan Tani: 

Um, my name is Dan Tani, and uh, I grew up in Chicago, but not... Right now I live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Uh, currently I am a director of a non-profit foundation, called the U.S.-Japan Foundation, and we are interested in bettering the relationship between the people of the United States and Japan.

Dan Tani:

But for 16 years I was a NASA astronaut, located in Houston, Texas, at the Johnson Space Center.

Dan Tani:

You know, I grew up in the '60s and so, like virtually everybody in and around the world, you know, I would play astronaut and pretend to be an astronaut, and think about being an astronaut. But I really had no idea that that was even possible to become an astronaut.

Dan Tani:

You know, I went to public school and, and uh, graduated, went to university and studied engineering, and um, my first job, uh, out of college was with a big aerospace company in California, and uh, they happened to be making, uh, rockets and satellites. And so that's the... That's exciting. I mean, building satellites is really exciting. So that's, uh, the job I chose for my first job.

Dan Tani:

Well, that company had the misfortune of having a satellite that didn't work in space. It got deployed and didn't work on the space shuttle. And so, uh, they had to find a team to figure out how to go fix that satellite, and of course, uh, since, since the company I worked for made the manuf- manufactured the satellite, uh, we got to build the tools and the, the, uh, pieces that the astronauts would use to go fix the satellite. And it was really exciting when the astronauts came and visited our plant, and uh, talked to us and, uh, discussed what kind of tools they would need. And, so I, I got to meet these astronauts and it was just an exciting thing to hang out with them for the day and go to lunch with them and talk to them.

Dan Tani:

And uh, then later in my career I... At a different company I worked with more astronauts, and the sort of slow, a-ha moment for me was that, um, by meeting these astronauts and talking to them and getting to know, you know, funny things about them and their families, I realized uh, that they're just... They're people with jobs. They're people that have a great job. I never really thought about that, I never thought about an astronaut as somebody who applies for the job and gets the job. But, um, once I realized that, that it's uh, achievable to anybody who has the... Can fill out the application, um, it... That set a seed in my head.

Dan Tani:

So I went back to graduate school and, and uh, uh, got another job of course- as I said, in the aerospace industry. And then I heard somebody say, "Hey, you know, they're taking applications for the astronaut program," and uh, they do that every... About every two years. And so, uh, a couple of guys I worked with look at each other and said, "Well, you know, we'd be stupid not to apply, (laughs), to be an astronaut." I mean it's, uh, it seems like the greatest job in the world, so we filled out the applications and sent them in.

Dan Tani:

Uh, I just got really, really lucky and out of, you know, thousands of applications, mine got pulled to go for the interview. Uh, and um, and out of 120 they interviewed, I was one of 35 that got picked that year. A, a huge class of astronauts, but uh, it was, uh, quite surprising to me that, uh, that I made it even as far as the interview, much less getting selected.


*music/transition*

Narrator: Every year, thousands of people apply to become a NASA astronaut. 

Out of those thousands, an elite few are chosen 

and Dan Tani was one of them.

The call 

Dan Tani:

I, I remember the, the, the moment distinctly because, um, it's one of those things that, uh, you just absolutely remember. Uh, and it was January 7th, I remember the date, and I remember I was taking down, um, uh, Christmas lights from my house. And uh, I heard the phone ring and I heard my wife pick it up, and she said she gave me the phone and said, um, "It's the chief of the astronaut office” - my boss. And there's not many reasons why the chief of the astronaut office would call you on a Sunday afternoon. And so, uh, um, I got on the phone and he said, "Hey, we're putting a crew together to fly, uh, later this year, and uh, we'd like you to be a member of that crew."

Dan Tani:

So it's one of those moments where it's, uh, a whirlwind of emotions. Uh, it's, you know, it wasn't as shocking to me as getting the call to be interviewed to be an astronaut. Uh, because you know, we are selected to be astronauts and we're sort of waiting for the call to get, uh, assigned a mission and we know, uh, most likely that we're gonna get that call. Uh, of course it's exciting when it happens. 

Dan Tani:

The call to become... To come down to Houston for the interview was a complete shock. That was out of the blue for me. And uh, that was a, a rush of emotions and thoughts and ideas and questions that I, uh, you know, felt, uh, were... I had no way of expressing all of those emotions. 

Dan Tani

But, uh, getting the call to be a, a crew member was fantastic, and then of course I wanted to know who I was gonna fly with, whom my commander was gonna be, all that stuff. And uh, it started a whole year of, uh, a whirlwind year of training and, and learning to be a crew member and, and uh, the anticipation of my first mission. 

 

Narrator -

 NASA astronaut candidates go through about two years of initial skills training -

 like spacewalking, robotics, and spacecraft systems -

 as well as focusing on behavior skills, like leadership and teamwork, 

which prepare them to live and work 250 miles above Earth

 aboard the International Space Station -- also known as the I-S-S. 

There, astronauts like Tani, 

take part in experiments that benefit the human race, 

and prepare us for life (In Space)  beyond Earth’s atmosphere. 

Dan Tani:

Um, you know, we... When we're in training, the moment we're selected to be an astronaut, we are, uh, we are knee-deep in data and s- procedures and uh, um, regulation and expectations. And so, the... For the year of training, we are so involved in how do we get the space shuttle up into orbit safely? How do we transform the spaceship into... The shuttle into a space, an orbiting laboratory? You know, all of the technical things that you have to do, and, and we, we take notes and we cram for, uh, for simulations and we, you know, we're so involved in the mechanics of getting into space and doing the work that we are expected to do when we're up there.

Dan Tani:

And there are... It, it's easy to lose the emotion and the philosophical aspect of wow, they're gonna, they're gonna put me on a rocket and I'm gonna go 17,500 miles an hour. And uh, and so even on launch day, you get strapped in and, um, there's a... You know, we are strapped in about, uh, two-and-a-half hours before launch, and so there is a moment there, when, when they're getting the rocket, the space shuttle ready to go, where there's not much for us to do. Uh, and we fall back into this familiar pattern, uh, uh, the crew does, of joking around and talking to each other, because we do that, uh, a lot in the simulations, it feels just like the sim.

Dan Tani:

And uh, however, you know, on launch day it's different, and you know it's different. And you have this... I had this feeling like, you know, any minute now they're gonna figure out they made a mistake and chose the wrong guy and come and pull me off this thing, because I don't know why I got fortunate enough to be sitting in this seat, and get ready to go into, to space.

Dan Tani:

Um, but my expectations were mostly technical. My expectations were on day two, I've got to get that suit ready to go and do my spacewalk. I have to, um, you know, there's... I'm, I'm in charge of all the cameras and all the film back then, it was film. And so I'm in charge of all that. And so, my mind was filled with, uh, making sure I get my job done. And really the, the, the um, emotional part of it was kind of secondary. Um, but until you, until you light those engines and boy, it's just a fantastic experience, and then it was uh... I was trying to be in data record mode, I was trying to... I was talking to myself, "Don't forget what this is like, try to remember every moment of this. This is so, uh, this is such an, an amazing experience, I really would like to remember this so I can tell my friends," and, and um, and express to people who, who will not, probably not get this chance to do this, that, uh, what it's like. Because it's just fantastic.
 

*music/transition*

First space walk

Dan Tani:

Um, yeah. Spacewalks are fantastic. Well, what did it feel like? Again, just like a launch, you're so... Your head is so full of procedures and making sure the machine of the spacesuit is working properly, that, uh, it's easy to, uh, it's easy to not think about what an incredible experience, uh, you're going to have. Um, I've always said I've, I've had the pleasure of doing six spacewalks, and I've always said, uh, the space... ‘The Best part of the spacewalk is when it's over and you can look back on it.’ And uh, think about the experience that you had because you're so, uh, concerned with making sure that you do the right thing at that moment and know what your job is, that it's not, uh, it's not easy to appreciate the moment that you have.

Dan Tani:

But, uh, first of all I got to do my first spacewalk with, uh, uh, a great friend of mine, and a, a, a wonderful woman that became a mentor of mine, Linda Godwin, and so we got suited up, and uh, just like the simulations, just like the practices we had, um, the suits worked great. And then you open the door and, uh, you leave the, um, the, the environment of the space shuttle and now you're in, in space.

Dan Tani:

Now the space... Doing a spacewalk from the space shuttle was a little bit different, emotionally, than the Space Station. Uh, when you leave the space shuttle through the airlock you're in what's called a payload bay, so you leave the space shuttle, but you look around and you're surrounded by this, more of the space shuttle. The cargo bay. So it doesn't feel like you're out in the open of space. You will be in a few minutes, but, but for that moment you're not.

Dan Tani:

On the Space Station, when you open the door and you, you float out the hatch, you are filled with nothing but earth. Uh, your, your visor can see nothing but earth and you see, as you leave, you don't see any of the Space Station. And it feels like now you're just part of, uh, of the universe looking down at earth. So, uh, it, it's a much different experience leaving the Space Station than it was leaving the space shuttle.

*music/transition*  

Four months on the ISS (International Space Station) 

Dan Tani:

Sure. So, I've had two trips to space, and my first one was for two weeks on the Space Shuttle Endeavour. We went to the Space Station and, uh, it was just a, just a fantastic, uh, introduction to space. And uh, but as I, as I mentioned, working on the space shuttle is, uh, I mean you are scheduled every 15 minutes, you're up there for a short amount of time, so they need to maximize the amount of work you do. And so, there is very little downtime on a space shuttle mission.

Dan Tani:

Going to the Space Station is much different, and for me a huge pleasure because now you live in space. That's... Now it's your home for those few months. And uh, we work hard, we work, uh, five and a half day weeks, but there are moments where... There are days where you have nothing scheduled. Because that's, that's what a resident would do. And so, um, uh, Sundays and half of Saturday, uh, were... They were just fantastic because now, uh, I could go to the window, I could just sit in the for... In the window for hours and, and watch the earth roll by. I could, um, uh, look at all my pictures and sort of do all the administrative stuff that you do have to do, uh, on earth. But I... You get to do it in space.

Dan Tani:

So for me, my Space Station mission was a real pleasure. I got to, um, make a home out of the Space Station. I had to... I got to find my favorite places to hang out, um, sometime it would get warm up there and so you know where the cool places are to just, to hang out. Um, you know, uh, you can look at your predicts for the next week and see where you're going to be flying over, and oh, I'm gonna go over Paris and so you can, uh, set the alarm on your watch so that you can go take some pictures of, of Paris or some other place that you wanna see on earth.

Dan Tani:

And so, uh, life on the Space Station, for me, was just fantastic. Now, I, I was up with a crew of three, um, my boss, the commander, was Peggy Whitson, and then my other, uh, flight engineer was, uh, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, and um, the three of us got along really well, uh, um, Peggy is a very accomplished astronaut. She's a classmate of mine, so we knew each other for quite a long time. And um, and so... And she's a farm girl from Iowa, so I learned a lot about, uh, farming. And uh, all the, all the, uh, very difficult things that farmers have to do, (laughs).

Dan Tani:

And then uh, uh, Yuri had a daughter about my age. About the age of my children, and so it was wonderful to connect with him about how his daughter was doing and how he communicates with his wife and, and children and, and so, uh, we had a lot to talk about, uh, there also. So as a community, as a crew, uh, I could not ask for, uh, a better, uh, crew mates and we really, uh, I think enjoyed our... Each other's company and we got a lot of work done, too. 

*music/transition*

The tvorg / food romance

Dan Tani:

What, what's really interesting is, uh, I get the question a lot. Which is, you know, when you came, uh, when you were in space, what foods did you crave? What did you really, you know, what, what, what were you missing in space? Um, and my answer is, pretty much nothing. I mean, the food up there was delicious and I did not sit around and crave, "Oh, I wish I had, you know, this or that."

Dan Tani:

Sure. Um, well, uh, yeah. Eating in space is very important. Eating in general is very important. And NASA, all the space agencies understand the morale importance of food and how it's... You always want to look forward to, uh, something that you're gonna eat. And also the social environment. Peggy was, was fantastic in mandating that we have dinners together. And that, that was important family time for us. And so, yeah, food is... We feel food is very important.

Dan Tani:

Um, when I was on the Space Station, and I... It's still true now, uh, half the food is donated, or half the food is provided by the, the uh, NASA system, the American system. And half is provided by the Russians. And so when we get to the dinner table, we can choose whichever one we eat, you know, and it's just sort of what you happen to be hungry for during that... At that time. Or else you'll look into your pantry and say, "Hey, we're loaded up here on the beef stew, we've gotta start eating down this beef stew."

Dan Tani:

Um, I liked all of it. There were very few things that I wouldn't eat. There were a couple of cans of meat, uh, that the, uh Russians provided that just didn't sound, uh, good to me. And so, uh, as long as, uh, as long as, uh, my Russian counterpart, my Russian crew mate Yuri would, would eat them, we, we, uh, I didn't feel badly about not eating, uh, some of those Russian, uh, cans of food. But some of the Russian stuff was fantastic. 

Dan Tani:

I would say my favorite thing in space is this, uh, sweet cheese that the... That Russians have. There's a sweet cheese that the Russians have called tvorg, and it's... Think of it like, uh, the, uh, cheesecake. It's that sort of sweet cheese, um, and uh, uh, they have it both in cans, which is delicious, and they also have it powdered and you add water and you mix it together. And we would take some strawberries and rehydrate them, and uh, and put them on the tvorg and it was all, it was like a cheesecake. I really miss that. I have not had tvorg since I've, uh, been back to earth.

Dan Tani:

Um, the irony is, when I got back to earth, there was space food that I still crave. And so, uh, it's a, it's a surprise to people to find out that I sit at home and I go... First of all, that tvorg, I would love to have... To eat some tvorg. And there was real pleasure in, uh, when a new, uh, spacecraft would come up, they would bring fresh vegetables and fruit for us, and uh, one of the things that Peggy would do is, she would take an apple and she would eat apple and peanut butter, which I'd never seen before. But I love that now. And now, every time I get an apple, I'll slice it up and I'll put peanut butter on it, it brings me right back to being on the Space Station.

*music/transition*

Leadership and teamwork

Dan Tani:

Well, I would say the whole, the whole experience of being an astronaut has been very, uh, has been very good for me. I, uh, of course learned a lot about what I am capable of doing, and what I am incapable of doing. Where I was able to draw... Uh, or I was able to refine the boundaries of what, uh, I, uh, let me say this. I was able to help, uh, define the boundaries of what I, uh, have the capability and interest of doing and what I don't. But also what my job is, what my role is in, in the team and how to best help the team.

Dan Tani:

Really as astronauts, one of the things that we learned, one of the most important things I learned is the importance of teamwork. And I know everybody, um, everybody talks about teamwork as important, but the astronaut program and NASA really focuses on that. We do specific training on teamwork. And uh, I don't think that I would understand how teams work and what my role in any given team would be, if I was not an astronaut, because we focused on it so much. And so now I think about leadership and teamwork all the time, because uh, I think that was the culture of what we were taught and what we were asked to be really good at astronauts and crew members on a space mission.

Dan Tani:

So I think that's what I've really learned. It wasn't particularly being in space, it was the whole process of training, uh, to be a crew member, both on the space shuttle and on the Space Station. And those are skills and ideas that I take with me every day in my, in my life, both professionally and personally.

Dan Tani:

So you know, I lived in Japan for a couple of years, and you'd be in the subway, and it's packed, and you're in the middle. And the doors open, 20 people are gonna try to get on, and there's hardly room for one person to get on. And what that team needs right now for you standing in the middle is for you to shuffle over three inches, so that the next guy can shuffle over four inches so you can make room. And I think leadership, like, my job... The team right now is this car of people, and the thing I can do to help the... This car of people right now is to squeeze into the corner a little bit more so that more people can squeeze in and we can get, uh, two or three more people onto the car.

Dan Tani:

And uh, I, I really... It's funny, I, I really now think about how do you help the team, and what does the team mean? Is it my family, is it my community right now? Is it a, a, you know... And a lot of time it's the world. What can I, what can I do, what's my role in the world and, uh, what can I do best to help, uh, that team?

U.S. Speakers experience

Dan Tani:

My interaction with the State Department is, I've been privileged to be, uh, a participant in the Speakers Program and uh, as part of that program I've got to visit Japan and Portugal, uh, and Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco. It's been fabulous and I've done virtual visits to Malta and Madagascar. It's just been a, a wonderful experience for me. 

Dan Tani:

Um, so there's certainly many on my end. I mean, these, these trips have really, uh, allowed me to grow in ways that I would not have been able to or, uh, experience things that I would not have, uh, been able to. Uh, one of the, one of the, at least on my end, one of the thoughts I have is... And it was not with the State Department trip, but I was asked to go overseas and speak at an American school, or an international school at a commencement. And I'd never been in an international school before. I'd never seen an international school, and it was fantastic.

Dan Tani:

It was in Germany, it was just wonderful. The people were great and the students were having a great time, and, uh, the languages they spoke and the, the diversity of the, of the um, student body, it was just fantastic. That set a seed in my head, which two years later, turned into me bringing my family to Japan because I wanted my kids to do an American school experience. And so we went to Tokyo and my kids, uh, attended the American school there. And I actually taught at the American school there, that, that was the vehicle that I was able to bring my, uh, family to Japan.

Dan Tani:

So, I mean I think that's a big ripple effect. Um, uh, I, I have heard anecdotally of, uh, people that have come to listen to me speak and now, uh, really want to work as an engineer or want to work in the space, uh, in-industry. And that's fantastic. If I can, if I... Whenever I hear those stories I am amazed that I had the, not power, but it... That, that just my presence, just hearing my story, allowed people to dream a little bit bigger, or to um, widen their horizon a little bit more to things that are, um, possible and, and I... You know, I'm, I'm warmed by that, I think that's, uh, a wonderful response to hearing me speak about space.

Dan Tani

Sure. I, you know, as an American I feel so privileged in all the opportunities that I've been given. And, uh, the fantastic place that I get to live and the fantastic, um, the amenities of being an American. I never want to take it for granted. And, um, through this program, it's been wonderful to go and, uh, be an example of an American to many people that may have never had met an American before, or certainly don't interact with them on a regular basis.

Dan Tani:

And um, uh, I feel, I feel a responsibility and a privilege to, uh, convey my story, which is a fantastic story. I mean it's... I can't... I'm constantly amazed at the opportunities and privilege that I have been, uh, provided. And so, uh, yes. I love to have fun with, uh, audiences and, and bring them to space and show them the cool things that, that we get to do and see.

Dan Tani:

Uh, but I also recognize that, as a representative of the United States, I'm there to be friendly, I'm there to be funny, I am there to, uh, be uh, empathetic and uh, to, uh, ask questions, uh, about uh, how they live and what they do and what they, what they like and, uh, uh, I try to find out a little bit about what their impressions of America and Americans are. Most of the people that come and talk to me of course, uh, want to be there and want to interact with an American. Uh, but um, so you know, I view it as such a great learning experience for me, but I also recognize, of course, that um, you know, I want them to come away with a positive image of the United States.

Dan Tani:

And uh, so I, I do feel that responsibility. And um, uh, space is such an easy and accessible way to reach people, uh, that... Because it's not really cultural. Um, you know, it's amazing to me that kindergartners around the world love space and love things that fly around. And, um, and so I'm, you know, I'm lucky in that the vocabulary that I have, the tools that I have to communicate with people are so universal and, uh, um, in that way it's, it's easier for me to, uh, get the attention or to, uh, start the conversation with, uh, with people around the world. Um, and try and connect with them and try to have them connect with me as, as the American they get to talk to for that day.

*music/transition*

Point of Pride/American dream

Dan Tani:

Yeah. I say that, you know, sort of the, the real point of pride for me is that, um, the irony of my parents had their cameras and their radios taken away from them because they were not trusted with radios and cameras. Yet just one generation later, you know, that same government spent a lot of money teaching me how to use cameras and radios. And I... It's a real point of pride, not only for my, um, you know, the Japanese-Americans or my heritage, but it's also a real point of pride for my government, uh, that, that we have been able to, uh, uh, get... We have been able to address that black mark on our history and reconcile, uh, reconcile it.

Dan Tani

And so I'm very proud of both my, uh, my community and my government, uh, for getting to where we are now.

Dan Tani:

So, typically, um, you know, I'm the astronaut. So they want to see rockets fly and they want to see people floating around. And they want to see what it looks like, what the earth looks like from space and they want to talk about exploration.

Dan Tani:

And so, um, I really like to just tell my story and, and show them what it's like to be inside the space shuttle when it's launching and um, what it feels like to put the helmet on and go out on a spacewalk. And I think the... And the message I try to convey is basically, I was pretty much like most of my audience. I wasn't born into, you know, great wealth, nor, nor privilege. In fact, um, my family, my parents were imprisoned by their government just for being Japanese or having Japanese ancestry. They weren't... They were, they were, uh, native-born U.S. citizens, but their parents were Japanese.

Dan Tani:

And so, uh, you know, that seems like a real, uh, deter- that seems like you're really starting from far behind to, to end up to go into space. And so I like to try and connect and be a... As human as I can to my audiences, so that maybe they can connect with hey, he's... To have that idea that I originally had, which is, "Hey, this is just a person. And it's... And, um, they have a great job and they've done some incredible things, and maybe that's something  that I can do."

Dan Tani:

So A, I like to be a person, and I like to try to connect on a human level with my audiences. And then one of the messages I like to convey as an astronaut is, what a beautiful earth we live on. And I mean, it's visually beautiful and I show pictures and movies of just how stunning the earth looks from the vantage point of the Space Station or the space shuttle. And the message I try to convey is gosh, I am so proud to be a citizen of that, and you know, we all have memberships that we like to adhere to and sometimes they conflict and, and uh, but when it... When it boils down to what is your real membership, and for me now it's being a citizen of the planet and, um, and…

Dan Tani:

So I try to shrink all of our experiences to we all live here. This is our home, and um, you know, we speak different languages, and we eat different food, and uh... But, uh, if we can see ourselves as mostly the same, you know, maybe some of the problems that, uh, that we're experiencing can be a little bit less. Uh, we're not gonna eliminate all, all pain and all suffering, but, but if we can all feel like we're all in this together, you know, maybe our chan- our attitudes can change a little bit, and we can have, uh, a better attitude about each other. 
 

*music/transition*

Message to the world/Spaceship Earth

Dan Tani:

Um, yeah, I mean this is, this is what... This is exactly what I try to do every time I talk to groups about, about space. Um, as much as I hate analogies, an analogy that I... That might resonate with people is that, um, when you sit in your house, and you look around. A lot of the time you look at the paint that's peeling in the corner, or the door that squeaks or the, the, you know, something that just isn't right with your house and it really bothers you and, and you know, it, it really gets at you.

Dan Tani:

But then there's a moment when you're driving by your house, and you look at it, and it's your home, and you're just filled with warmth and you love your house. You love your home. Um, and, and the, the paint is still peeling and the door still squeaks, but you... That difference in perspective allows you to feel a kinship to your home. And um, sometimes it just takes stepping away a few feet, uh, and, and looking at it as a whole instead of looking up really close.

Dan Tani:

And that's how I feel about our Spaceship Earth. I think that it's too easy for us to be down here, uh, where we are most of the time, even the astronauts. And think about the peeling paint and the squeaking door and all the little things that bothers us about it. And the, the few... The privileged few of us get to take a few steps back, and look at our home as, uh, as our home. I mean, look at our planet as our home. I, I would... You know, if, if people can think about that and go, "You know, I've had that experience, I've had that experience of seeing a picture, maybe on Google Earth of my house and feeling pride and feeling like, oh, that's my house. I love that house."

Dan Tani:

Um, and extending, and extending that, that imagery to our planet and, and uh, the... Having that emotion of yes, I... You're right. The little things bother me, but I take a step back and for that moment it's not so important. And that's what we astronauts get the privilege of doing and, um, you know, when I fly over the earth, I, I, I get to fly over Africa and I know the millions of people that are down there, I, I wonder what they're doing and, you know, what's going on in their lives and, and you know, and I'll probably never, ever meet them. But I feel like, uh, I'm, I'm with them.

Dan Tani:

And then I go over Asia, and all the people of Asia. And so, um, and, and so you know, I would love for uh, all the people on earth to feel like earthlings. And uh, and, and, and carry the, you know... Wear the badge of being an earthling and feel like that's a, that's the club they belong to. And uh, that's what fills me with, uh, optimism, um, uh, after coming back from, from space. And that, that is what I want to share with the people of earth.

Close (narrator): We would like to thank Dan Tani - astronaut, director, father, and good citizen of the planet - for sharing his stories with us.

And thank you, our listeners, for tuning in. 

If you haven’t yet, don’t forget to subscribe to Voices of Exchange wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to tell your friends too!

Voices of Exchange is a bi-monthly podcast brought to you by the Office of Alumni Affairs, in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Our team includes Desmon Farris, Asha Beh, Maria Eliades, and Emily Rand. 

Have a question or suggestion? Email us at voicesofexchange@state.gov, or reach out to us on Instagram @voicesofexchange.

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Trailer


SEASON 1: PREVIOUS EPISODES

Voices of Exchange Podcast
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Final Episode: A Letter to My Younger Self

 

Final Episode: A Letter to My Younger Self

Description: Three women. One goal. And a letter to their younger selves.  In the final episode of our first season of Voices of Exchange, a team of exchange alumni - Pandora White, Vanessa Diaz, and Ashleigh Brown-Grier - join us to talk about international exchange, their Citizen Diplomacy Action Funded project -- We Represent -- and how they are bringing diversity, equity, and inclusion to exchange programs.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Pandora White

I'm Dr. Pandora White, and I am the CEO of We Represent, and I am over everything, it appears (laughs). I am Dr. Pandora White, and I am the CEO of We Represent, and I oversee all operations.

Vanessa Diaz

I am Vanessa Diaz. I'm the COO and director of creative communications. I design all social media and website graphics, as well as work closely with the CEO of We Represent. 

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

I am Ashleigh Brown-Grier. I am the director of external relations, and I help wo-, solidify relationships and partnerships within We Represent.

Dr. Pandora White

What is WeRepresent? What is our story of beginning? I was at an international, uh, alumni event. I, i.e with partners of America, I had started putting on events for alumni to meet each other, to talk about, you know, what's the next steps after you do these exchanges? How do we use this to further our career? So at that meeting, they announced that there is gonna be the citizen diplomacy grant to do projects in various fields, including, uh, creating, uh, communities for alumnis and promotion of the program. And so at that meeting, I actually s- just met three or four other alumni. So it was about 30 to 40 of us there. And they were like, "Does anybody wanna do a project like this?" And we're like, "Okay." So we just took each other's phone number, [in the] first couple of days of knowing each other.

Dr. Pandora White

So the plan originally was to basically go to the schools, go to HBCUs, minority serving institutions, and just have them have an opportunity to hear from someone, uh, who looks like, um, or who've done that experience. What's it like, especially at those smaller universities that might not have a study abroad office? So promotion. And so in 2020, we was gearing up to do it, and I had some really cool, uh, plans, like going to Hawaii, uh, or reaching out to the people and then COVID happened. Our future was canceled. And we have to like sit down and think about what was going to be the future, uh, we represent. And so at that point it became a conference. And so, um, I was like, the only thing we can do at this point would be a virtual conference or a virtual setting. And so we, how did we get that mission, that ideal?

Dr. Pandora White

No one that I knew I had ever really went abroad. You might know one or two people who would take a boat down to Mexico, because I'm not far from New Orleans and there's a port there. But going to another place, living there, really seeing what it was like to be in someone else's shoes, that wasn't something that you would see. And then the other thing was, if you knew someone who did it, maybe they didn't look like, you, maybe they didn't have a similar background to you. They got me thinking that we should do it, and that's why. And see if we can increase them as, uh, students from different, uh, backgrounds that apply.

Vanessa Diaz

We also, uh, our group, a lot of our team members were also doing similar work prior as alumni ambassadors, um, as co-founders of affinity groups in which we were trying to reach underrepresented groups anyway, on virtual, like virtually and in person. So it kind of, um, was great that Pandora reached out to us cause we were doing similar work, and then now we were able to like hone in. Between everyone, we had like 60 volunteers, panelists, moderators. Yeah. It was, it was really amazing.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

Also with our affinity groups, they were also willing to promote, help promote the conference, which really helped gain those, uh, other alumnis, um, put us in contact with them or alumni (laughs), and put us in contact with them as well as, you know, promoting to, to their base, to students who may be interested in attending the conference. The most rewarding part, or just for the team in general was, um, we were able to really push the WeRepresent brand and, um, our mission to people. Right? And so we were surprised in the beginning when we had so many advisors from these institutions who are like, "Oh my gosh, we wanna work, we, we're interested in learning how to really, um, reach our minoritized students on campus." And so that was, that was a little shocker for us. And what I told Pandora was, you know, it's great that these advisors A, attended and, registered and attended this conference. Because what they took from that con- com- from our conference is they can go back to their campuses and they can use these tools, um, to help with their outreach on their campus with minoritized students.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

But now they also have connections with alumni from all four programs that they can call on and say, "Hey, do you mind speaking with our students or do you mind, you know, there's a student who's interested in X, Y, and Z. Can I, you know, uh, put them in contact with you?" So I think that was one of the most rewarding. And also that so many people attended the conference. I think that was also (laughs) really, um, not saying that we didn't expect anyone to attend, but, you know, it's COVID, there's Zoom fatigue. So to have people attend, whether that was, um, via Zoom or, uh, via our social media accounts, I think that was really, um, a reward for us.

Vanessa Diaz

Being able to have a space where we talk about underrepresented groups, but like multiple underrepresented groups. And not only that, but like, recognize that you can be more than one thing. So you could be like a gay black man who is also disabled abroad, you know, and like being able to talk about those things in like an intersectional way versus like just checking off one box. I think it was rewarding to hear stories about people maybe even traveling to the same place. Cause my experience in Jordan, it's very different than a colleague of mine that looks different than me. And so I think having those parallels and having those stories heard side by side are really important. Having the opportunity for people to talk about that candidly and openly, but in a way that was like, I learned a lot and I would go back.

Vanessa Diaz

Um, and here's what I can give you, uh, I think was really refreshing. And um, yeah, I think, uh, pat ourselves on the back, I think we did a good job in that aspect. As the person who put out everything you saw having to do with the conference was like trying to effectively, effectively communicate and reach our audience, um, on a virtual platform, which means like building a website that works, that's functional, that tells a story. Um, having, reaching the panelists that we wanted to, reaching the audience. And to some degree we definitely reached it because the fact, there was so many faculty involved that came out in, that, um, attended. So for me, a personal goal was like, is our intent aligned with our design aligned with, like, the reaching goal. And I think, there's always room for improvement, but we did an okay job (laughs).

Dr. Pandora White

I'm from Fayette, Mississippi. So I'm first gen. I ended up going to Alcorn State University, which is an HBCU [Historically Black College and University]. And while there, I ended up, um, applying for the Gilman to Ghana, and going to Ghana in the fall of 2012. I got the travel bug. It was like, you know, that first time is the scariest time. So I went on, did a summer internship in India. So I ended up meeting some exchange students, some Fogerties [Fogarty Global Health Program for Fellows and Scholars] and Fulbrighters, and ended up saying, you know, I think I can do this. So during my PhD, I ended up staying in Taiwan, Boulevard, in Poland and I came back to the states, graduated with my PhD in biochemistry, got a postdoc of Fulbright to Peru, came back, finished my MPH. And now I'm a visiting assistant professor of chemistry.

Vanessa Diaz

I was a 2016, 2017 Fulbright, ETA to Jordan. Um, I'm also a Gilman alum and I traveled to Qatar in 2014. I am first gen, Latin X. My family are Colombian immigrants. And so my travel experiences were definitely like, I had traveled before I had gone to Columbia. My first time, I hadn't really gone anywhere outside of my comfort zone of south America. So I went to Virginia Commonwealth University and they had a sister campus in Doha, Qatar. And I was able to do, um, a semester abroad there with Gilman, literally the same semester, just in a different place. And so I was kind of enamored with that idea, and the fact that it was in the middle east, I was super excited because it was a place I had never gone to before. I had no expectations, nothing. I was just like, I'm a sponge, I'm going to soak it in.

Vanessa Diaz

And I felt there was so much, um, a little, uh, a lot of ignorance and a lot of, um, I guess people didn't really care that I was so excited about the middle east. Um, at least my peers. And so I wanted to find another way to go back, then someone recommended me to go and apply for Fulbright. I, I only got it the second time I applied to Jordan. And then while I was in ETA, I was able to not only teach, but also like, um, do some pro bono design work. And now I work for the LGBT community center in New York City as a digital and design coordinator.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

My first international experience was, I studied Italian opera in PISA, Italy in 2013. And so, um, that just really opened up my eyes to like being able to travel. And so in 2015, I applied to Fulbright. Um, I actually was at Morgan State University at the time, um, working on a master's of arts and teaching and just was like, okay, I think I wanna teach abroad. And so I got on the Morgan State website, did some googling, came across Fulbright and was like, I'm gonna apply to Fulbright. And so I went to the, uh, Fulbright program advisor at Morgan State, wasn't selected. And was like, okay, I am going to take this main application and apply into Malaysia, um, the following year. And so that's what I did. And honestly, my experience teaching in Malaysia just really, it changed my life.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

But just some of the projects that I did with my, uh, students, um, taking them to visit the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur. We published a really cool Malaysian American poetry recipe book, uh, where we collaborated with, um, my student, my former students here in the states, as well as the students in Malaysia. And so we have this really cool book of just their favorite, the points are about their favorite foods and, uh, their favorite recipes. Um, but it just really changed my trajectory. I came back to the states and, um, was like, I'll see you all in the K through 12 arena at another time, all of my students, I pray to God that you make it (laughs) to college because that's where I will be seeing you all. And so, um, I'm currently at Howard University working on my PhD in higher education with a focus on internationalization at HBCUs, historically black colleges and universities. And outside of the classroom, I'm all about increasing students and HBCU students, um, knowledge and awareness about government funded, internationally exchange programs.

Vanessa Diaz

We're all very involved in trying to increase the amount of representation, um, of underrepresented groups in government and exchange programs, actually Pandora and I met through various venues. And Dory and I were both alumni ambassadors in the 2019 cohort. We were selected to go around, honestly, the U.S. at different universities, speak about our experiences and kind of like have students get inspired to apply through our personal stories. So all of us are alumni ambassadors. Ashleigh is an alumni ambassador from the 2020 cohort. Yeah. So we all have done very similar work. So I co-founded Fulbright Latin X, uh, an online community on Instagram and Facebook that kind of helps, um, uplift, highlight stories of Latin X Fulbrighters, um, so they can be seen, they can feel represented. And, uh, actually founded or co-founded Fulbright HBCU that helps elevate the stories of HBCU, um, alum Fulbrighters. So, that's how we know each other.

Dr. Pandora White

So when I knew I needed a new team, I reached out to the Nelson, was like, "Yo, you wanna do this?" And she was like, "Okay." So then I had to find at least two or three other people. So I said, I think Ashleigh might be a good try, we'll see. She's doing so much with her life. (Laughs). So I asked her, and she was like, "Okay, I guess I'll try it." (Laughs). And then the other two, uh, who aren't here, I actually found Shawn, he's a Gilman, and I met him on Facebook. And just was like, "Hey, I'm looking for somebody to help me with this project. Does anybody wanna do it?" So I posted it on one of the Gilman alumni groups, (laughs) and that's the team.

Dr. Pandora White

So for me, WeRepresent is essentially a letter to my younger self. And it is a letter telling me that I can do it. I was in high school and I for real was like, I'm gonna get to welding school. I'm gonna get a welding license. I'm gonna to go work on the boat and make a lot of money, and that's it. And somebody reached out to me and said, I mean, "You should go to college, give it a try." When I was in high school, and I'm first generation, I don't really know of anybody with advanced degrees. So at that time I just wanted to do what a lot of people did. I wanted to make money. So I went to college and I picked a random major, and said, "This sounds about right." Cause it was the only subject that I liked.

Dr. Pandora White

So then I'm in college and now I just know, you know, I have to graduate. But I was a very horrible student. I'm talking the worst. And, you know, part of it was, my school didn't really prepare me for college. It kind of but not for the college that I went to. So I get the college and I have to work to pay my tuition. So I had scholarships, I had loans, but my tuition was like almost $40,000. So I'm working and, you know, signing over my paycheck to the school. And I was like, I just want to graduate and be done with it. So I'm on academic probation. I'm about to get kicked out of school. And, you know, at that time I ended up finding trio programs. I transferred schools. I went and became a part of student support services in the Magnera Magneto scholars. And I pulled my GPA up.

Dr. Pandora White

And so at this point, the only goal I got is graduation. And I had heard about study abroad and I saw the price tag and I said, you know, I don't have $10,000, $5,000. I can barely afford to be in school. And that's when they told me about Gilman. And so I applied for Gilman. I go to Ghana and, you know, it was my first time on an airplane. Is my first time seeing a bus, like a city bus. That was, you know, is life-changing. 

Having the opportunity to tell people this story or share other stories that all are different, but all means that you needed to have someone there, that first contact to get you on that path. And so having the opportunity to do that for students is important. And also for those faculty and staff that wanna help students, but don't know how. And so that is what WeRepresent is to me. What I wanna say about mentors, is that mentors are important, but sometimes you're gonna need more than one mentor, right? So if you have a team of mentors, the support team where it feels-

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

I came here to this like, okay, we can get more, um, outreach and recruitment to our HBCUs. You know, sometimes we have to really build those relationships with people. And so while this year we had some HBCU, um, students and faculty attend the conference, hopefully next year, you know, we've been around, we have some, we have some proof that (laughs) we've done some work and so next year, hopefully we can really hone in and get more, um, HBCU students to attend. And also predominantly black institutions. Because a lot of times we, we, you know, I, I didn't think about this in the beginning, but I'm like they're and they're also, um, mostly a majority community college institutions. And so that would hit, definitely hit, uh, more than one of our goals. (Silence).

Vanessa Diaz

I think for me, um, what this means for me is bringing the message that you don't, like, that these programs, these government exchange programs aren't for elite, you know, they're not for the top, um, either a super academic or just a certain group of people. Anyone can apply to these programs, right? Um, within the e- eligibility standards. But I just want to like, make sure that anyone that has ever been told, like they're not worthy or they're not smart enough, or like they're not meant for those programs, that would just feel out casted. That could feel that they have something to bring to the table. Basically, just being able to tell people that they can apply too.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

Um, I went to Talladega College, which is a small private liberal arts HBCU. And so in undergrad, I had no clue about international exchange programs. And so I didn't even apply or know about Fulbright until my master's program. And so, um, I was intentional on when I got some Malaysia, I re- recognized that there were a 100 people in my cohort. Two of us were from HBCUs and only about 10 of us were black and or mixed identity with black. And I was like, oh, we have to change this. But so, I think it's that knowledge and awareness piece. I can't expect someone to apply for these programs if they don't know about these programs or that they exist.

Dr. Pandora White

Did we meet our goals? Was there anything, uh, that was surprising? We really only had two big goals. To have at least 10 alumni speak and to have 275 people attend the conference. And so we met both of those goals. And I think what was surprising and what we didn't think about before, was the number of, uh, faculty members that wanted to learn more for their students. And so now we're thinking, uh, bi-modally, so when we do outreach to purp- uh, to purposely look at things to help advisors and help students. So I think that was the change.

Vanessa Diaz

I did have a few people that pushed me for sure. Um, I will say I've always been interested in traveling, but the first time I went abroad, um, as a study abroad with Gilman, I didn't know what Gilman was. So the person in the national scholarship office was kind of like leading the way and guiding me. She was fabulous. Um, and she helped me through that essay, and writing is definitely not my strong suit. So there was a lot of writing workshops and stuff, a lot of guiding all the way. And, um, yeah, if it hadn't been for those people, I probably wouldn't have been pushed as hard.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

Mentorship is, is a really big thing. Uh, for me, it started with my family. My grandmother was educator. I did have this one professor who, she still supports me to this day. She wrote my first, uh, she wrote, wrote my recommendation letter for both of my Fulbright applications. And then when I got to Morgan State, I never thought about doing like a PhD program. But when I was working on my masters, those professors there, w- we will be in class and they'll be like, "When are you all applying for the PhD program? When are you thinking about doing X, Y, and Z?" And so that aid, that instinct, you know, pushed me to go further. But also when I told them that I was interested in, uh, the Fulbright program, they supported it a 100%. 

Vanessa Diaz

My favorite part of the WeRepresent conference was the identity panels. We had a bunch, some of them on LGBTQ, uh, being black, indigenous, or a person of color, and or person with disabilities abroad. Um, I thought I learned a lot from those panels and hearing the panelists.

Ashleigh Brown-Grier

So my favorite part of the WeRepresent conference was Lynita Burger's, um, speech. It re- resonated with me, um, and especially with, um, in my area of international education. So that was-

Dr. Pandora White

And my favorite part of the conference was the networking sessions. All the networking sessions, we essentially did a speed dating version of networking. So you were matched with someone one-on-one and you had the opportunity to just talk to them for five minutes and you can extend it or whatever. So we had two different sessions. We had one for faculty and staff and one for students. And so I told, you know, the team, let's also pop in on some of those sessions, so we can, uh, talk to people and see, you know, firsthand how they feel.

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Episode 9: The Endless Journey

Episode 9: The Endless Journey

Description: A motocross accident forever changed Daniel Gómez de la Vega’s life. But today, as a world champion-winning medalist, founder and director of Surfeando Sonrisas (Surfing Smiles), and exchange alumnus of the Global Sports Mentoring Program, Daniel finds that being in a wheelchair is challenging, yet fun -- an endless journey, as he calls it.

TRANSCRIPT

Daniel Gómez de la Vega

My name is Daniel Gómez de la Vega. I'm 37 years old. I'm from Mexico City, but I used to live in Acapulco Bay, it's a beautiful bay, uh, obviously on the ocean Pacific. Now I live in Guadalajara. My wife is from here. I have two kids. I have a, a, one kid, his name is Sebastian, he is three years old, and I have a baby girl, Jimena, is eight months old, almost nine.

Um yeah, I do... I do a lot of things. I love sports, I love adrenaline, uh, I have a non-profit. I also do, um, motivational speaking, like keynote speaking.

Uh, when you hear about surfing, you can say, "Well those guys don't, don't do anything. They just smoke weed and blah, blah, blah." Probably there's a lot of people like that. No, and there's no harm in that. But, uh, I think it's more, way much more than that,, uh. Surfing people, they care about the ocean. They care about, uh, the beaches. Uh, plastic pollution. Uh, surfers nowadays are, uh, more athletic than they used to. Um, and after my accident... I, I surf probably six or seven months after my accident. I have to say that I, when I got my accident, I passed five months in the hospital. So two months after leaving the hospital, I was riding my first wave - of course, with the, with the help of my friends, and that moment was the moment. That was everything. That was, uh, oof.

In that wave, in that particular wave that I have, I, I have it, I have it recorded. A friend of mine was, was taking video and I have it. It was a small wave, but probably the best wave in my life. And, and that was that wave that told me you have to get back in the ocean. This is healing. You have to start working from here. Um, and yeah, surfing and sports in general, have been, uh, a huge, uh, pillar, pillar, I don't know if that's a word. (laughs) But we used it in Mexico. Pillar. Uh, a, a, a big thing in my life, you know? It's not just fun to have to do exercise. No, it's more than that. It, it, it teaches me all the time. It makes me who am I today. Uh, it helps with my good habits. Uh, sports helps with a lot and now, uh, I, I just think about surfing all the time.

Take, for example, when you go to the beach. I don't know if you, if you live around the beach area. But, if you don't, when you go to the beach, you start feeling different. You start feeling, uh, this freedom. When you start feeling the wind and it's in your face. When you start smelling the sand or, or, or the sea water. Or probably you can smell some fishes. I don't know, I think just going to the beach, going to the ocean, allows me to open all my senses, which sometimes when we live in big cities, you are shut down. You, you are just looking the same things, smelling the same things. And just by going to the beach, it's, uh, it opened my mind.

And when you go into the ocean, that's when everything starts to happen. Um, I'm very, I'm very, a risky guy. I, I, I love to take risks. Um, I love to put me in situations that I don't know if I can control them or if I can go, uh, if I can go alive out of that situation. Surfing is very, very, it's a serious sport. It's very dangerous. And, I think what, what I, what I think is more healing about being in the ocean and healing.

For a start, I don't need my legs to be in the ocean, you know? I don't, I don't need to, to walk. I, I feel, uh, I feel even with my peers, with my friends. And that was something that it bothers me a lot, uh, in the past. That I don't, uh, I don't, I don't like to be left behind because I can't walk or because I can't move or, or whatever. Uh, when I'm in the ocean, I'm the same. I don't feel about... I don't think about my legs. Uh, I don't think about if I, if I can surf on the standing position.

Surfing is surfing, you know. Surfing is, it's just riding a wave. It's, uh, it's flying in water. And you can do it on a standing position or on the prone, uh, position. I surf, uh, laying down on my stomach. And I think what, what is more important about surfing for me is that, uh, it gives me the chance to be present. You know, to be there. To be at that precise moment. And I think as humans we, we always are trying to be present all the time. But, but our minds, our technology. Now what's happening with all this, uh, social media bombing all the time. It, it's pulling all, pulling us in different directions. And surfing, uh, it keeps me away all that. Eh, I'm just thinking about being there, being safe, reading the ocean, hearing my, uh, hearing my body, hearing my thoughts. And I don't think about anything. I'm, I'm just... The two or the three hours that I'm surfing, I'm surfing. You know, I'm not anywhere else. And I thing that, that's what is healing for me.

I had an accident on 2011, uh, a motocross accident. I was riding my bike,, uh... An average accident, I- I may say. It was, it was pretty random. I wasn't going that fast. I hesitated the jump and that was it. Uh, I broke my back, I have a spinal cord injury at T8 level, which is around,, uh... above, above my core. So yeah, it's been... a very, very... what's the word, very... I don't know. Emotional, uh, fun at the same time. Uh, challenging, uh, being in the wheelchair. But definitely, uh, it could be worse, you know? So I'm not that bad.

Being in the wheelchair is, is, it's like, uh, an endless journey. Uh, when I go out with my kids, to move around on the sidewalks. Uh, trying to do, uh, new sports. Um, going on vacations to a place that I don't know anything about it. Uh, when I started dating my, my wife. All those things were totally different. Even though I- I knew it from, from past experience, it was very new to be in the wheelchair. To be in the sitting position, you see the world with a different perspective, and I... and I think the world sees you also differently.

Even though I'm the same Daniel, I have, uh, a few upgrades, I might say, um, but, yeah, people... I, I think people see me different. Not bad, just different, you know? It's like, I didn't change a lot my personality, but at the same time, I could, I could tell that I'm different from my accident today.

So, so after a few years of trying to walk again, to do a lot of physical therapy and, and do this and that, that's when I... that's when I had realized that, "Yeah, this could be my life forever." But not until I try it, you know, not, not because just the doctor told me that. Uh, of, of course a lot of fear, uh, but fear is really, really good. I love the fear. I'm not fearless like a lot of people can say, but, uh, it's a good tool if you know how to use it.

Uh, of course I went through a lot of depression in different moments of these past 10 years. I can tell you that I have, uh, sometimes a little bit of depression, not regarding my accident, but regarding different aspects of life, but I think I can... I can go through them on, on the more fast way than I used to. Uh, I know when the depression, or when a sad moment, is coming and I... I can know how to navigate it.

I was thinking more about going to a university and have a lot of more, how can I say, yeah, more challenge. More, more intellectual challenge. You know, like being very challenged to... I, I don't understand it. Can you explain me to do? Can I make an essay? Can I do things to, to get over it? And my first work was very difficult because, uh, everybody was so happy and, yeah, high-five here and there. And I wasn't like that. I was like, whoa, whoa, these poor people. I hate it.

So everybody was very optimistic, that's the word. And, and to be like that, you have to feel like that. You have to believe like that. It is very difficult to be optimistic to everybody else if you don't feel that way. Um, that was the first difficult moment for me and after a few days, and then you are here. Be optimistic. Why not? Just make high-fives with everybody. And, I think the best experience of the GSM, GSMP program was that, um, that interracial experience. To, to be in the same room with people, um, from different countries with different languages. With different, uh, customs. Everything like, everything was different.

In my program there was people from Korea, from China, from Senegal. From a lot of different places in Africa. From Egypt, from Latin America. People, able=bodied people. People with disability. I think that's, for me, the most important part of the program. Because, if you don't have that big picture, big picture, you don't know how, um, the social impact world, the non-profit world, is around the world. You only know what's happening in your country. And if it's not good, if you live in a third world country that it's very difficult to develop a, a program like Surfeando Sonrisas or another program, you don't have that different mind thinking about...stop complaining that Mexico doesn't have what USA have, but try to change it and tropicalize it so you can make more with what you have in Mexico. With, uh, with, with whatever you learn on the GSMP program.

Um, another thing that I love about this program is that just because being part of the Department of State program, you have a lot of huge benefits. You get into this big alumni database. You can apply for different programs. Uh, it's awesome how the USA can help others. It changed, a little bit my way of thinking about the USA, which in the past, I didn't love it a lot. But after this, I was like, yeah, they can do a lot of good, bad things, whatever. But for me, they are helping a lot. I can tell you that probably half of the money that we, that we have since, since the moment that we founded Surfeando Sonrisas, have come outside, outside Mexico.

Um, I had opportunity to go to Phoenix, Arizona, to Ability360. And wow. That's, that's a big non-profit. It's, it's bigger than a company. It's, it's, it's doing so much good. And for to do so much good, you have to be, you have to run a, a business. Even though it's a non-profit. I started thinking about non-profit as a business. Because it has to pay salaries, it has to have people. You have to have money. Here in Mexico, non-profits, they see them like no, you, you don't have, you, why you have to have money? You are a non-profit.

Now, if, if you see, I don't know, if you go wherever, to LA and if you saw a football player,, uh or a business man, getting out of a Ferrari you would say, "Okay, they earned it." But if you see, I don't know, a big, uh, I don't know, the biggest non-profit, whatever, you name it. Um, the CEO of that non-profit getting out of a Ferrari, you will say that's very, that's very hurtful, you know? He shouldn't have a Ferrari. You don't know if that guy has another business and he can, he can have it.

So, yeah, I changed my mind.

Um, yes. Well, it's gonna be very difficult. You have to know that to follow your passion or your dreams is gonna be very difficult. Because normally everything that we do and we care, it's difficult. But, uh, you have start knowing that. And you have to also be very conscious that you can fail on the process. And that's also an option. And you have to be very aware of that. Because if you don't, and you fail, which you are gonna do, you are gonna fail somehow or somewhen, and that's not bad. Uh, it can take you to the bottom if you are not aware that failing is an option.

I'm not saying that you have to feel very good about failing. No, not at all. But yeah, it's part of the journey. And, be around people that that is following the same things as you. Probably it doesn't have the same dream or same passion but you can tell when people is more in tune with you. And if you don't have that people around you, start making decisions. And start saying no to some, some social, uh, circles that you don't want to be longer in, in, in that space. You know?

Uh, I don't think we don't have much, much time in this world to, to do things that we don't want to do. Or to be with people that we, we don't seem the meaning of being with them. Uh, that's not bad. You can say no to a lot of things. And I think that it's very difficult for us to say no to something because you start thinking what, what would they think of me? And we start putting a lot of, a lot of weight into what people is thinking about you. I used to do that a lot of time. All the time. I was trying to be in people's minds, which is crazy. I can't do that. I, I, I don't have that power. Uh, yeah, I'm in a wheelchair, but I'm not Charles Xavier from the X-Men. You know? (laughs) So I don't have... I'm not that able. Uh, but when, when you stop thinking about what people think about you, uh, it's so liberating.

People doesn't care about you. You have to understand that. Nobody cares about you. The only thing who cares about you is you. Probably your family too. But when you, when you think about that, when you go to social media, when you post something and you just wanna have likes and, and people to join to your page, that's when you start with the wrong foot. You have to do it because you want to. You have to be, uh, authentic. You have to be you. And, and that's the way you, you are gonna develop more things in this world.

Because, like I said before, everybody is pulling and pushing from different directions and what's your direction? You have to dig in that, and, and follow that direction. Um, and of course, uh, a fear, I, I always talk about fear.

We all, we all want to be approved by somebody. But if you are not au- authentic, you are not gonna be approved by anybody. And you have to be, you have to be approved by you first. Not by every- by everybody else.

Yeah, so Surfeando Sonrisas. Everything start when I, when I get back on the water. Um, uh, after that, wave, that I told you guys, uh, that I applied, that was the start of the journey. And, I started surfing more and more and more. And a good friend of mine, Arturo, uh, which we are very, very close. He told me, uh, "You cannot be selfish about this. You cannot, you cannot just serve you and not let other people to, to know about this." I'm, I can see what it it's doing to you. I can see the way you are changing. The way you are getting better just by surfing. Your... Uh, I think he was the first friend. We came to, we came very close after my accident. We were friends, but we weren't that close.

And I think he was the first friend that gave me the opportunity to, to get back life. Because he pulled me to his project. Uh, it was a project about surfing. And then I start going to beaches and I start going to places that I thought it was very difficult. Which they are, to be in the water and be on the sand totally difficult. And, and every time that I challenged something else, I was discovering that it was, it was possible to do it. It was difficult, of course, but it was possible.

And, and being in a wheelchair and being the only guy in the wheelchair in the beach, normally, I'm the only guy on a wedding, or the, or the party. It was difficult, you know? It was like, I feel different. Yeah, you are different. You are the only guy in the wheelchair.

So, so challenges, challenging those particular moments from the beach, uh, and, and Arturo saying, "You don't have to be selfish about it." That's where we thought about doing the non-profit. And this was almost eight years ago, and the non-profit, uh - Surfeando Sonrisas - was founded four years ago, almost, in 2018. So it took me a lot of years to develop this.

Uh, I wasn't, at that moment, I wasn't prepared to help others. Uh, I was receiving help from others. Now, now I'm up to the task to provide, uh, more, more things to, to the, the disabled world. Um, I don't like to talk about disability. I like to talk more about inclusion. But, um, sometimes it feels that the disability world is so far apart from the able-bodied world [in] which we are both human and live. It's so stupid to say this, but it feels like that and, and the purpose or the objective that Surfeando Sonrisas has is, of course, uh, bringing more, bringing more,, uh continence, more, more outdoor experiences for people with disability.

And, of course, surfing is so difficult to do it. When, when these kids and their families realize that after the day, after the three days, they were able to do it, that's very empowering, you know? Because, uh, you can move around on the beach. You can change yourself on the wheelchair in the beach. You surf and you had a, enough of day and night. I think at the end of the day, that's very empowering for people. Not just for kids, for the families, for the volunteers, for the instructors, even for us, for our staff. Uh, this is a huge impact and I think, um, we as humans have to be more sympathetic about someone's problems.

We have to be more in tune as a collective, uh, as a collective world, instead of being very individual. And of course, one of the main objectives of the non-profit is to bring inclusive to Mexico. If you have in the same place, in the same event people with disabilities and able-bodied people, that's inclusion. You know, because the problem is, is, is that people doesn't know about disabilities. They don't know about what, what happens to a spinal cord injury. And when, when I go to schools, I do a lot of the speaking. When I go to schools and I bring my surf boards or my hand cycle and I talk with kids from every ages, uh, they know, they, after the, after the talk, they have a different opinion, you know?

They aren't, "Oh, he's just in a wheelchair. He, he is like me." He doesn't have the, that ability,, uh for walking but he has a lot of ability. Uh, and, and that's very empowering. Also what Surfeando Sonrisas - and this is a new project that we are trying to develop - is that all the places, all the cities, all the beaches that Surfeando Sonrisas goes, uh, we have to, we have to bring or to, or to develop access to the, to the, to the beaches because that's, that's a big problem. 

We don't have um, good access to beaches for, for everybody. We always think about ramps for people in wheelchairs, but we want to shake that mindset. Ramps are for everybody. For everybody. We, we have to think that way. If not, we always segregated. Because, ah, it's for the wheelchairs. No, it's for everybody. It's for the guy who is bringing in a cooler full of beers. It's for a girl with a stroller, with, with her baby. Or with her son. Uh, and yeah, so Surfeando Sonrisas started to just to providing a positive experience for people with disabilities. But I think during this journey, our mission is way bigger than just providing, uh, sports for people with disabilities. 

Yeah. Because that, that's the biggest problem for me. Moving around. It, it's my biggest problem. And when you can’t move around, when you can’t go to a, to a, a toilet in a restaurant, to a bathroom, that impacts your self-esteem for sure. If I cannot move around just because one stair, one stair and my son which is three years old can be in danger for because of the cars or whatever, and that, and I can do nothing because just one fucking stair? That's huge. And we have to change that.

Um… I think everybody has a mission in this world. It can be, it can be small, it can be big. But if you don't pursue your mission, if you don't pursue your calling, I think that affects on a worldwide, uh, view. So everybody has to, to try to push, uh, and, and, and follow your dreams. Because if you do that, uh, our global dream, it will be, uh, it will not be that far away.

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Episode 8: Dispelling the Gender Myth

 

Episode 8: Dispelling the Gender Myth

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Description: Her dad taught her gender equality. Now, entrepreneur and alumna of the Mandela Washington Fellowship program Olive Michele Dol-Somse is training and empowering women in the Central African Republic to help them move past gender as an obstacle.

TRANSCRIPT

Olive Dol–Somse

I founded Bekilita in 2015, uh, right after the- the crisis that hit the country in 2013. Uh, the other time I was working as, um, uh, head of, uh, head of sales and marketing in a, in a hotel. But with the crisis, uh, business was not, uh, doing good. So I left the hotel and I were thinking about something, uh, I- I could do by myself to- to help and I started my business.

When I started Bekilita, I would really- I would really wanted to- to offer services in communication. Because, I- I have a major in marketing and, uh, in communication. So, um, I offer two services, communication services and catering initially.

And then little by little I found myself, uh, overwhelmed with people, uh, asking me for help, women asking me for, uh, uh, to link them to job opportunities. Uh, friends asking me to help them find a good seat for helpers. And I was doing it just naturally. I was just trying to help people around me.

And I ... It was not, uh, a paid service. It was just a help, I was just helping. But, uh, it soon became very overwhelming. Because, uh, when things did not work out, uh, uh, both- both parties were complaining. They will, uh- uh, I was at the center of the complaint. So, I found myself trying to- to help both sides. And, uh, it- it took- it took, like it took a lot of- of my time.

But I didn't really see it as a business opportunity. So when I went to the USA for the- the exchange program, I came to realize that I had the opportunity to turn this as a- a social enterprise. And that's- that's when all started. So when I came back, I decided to- to capitalize on this opportunity to- to help people. But to include this as part of my- my business.

So, I started training the women before linking them to the ... To job opportunities and, uh, redefining the- the- the way we work together with the- the women, the customers. Uh, where I started on my- my communication and pricing strategy. And also, I- I was, um, I- I searched for help to draft the contract.

So, I will have my customers sign the contract. And also my employees how they sign the contract. And, uh, he helped me monitor the relationship between customers and employees, uh, yeah, that's- that's- that's when everything took off.

I spend more time working with these women than doing communication and marketing.

I first started applying for the Regional Program in Nairobi. But, I- I did not complete the application and I missed the deadline. And, uh, a few months later I received an email announcing the Mandela Washington Fellowship application opening. I was still too busy (laughs) to start my application.

Then I had two friends who prompted me at that time to apply. One of my friends was also an alumni from, uh, uh, Mandela Washington Fellowship- Fellowship Alumni from 2014. And the other one was the U.S. Public Affairs Officer in at that time. Uh, they really prompted me, motivated me to- to apply.

And, uh, at some point, I- I really wanted to give it a try also. So, I decided to, uh, dedicate like two, three days of my- my life, uh, to fill the application. And gather all the docu ... Required documents. That's how, that how I- I applied to them in the Mandela Washington Fellowship Program.

It was my first time in Virginia. And, um, I was really excited. Because before the fellowship, I studied in the U ... In the USA. Uh, I was at Temple University in Philadelphia. So, I know a little bit about Philadelphia. I went to- to New York. I went to ... I had a chance to go to Washington but I've never been to Virginia before the Fellowship.

So I was really excited. The other thing is one of my friends from high school were also selected as part of the program. And he was going to be at the same university at, uh, in Virginia. So I was really, really excited to meet him again after like almost five years.

t was just awesome to, to be with, uh, different, I will say people from different- different backgrounds, from different parts of Africa. The part of Africa I know is mostly the Francophone Africa. Um, but some of the people I met there from Namibia, uh, I met- met people from Zimbabwe. It was my first time to meet people from this part of Africa.

So it was just like ... It was awesome to me to be part of this, um, journey to get to know, uh, all those brilliant people to- to learn about what they do in their- in their country. And how people are like, um, giving ... I would say, uh, traveling so hard to positively impact other people's lives, uh, in the environment.

The first time, um, I read the profile of the fellows on my campus, I was blown away. I was telling myself how come, like ... I have the feeling that everyone is- is doing something, uh, valuable somewhere. Then I asked myself, "Um, what are you doing?" And uh, like ... I- I- I- it becomes obvious to me that, um, I was not doing enough.

We may all live in different parts of Africa. But at the end of the day, somehow, we all face the same challenges, plus or minus. Like, we all have the same ... Uh, we all have dif ... Uh, challenges. We all, we all have obstacles. It all depends on the degree of those challenges but at the end of the day we all have to go through something.

So ... And despite all of the challenges people, uh, face, um, there are improving things, life and they are positively impacting people and bringing hope in the community. So, as I say, all of a sudden, I- I feel I was not doing enough for- for my country or for people in my community. And, uh, I felt the need to push harder.

Uh, I felt the need to, to strive and to overcome. And, uh, I felt the need to- to work on my resilience to be able to push even when, when it seems impossible. Uh, because, I- I realized I have no reason to accept failure and- and give up. Because somewhere people also do face worse than my challenges. But, um, they are all successful. So, uh, challenges and obstacles are not enough, um, excuse for me not to- to do better, to- to do better than- than what I was doing.

When I came back, I realized I need to push, I need to- to look beyond my- my own, uh, persona. Like I was ... Uh, I started a business, it was just all about me. I wanted to start my business. I wanted to run my business. I wanted to work for myself.

But when I came back, I changed my- my vision of the business. Um, I started putting, um, the- the women program on the, the center of my, my vision. And there is, there is one story I, I think that's, uh, could help you understand my, my motivation.

Um, when I came back it was really difficult. I have to admit. Because I spent ... We spent six, six weeks, uh, abroad. And during this time my business was almost collapsing. So, when I came back, I- I- I- I really was tired mentally. And, um, I needed to make a decision whether to- to pick it up and- and- and- and start over or to- to drop it there. Go find myself a decent job, uh, put money ... Save money and come back later.

So I was, I was thinking, and, uh, I have to make a decision. But, um, I had, uh, some of my employees, women who wanted to talk to me at that time. And during the meeting, they- they remind me why I started this business. So, they testify that, um, the life has changed ... Sorry, since they started working, uh, with me.

Because, um, I help them get a paid job and now they're able to take care of their family, to send their kids to school, uh, to take care of their ... One of them actually told me she's now ... She was now able to,-to take care of her mom who has been, who has been sick, seriously sick.

So, I, I stayed there. I was ... I- I- I couldn't just realize that some people were happy working with me. And what I was doing had a positive impact on some people life. I- I couldn't imag ... I couldn't ... I mean, I couldn't picture that. And right after this conversation, I made that tough decision to pick my business right from where it was and to start working as hard as possible, uh, to grow it. Because it was not about me anymore, it was about people who relied and trust me more than I trusted myself.

So, I didn't want to see ... I didn't want to, uh, I didn't want them to be disappointed, so, (laughs) I- I started working hard, uh, to make sure they will be ... They would be able even in the future to keep taking care of their kids, taking care of their family, and being able to take care of themself. That was my motivation from that day.

And, uh, even today, uh, this is the- the main reason why I still push in that direction. Because I know some people hugely depends on what I do to have a decent life, to- to hope for a better life, uh, for their kids, for, for themselves.

And some people depends also on me, uh, to dare, to dare make right- to dare make the right decision for their own life. Why I'm saying this? Um, women, most of the time depend ... In my country they depend on their husband. So, when someone depends on someone, you can you know ask that someone to- to go against the rule in the house.

So when we talk about, um, uh, sexual violence or- or gender-based violence and so forth or- or gender equality. We're talking about giving the opportunity to those women to- to be heard, to make decisions for their home. But how do you believe someone can make a decision for her own if she's not even able to buy food for herself.

She depends on someone to, to have breakfast or to have lunch. She depends on someone to have a piece of soap to- to- to wash her clothes with. We ... You can ... We ... You cannot ask someone to say no to- to- to her husband or to her father, um, who's abusive if that person still depends on them.

So my solution to that is, let me empower them, let me help them get a job, get money so that they can take care of themself. And then at the end- end of the day they will be able to say no to some of the things we are fighting. Like gender-based ... They will be able to say, "Enough is enough, I am not staying in this house anymore. I am living because I have enough money to rent a house for me and my kids."

Uh, they will be able to say, "I will not tolerate that you don't send my kids to school. I will pay for it. Because I have enough money." Uh, let's give them the opportunity to say, "I ... When I am sick, I can go to the hospital because I have enough money to pay for the fees, to pay for the medicine and so forth."

This is, this is my vision. Empower those women, so they are able to take responsibility from their- their own life and from the ... Their- their family. And, uh, this is, this is the main, uh, goal of everything I'm doing. Of course, it is not easy because I work with uneducated women most of the time. And, uh, to get them to that point, it's not easy.

Uh, but, uh, I didn't say I was going to give up, I didn't say it was going to be easy. I just said I need to push harder. So everyday I try to come up with new s ... New strategy to help, to empower those women, how to- to communicate with them. How to make them understand that, um, uh, what we are doing together is not just about them. But it's also about the- the kids, the children they are raising today. And, uh, the future they want for their children.

I have been appointed, like, some months ago as the Chairperson of the, um, Football Commission in my country which is under the, uh, the, um, Soccer Football Federation Association.

So, I work with women, uh, uh football players. And, uh, this is a new challenge I took on since, uh, uh female soccer is not very developed, uh, here in. But these w ... those women are really serious about what they are doing. They, they are very passionate, passionate about, about football. And, uh, I feel I need to do something to empower them.

So they can actually, uh, take ... I would say benefit from their passion. Because it's a pity that someone is, is working so hard in an area and- and they are not getting, um, the return on investment. Because, because this is a world of men, soccer is a ... Like football is a- a view of men.

I want to change that. I want those women also to be known for what they are doing. I want those also to benefit, to get a - the return on investment. I want them to live from what they're doing. So, I want to change the- the whole, the whole face I would say of- of- of the female soccer here in my country.

I grew up in a family of six. We are, um, four sisters and two brothers, but my parents are just wonderful because the way they raised us is ... Like there is no difference between my brothers and- and- and- and I and my sisters.

Uh, my dad is- is such a gender equality advocate. Like he, he will push. Everything he say, he said ... He used to say, "You are the only obstacles ... The only obstacle between you and your goals- your goals is you. So, no matter what you wanna do, it's not about, uh, being a woman, or being a girl or a boy. It's just being able. Make sure you have the skills, uh, required to do it." So, this is how I grew up.

So, to me it's quite normal that, uh, when I decide to do something, uh, I, I mean I don't even think of myself as, uh, women or men. I just think of myself as a human being, uh, with a vision. But when I returned back to my country in 2012, I was shocked because I realized we are still at that age when some of the things depend on your gender like whether you are a woman or you're a man. And I was, I was really shocked and to me, it was really frustrating and I wanted to help.

In ... With ... In my family, people don't do that to- to me because I- it's a different set, but with the colleague, when I used to work at the hotel, the colleagues, in some of our conversations, I noticed that. So, I was frustrated and, uh, I- I wanted to do something but it was not ... Uh, uh, I wouldn't call it, uh, advocating for gender equality, no. No, no, I just wanted to ... Again to help them. I wanted them to know that it's not normal. This is the way other people do it in the world.

So, maybe they- they- they should, um, also uh see things differently. But when I started my business, I realized this is a serious matter. And if we don't start changing things right now, then the future generation will also suffer from it because it goes from education to education. It is in the family. If the mom b- believes that, uh, "My daughter cannot do this, only my son can do this. My son can go to school because, because ..." then they will transfer this to their children and- and so forth.

So, I wanted for my part to change this with my employees. That's- that's how I can ... I- I could answer this question. It's not one day I woke up in the morning and I say, "Me I am going to advocate for gender equality." Is just that the context, the environment actually pushed me to- to react and- and do something to help.

It is, um, a life experience and uh, there is lots to take from it. And know exactly what you wanna take from, uh, the program.

When you attend the Mandela Washington Fellowship Program, you will meet a bunch of people coming from different backgrounds, different countries, you will hear stories from different people, success stories. Uh, and sometimes you get lost, in the midst of all that, you get lost and you get confused. But if you know exactly what you are looking for, then all those stories and those people will help you improve or define better your vision. So, yeah, to recap two things, it's a life experience. Uh, take the most- most, uh- uh from it. 

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Episode 7: Breaking Out of the Box

 

Episode 7: Breaking Out of the Box

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Description: This week, Howard University alumnus Dr. Brandon Ogbunu takes us on a journey from his humble beginnings to his Fulbright in Kenya, and why he’s not afraid to go where no one has gone before. Growing up in L.A. with a Trekkie mom, he shows us why barriers were meant to be broken, and how he's drawing on data to connect the dots on disease.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Brandon Ogbunu

My name is professor Brandon Ogbunu. I'm an assistant professor at Yale University and I'm a geneticist who studies epidemics.

Again, I was that, you know, child of the HIV pandemic, it locally, in the, in the United States. I remember what that was like. I remember what the crack epidemic was like in the United States. These are things I have very vivid memories of, um, growing up in the '90s mostly.

Um, and so, and so, you know, this is a big part of my imagination, but to see the way it looked in another setting, to see how disease manifested in another setting, for all the problems, I never had to deal with the mosquito borne illness.

It's one of the leading causes of death in the world for children under five.

I also saw the, you know, the way HIV/AIDS worked or, you know, in, in, in, in ravaged communities, right? In that part of the world. And I think, you know, by them, you know, you know, HIV continues to be a major problem. But I think even by the 2000, mid 2000, early to mid 2000s, it was a different conversation in the United States, right? We, this is 10, you know, this is over a decade post Magic Johnson, right? So the United States have had a lot, um, uh, sophisticated conversation. We had pretty effective drugs that were pretty widely available, right? I was able to see kinda how this pandemic was playing out in another setting.

So broadly I was exposed to, uh, you know, illness and the way that it kind of ravages communities and the way it shapes economies. And that's the interesting thing about malaria. Uh, not only does it cause a lot of disease, mortality and morbidity, it actually kind of like drains communities because of kind of, uh, the number of daily adjusted, you know, life years lost, work. These, these types of things, that it actually just drains communities, uh, families are affected.

When I think about kind of the long view of what my story is, um, I think it's, you know, I think you could think about it m- multiple different ways. You can kind of paint it with the classical descriptions of, right, you, you know, an African-American growing up in a, right, in a, you know, at best lower middle class, but probably not even setting.

That's an important detail, but by an enormous amount of privilege I have being raised by the woman that I was raised by. So I think mom, I was raised by an African-American w- woman, uh, from Baltimore. And I think I had a lot of an advantage over a lot of other people in my community because she was, I mean, really just an extraordinary person.

She kind of had this view of there's nothing in this world that you can't have.

Importantly, it wasn't just that she pushed me to be academically successful. I actually was not an especially good student. I, I always, school was very easy for me, but I actually didn't really try very hard.

Her thing was more like expand, push the envelope, be original, be a leader, think differently. Right? So for, you know, for example, you know, my mother was interested in science fiction in the '60s (laughs), you know what I'm saying? She was a Trekkie (laughs). Like, and, and that's something... So I had that at home. Right? And, and so seeing that, she was put, putting New York Times science articles on the refrigerator from young. And so my point is, it's like I never, ever, ever felt like there was any setting I didn't belong in. I felt like I was never, ever felt lesser than anyone ever. And I saw her kind of stand up to people and defend herself in these really amazing, I would see her get disrespected by people and her just break them down. And you're seven years old and you see your mother doing that... She’s raising you by herself...

I mean, you know, so I, I always entered this world that, you know, uh, with the, with the notion that barriers are meant to be broken, uh, rules, I mean, you wanna obey the law, but silly rules don't matter. And if somebody tells you something, uh, that, uh, you know, you, uh, that you can't do, uh, it's just a matter of you, uh, hustling and, and figuring it out. And that's something I've carried, I, I run my research lab that exact same way (laughs) to this day. So I, I, I, so again, you can think about it from one perspective that is, these classical kind of markers of, right, disadvantage, which are true. And I think had a very, very large impact on me and my life and my mother's life, um, and would still do in some ways. Um, but I think there's, I had a lot of privileges that other, other kids did not have by virtue of my, my mother.

My motivation is, I mean, you know, like one of the things that I'm about is, I'm about kind of giving access to people. And part of that is just my politics. And I believe in people having an opportunity, but, you know, part of it is, there's just no question that my mother would have been a better scientist than I would had she had the opportunities that I had, no question. I mean, she taught me algebra (laughs), you know what I'm saying? And so she didn't have to raise three kids by herself. So my point is, I mean, I, I, I have to try to do well. Right? Just kind of add an honor. That's why I don't, I, when, when people talk about what people are capable of and incapable of, it doesn't even make any sense to me. You know, because I, I see this at home and I see, I see how society and, and, and, uh, challenges kind of force people in kind of to be able to do certain things

You think the difference between me and my mother is talent, and that's just, that's, that's like, that's, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. And so I try to go through life with that way. I, you know, um,

Like life presents challenges to people. They were people more talented than me in my community, they just didn't have my mother (laughs). 

At Howard University where I went to college, there was a kinda growing interest in students applying to kind of prestigious scholarships and fellowships like the Marshall and the Truman and the Rhodes, and the Fulbright. And the idea here is that, you know, we had a, a, a good group of students who, whose interests were growing and diversifying. And so I think there was a campus push, I think maybe a year or two before me was the, uh, first Rhodes scholar in the history of Howard University.

Right. So the, I think there was this kind of idea that our students can compete nationally and should be kind of immersing themselves in these, uh, types of experiences.

I was eager to kinda push myself and kinda do different and eclectic and exciting things.

There was kind of a campus buzz around people kinda getting involved in things. And then I think that ran parallel with a growing interest of mine in global health and activism and doing well and, and inequalities, uh, and things of this nature. Which also ran parallel to my scientific career. So I at least kind of, a lot of things were going on at the same time.

Here's the greatest thing about my experience of Howard University in the sciences: Everybody next to you, you wanted them to achieve. That's the single thing. We wanted us all to do well.

So we pushed each other and competed, but we really, really wanted everybody to succeed. And we had a pride in everyone doing well. Now that changes the classroom dynamic because, your self-esteem, your, your self-esteem isn't on the line all the time. You're, you're, you're in a place that's nurturing in a way, it's still hard.

You still have to do the work, but you're doing it from a place of, it's not antagonism. It's a place where, you know, uh, I actually want people, I, I, I wanna do better than you, but I want you to do better than them (laughs).

And, and I think that was a really important thing for me to see at that point not coming from a great academic environment.

And I think Howard was really, really important for me and kids like me, who come from those types of backgrounds. And, uh, that's why I think you see it working.

Look at Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, right? She's a woman, right, who, uh, has a very kind of interesting background of her own. Right? And I think her, she's, you know, she's, you know, you know, she's kind of lived in multiple places, she's from a multi-ethnic background of her own. That's another thing you hear, you notice, about Howard University.

Howard University as a whole is a very accepting place with regards to what your background is.

There are a lot of individuals of mixed ancestry there and they come there and they kind of come, they kind of learned to embrace the positive parts of, of their identity.

This has, this is something else very, very powerful, uh, I see manifesting in president, in Vice President Harris.

Personally, I had this growing scientific interest in infectious diseases and it kinda interfaced nicely with my growing political awareness around inequalities. Um, and I think that kinda, it was fostered a lot by kind of my experience growing up with, with HIV, with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Which is really the thing that kind of changed my imagination and framed how I thought about kind of disease and the relationship between disease and society. So this was a part of my identity from pretty early. And I think it grew and I learned to get interested in things like malaria during college. So then kind of when you take these two things and you put them together, I said, you know what?

It would be really, really interesting and important for my career to be able to kind of do some real work, right, in another part of the world where they're actually being affected by these things. Certainly I saw HIV/AIDS in my community but I wanted some other experiences, and I had done a lot of laboratory research during college. Uh, but it was important for me to get this other step, uh, to b e able to really, really see these things. At that point I kinda was between careers, I didn't know whether or not I wanted to practice medicine. I don't know if I wanted to do research, but I had a bunch of different ideas. And so I thought that this experience could be a good opportunity to do so. I ended up meeting with some of the administrators on campus, uh, involved with the, uh, U.S. Fulbright fellowship.

And I decided that it was for me. I then ended up contacting individuals everywhere, kind of across the country who had connections to kind of countries around the world in particular, right, Africa where, uh, where there was kind of a major malaria problem. Um, and I was, um, end up forging this relationship with, uh, the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology based in Nairobi, Kenya. One of the leading, kind of, NGOs in the world that did, kind of, malaria vector control and other kinds of insect work actually, which was important. And that kind of led to me applying, uh, to work there for a year. Uh, and I, and I was accepted.

The Fulbright experience kind of, uh, changed my career, right? And, you know, closed some doors and opened others.

Because again, if you look at my career, even today, I have multiple interests

My lab works on multiple things. I look at the world in multiple ways. And that's just a part of my personality and it's kinda always been that way.

So in college I said, all right, well, I'll apply to everything. I said, I'll apply, uh, to, to medical school. I'll apply to graduate schools and everything from chemistry to biophysics (laughs). That's how kind of diverse my interests were coming out of college. And then I applied to everything. And I got accepted into everything (laughs). And then I also got the Fulbright fellowship.

So I went there with the idea I was gonna come back and start medical school at Yale, um, and then also kind of do a PhD. And, um, and I think that year in Kenya, in Kenya, working there really was the most important year of, one of the most important years of my life, for personal reasons, spiritual reasons, scientific reasons, social and political reasons.

It opened my eyes to everything about how the world worked, the way disease works, the way people are kind of thinking about it. And I decided at that point (laughs), there was pretty much no way I was gonna be bottled up in a, in a job where I couldn't kind of do this type of expansive work all the time.

So a career like medicine -- which is a great profession, right?

Um, I, I knew right away that it wasn't a fit, right? There's no way you're gonna kinda fit me into a hospital setting where there were so many rules.

And also, kind of having seen and been exposed to the way the world worked, I was eager to recreate the life to be a more adult version of the life that I have in Kenya in some ways. Where I was able to, you know, create and, and, and innovate and work with innovative people around solutions.

Problem solving on a global scale was the thing that I knew I wanted to do from my Fulbright experience.

My time in Kenya definitely opened my eyes to the way the world works.

The things that Kenya taught me about the world, uh, were, were important for me to learn at that stage in life. You have to remember I'm from public housing in the United States, right? And so I had this conven-, you know, conception of the way poverty worked here. And I still have that conception of the way poverty works here, because it's very, very serious in the United States.

But I think what I needed to learn was the way it looks and operates and manifests in other parts of the world. And so broadening my perspective on how inequality manifests.

The COVID era, right, misinformation, you know, has been one of the great shapers of COVID-19 policy around the world.

I think early on, it's been this misinformation, kind of war against misinformation around the vaccine. I think that was the early conversation, right? How do we make sure that people have the right information, have access to the right information and understand that this thing is safe and effective?

So the war, it's not where we, we've been fighting the disease, but we've been fighting this poor messaging.

And I think with social media, things can go viral in a moment. And I think I constantly do that. So what do I do? I engage in active conversations with communities. I've engaged in multiple forums. I've talked to heads of church, everything like that self available. And, and what do I actually say when I'm having these conversations is the most important point. Number one, you have to come from a place of empathy. You look back in American history or not even look back, you look at history now, right? Right. You look at all, you know, there are a lot of reasons to be distrustful, ain't it right? There are lots of reasons to be distrustful, right? I think the experimentation on certain bodies and certain populations is a part of the legacy of science and medicine. It is.

And so we have to admit that and deal with that very, very squarely when we're talking about kinda how to get people on board, uh, with this. That said, what I try to say, what I'm thinking, what I'm telling people about why I'm confident in the vaccine, is the vaccine development process. The people who are doing the science, it's not some person, uh, sitting in a white castle, right, pushing buttons and making a decision. The people working on the vaccine are the people like me. It's people who are hustling and trying to do the right thing, right? And we really, really are. It's, right, there's no kind of magic kind of, uh, person on the moon making these decisions. This is a process of tens of thousands of scientists who put their kind of effort and their lives on the line, you know, uh, to try to make this type of thing work.

So  my point is by walking people through both the past and the present, the idea here is that we can get people to understand that science, um, it can work.

This thing did not take a year. The research behind the vaccine goes back decades, decades.

The mRNA technology in particular, I mean, you know, vaccinology is several decades, right, right, in, in terms of its modern phase. So this technology itself has been around for many, many years.

I think what, with, what COVID did was all the virology world stopped. Everybody stopped what they were doing and pivoted their attention towards COVID. And so we were able to do more in a short amount of time and better ever. My group, for example, I, I had other things to work on. We stopped a year ago, shifted our attention towards COVID and put out, you know, we published several manuscripts on this. And I think that goes for a lot of people. So, when you actually think about, A, the fact that technology is better now, right? Well, well, A, it's the fact that we've been thinking about this for many decades, right? B, is that technology is better in 2021 than it's ever been. And then C, everybody, the whole kind of medical world in the biomedical world and the scientific world stops and pays attention. All of a sudden that amount of time isn't so short, right? When you actually think about it that way. It's, you know, and I think that's how we were able to do this.

I call myself a disinformation and misinformation warrior, and it's (laughs), I mean, which is, you know, a silly label in some ways, but it, it does acknowledge that the, uh, the climate calls for people who are willing to kinda engage, um, that disinformation misinformation are just as big illnesses as the actual illnesses are.

I've been involved in kind of very, very large conversations with people where they can ask questions about kind of the vaccine and why they should or shouldn't or things that they saw on YouTube. I mean, I got a lot of very interesting theories and things on Mars and, and, and, you know, and ro- robots in the bloodstream. But again, right, to the bright, to a point that's very critical and important to make, I cannot dismiss those. You have to engage people. Because at the end of the day, people wanna be healthy and happy and have fun with their family and have a good time.

So simply calling on your credentials, right, is not an appropriate way to engage people. You have to meet people where they are. You have to empathize with what their fears are and try to gently walk people through. You don't talk down at them, you talk with them. Um, and at the end of the day, I can't tell anybody what to do.

Right. What I can do is lay out the information in a manner that kinda empowers them to make their own decision. And I think I've been able to do that.

As far as I'm concerned, that's, that's more powerful than anything I will do in a laboratory.

And I found that just as, uh, gratifying as anything."

What my Fulbright experience did for me, uh, well, it, it really is the most important intellectual year of my life.

Number one, I came out of college. I was chemistry and mathematics, and I, you know, I had taken a little bit of biology here and there. I had never taken a course on ecology, on evolution, on insects, anything, ever, not for a second. Okay? I went to Fulbright and I read everything about mosquitoes, knew, I, I published three manuscripts about mosquitoes and ecology and doing work in nature. I had never done work in nature before. Right? At that, so my point is, I was able to really do science originally, uh, with, on my own, with a lot of independence having forged my own relationships doing work in infectious disease. So that's what my point is in terms of my independent scientific trajectory. I mean, now I'm a professor of ecology and evolution of infectious disease. I mean, the thread runs directly from my Fulbright experience. I still publish work on malaria. I don't do mosquitoes, but I still do work on malaria, and we writing the grant of malaria.

So the signature on my science is very, very, very clear.

I have a very kind of interesting and complicated, you know, complicated family history of myself, right? So my father is Nigerian, but I was not raised by him. Right? So I don't have a relationship at all with my father. I was raised with my mother who's, you know, who's African-American. So my point is going to Kenya, where it's not -where I do not have ancestry. I have no connection to Kenya kind of, uh, part, you know, ethnically or, you know, uh, genealogically. It was still me connecting with Africa in a way in, and, and I kinda, I found out kinda they were, that I, uh, uh, making a connection with the continent in this way was very important for my kind of emotional and psychological development as a young person. And I did not realize that until after I was there. Um, to see how beautiful the continent is and how beautiful the people are, how young the continent is, how they will not be denied moving into this next century.

They're gonna, they're, they're bright. They're gonna do great things. And they're gonna be, the more, the world is going to have to contend with them in a good way, right? In the sense of they're gonna kind of continue to do, they're gonna do wonderful things in this world. That was very, very important for me to see. And then more generally, just like the global perspective on things. Look, the thing about being American, independent of what your background is, we are narrow. And even me, I thought I was kind of broad-minded as like a college kid. Right? I thought I was, and I thought that I kinda knew what went on in the world, um, particularly after 9/11. Right? I think a lot of us began to think about how the world worked. I realized when I was in Kenya, I didn't know anything about the way the world actually works, and have, to have to kind of even talk to not just Kenyan scientists, but Cameroonian scientists and, and Belgian scientists.

And, and, right, from around the world, I think, wow, this is how science actually works around the world. There are independent scientists around the world doing cutting edge world-class work. I felt like more of a citizen of the world because of the Fulbright experience.

You know, I can only speak for being an American is the only place, that's the only citizenship I've ever had. Um, all right, only place I've ever, you know, lived, lived before I went to my Fulbright. Uh, growing up, um, even when you're eclectic and original, you're still original within a very narrow context.

So I was interested in comics and sci-fi and things of that nature, and that was eclectic for the setting I was in. You, you know, and I, you know, and it, and it's still is. It is still is eclectic. But I, part of, kind of my triumph, the triumph of a lot of people is realizing, even if I'm doing well in this box, this is still a box. And there's a lot of other experiences that you can kind of break into.

I remember my mother took us to dinner one day, she made us dress up and go to some fancy steak house or something like that. I was a little, little boy. She made us dress up and like the violin player, you know, came over and started (laughs) playing violin at our table.

And this was an important thing for us to see, right, because like, this is the way some people live. And I remember being seven or eight years old and thinking I belonged there, right? Now, we didn't do that ever again. I haven't done that since, as a grownup with an actual job. But the point is that there are other places in this, in my, in the country when I was young, there are other settings, right, where you, if you wanna do it, you can belong. Is that the art world or what have you? And I think that attitude of being encouraged to explore and try different things, um, it doesn't mean the things outside of your community are better.

It just means that you should be able to have, to have access to whatever you want. Right? Um, and that's my, that's what I've tried to do. So going to Howard University, going to the Fulbright, going to Yale for my PhD, going to Harvard for my postdoc, going for my jobs from Vermont to Brown. Now back to Yale. At all of these places, two things have been true. One is, I've had to expand and get out of my comfort zone in every single one of these settings. All of my research, I've had to learn new things, all of my writing and outreach, I have to learn new things, but I also stick and bring myself to those jobs. I do not feel like I have to be someone else in the settings.

Like what you're getting here is pretty much just the grownup version of me at 17 years old. Right? Just, I just read a lot more books since then. And I think that message of your home and yourself is a valuable thing. You are brilliant and beautiful the way you are, but there is nothing in this world you can't have. I think that's a theme. And I think the Fulbright experience was a very important part of that theme.

I encourage people, like don't be afraid to get outside of your comfort zone. If you look in any paradigm, the people who made leaps forward did just that. They were people who kind of like got into different things and were thought, you thought, they were, you know, they thought they were crazy or other people thought they were crazy. So programs like Fulbright, right? And I really urge people to try something truly different, right? True now, now you should have the skills to do the work (laughs). You shouldn't be unprepared to do the stuff, right? Uh, but if you have the skills to do it, try something different in particular as your junior person kind of developing your professional identity and who you are.

Be that photography or anthropology or art or in my case, science, um, you will be, you will thank yourself for the long term for having kind of made these types of bold steps. And I think the Fulbright is a perfect example of that.

The exchange changed my life.

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Episode 6: Mermaid Advocacy

DESCRIPTION

On this week’s episode, we dive in with Anna Oposa, co-founder, director, and Chief Mermaid of Save Philippine Seas, to learn how she is working to mobilize “sea-tizens” to take action to protect marine and coastal lands on a local and global scale.

TRANSCRIPT

Anna Oposa:

I am the co-founder and executive director and chief mermaid of an organization called Save Philippine Seas, that was created as a response to a major illegal wildlife trade case that happened.

At that time, I had just submitted my thesis for my undergraduate degree and I was looking for a job and I had a lot of free time to, you know, comb social media.

I always say that my advocacy was built on the foundation of my, my English language education and my English studies education, because I think when you are an English major, you're trained to read a lot, you're trained to listen to the way people use language. Um, and I was taught by my teachers to ask, like, the right questions and the good questions, which I feel are things, you know, they're life lessons that help me everyday.

I grew up wanting to be a Broadway star, that's what I thought I was going to be. And ever since I was maybe 11 years old or 12, I was in voice lessons and I spent summers, uh, being immersed in musical theater workshops and dance workshops and teaching musical theater. So, that's another part of my background that was really formative for developing discipline.

So, sometimes people ask me, you know, "What do you do when you're not motivated to, like, work on saving the seas?" And I always say, “It's not about motivation, sometimes it's about discipline,” right? So, it's, like, getting up and putting in the work, whether you feel inspired or not, which I think being both an English major and a theater, um, actor taught [me].

So, my dad was an environmental lawyer. He actually started environmental law in the Philippines. So, even since I was young, I was really exposed to a lot of environmental issues, not just fishing, you know, not just, like, illegal fishing issues or marine conservation issues, but even, like, reforestation projects and illegal logging and different kinds of environmental injustices. So, I always joke that my environmental law degree came from the dinner table because our everyday conversations with my family would be about politics and environmental laws and issues like current events.

So, it's always been there, and I actually deliberately did not want to pursue environmental law. Because.

I, didn't want people to think that I was just where I was because of my last name or because of my connections.

So, I really resisted it and I think even when Save Philippine Seas already started, I was still very hesitant to think that it would be my, my path, my chosen career.

In 2016, I participated in an exchange program, um, in the U.S. and it was on oceans. And I was selected as a mentor or a facilitator for a youth program, and I enjoyed it so much. Um, so it was a, some Southeast Asian and East Asian students and I would be their mentor, not just to teach them about the oceans and answer all their questions about the sea, but also help them adjust to culture shock in, in the US. So, a lot of the students that were there had never been outside of their hometowns, so obviously there's some culture shock.

And I remember one of my Filipino students, when we ate spaghetti for the first time -- so, for context, in the Philippines, spaghetti is very sweet, like, there's a lot of sugar and there's a lot of hotdogs, it's very strange, I know it sounds strange, but it's really good --and she was so confused why the spaghetti didn't have hotdogs, and why it was a little bit sour and salty (laughs). So, those are other things that I wasn't really expecting to have to explain, but on a personal level, uh, we got exposed to so many different programs in the US. We got to travel to, like, aquariums and speaks with environmental educators, and that really left a big impression on me and.

I still actually continue applying the lessons that I learned during that exchange program to this day.

I actually lived in the U.S. when I was younger. Uh, my dad did his masters in Harvard, so my family lived there for, we lived in, in Cambridge for a year when I was about eight years old. And then I went back in 2004, um, for a creative writing program in, in Pratt Institute in New York. And then I did a fellowship in Duke University, um, after my Masters. So, I had been to the U.S. several times.

Being in the U.S., and specific to the program that I was part, um, under the State Department, one of the, I don't re- I don't remember exactly where we were, but I remember what the topic was about, the speaker was talking about this concept called science cafes, and she said that the point of the science café is to make science more engaging and more approachable.

So, that's left a big impression on me and I, I was asking myself, how do we bring science to, to, closer to, you know, people who are not, you know, studying marine biology or, and, and we decided that (laughs) with another YSEALI alum actually, to create what we call conservation workshops, so communicating for cons- conservation in a brewery, and I think that, that experience was something that planted a seed in my mind to do something like that in the future.

You know, before, pre-pandemic (laughs), we used to travel all the Philippines, holding workshops, um, you know, working with communities closely in a physical, face-to-face setting.

And now we're developing what we call Earthducation kits. So, it's, you know, education for the earth and we're working with teachers, we're working with students, we're working the Department of Education in the Philippines to create these learning kits. So, that's also a, you know, a little seed that was planted in my mind back in 2016.

What I'm thinking about now is. If we can't bring people to the sea, then how do we bring the sea to them?

You know, when you're eight, you don't really have a grasp of how things affect you so much, you know?

You know, coming from a tropical country and suddenly having four seasons, I mean, that is, like, I still, it's still so clear to me the first time I ever saw snow. It's like one of my core memories. Um, but it's also, like, little things like eating TV dinners and, like, doing my own chores, um, and then watching Nickelodeon all day, 'cause we didn't have Nickelodeon in the Philippines back then (laughs). And of course, as an eight year old, these are things that you get super excited about.

It was also hard to learn to speak English the whole time, because in the Philippines, we mix English and Filipino a lot when, in, when we converse, we code switch a lot.

So, I had to train myself to speak in straight English, which, you know, can actually get really tiring.

I feel like I had to grow up quickly.

And I remember there was even a time I started crying because I just felt like, "Oh my god, how can people know, how ca- how, how can people have figured this out?" And, like, you know, I do well in school, but in, like, real life, it - it's hard (laughs).

Um, and then the pace of the education was also different and what I valued in that, in that, um, creative writing space was how much, um, the class put value on, like, poetry and fiction and non-fiction and the creative space, which I felt like, you know, in the Philippines, we are always conditioned that you have to be a lawyer or you have to be a doctor, and because I got good grades, you know, people always assumed that I would go down those paths, and I think that course really influenced me to major in English, much to the, um, disappointment of my parents (laughs). But, you know, it was just another reality that, oh, there are other choices, there are other care- career paths that I can take.

Sometimes you get scared to ask questions because you feel like people will think you're stupid.

So, I remember being in the, like, the laundry room in the school, and I'd never used the washing machine before, so, I remember being there and just standing with my laundry and someone went up to me and was like, "Are you okay?" And I said, "I don't know how to use a washing machine." And she was like, "How can you not know?"

So, so that, I felt like, oh my god, I shouldn't be asking people these things, I'm supposed to know these things.

So, when I had my opportunity to mentor these young students who are going to the U.S. for the first time, I just always reminded them that, "You can ask me anything, um, there are no stupid questions, uh, whatever it is that you're thinking, just let me know. Um, you know, if you're shy to ask it in the group, then you can ask me during the break," you know, things like that.

I don't think I can run out of challenges (laughs). But there are of course, like, the organizational ones, which, you know, if you're running a non-profit, then you're always going to be financially, um, un- unstable I guess because as a non-profit, you kind of have to keep raising funds, and I've been very fortunate to have the US government support our work in the last maybe six, seven years already. Um, so that's been a huge part of being able to sustain our organization and the work that we're doing.

But on another, um, aspect of it, whatever you do to one sea, you do to another. And I think that's why I like the, the US calls it Our Ocean, right, that's the branding that they created because they want to emphasize that it's ours, and whatever you do in one country, you do to another.

And still, it's hard to advocate for the seas when there are bigger or, I guess, more urgent issues like health and, you know, economic, or economic situations. So, it's kind of been pushed a little bit lower compared to other development issues.

When we protect our environment, we also end up protecting our- ourselves. Um, so whether that's clean air or clean water or a clean environment, those are all related to, to the state of our health and the state of our wellbeing and our, and our physical health as well.

In 2021, I think it's particularly, um, challenging because of the pandemic and how it's so hard to advocate for, let's say, you know, reducing plastic pollution when so many of the things now are dependent on it being single use.

I've seen a lot of face shields, you know, being blown into the streets in, in the coastal areas. So, the medical waste is part of it.

But also being on lockdown means there's inception of e-commerce packaging because, like, the plastic is wrapped in another plastic, which is wrapped in a bubble wrap, which is wrapped in a paper bag and which is wrapped in another plastic, so that's another, um, another challenge that we're facing.

A lot of people who are working to protect the oceans also were related to the tourism industry. So, you know, dive operators and diving, um, patrol boats would be around marine protected areas and these, th- they can't run without the income coming from the tourism sector.

I've always been a very, like, internally motivated person, I guess, um, and there are days that I really don't want to work or I don't feel like, like what I'm doing is actually going to result in something. But what motivates me is knowing that, well s- there, there are different ways that I, like, give myself a pep talk. So, on some days, it's like, you have a deadline," (laughs), "you can't miss this deadline. So, for practical reasons you have to get up and work, even if it's just for two hours, just start.

I always have to remind myself, okay, I'm doing this so that I can, you know, work with young people or work with fisher folks or work on shark conservation. So, it's just finding what inspires me or what can motivate me on that day. And sometimes it's not always the same.

If you don't know something, you can't love it. And that kind of approach has made me a big advocate for what we call experiential learning.

So, for example, in our programs, we learn that 90, 80 to 90% of the students that we, that we work with have never been in the water. And for me, that's very strange knowing that we're the second largest archipelago in the world. Why are we so scared of being in the water?

So, in every program that we did pre-pandemic, we would always make time and allocate resources to bring people into the water because it's one thing to watch, you know, documentaries and see photos, but it's completely different when you're there and feel this sense of connection and this kinship with, with the environment.

Growing up, we've always been snorkeling and we've always been, you know, going to beach trips as a family, but going underwater, I was just so blown away by it (laughs). It sounds silly now that I'm talking about it, but I was like, "Oh my god, there's so many fish," (laughs), "there's so many colors underwater."

Um, and I was thinking, oh my god, if I were an artist, I wish I could draw, I could paint and, like, make people see what I'm seeing and make people feel this excitement and this sense of wonder that I'm feeling.

I've done maybe, I would say, let's say over 400 dives, um, in different parts of the Philippines and in some parts of, other parts of the world, and it still brings me so much li- life.

No two dives are ever alike. You know, even if you go to the same spot and you dive on the same day, uh, same time, it's just always gonna be different, and I think that's part of the thrill of it.

So, my story of the chief mermaid, um, we had a volunteer who said, you know, "Why don't we come up with business cards so that people take us seriously?"

This was like, you know, a few months into Save Philippine Seas. And I said, "Oh my god, that's a great idea." And then she said, "Okay, I'll design it, what title do you want?" And I said, "Chief Mermaid," and she said, "You're joking, right?" And I was like, "No, I mean, others have chief executive officers and chief finance officers. Why can't I be the Chief Mermaid?" Anyway, it's just for fun.

So, I printed it on my business card and so I would give it to people and one time I was giving a talk in a- in a university, and someone got my card and it turns out that person was from the government, and then a few days later I got a letter with a letterhead of the, of, you know, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the letter said, you know, Anna Oposa, co-founder and chief mermaid, and I was like, “oh my god, people are taking it seriously.”

And then I tried to, like, rebrand myself and drop the Chief Mermaid.

But then people love it and people still call me Chief Mermaid.

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Episode 5: Walk with Confidence

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This week, we travel to Mumbai, India, where we meet ElsaMarie D’Silva, the founder of Red Dot Foundation, Safecity, a platform that documents sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. Hear about her journey from the corporate world to award-winning social entrepreneur, the circle of sisterhood, and how she is helping women walk with confidence.

TRANSCRIPT

My name is Elsa, and I am an Exchange Alumni. 

I was really lucky to have been, uh, selected for both these programs, the Fortune, uh, State Department Mentoring Program, as well as the Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Oh I've, I really consider myself lucky. Uh, both of them were, I would say life changing, especially the Fortune Mentoring Program, because you are mentored by some of the most successful women in the world.

And to be in that circle of sisterhood, and I would say leadership, is really, really real forming, not only for yourself as a leader and, and a social entrepreneur, but also as, uh, someone who comes from, um, maybe India to the U.S., you know

I understand the value of the relationship and therefore I pay it forward by also mentoring others and facilitating mentoring relationships with established leaders in India with vulnerable girls.

It's a gift that you cannot measure in the present moment, but in the future, when you look back, you will know how valuable that gift was.

And that's really now, you know, when I look back on my Fortune experience, I really really know the importance and the value of it.

I believe I've always had that passion to positively impact other people and have them explore their potential. But the current work that I do with Red Dot Foundation actually began in December, 2012. At the time I was in the aviation sector, I was heading a department called Network Planning where I was optimizing over 500 daily flights. And then in the middle of December 2012, we had a horrific incident where a young girl was gang raped on a bus in Delhi and subsequently died of her injuries. And that incident was so brutal and horrific, it opened up a lot of conversations around the topic of sexual and gender-based violence.

Now I was in my bubble in aviation, but this also, you know, got me really upset. And I felt I was at a moment in my life looking for my purpose, but I wanted to contribute in a very concrete manner.

And this incident was a catalyst for me launching SafeCity. What is SafeCity? It's a crowd map or crowd sourcing tool where we encourage people to report their experiences of sexual and gender-based violence anonymously. And this is then collated as location-based trends visualized on a map as hotspots. And the aim is to make the issue more visible because until that incident that happened with Jyoti Singh, I don't recall reporting my own experiences of sexual violence.

In fact, all my women friends had experienced it, but none of us had made any official complaint, which meant that this issue was invisible due to the lack of data. The official statistics do not reflect the true nature and size of the problem. And what we were trying to do with SafeCity is make it more visible by bridging the data gap, putting it in a format that people could understand what was happening, where, and also make the data available in the open source format so that you can use it in whatever way you wanted to use it at the individual level to improve your situation awareness. Or engage with your community to find solutions with you. Or even to demand accountability from service providers like the police, the municipal corporation, or your administration on college campuses.

And it's not very different from the various apps we use in our day-to-day life. You know, we are now in a space and technology where we are, every decision we make is made, uh, using peer reviews.

We depend on what other people are sharing about their experiences regarding a hotel or restaurant, so why can't we learn from each other's experiences on sexual and gender-based violence?

We can definitely learn from it. We can make ourselves situationally aware so that we respond quicker, faster, better, uh, more effectively.

You see what happens is when a woman is confronted in these circumstances, you tend to freeze because there are three responses. You can freeze, you can flee, you can fight back, but we freeze. And then we beat ourselves up emotionally saying that was not an adequate response.

So if you had advanced intelligence to say, "Okay, on this street corner, this is what I can expect. Or if I'm taking the train, this route has this, uh, kind of a problem." You can have many strategies to respond, and you're aware. Also the perpetrators looking to catch you when you're not aware, or, you know, they'll prey on the vulnerable, so to speak. But if you knew you will walk with confidence, at least that's my hope. And you will respond even co- even more confidently, which will, uh, intimidate the perpetrator.

And then take the community, for example. If you went and told your story, again, the onus comes back to you saying you were in the wrong place, you were wearing the wrong clothing, who told you to go out? Et cetera. But if you can prove that it was happening over and over again, in that same location, the pattern is appearing through the data.

You can then ask questions of your community as to why they're okay with this kind of behavior and, uh, and demand for them to have your back. And that's very powerful. And the solutions that we have seen range from not only policing, but also where do you place the CCTV cameras? Because in my city, everybody loves putting CCTV cameras. So you can have a say how you know, where those CCTV cameras are placed, but you can also use art on walls to challenge, uh, these cultural norms that, uh, promote harmful gender stereotypes, and so on and so forth. And then institutional accountability. We have seen that you don't need big data. You need relevant disaggregated data to convince the authorities to implement better policies and procedures. So whether it is increased, beep patrolling, or change of beep patrol timings, fixing broken lights, fixing broken toilets, all these contribute towards the feeling of being unsafe.

So 2012 was a landmark year for me. So the company that I was working with underwent a financial downturn and eventually shut. Of course, as head of network planning, I was working on recovery plans and we were in talks with, uh, another airline to, uh, you know, buy us off, et cetera. But I thought to myself that if I wanted to make that change, or if I wanted to pay it forward, this was my moment. It, it was never gonna come again. And if it didn't work out, I could always go back to a corporate job. But if I didn't make that decision now, you know, at that time, I didn't think I would have had the courage to make it in the future.

Now I come from aviation and at one point in my career, I was a safety instructor. So aviation is a very safe industry in the sense there's a lot of investment in situational awareness and emergency preparedness

And you go through all these drills annually all the time thinking about all the various situations that could go wrong, right? And we study accidents and we study in a way th- I'm just applying what I learned in aviation to this particular topic.

So when now my team explains this to the partner organizations in the communities that we work in, it makes a lot of sense to them because they know intuitively that this is happening on a daily basis, but without the data, you cannot give it, you know, that touch and feel to it. And you have to convince the men and boys around you to say that this is a problem. That they may never have been challenged before. They may never have been spoken to about it before, because a lot of the men interestingly say that, "Oh, we never thought it was a problem."

Every city has its own dynamic and knowing what will happen where, it's very important because the kind of crime that we are seeing surface on our data, uh, on our mapping Delhi is very different from Bombay, is very different from Kerala, for example, or Goa. And just knowing what is ahead of you is, is really important in your own, uh, plan of action for your own safety.

But basically there's very poor understanding of the spectrum of abuse. What constitutes sexual violence. What is the legislation? Many men don't even realize, and many women too, that it is a crime in India for every category of nonverbal, verbal, physical forms of abuse, it is a crime.

So knowing your rights is absolutely critical and we shouldn't be waiting for something to happen to us to then find out what is the law and what are our rights.

And that data is absolutely, uh, critical as well, because it allows you to think of innovative options, non-confrontational options, or it helps you build dialogue  within your community and between your community and institutional service providers.

Once we get a sizable amount in any community -- 100 reports, 500 reports, we help analyze those reports and present the findings back to the community and then ask them, what do they wanna do to solve the issue.

One of my favorite examples is in Delhi, in, uh, in an urban village, low-income community, one of the hotspots was near a tea stall. And if you've been to India, you know, the tea stall is a kiosk on the side of the road, which is a male-only space. You'll never find women hanging around over there drinking tea. Now, the way it was located, women and girls had to pass by on the way to school, college, work, and men would loiter over there, stare at them and intimidate them with their constant mail gigs. And when asked, what would they like to change? They said, "We want the staring and the loitering to stop."

Now, how do you challenge this kind of behavior? So we organized an art-based workshop and on the wall near the tea stall, a huge wall, we painted a mural with staring eyes and subtle messaging that says, "Look with your heart, not with your eyes. We won't be intimidated by your gaze. We will speak up. We will not stay silent." All of this is through the wall. Okay. We call it talking walls now. And this was so effective that the staring actually stopped and the loitering also stopped, because the tea stall owner was now put on notice and he would, you know, send the men away. Now, this wall mural idea was so powerful that we used it in other places...

...outside of girls college in Bombay, we, um, got them to paint their feelings on the wall. And I remember during that time, men would stop to see what we were doing, a bunch of women painting the wall. And these girls decided that in between these panels, they would put the sections of the law that make all of this crime, whether it's staring, taking pictures without permission. The men said, "Thank you, because we ourselves didn't know it was a crime."

And they became advocates to, uh, educate their own communities, their peer groups on, uh, you know, why they shouldn't indulge in this behavior. So you see the ripple effect where one innovation then goes to another and to another, and you're constantly learning what has worked in some community or not, or the other.

We have to talk about female, female leadership, because there's just not enough of it. Take for example, Kamala Harris, when she was elected as vice president, the whole world was celebrating. Why? Why is that? Because we felt we had broken that glass ceiling along with her. If you take India, we have 14% of women in parliament. 14%. That's a miserable amount. If you take business leadership, also it's pathetic. It's nothing like 33%.

We need to make the effort to make women more visible. Men need to make space for them. And I'm tired of this tokenism where people want to tick boxes. There has to be an effort made.

They'll never have the experience unless you give them that space. So when I look at my own leadership journey, I've been very fortunate that my male bosses gave me that opportunity to excel.

And at very, at a very early age, I got all my promotions and that's because there were men who believed in me, who trusted me. Even if then I didn't believe in myself. So there are people out there, we just need more of them and we need them to feel comfortable, you know, getting more women into that top job.

So yes, women's leadership is absolutely critical.

It's not that all women will be great leaders or that they will always do the right thing for gender equality. But at the moment, we do not have as many reference points to say what female leadership does look like.

You know, we don't have that problem with men, right? So when one man as a leader fails, we say, "Okay, he was a bad person," but when one woman leader fails, because we are so few in number, they put the whole onus on the gender saying, "Oh, you know, the entire, a lot of them are bad." If you look at how countries have fared during COVID, by and large, the countries that have done well have mainly had women leaders, or the cities that have done well. So there is a point to be made for female leadership and we just have to put in more of an effort and it has to be top down driven.

Ever since I started with SafeCity, I do have to say that the U.S. Consulate Mumbai has been one of my biggest supporters. And then I have personally benefited from the two State Department exchange programs. I do not feel like that relationship has ever ended. It's a continuous one. It's one for life. And I have used it for the benefit of my organization, but more importantly for the benefit of my cause, which is advancing gender equality and prevention of sexual and gender based violence.

So I'm deeply grateful and humbled as well for having been, uh, selected for these programs. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I re- highly recommend it to everyone out there, and I'm deeply, deeply grateful for

The U.S. Consulate, uh, Mumbai who have always supported my work, always, uh, helped me think through solutions, uh, and, you know, seeing the potential in what we were doing even before we realized that.

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Episode 4: From Bullets to Books

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In the latest episode of Voices of Exchange, we sit down with Jok Abraham Thon, founder and director of Promised Land Secondary School in South Sudan, to hear how he is advancing peace and resiliency in the region. Jok's story is connected to our last episode, featuring U.S. Arts Envoy Gail Prensky, who documented Jok's fight to save the soul of his country, one book at a time.

TRANSCRIPT

Today we meet with Jok Abraham Thon, founder and director of Promised Land Secondary School In South Sudan. That name might sound familiar, as Jok works closely with our previous guest, documentary filmmaker Gail Prensky. If you missed that episode be sure to go check it out. On this episode, Jok takes us on a journey of how he is fighting to save the soul of his country, and with it, the world.

Jok Abraham Thon

My name is Jok Abraham Thon. I'm the founder of Promised Land Secondary School. I'm passionate about education and changing minds from Bullets to Books. Trying to invest my time and my talent to really fight for it. One of the world's challenging, um, situation that is gun violence. So my life has really changed when I joined, uh, Mandela Washington Fellowship family. I learned a lot, uh, through the fellowship program and I also got connections. I built a very great network that is really helping me and helping, uh, the young people in South Sudan.

South Sudan, uh, is actually one of the countries that went through a long struggle. You know it all began 1955 before even Sudan independence. Uh, because the- the southerners were not, uh, part of the- of the independence of the Sudan, uh, during the British time. there were no schools in the whole, in the- in the- in the southern part of the country. They were no hospitals, they were no roads, you know. So they- they were really marginalized. They were second class citizens in their own country.

So we fled to Uganda and we began as refugees. Life was really hard and we were in a camp. I even lost my younger brother to malaria. The- they were no schools. You know, life was really hard, you know. So, as we were growing up, the war also continued in South Sudan. They killed 2.5 million people, you know. And that was the longest war in Africa. So when I came back to South Sudan in... When I came back to South Sudan after completing my high school, I joined [the] University of Juba where I studied economics.

When I came back to South Sudan, after completing my high school, I understood there was issues to do with illiteracy in my country, because the longest war affected our people, 75% of the population cannot read or write .But the biggest call was when the conflict broke out in 2013, between the vice-president and the president. And the, the, the war just erupted abruptly, because there were illiterate young people who were ready to fight and die for their uncles or for their tribemates.

So 2015, I went to the authorities, local authorities. And I told them, I have an idea of opening a school because the conflict of 2013, uh, really affected so many people. And a lot of people are displaced. Some kids were brought back from neighboring countries because their parents were not able to afford to pay their school fees in Uganda. So there were a lot of young people around me and in the place I stayed, many young people joined criminal groups. So they became, they became criminals. They became addicted to drugs. And I was really scared. And with the energy I had from Uganda, and so being somebody who grew up in such a very hard environment, so I decided to have courage to open a school.

So I went to authorities, the local authorities, and I told them, "Hey, I need to open a school. Can you help get a land for me?" And they said, "Okay, sure." Because we did not get young people are really interested in such bigger dreams. So, and they showed me the place. So I went and put down a temporary structure because I was not financially up, I wasn't financially okay. So I put on a temporary structure and I talked to my colleagues, teachers who were with me [inaudible 00:30:17] of Juba, and we started the school. In 2016, I made an announcement in the church that if your child is interested to come to school, then you can come and register. And that's how we started.

And in 2018, our school became the best in the country national examination with two best, uh, students, one overall, and one best female in the country.

So Bullets to Books is a, is really a big campaign to let the young people come back to their senses that the progress of Africa and, and the progress of each and everything that we need to see in Africa or across the world is in their hands. So Bullets to Books is also one of the biggest campaigns I'm dreaming to really inspire our leaders across the world so that they can put policies that can guide gun violence, to put policies that can end, uh, issues to do with guns. So I believe this campaign with the help of, uh, the U.S. Department of State will be able to reach far and reach more people across the world so that we bring down the issues of those guns, issues of killing children in the schools is really very sad. We need to put this to an end.

People see me like a threat because, uh- because the young people are able to come together through the Bullets to Books project. It is a- it is a uniting, uh, platform for the young people. It is a campaign that is aiming at young people to drop their guns and invest their energy and time in agriculture, in entrepreneurship, in demanding their right, in demanding their... Uh, the democracy in the country, so and connecting them to the young people across the world so that we have a joint force.


So what keeps me going, uh, is the school and, uh, you know, Promised Land Secondary School has been, uh, providing, uh, education, quality education to the conflict affected children. And, uh, we have graduated a lot of, uh, students. So far now, this year, we are going to have a total of 400 graduates, and 300, uh, candidates already in the university. We have one student now who is in the US and this year we, we brought 86, uh, IDP, uh, IDPs, uh, children who are victims of floods to come and have free education in our school. So our school is the center of our message of Bullets to Books. So one is you need to understand, Bullets to Books, you come to our school and you see the diversity of the students from across the country who are learning the same ground. We are trying to change their minds so that they become, uh, uh, global ambassadors of peace, as well as their countries and communities. So what keeps us going is the courage we, the passion we have in edu- in education and our smaller school that is in operation.

The Bullets to Books and the presence of Gail Prensky through the support of the U.S. Department- Department of the State was able to bring this organization together... To work together. And now young people of South Sudan, they are really working together and they have a united, uh... They have a powerful voice together.

Uh, Bullets to Books is also not targeting only in South Sudan. We're also targeting, um, the global leaders and how they can join the effort to denounce guns and revise the gun policies in the- in- in their countries. Because if you look at the gun, uh, if you look at the military expenses in all the countries across the world, it is one of the- it is one of the main- it one of the highest funded ministries. Like the Ministry of Defense is one of the highest funded ministries because of the guns, you see than health. Government is supposed to invest their money in health, education and infrastructure but not guns. So the Bullets to Books is aiming at- aiming at- aiming at getting the young... Getting the world leaders invest in education, health, infrastructure but not guns.

And, uh, with the networks that I have from the Mandela Washington Fellowship, I get a lot of inspiration each day, uh, that gave me a lot of energy, a lot of courage and knowledge to face all the challenges I'm having. And the biggest challenge I have, uh, Bullets to Books is an initiative that needs to be had. And, uh, if we have support, we'll be able to reach more people, uh, across the South Sudan and across the world, we'll be able to talk to people who are really, um, not taking human life as valuable, but consider that we, human beings are equal, including children's. And, uh, if this campaign is taken serious of, and then I think more people will be safe and our world will be safer than before.

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Episode 3: Jumping Out of the Water

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What happens when you’re an artist living in a tyrannical state: do you risk your life to fight tyranny, or do you escape your country because your gifts are valuable to the entire world?

Join us as we meet Gail Prensky, a U.S. arts envoy exchange alumna and documentary filmmaker, who is working to shed light on the plight of artists living under continued oppression. Hoping to advance peace and unity across the world, Gail and her team are currently working with a Mandela Washington Fellow alumnus to shift the focus from bullets to books in South Sudan. This is the story of “Bullets to Books,” and Gail’s journey as a storyteller and envoy.

TRANSCRIPT

Gail Prensky

I became an arts envoy in: 2019 on the [Judische Kulturbund: 00:02:23 Bullets to Books came about when I met Jok at the Mandela Washington fellowship, young Afric- let's say young African leader summit in DC. And he told me that his mission is changing minds from Bullets to Books, what a great tagline, right? And so I called up my - one of my colleagues, Andy Truschinski, who is an actor and producer and filmmaker in New York. And I told him about this angel I just met, Jok from South Sudan. And Andy said, Oh my God, we have to do a film documentary and help him with his mission, but also his school he built from hand using bamboo, mud and concrete classrooms.

Four of us traveled over to South Sudan and we spent about 12 days there working with various partners also from, who were Mandela Washington Fellows the year before Jok. And together through their planning and organization, the Bullets to Books team were able to film interviews and, and also, uh, some B-roll to produce a short documentary. To produ- to write and produce a music video and theme song, and to lead workshops with the, the entertainment community, the artists in Juba, as well as students from a few different schools. So we impacted over a 100 people while we were there in a very short amount of time.

It was a life changing experience, I think for me and everyone. Um, and since then, our bond with those that we are connected to in South Sudan has grown even stronger than when we were there for 12 days. And we have a number of programs, projects that we continue to do and have plans that I think will expand the Bullets to Books initiative, not just in Juba, but across South Sudan and hopefully across East Africa and in the United States to start.

it was back in the early: 2000 when I, when: 2009 So the frog in the boiling water – you put a frog in nice water. It's very tepid. It's comfortable and slowly turn the flame up a little bit at a time. It gets a little warmer, it's okay. It gets a little hotter, it's getting uncomfortable. It gets boiling and what does the frog decide to do? Does it stay or does it jump out of the water?

So when people are targeted and persecuted, they have to decide, do they wanna stay, or do they wanna leave their country? And that's a hard question. If they leave, they could survive and, and protect their culture, but if they stay, maybe they can be with their families and, and do more to raise the issues through their art, to connect with other communities who may be able to join them. You know, there's a collective force in a group. Um, so I think artists today can find ways to empower communities, to stand up and have courage and not allow those who want to forbid minorities from living a free life in their chosen country.

Having a personal story is the most impactful way to connect with human beings I think.

You, the best way I can describe it is, you have to start out with a big picture of the story you wanna tell. You have to develop interview questions that hit, hit the different parts of the story you wanna tell. And it's similar to when you come up with, let's say, you wanna remodel your kitchen. So you come up with an idea of the kitchen and then you break apart all the elements in the kitchen, you've got the appliances, you've got the cabinets, it's, you got the floor, you got the ceiling, you got the color paint. So you work out all the details and you make each of those details and then you put it all together and you got a beautiful kitchen. And that's what storytelling is. You break it up into pieces, you build each of the piece, knowing what the whole picture is and you build it. And then you've got a cohesive story.

So the Bullets to Books process of how to tell a story where I begin, uh, always begins with an interview because hearing someone's personal account is the best way to connect with people. So I started with Jok to hear his sort of life trajectory, who he was as a child, where he grew up, how he ended up in a refugee camp, how he decided his mission, how he got to Promised Land and what he wants to do moving forward. And learning all of that is then who else do we need to bring in to get a kaleidoscope, different perspectives? And in that case, I connected with the ambassador of South Sudan to the United States and to the US embassy to hear about the need for their countries to connect and how Bullets to Books might help facilitate that.

growing up, I, looking back, I loved research, I loved storytelling. I love coming up with ideas and somehow they just happened and I got into content and, and, um, art. And I started out, um, after graduating with an art history and fine arts, uh, focus and design history and exhibit design. I, I sort of transcended out of book publishing and exhibits into multimedia and film. For me, it's all the same because it's about storytelling and I feel great that I can move from one platform to another using different techniques, but it's all production and it's so collaborative and I think it's the best profession in the world.

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Episode 2: From Introvert to International Illustrator

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In the latest episode of Voices of Exchange, we learn how international exchange helped a “shy, nerdy kid” reconnect with a childhood friend and her passion for art. Travel with us from Buffalo to Chicago, Paris, Tbilisi, and New York City with Returned Peace Corps Specialist and illustrator Maria Krasinski.

TRANSCRIPT

This week, Exchange Alumna Maria Krasinski tells us how she took the leap from working in Chicago in international education to volunteering with the Peace Corps in Georgia. We explore how her international exchange experiences were the key to carving her own path as a professional artist.

Maria Krasinski

My name is Maria Krasinski. I'm an artist and an illustrator. I'm also a freelance consultant on different nonprofit projects, mostly related to civic engagement, youth and different social sector issues. Currently I am in Buffalo, New York, my hometown, but I also spend a lot of time in New York City where a lot of my creative work is based.

When I went to the Peace Corps, it, I was mid-career. I was the vice-president of a, a nonprofit called world Chicago, which was actually a partner of the state department in ECA implementing exchange programs. And I loved it. It was probably my dream job that brought together my academic background in international relations and policy with my personal passions and interests for travel and cultural exchange and language learning. And I had been there for about five years and had kind of moved through all of our different programs, met hundreds of just super interesting, smart, driven people from all around the world. World Chicago is one of the largest local organizations that works with the state department on these programs. So we would have upwards of a thousand visitors every year from a hundred or more different countries. And so just being in Chicago, being able to meet all these folks from all around the world, just right in, in my town, which was pretty amazing.

But I think like, like everything, you, when you reach a goal, then you, you start to push your goals a little bit more and think what's next, what's next. And, you know, I sort of reached a point where I was thinking about what was next and actually got pretty inspired by a lot of the delegates who, who came to Chicago on these programs. And I was working a lot with different entrepreneurs at the time, and just seeing how they were just kind of leaving that safety net, that security and just striking out on their own. I was thinking about like, what might I do in that space?

And in a chance occurrence, I was speaking on an international careers panel with the diplomat and residents for the Midwest. I'm from the state department, some folks from the Peace Corps and then me and the Peace Corps representative talked about the two-year program, but also the Peace Corps response program, which I was not familiar with. And it is a shorter stint. It's not the full two years that you might think of. And it is geared more towards mid-career professionals who have some significant experience or volunteers who have already gone through the two-year experience. And it definitely piqued my interest. And so I went home and I looked it up and I shot off an application. And then a few months later got the call and it just seemed like the perfect alignment of still continuing to work in an international development exchange space, getting some on the ground experience abroad and kind of getting to live the life that I had been working with in Chicago with all the delegates coming there, but on the flip side.

An unexpected thing happened while I was in the Peace Corps and it completely changed my trajectory for what would happen after the Peace Corps.

So a friend of mine, Laurie came to visit me in Tbilisi a few months into my service. And she and I have been friends since we were nine years old. We, we lost contact for a little while. We went to different high schools and colleges, but then through the magic of social media, we reconnected as young adults and realized we were still really similar and had had a similar trajectory. I ended up in Chicago, she was in New York and Philly. And, you know, since then we have traveled a lot together. She's an art curator, I'm an arts writer has worked with different artists. So I was in creative fields in museums and exchanges. And so we had these really complimentary experiences and probably at least once a year, we would take a trip together somewhere in the world and go traveling and exploring because we had a similar interest, but also a similar way of moving through the world.

Again, like I'm, I'm sort of this observer and I just like to wander around and don't have an agenda, don't have a map, just kind of see what you might discover wandering through a city or a small town. And so when she came to visit me into Tbilisi, we were just chatting one night and I was sort of telling her about life in Georgia and its slower pace of life. And with that new-found free time, I, I had started drawing and painting more, again, something I had neglected for some time just being always busy at work.

And she says, What! I have no idea you drew!

And I was like, we have literally been friends for like 30 years, how did you not know that?

And I started showing her some of my sketches of Tbilisi just around my neighborhood, just again, from taking these meandering walks and just discovering the little nooks, not the big things you see on postcards and National Geographic, but here is this really cool raw iron gate design, or here's like this funny street that is winding and twisty, just the little things that kind of jumped out at me.

And she had this, this moment of being like, Oh, I've been looking for an illustrator for this book idea that I have, and this is exactly the style that I want for the book.

I actually started drawing the book in Tbilisi. I would be at my Peace Corps site. We do our projects and at night I would come home and start sketches and their process continued for a few more months after Peace Corps. I was, I was still traveling different parts of the world, drawing New York City streets while I was in Paris or Guatemala or some other location that was not New York. And in a way it was sort of, Lori's writing is very, it's fun, it's accessible and the best way, and it's, it's not dense art history sort of texts. It's really engaging and really paints a picture. And for me not being physically in New York for the production of most of this book, it, it helped me channel that that excitement to, of, of sitting in front of, you know, this, this building where, you know, Marc Chagall used to live.

And that was the same idea I would have in Tbilisi. You know, the more I learned about the history and the incredible writers and artists who are all around that city, and I got to wander through the Writers’ House of Georgia, you know, where all these storied authors and, and, you know, luminaries of the past lived, and this is beautiful Art Nouveau building. And just physically being in the spaces where, or these people were just gets you excited. And so that definitely got channeled into the production of the book before even being in New York.

this book would not have happened were I not living abroad for a multitude of reasons. One, I just, at that point in my life was not making space for, for art in any real way. I did creative projects here and there, or would help friends with things, but I just didn't make time for it. And it was kind of this neglected passion that I always, Oh, when I have more time, I'll, I'll paint again. When I have more time, I'll do this again. And, and being in a completely foreign environment that, you know, from the language to the food, to the people, everything was new. And that really opened my eyes again.

When I think back and reflect on where I started, even as a kid, I was this really shy, introverted kid who was scared to talk to anybody, even my own classmates to, to now, you know, having lived in, traveled to, you know, dozens of and, and had these very expansive experiences. It's sometimes I, I think about what, what advice, or what would I tell younger me, you know, kind of like, hang in there, it's going to be, be better. But, the thing that I come back to is, is opportunity.

There are several inflection points I can identify growing up that kind of led to where I am now. And they all centered around me saying yes to something that terrified me. And even as a kid going on this exchange program, when I was 15 with a school that was not my own, it wasn't even my own school. I was going with a bunch of strangers from the US to go be with a bunch of strangers in France. And I was terrified, but there was something in me that was like, you have to do this even at that age. And, and I think it was very much tied to my artistic interests because of course, France: Paris, Monet, Van Gogh, like this was the place to be. And so that, that love that passion, those interests that I had really, it was sort of overridden my shyness and extroversion and by saying yes to that, and then having a fantastic experience there, when I, you know, I came back to the States, then it was like, Oh, well, college is coming.

I think I'm going to leave my hometown. Okay. That's terrifying. That's scary. Just say yes.

And then I ended up in Chicago and then from there just the, that ability to look at a seemingly scary situation or an unknown situation and, and be able to, to find the benefit in it or the, the less scary parts. It's a huge takeaway for me from, from these types of exchanges, whether from a, a high school cultural exchange to an ECA, very structured program. And so I would absolutely recommend and advise anyone considering that, to really think about all the ways you don't even know what will benefit you going into it.

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Episode 1: More Alike Than Different

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For our first ever episode of Voices of Exchange, we travel to Florianópolis, Brazil, with Critical Language Scholar and disability rights advocate Anna Landre. Anna takes us on a journey of overcoming cultural, lingual, and physical barriers in a new city, while describing the lessons she learned to advocate for herself and for others with disabilities. Through Anna’s story, we learn that we are more alike than different.

TRANSCRIPT

For our first ever episode, we traveled to Florianopolis, Brazil with critical language scholar and disability rights advocate, Anna Landre. As we dive into Anna's story of overcoming cultural, language, as well as physical barriers in a new city, we come to understand that we're more alike than not. With Anna's efforts to fight for disability rights stretching beyond campus, we learn that such issues transcend borders and boundaries, and can contribute to bridging the cultural gap. You're listening to Voices of Exchange, a podcast of people, places and international exchange.

Anna Landre:
I did the CLS program, the Critical Language Scholarship in Brazil. Uh, it was the first year in Brazil and it was just a fantastic experience. I first heard about it through Georgetown University's Fellowship office. I'm a student there and they send out these great emails about different opportunities. And I was just really excited about, especially the fully funded nature of the program, because I am someone who doesn't have access to a lot of these paid programs. I wouldn't be able to afford them. Financial aid is a lot of times really shoddy. So suddenly I was looking at something that was fully accessible to me financially. And I was just so excited as someone who had just started learning Portuguese and was seeing them doing their first Portuguese program. Um, I think I was also really drawn to their emphasis on inclusion, like in the application they had questions about, do you have a disability?

How does your disability manifest? Does it mean how could you travel a certain distance on foot or in a wheelchair or something else, uh, like that. And it was really encouraging to me to see that they were thinking about this. One of my favorite parts of the program was that I was able to get in touch with a local, uh, disability rights organization. Um, so right up my alley and it was one of the program coordinators who helped me find it 'cause he kind of saw that I was struggling with the inaccessibility of the environment. You know, this was one of the least wheelchair accessible places I had ever been to. And that was taking a toll on me, you know, both physically and mentally. And so they were able to connect me with this organization and I just felt at home immediately, you know, I was around other disabled people or other people working for disability rights.

And I got to meet everyone in the office and talk about, you know, the- the state of- of disability issues in Brazil versus how things are in the U.S. and it's a connection that I still use. I still talk to them all the time. So that's definitely the highlight. I think for me. I wasn't too surprised to find them because I researched Latin America and I know that, um, a lot of places in the region have a strong presence of disability activists, but the fact that, you know, I happen to be staying in a city with a really great organization, was, you know, a little bit serendipitous, you know, not every city has an organization like that. Certainly not every city in the U.S. does. Um, so it was surprising, but also just kind of confirmed some amazing hopes and connections that I hoped to find there.

So I faced those barriers that every, I think student abroad faces things like culture, shock, language, fatigue, just being in an environment that because you aren't comfortable in, it sometimes feels a little exhausting. And like you're constantly having to be totally aware of everything you're doing. You're nervous to make a mistake and maybe offend somebody else. Um, and then on top of that, I was facing an environment that was really inaccessible to me with my wheelchair. Um, you know, I, in DC, I can count on there being a ramp on basically every sidewalk pointer. I don't have to think twice about where I'm going or how I'm getting there. But in Florianopolis where I was living, it was different. A lot of times the sidewalks themselves would be filled with holes and I couldn't traverse them, or if I could, I would get to the end of the block and I couldn't cross to the next street because there was no ramp.

So it was physically exhausting because I was trying to like, not fall over in my wheelchair in this really, this really difficult terrain. And just mentally of not always being able to go to the places that the other people in my program were going to, you know, they could say, oh, we're gonna go to this restaurant for dinner and- and just not think twice and get an Uber and go, and I couldn't, the Ubers weren't accessible. I would have to make sure the bus I was taking had a lift because not all of them did. I would have to call the restaurant and check that they had a ramp and check that the path from the bus to the restaurant was accessible. So that was really difficult.

Um, but I also think in handling that and in pushing through it to the greatest extent that I was able, I now have like this really great confidence in myself to handle difficult situations that I can be independent, um, in even those really tough environments. And I think that's a similar thing to what non-disabled students would feel after handling language fatigue after handling culture shock. Like suddenly you have more confidence in your ability to – to get through almost anything. And for me, that was also really useful because I- I would love to have a career that involves traveling and involves going to different places and- and learning about them and connecting with people. And now I feel like I could handle that almost anywhere.

At a certain point, I asked one of my program coordinators who was there to just make sure that we were all safe and- and doing well on a daily basis. I asked him, how do you say ableism in Portuguese? And he said, and I was trying to explain it in Portuguese. Like, how do you say that word that means discrimination against a person with a disability or something and he was like, I don't think we have a word for that. And then finally I said it in English, in English, it's ableism. And he was like, “I don't know what that means in English.” And I was like, oh, okay. So it was like a lot of homework, not only on the language translating side, but also just on the, you know, disability culture and explaining these things to people, whether it's in English or Portuguese. So many means of translation that – that we had to go through.

I was so pleasantly surprised to see the emphasis on civil rights in relation to disability in Brazil. I think that's something we don't necessarily have in the United States. Here when we talk about disability, I think it's more often tied to like healthcare or charity or something like that. It's more of a- a charitable model. Whereas there, when you talk about disability, it's more recognized that this is a marginalized group of people that, you know, their exclusion is, uh, a product of lack of access to rights and- and services and inclusion. And that was definitely a product of a lot of internalized ableism, just growing up and being socialized with the idea that the way I existed in the world was somehow bad and was somehow less compatible with success. And I saw disability as, like, a very individualized problem, a me problem that I just had to, like, push off and overcome.

And then as I grew up, particularly in high school and then rapidly in college when trying to reach like everyday milestones, that my peers could reach without a second thought, you know, going to college or driving for the first time or getting their first job, I started to see that every time the things holding me back weren't my disability. It was things like social stigma, lack of access to a building or lack of access to a certain piece of healthcare or like a discriminatory law. I wasn't having to overcome anything related to my body. I was overcoming these other things, these outside things.

And this was really transformational for me to kind of reframe my identity as all of these things that I might be missing out on, all of this exclusion isn't inherent to my body. It's things in society that can be changed. And I think that really hit me most when after my freshman year of college, I was able to get a paid internship in DC. And I was so excited. It was like my first big full-time paid job. And I was gonna be able to pay my own rent, afford my own groceries. But then when I mentioned this to my disability services coordinator, they were like, “Oh, well, if you're making money, you won't get any services anymore. You'll be ineligible.”

So essentially the system creates this poverty trap that was threatening my life. I was, by accepting this job, which I had already done 'cause I didn't know, you know, these regulations, I was looking at getting all of my services revoked and not being able to go to school or live dependently, or do any of these things. Um, and this, in my opinion is one of, I think, the biggest disability rights issues in the U.S. right now, um, this sort of poverty trap and through a lot of advocacy, I was able to get the state to let me keep my services. They basically made an exception because there was, I was reaching out to reporters, to my local officials. There was like a – a bit of outrage. And – and I had a lot of allies working for me, but they still haven't fixed it systemically, you know, they gave me an exception and sent me on my way, and haven't budged for everyone else who's being affected by this problem.

So I think that was my first kind of light bulb, where this is an awful issue of exclusion, of oppression. It's systemic. And I feel like I have a responsibility to other people in my community to kind of work on these. And to us, they're simple fixes, you know? If you ask almost any disabled person, they can tell you ways to change the law or change their environment to make things easier. And I think those of us who can have a responsibility to – to do that, so that the next generation of people with disabilities don't have to face these things and we can have better equality and inclusion. On a personal level, first, I'm hoping to graduate, finish my undergrad, uh, this spring. Um, and in the midst of the pandemic, I've been working a lot on disability rights policies in connection with COVID-19. Um, I've been interning with the partnership for inclusive disaster strategies, which is the only organization in the U.S. that works on disaster relief from a disability center perspective.

And too often in these disaster situations or in any conflict situation, on a broader scale disabled people are just thought of as expected losses and we're trying to change that. Um, and I've been lucky enough because of my background in – in Latin American studies and because of the fact that I speak Spanish and Portuguese, I've been able to work with the partnership to start expanding our scope outside of the U.S. to other places in the Americas, um, to the Caribbean. And this is something that I'm working on and then in September, I'll be headed to London to study on a Marshall Scholarship. So I'm very excited about that too.

I was really interested in applying for the Marshall partially because of the UK's, um, strong history of – of disability rights. You know, they have a really active disability community. Um, nonviolent direct action in particular is really big and that's something I've been involved in, in the U.S. but would love to learn more about. And so I was thinking about that and the fact that the UK and it's academic community is a big leader in international development studies and has a lot of connections to the global South and thinking, wow, this would be a really amazing place to be. And so in applying, I was looking for places I could be where I could not only have a- a great academic program that fit my academic interests, but also outside of that, be in a location where I would be constantly in contact with the disability community and London was an amazing fit for that [inaudible 00:15:04] emergencies.

So again, I'll get to do work on ensuring that disabled people aren't just viewed as expected losses when something goes wrong, that we're implementing, um, means of- of access and support and disaster situations or conflict zones to support this really large portion of the population. Um, and yeah, I'm really excited to- to go. I've never been to the United Kingdom. So it'll be another exchange experience for me. I'm really lucky to be at Georgetown, where we have a disability studies minor and a disability studies program, which is absolutely fantastic. You know, the faculty is doing really exciting work in the classroom and activism wise on – on policy and that having access to a program like that really informed the way I do activism. I, a big neutral friend in the disability community is the disability justice movement, which not only works to change laws and change legal structures, but also to center the voices of the most marginalized people with disabilities and to work from the ground up in getting rid of social stigma.

Because I think what we've seen is that you can change laws anywhere in the world. And if the social stigma hasn't evaporated too, if you haven't changed people's preconceptions about disability, those laws aren't gonna be implemented. So having access to this academic atmosphere where we're talking about theory, and we're talking about the best ways to approach a problem an – and attain justice for the people who need it has been amazing inside the U.S. So it's really lucky that, um, I think it was either my freshman year or the year before I started at Georgetown was when this program began and I didn't even know about it until I got there.

So it was really serendipitous. Um, and of course, Georgetown has a really, really strong foreign service atmosphere. Um, I'm in the School of Foreign Service, we, a lot of our faculty have experienced whether working at the State Department and are working in international development policy making, and they bring in a lot of real world experience and issues to the classroom and are just so inspiring about telling us the urgency of – of being global citizens and – and ensuring that we're constantly working to make the world a better place, um, and being great at telling us how to start.

So I'm definitely very grateful to the – the Georgetown community, especially. First of all, to absolutely try and do it, even if you're a little bit unsure. I, when I went to Brazil, wasn't really imagining having such an academic or career focus on Brazil, um, and being there and – and getting the sort of experience and cultural competency that I got changed, my academic tra – trajectory and my career trajectory. So absolutely try and go on an exchange experience. It'll really open up your world and – and the things that you think are possible, you'll meet amazing people, um, who hopefully will – will stay with you and we'll stay in touch throughout the course of your life. And I think while you're there, just try and get the most out of it. It's really hard when you're on an exchange to kind of remember to – to keep going and keep planning things, because you're exhausted all the time.

You're in a new place, you're speaking a new language. Um, but I was really lucky during my experience that the people in my cohort were constantly planning things to do and, um, doing different excursions, going to different places. And then finally, I think it's important to just go into it without a lot of preconceptions, or just knowing that a lot of the things you think might be disproven and might be wrong, because as people from the global North, from the U.S. in particular, we probably have a lot of stereotypes about the places that we're going to. And it's important to ensure that you're not speaking for anyone that you're being conscious of your place in the world. Even I have to be really conscious as a disabled person from the global North and speaking about disability as if it's a universal experience, which it's not, it's really different depending on where you come from, depending on what disability you have.

So just going into it with a really open mind and being willing to be humble about the knowledge that you may or may not have. I'm, I don't have a – a particular career in mind yet. I would really love to, you know, work in the UN, uh, Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and working on the, um, CRPD, the convention on the rights of people with disabilities. That's, there's so much to be done on monitoring and implementing it. Um, the State Department also has an awesome international disability rights team, which I think would be a super cool place to work. Um, basically I just, it's really important to me that I get to work on disability rights in a global context 'cause I think that's, there's so much potential for learning from one another and – and getting best practices and pulling resources across borders.

Um, and I think my time in Brazil on CLS is definitely gonna be a part of that. You know, I have such a love for – for Brazil and – and for Latin America because of the experiences I've had there. And I'm never going to forget that, you know, it's always gonna be one of my favorite places to work. And – and I have now a bunch of friends and colleagues, who so I'm constantly in touch with about what's going on. So there's no getting out of that nor would I want to. Um, and I really hope that when I go to the UK, I'll get to meet people from a lot of other places who are there for the same reason to study, to learn, to connect. So I'm really hopeful about what – what that'll hold.

Thank you, Anna Landre for joining us in our inaugural podcast episode. With your story, we've truly come to understand that we are more alike than not, join us in two weeks for our next episode of voices of exchange until next time.

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