The Global Leadership League Limelight Interviews

Dr. Maureen Manning

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 04:30:00 GMT

LimeLight Interview with Dr. Maureen Manning

Dr. Maureen Manning has built a career at the crossroads of storytelling, strategy, and global education. As the Founder and Principal of The Global Nexus Collective, she helps organizations and their leaders find clarity in their messaging, authenticity in their brand, and confidence in their voice. Her path into the field began with a transformative study abroad experience in Ecuador at sixteen — one that redirected her from a future in the performing arts to a life-shaping narratives that move people and organizations forward. In this interview, Maureen shares what drives her work, the challenges of operating in an ever-shifting global landscape, and why the most powerful communication always begins with knowing your own story.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

I’m the Founder and Principal of The Global Nexus Collective, a public relations and strategic communications consulting firm focused on brand architecture, narrative clarity, and thought leadership in the international education sector. We facilitate needs assessments, strategic planning processes, rebrands, and PR campaigns.

Our work sits at the intersection of personal and professional brand, helping leaders align their individual voice and visibility with the organizational narratives they represent. In a field where credibility and mission are deeply intertwined, we work with executives and teams to ensure that their personal influence reinforces the broader mandate and values of the organizations they serve.

2. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

My first international experience was a short-term study abroad program in Ecuador at age sixteen, and it was somewhere between the mountains of Quito and the coast of Guayaquil that my understanding of the power of global education began to take shape. I experienced firsthand how language, travel, and intercultural learning expand worldview and build empathy, perspective, and confidence.

Up until that point, I had always envisioned a career in the performing arts. I imagined I would be on a stage somewhere, acting out stories and expressing creativity in that way. In fact, part of the program in Ecuador involved a performance of the musical Grease, in which I played the character of Sandy. The experience in Ecuador reshaped that vision, however. And, as much as I was and still am enamored with theatre, halfway through university, I changed majors from music and theatre to education and world languages.

Storytelling has remained a consistent thread, however. And that first international experience sharpened my awareness of the power of storytelling. The way we narrate our experiences shapes how we understand them and how others understand us. International education is not only about mobility; it is about meaning-making. That insight continues to guide my work today.

3. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

No two days look the same, which is part of what I value most. Our work includes consulting meetings with partner organizations, strategy development, and helping leadership teams clarify their message and amplify their impact. We spend a significant amount of time building relationships, connecting people, elevating ideas, and shaping narratives that resonate both internally and externally.

We work closely with organizations who are keen to build a vibrant US footprint and expand their influence in the US. The Global Nexus Collective is deeply involved with research around market entry, competitors, gaps and opportunities, and we work with partners on designing plans that support their presence and growth strategies in the US, whether that be companies seeking expansion in the US or universities keen to amplify their recruitment and enrollment efforts.

A significant portion of our work focuses on brand architecture. That includes helping organizations define their core narrative, clarify differentiation, and align internal culture with external communication. We guide senior leaders through the thoughtful alignment of personal and professional brand. In a values-driven field like international education, organizational credibility is often inseparable from the authenticity and coherence of its leadership.

And as the Founder, I frequently moderate webinars and co-host in-person gatherings across the sector and can often be found on panels or collaborating with partners in the expo hall at conferences and events throughout the year.

4. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I love helping leaders and organizations articulate why their work matters and how to communicate it in a way that builds trust and momentum. I am especially energized by the storytelling dimension of the work, because narrative is often the bridge between organizational strategy and human connection.

I also deeply enjoy helping leaders navigate the relationship between their personal voice and their professional role. When individuals communicate with clarity about who they are and what they stand for, it strengthens their influence and reinforces the mission of the organizations they represent. That alignment can be transformative.

5. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

International education operates in a climate of constant uncertainty: political shifts, visa and policy constraints, crisis management, enrollment volatility, and rapidly evolving public narratives about higher education and globalization. The work requires agility and emotional intelligence. It can be challenging to sustain long-term strategic vision while navigating short-term realities and external pressures.

6. Do you have a career mentor or someone you consult with about career growth?

I’ve been fortunate to learn from a combination of mentors, colleagues, and trusted peers throughout my career. International education is a relationship-driven field, and some of the most valuable guidance I’ve received has come through honest conversations with sector leaders who are not only accomplished, but also generous with their time and perspective.

In particular, Dr. Chris Unger at Northeastern University played a pivotal role in my professional trajectory. He was a professor and my second reader in my doctoral program and led a course called Educational Entrepreneurship. I had been consulting part-time for years, and his course, along with his mentorship, inspired me to transition my consulting work into a full-time enterprise and formally launch The Global Nexus Collective. Since its inception, we have expanded to collaborate with a number of senior consultants with deep expertise across the global education sector.

7. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

A recent milestone that felt particularly meaningful was leading the AIEA rebrand process, which launched publicly at the February 2026 conference. Guiding an international membership organization through narrative clarification and identity evolution was both a strategic and relational undertaking. Seeing that work come to life in front of the field it serves was deeply affirming.

The following evening, I was invited to sing with the rock band of AIEA Immediate Past President Dr. Paulo Zaglo-Melo. The encore song was from the musical Grease, and was the very same song I had performed during my first study abroad program in Ecuador at sixteen. In that moment, the personal and professional converged. For me, it was validation that I had chosen the most meaningful path and the one I was truly meant to be walking.

More broadly, however, my greatest achievement has been building a career centered on connection: creating opportunities for others, shaping initiatives that elevate equity and access, and helping organizations find clarity and confidence in their voice. I am proud that my work has supported meaningful change through sustained influence and trusted leadership over time.

The mission of the Global Leadership League is to ignite change across the global education field by empowering, connecting, and training leaders. We invite you to reach out to us here or learn more about becoming a member.

Orlina Boteva

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 15:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH Orlina Boteva

Orlina Boteva, the Director of International Programs at the University of Maine (UMaine), has built a career dedicated to fostering global education and supporting students in their international journeys. Originally from Bulgaria, her own transformative experience as a study-abroad student at UMaine ignited a lifelong passion for international education. From serving as a study abroad advisor to stepping into leadership as director, Orlina has leveraged her academic background, professional experience, and deep commitment to student success. Her story is one of perseverance, continuous learning, and a dedication to creating opportunities for students to explore the world beyond their home countries.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

I serve as the Director of International Programs at the University of Maine (UMaine), which is the flagship public land grant institution in the state of Maine.

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

Our previous director announced that he was leaving the institution. I raised my hand as someone interested in an interim director role. I served in that capacity for about a year and was then appointed as the permanent director.

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

As many colleagues in international education, I studied abroad during my junior year of college. As a native Bulgarian, I enrolled at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), the only US-style liberal arts institution in Eastern Europe. My parents were very supportive of study abroad and encouraged me to pursue it as an option. Since my very first semester in college, I started gathering information. At the time AUBG had only two direct exchanges, one of them with UMaine. It was the better choice for me since UMaine had graduate programs, and I thought it was a great way to learn more about various options, how to apply, etc.

My academic year abroad at UMaine was personally and academically transformational. Mentored by Lydia Krise, the former AUBG Dean of Students, and Jill Rasmussen, former AUBG Director of Residential Life, I applied to serve as a resident assistant during my year abroad. Upon my return to AUBG, when I resumed my student worker position in the dean of student life office, I wanted to focus on understanding the experience and process of AUBG students studying abroad and to improve their pre-departure process. This experience sparked a lifelong interest in encouraging and supporting students in taking the leap to learn and travel outside of their home environment.

4. What was your first job in international education?

My first job in international education was as a study abroad advisor at the University of Maine in 2009. It took two master's degrees - in history and in student development in higher education, professional experience in student life at two institutions, and leveraging my skills and knowledge to land a job in international education. It was a tough and competitive job market at the time.

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

Even though I was enrolled at a US-style institution, studying abroad at a large doctoral university in the US was overwhelming. Speaking in English for 12-15 hours a day without switching to my native Bulgarian outside of classes was very exhausting at first. The small Bulgarian community on campus was a lifeline during holidays and when homesickness intensified. At the time, in 1999-2000, before cell phones and video calls, I could call once a month to speak briefly with my parents. Phone calls were very expensive. We relied on emails and snail mail. I still have some of the letters my mom had written to me, which I cherish now. Making new friends, exploring new activities and clubs, and traveling around the northeastern United States was fun. I learned much more about myself, what intrigued and inspired me, what made me mad and angry, how to make new friends, and how to challenge myself to step outside of my comfort zone.

6. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

I prefer to respond to "How do you organize your day and take care of yourself in the hectic environment of an international education office?" What is typical in international education? You have to be ready for the unexpected.

I start my day by making a cup of coffee, reading the news, and reviewing my calendar for the day and the next few days. Starting slowly and having some quiet time in the morning has really helped me to center, be mindful, and enjoy the quiet in my house before my kids get up.

I usually get organized mentally before I even get to the office about what to expect that day and prepare in advance for any meetings coming up. A good mentor taught me early the importance of never walking into a meeting unprepared or unclear about the goals of the meeting and expectations of me.

I start my work day with a quick scan of emails for anything urgent, and I like to say hello to my colleagues and student workers and connect with them on a personal level. Then, I prioritize what is urgent for the day, create a top 3-5 items list, and work on accomplishing these tasks in between meetings. Another good friend and mentor shared her way of getting organized – she blocks Monday mornings for email and Fridays for projects and urgent meetings, and blocks time on her calendar for quiet time to work on projects. It is a life-saver strategy to stay on top of deadlines and projects.

I occasionally don't pack lunch so I can stretch my legs and go to the student union to grab lunch. It is amazing how many quick and helpful conversations happen in the lunch line or on the way as I bump into students and colleagues. Usually, the afternoons are meetings or work time. And then, I rush out to get my kids to an evening activity, make dinner, help with homework, etc. And then off to bed. I try to get 7-8 hours of sleep per night because I don't function well without enough sleep.

7. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I like the variety in it. Every day and month are different, with new challenges. And I love working with the students. I keep a small advising load to stay current on trends, needs, and policies. The best part of my day is meeting with students to discuss the challenges they are dealing with and strategizing how to resolve them.

8. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Administering institutional scholarships. Some days, I wish I had an unlimited endowed scholarship fund to help students experiencing financial distress register for the next semester and graduate.

9. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

I learned, as many others before me, that we take for granted what we know and what we experience without asking deep questions about how our own family, culture, nation, religion and identity influence our worldview. After living and learning for years outside of my home country, I was able to see deep social issues stemming from sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and racism in Bulgarian society, which I was blind to before.

10. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I have multiple mentors and go to each one with different questions. For example, one mentor helped me identify opportunities for growth after reviewing my resume. A few years ago, she encouraged me to add writing skills and publications to my resume. Another mentor discussed conferences I should consider as I gain more experience in international education, and committees I can join as a way to continue learning, growing and serving the field.

11. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

The last few years have been fun and busy. I added a doctoral program on top of my full-time job and my family obligations. For years, I wanted to enroll in a doctoral program and the pandemic presented a great opportunity for reflecting on my life and career goals. I dipped my toes back into the classroom with one class, then a few more and now I am working on my dissertation. My goal is to graduate by December 2025.

I often tell friends and colleagues that the PhD program has been the best thing I have done for myself. It allows me to step away from work and draw healthy boundaries. Additionally, I do not feel guilty at all about spending time on reading and writing since my research is within international education. It is great when my kids and I "do homework" together. Mostly, my doctoral studies have allowed me to take questions from my daily work in international education and do a deep dive into the scholarly literature, understand the issue better, and then bring this new knowledge back into my practical work and share it with my colleagues.

I consider it an achievement that I have learned to juggle my schedule successfully between work, studies and family. I will be so happy when I get my diploma at the end of the degree. However, I consider my greatest achievement in life being a mom to my two kids. My greatest joy is when we travel together, and I teach my kids about languages, cultures and people.

12. How has COVID-19 impacted your work life?

I have learned that I really enjoy being in the office with my colleagues. I deeply care about students, and connecting with them in person one-on-one is so rewarding. Working from home felt lonely and boring.

13. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health?

I like to walk, read fun books, watch movies, and work in my garden.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, working on my doctoral degree has also been very good for my mental health. As I have learned the history and landscape of global and US higher education, I don't get frustrated as I did before over policies and processes. Instead, I see that many issues are often embedded in the history and structure of higher education, which is patriarchal and masculine. This new perspective allows me to focus on how I can change what is within my control and advocate for policy revisions at my institution or state.

14. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Build networks of colleagues who you can reach out to for advice and guidance, but also to vent and commiserate as needed. Peer mentor circles are a great and free way to learn, seek support, and grow in the profession.

Jesse Malone Ferreira

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 17:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH Jesse Malone Ferreira

In our recent LimeLight interview, we had the pleasure of speaking with Jesse Malone Ferreira, an Associate Director of Education Abroad at the Georgia Institute of Technology. With a strong passion for experiential learning and cross-cultural connection, Jesse brings a wealth of experience to her current role. Her journey into international education has been both unique and inspiring, marked by personal travel experiences, inspiring reflection and understanding, and the encouragement of peers. Jesse’s insights into the challenges and rewards of working in the field of education abroad, along with her dedication to fostering transformative student experiences, make her a standout leader. Read on to learn about her international education journey!

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

Associate Director of Education Abroad at Georgia Institute of Technology. I oversee campus engagement strategy and operations, and provide support in the area of Education Abroad processes and procedures, as well as data and reporting.

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

I was in a different role within the GT Education Abroad team when my current position became vacant. I was eager to apply because I had been looking for a new challenge and wanted to grow. It was a great professional opportunity and a solid next step in my career trajectory.

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

While past experiences abroad, including my own study abroad experience, played a significant role in molding who I am as a person, I can’t say they were what initially sparked my interest in the field. In fact, I had never considered a career in IE or even realized the range of jobs within the field until I was getting close to finishing undergrad and figuring out my next steps. A former classmate of mine got a job in the field and encouraged me to explore my options in IE, and I’m so happy she did! She shined a light on the numerous opportunities that abound, and I found the field attractive because it aligned with my passion for experiential learning and cross-cultural connection.

4. What was your first job in international education?

I taught ESL in Madrid, Spain right after undergrad. Initially, I planned to go for 1 year and ended up staying 3 (what can I say? Spain is easy to love). While I enjoyed teaching English, it was not something I imagined doing long-term, yet I still wanted to remain in IE. By the end of that experience, I was ready to move on from teaching and pursue a position as a study abroad advisor in the US.

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

I was 14 when I first traveled abroad – and the first in my immediate family to do so. A close friend from childhood invited me to spend a month traveling around Kenya with her family. I am deeply grateful to my parents for being supportive, considering I was quite young, plus the fact they themselves had never traveled abroad and would not be joining in this trip. For me, it was an impactful experience during formative years, and I carry many sweet, vivid memories from that first journey. Aside from the excitement of experiencing a new place, I felt my worldview start to shift as my eyes were opened to how different life could look outside of the small southern town I called home.

6. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I love that each day is unique, and I never find myself in a fight against monotony. Are there repetitive tasks? Of course, and that is nice at times, but I love that my role has a wide variety of responsibilities which spread my time and work across different functional areas. One day could be full of meetings with campus partners, and the next might involve work on a marketing campaign or updating a standard operating procedure, so there is never a dull moment.

7. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

What I love about my job is the variety of responsibilities and work across different areas, which can also be the most challenging aspect because I’m switching hats frequently and balancing multiple priorities and projects. I remind myself regularly how important it is to slow down, take a step back, and keep the big picture in mind.

8. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

Working in IE has pushed me to become a better listener and observer, and to thoughtfully examine my own assumptions and beliefs, which has been quite humbling at times. Because of this, I feel that I’ve grown to become a stronger and more empathetic leader and a better decision-maker and communicator.

9. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I’ve had a few throughout the course of my career, and I’m so grateful for the time they have invested in me. I can’t stress enough the importance of having an individual/s you respect and look up to offer their perspective and help push you towards growth and realizing your potential.

10. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

I don’t have one particular moment that comes to mind, but rather many moments throughout my career that serve to reinforce my belief in the important and meaningful work we do in IE. To me, there is nothing more rewarding than having a student return from a program eager to share how impactful and transformative their time abroad has been. Perhaps studying abroad was something they initially never considered or thought possible. For me to have played even a small role in their decision to go feels like an achievement, like I’ve contributed to making a difference in their life, which I find both fulfilling and motivating.

11. How has COVID-19 impacted your work life?

For a while, we were fully remote during Covid, which felt quite isolating for me. After some time, we transitioned to a hybrid schedule, which I find ideal. I can be on campus and see colleagues in person a few days a week, but I can also enjoy the benefits of working from home a couple days.

12. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health?

Getting outside in nature is a must for me, and I love horseback riding, running, and hiking.

13. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Be patient with yourself and where you are in your career. It is your unique journey, and there is no point in comparing yourself to others and comparing yourself to where they are in their journey. Don’t be shy in putting yourself out there and connecting with others in the field. IE is an incredibly collaborative, supportive community, and there are so many helpful resources and opportunities to learn and grow through making those connections. Also, regularly revisit your “why” and remind yourself why you chose to pursue a career in IE and what you love about it! I find this helpful in staying grounded and motivated.

Kyle Anderson

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 16:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH Kyle Anderson

Kyle Anderson is an impassioned leader within the global education field who recently took the time to share his experiences and insights with us. Driven by an unwavering commitment to his "why" and a profound belief in the power of patience and understanding, Kyle champions transformative change, advocating for inclusive practices and innovative approaches to the technological side of the university and student experience. Kyle's creativity, drive, and enthusiasm are highly evident, and we are excited to share his story!

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

I am the VP of Strategic Programming at Academic Programs International (API) (Austin, TX). API has made great strides in the last few years in expanding its programming and technology to embrace all facets of Experiential Learning. I work with university leadership to help them create integrative Personalized Pathways for all of their students.

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

Through the infamous international education networking game: "You know something, Kyle, you should meet Dr. X and have a chat."

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

Different formative experiences when I was younger and living in the Middle East, England, and Italy. When I later became a professor, I couldn't stop taking my students and faculty colleagues overseas with me. There are always pieces of ourselves and others to be found in every corner of the globe. I want everyone to enjoy the creation of a collaborative mosaic.

4. What was your first job in international education?

Centre College Faculty Director of a Jan-term program in Beijing, China. That's right... Beijing... in January... The Great Wall had no central heating, naturally. (And one of the students didn't bring a winter jacket, either–surprised?!)

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

I was a competitive soccer player in high school and was part of a club team that travelled to the UK for a tournament. I vividly remember learning to eat beans and tomatoes in the morning and washing my stinky match socks in a hostel sink in the afternoon. I could never get the mud completely out.

6. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

I work on the programming and technology side of the business, so my work always involves a combination of interacting with universities, programming experts, product managers, and engineers.

A typical day includes four things: university support, improvement of programming and technology services, research, and collaboration with colleagues.

7. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I love to analyze and problem-solve. Nothing makes me happier than helping an institution or sub-unit identify solutions and achieve big results for their students.

8. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

I was brought into API to build something from the ground up. That takes a lot of patience and persistence. I'm not naturally patient (not sure if I’m improving in that regard).

(How have you worked on gaining more patience, or what other skills have you developed to help?)

I believe I have developed two other skills: one is intrapersonal, and the other is interpersonal. I tend to be more impatient with myself. I am used to accomplishing stuff, and I want those results fairly quickly; I have to learn to step away or take a break to reset. I tell myself that it is okay if it doesn't get done today and try not to be so aggressive or pushy with my implicit desire to achieve. I have learned to work on checking my feelings of getting upset when things are not done and cultivate mindfulness of my own discomfort with the lack of project closure. Honestly, the outcome is usually better the longer it sits and is given time to develop and breathe versus forcing closure. I have developed the phrase "No fake deadlines" for myself - we always think we are on some sort of hamster wheel, and therefore, we tend to give ourselves these fake deadlines that don't actually exist. I must constantly remind myself not to push myself with false deadlines or artificial expectations.

Externally, I have learned to think empathetically about other people. I try to remember other people's job duties or descriptions, and I try to get to know them - I find that it creates less room for judgments. I am able to have a lot more understanding and compassion for all of the things people have going on inside and outside of the workplace. I just remember that there is a lot going on for everyone.

In both cases, you have to practice a bit of mental acrobatics - recasting circumstances from different perspectives. But, this allows me to extend some grace and compassion to others, and to myself.

9. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

I grew up in smaller New England towns in RI and VT. Living and working abroad showed me that the options to fashion a life were infinitely more varied than I could have imagined. Nobody who knew me at Rutland High School in Rutland, VT, would ever have guessed I would end up teaching Italian and Chinese at a couple of different universities! More than anything, though, it's taught me Freedom for myself and Love for others.

10. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I do - a retired college president who encouraged me to expand my profile as a Humanities professor to become a leader in global education.

11. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

I befriended a young refugee from Southeast Asia, helped him get into college on a full-ride scholarship, and supported his journey of studying and interning in the country that once rejected him and his family when he was young.

12. How has COVID-19 impacted your work life?

I've been working remotely ever since Covid started. I'm a bit of an extrovert and teammate, so working alone is taxing. That's why I often crash local cafes or busy restaurants to feed off of good ambient energy.

13. If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

More challenging for me than enjoyable at times.

14. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health?

I spend a lot of time outdoors and have several athletic and artistic outlets. I recently published my first fantasy novel and am completing a cabin build in the Blue Ridges.

15. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Rediscover your "why" and hug it tight!

Throughout my career, you can see how the field has been constant, but the assignments and positions, both in the public and private sectors, have varied quite a bit. There are truly so many roles within this industry to explore. In order to sustain a continuity of personality, we have to connect with why we are doing what we are doing. I think we need to maintain our own sense of identity when we are changing schools or companies or positions. It is going to be necessary to reground to maintain that clear sense of self.

The only way I maintain my inspiration, motivation, and my "why" is that I am feverishly driven to improve the student learning experience. Most of the time in our field, we only think of that in terms of experiences, but now, because I am in tech, I am thinking about that in ALL of the ways we interact with students. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of things happening throughout the student experience and decision-making process- and that is a lot of things you can get drowned in. How do we bring out the joy of this experience at every stage, from exploration and discovery to completion and beyond?

Sara Dart

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH SARA DART

Our next LimeLight interview introduces us to Sara Dart, Senior Vice President of Education in Ireland. Sara's interview stands out not only for its informative content but also for the delightful sense of humor she brings to the conversation. From lessons learned in bartending, to finding “your thing”, and how literature can help us better understand other cultures, Sara shares some wonderful insights, and learning moments from her career in international education. Her passion for this industry is evident and we are excited to share her story. Read on to learn more about Sara Dart.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

Senior Vice President, Education in Ireland

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

I was recruited for the role on LinkedIn.

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

I was a little bit lost for a time after finishing my undergraduate degree, but I kept returning to this thought that the semester I spent in El Salvador was the most important thing I'd ever done, because of how much it had challenged and changed me. I realized that I could make a career out of helping other students have similarly transformative experiences, so I went back to pursue a graduate degree in Higher Education.

4. What was your first job in international education?

I started my career as a Study Abroad Advisor in the International Learning Opportunities office at Boise State University. Corrine Henke was kind enough to take a chance on someone who basically had no international education experience and who answered behavioral interview questions with anecdotes from her bartending job. It was an amazing place to start out - we were a small office, which meant I was able to get experience in everything from marketing to scholarships to budgets - and Corrine taught me so much about working in this field.

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

I had the privilege of spending a semester at the Casa de la Solidaridad program in El Salvador. I took classes on the campus of the UCA (Universidad Centroamericana) and

spent two days a week learning from the wonderful women at a sewing cooperative in the community of Mariona. It was a completely transformative experience that changed the way I saw the world and my place in it, and inspired me to pursue a career in international education.

6. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a typical week in this job. A week for me might involve representing Ireland at a conference, our team hosting a visiting government minister, or leading a site visit of study abroad professionals or high school counselors across the island. If it's a quieter week, I'm probably planning for one of those events or doing a bit of work on partnership development between US and Irish institutions.

7. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I'm not Irish, but the vast majority of my colleagues are. For me, this means that every day is an intercultural learning experience, whether it's how to pronounce a particularly difficult Irish word, an explanation of the nuances of the Irish political system, or a lesson on how and why the DEI landscape and context in Ireland is different from the US. Since leaving Boise State, I've missed being part of the academic life of a campus, and this aspect of my current role really feeds the lifelong learner in me.

8. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Deciding what to say no to. A role like this is vast, encompassing so many different areas and activities, that if I had twice as many hours in the day, I could easily fill them all. Understanding that I can't do everything, and have to be a bit selective in my focus has definitely been a learning curve for me in this role.

9. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

It has definitely taught me that I'm not as light of a packer as I aspire to be! On a serious note, working in this field has shown me just how many ways there are to live in the world, and that anyone who thinks their way is the only way is terribly narrow-minded. I believe this is why widening access to international experiences is so important, especially in the face of the increasing division, unrest, and inequality that seem to be filling our newsfeeds. If people have left home and lived somewhere else, among people whose lived experiences are different from their own, it is far more difficult for the rhetoric of hate and of malicious othering to find a foothold.

10. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I'm fortunate to have had some tremendous mentors over the years, including Corrine, who I mentioned above. During my years at Boise State, I also got to know the Career

Center team, and in particular, Associate Director Alex Gutierrez. Alex has reviewed more versions of my resumes and cover letters than I can count. He believed in me enough to agree to collaborate on my first-ever conference presentation and is someone whose advice I always seek when considering career decisions. Later, while at ISA/Worldstrides, I had the great fortune to work alongside Malaika Serrano, now VP of DEIB at Guild Education. Malaika taught me so much, including how to harness the power of LinkedIn, how to advocate for myself, and most importantly, that when a door opens for you, you reach your hand back and pull others forward with you. When I'm faced with a difficult professional decision, my first reaction is to ask myself, "What would Malaika do here?"

11. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

The hardest thing I've ever done as a professional was writing a chapter in NAFSA's recent Guide to Education Abroad - grad school was the last time I wrote anything that substantial, and it turned out, I was a bit out of practice! However, the thing I'm most proud of is the development of the Inclusive Ireland Scholarships, which are now administered by the Fund for Education Abroad. When I joined Education in Ireland, one of my key priorities was to change both the narrative and the reality of who studies abroad in Ireland. Historically (and stereotypically) that's been heritage-seeking students from Irish-American backgrounds, and we wanted to send the message that Ireland truly welcomes and supports students of all backgrounds, especially those who may be historically underrepresented in study abroad. FEA has been a tremendous collaborator in this work, and I'm incredibly appreciative of Angela Schaffer and her team for their partnership and the impact that it's had on our work at Education in Ireland.

12. How has COVID-19 impacted your work life?

I started this role in April 2020. I'd never been to Ireland and I'd never met any of my colleagues in person. So, I had to figure out not only how to get to know Ireland from 3000 miles away but also figure out what my job meant when students weren't moving. Fortunately, the Irish reputation for being friendly and welcoming couldn't be more accurate, which made the former much easier. As for the latter, I focused on keeping Ireland top of mind so that when mobility resumed, study abroad teams would consider us a safe and attractive destination for students. I'm proud to say that following a very tough few years, we're now nearly back to pre-pandemic numbers!

13. If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

My job is hybrid, so I'm office two days a week. I'm part of a great team, and being able to see them a few days a week is definitely a plus.

14. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health?

I read a lot. Mystery thrillers are my escape, especially those with an international setting. Actually, one of the ways I got to know Ireland before I could actually travel there was by reading books by Irish authors.

15. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Anyone who has heard me present recently has probably heard me preach the importance of finding an area within the field, and making that "your thing". Find something that interests you, learn as much as you can about it, join a related group, present about it, post about it on LinkedIn, really make it yours. I've had a few "things" over the years - the intersection of study abroad and career development, marketing to GenZ - and these days my things are Ireland, obviously, and career development in international education. Your thing can change. It's a way of distinguishing yourself in the field, a path to finding a community of like-minded colleagues within international education, and a way of staying passionate and energized about the work.

Liz Hong-Farrell

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 20:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH LIZ HONG-FARRELL

In today’s globalized world, the opportunity to study abroad has become an invaluable experience for countless students worldwide. To shed light on the transformative power of international education and the intricacies of making it a reality for different young Canadian demographics, we had the privilege of sitting down with Liz Hong-Farrell, the assistant director for the International Experience Canada program.* With a wealth of knowledge and a deep passion for encouraging Canada’s youth, Liz has played a pivotal role in shaping the dreams and aspirations of students seeking to broaden their horizons. In this LimeLight interview, we delve into her journey, insights, and the profound impact of studying abroad.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

I work for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, a department of the Government of Canada. I am the Assistant Director responsible for stakeholder engagement and promotion for the International Experience Canada program.

The International Experience Canada program is a cultural program that allows Canadian youth between 18-35 to obtain a work permit and work and travel in one of over 30 partner countries with Canada.

As a reciprocal program, youth citizens from those countries can do the same in Canada. Being able to work in a different country is a great way for young people to experience cultures different from their own and gain the skills employers are looking for. You’re not just a tourist – you’re immersed in the culture because you live and work in it.

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

I was looking for a change and reached out to my network for possible opportunities, and this amazing role came up. It’s been so important for me to build and, more importantly, maintain my network of professional contacts. It takes a lot of work, but it’s so beneficial!

3. What sparked your interest in working in an international field?

When I reflect on my career, I’ve noticed a bit of a trend. While not always directly working in the international field, it’s always been there!

Early in my career, I worked in a government department focused on improving labour market outcomes for young Canadians, and while there, we had a few visiting delegations from different countries coming to Canada to learn about what we were doing and to share what they were doing. It was so interesting to hear about how so many things were the same despite being from different countries, and we were all just looking for ways to solve similar problems for our youth.

Then, I worked in a national charity where I had the opportunity to attend an international conference. Again, it was so eye-opening to see how things are done in other countries and what issues and barriers they face – sometimes, they were the same as what we face, but in other cases, so very different.

Fast forward a few years to another government department where I worked with the medical sector to fund projects that supported internationally educated health professionals to obtain their credentials and practice in their fields in Canada.

Finally, in this job, I promote the value and importance of international work and travel experiences to youth as a fantastic way to develop personally and professionally.

In all cases, it’s such an interesting way to look at the world. We are facing similar problems (e.g., youth unemployment, people wanting to work in the field in which they were educated, and wanting to increase civic and community engagement in youth). Learning about what strategies other countries used to mitigate these issues was so interesting, and it was wonderful when we could come together and work on a problem together.

4. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

For me, even though going to the US is technically an international experience for a Canadian (and we travelled to many parts of the US from a young age on holidays), I am going to count my first overseas trip as my first international experience – that was to Turkey in 2009! Yes, it took me that long to go abroad!!

It was travelling and not working, though. I found it fascinating to visit the many mosques, palaces, and other historical sites, knowing that THAT indentation in that marble step was made by people walking those same steps thousands and thousands of years ago! We are too new a country to have something like that. It made me think about how young Canada really is. Our buildings are hundreds of years old, not centuries.

Working while abroad was a different story. While I have always been working with international audiences in some way, I always did that either in Canada or through virtual means (email, teleconferences, videoconferences). I never had to go anywhere, and when I finally did, it was such a different experience!

My first working abroad experience was attending a conference in South Africa for this current job. Before I left, I tried to prepare myself for the culture shock, but you never get it until you experience it. This was an international conference focused on the travel and tourism industry, and it was just so interesting to learn about the different barriers and considerations that each country faced when their youth travelled abroad and what and how they marketed their destinations. There were some things that would never have occurred to me as a Canadian working and travelling abroad: things like how safe it was for me as a person from X country or X community to go to a certain country, for example. Luckily, this was an international conference, so I was exposed to so many different people from many countries. That’s when I knew I was hit with the travel bug… but it also gave me a new appreciation for how much you can learn when you step out of your comfort zone!

5. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

Does anyone actually have a typical day/week in their jobs anymore?

My team works on stakeholder engagement and promotion, so much of what we do is all about how to best communicate the value of international work/travel/work-integrated learning and how we can work with other organizations to help break down barriers to going abroad.

We spend a lot of time talking to people – I think that’s likely the best part of our jobs. We all like to get out and talk to the people who work with youth to see what we can do to support them in encouraging more of their students and clients to take on an international experience. We, of course, love to talk to the youth that we serve – or are hoping to serve – to hear about why they are hesitant to go abroad and see if there is anything we can do to provide them with the information they need to make an informed choice. And if we can work with different organizations to create new resources or connect people together, then that’s a win for us. We take all this information in, do some of our own research, and try to come up with ways we can support youth in deciding to go on a work/travel/work-integrated learning opportunity.

And it’s so rewarding when we hear from youth who have gone on an experience through our program, and they come back saying how life-changing it was and how it helped them to make a decision about their career or about going back to school with a better sense of purpose. We’ve also worked with what we call communities of interest – youth who identify as being a part of a community that may face additional barriers to going abroad (e.g., Indigenous youth; youth identifying as part of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities). For example, we’ve had Indigenous youth who have told us that, because of their experience abroad through our program, they have learned more about another Indigenous culture in the world and want to then come home and learn more about their own culture- and they then want to become role models for younger people in their communities to show them that they can go abroad, too.

The most challenging thing for us is that going abroad just doesn’t seem to be in the mindset of many Canadians. It’s not a natural pathway for youth, and many parents that we’ve run into are not convinced that it’s a good idea.

Unlike other countries (like Australia, for example) where it’s not a matter of IF you go, but WHERE are you going, we run into many Canadian youth who don’t know that they can do this; their parents are not supportive of their kids “interrupting” their linear pathway of school-to-work transition; and even some academic advisors that don’t know what information to give their students who actually do want to go. We have work to do to shift Canada’s culture so that going abroad is a natural option – for youth, their parents, and their academic advisors.

Another challenge for us is knowing that we have a very limited sphere of influence – there are so many barriers to going abroad, but we can only do so much. We would love for more young people to have international work/travel/work-integrated learning experiences, but we can only give them the most up-to-date information that we can so that they can make an informed decision.

6. What has working in an international setting taught you about yourself and your own culture?

For me, I’ve only been able to work in an international setting for very short periods of time (e.g., days or weeks), and this has been focused on events or conferences. Even so, I think it’s been an important learning experience for me as I learn about different cultures and how similar we are, even if it seems so very different at first glance.

I am learning about my Canadian culture and my Chinese culture.

I spent most of my life here in Canada, and I was able to see how these cultures intersect as I travel to different parts of the world. This is, I think, something that really hit me more than I thought it would. The intersections of my two cultures, my gender, and how this was seen (and how people reacted to it) were quite interesting. For example, in some countries, there was an expectation that I would be able to relate to one culture over another because of my appearance, but once I spoke and did not have an accent, some perceptions changed. There was an understanding that I didn’t understand the nuances of some behaviours and customs because I was raised in Canada. I was able to ask more questions about customs and how they worked. These experiences gave me a much better understanding of some of the things my parents and grandmother used to do when I was young.

But no matter where I went, being Canadian was definitely a bonus! It’s so great to see how welcoming people were when they found out I was Canadian. And there were always questions about the mountains, polar bears, being sorry all the time, and the use of “eh”!

I have also learned that I really, really want young people to benefit from going abroad. There’s a t-shirt that I saw once that really resonated with me. It said, “You can’t have a narrow mind and a thick passport.” That is so true – you really learn about yourself and how adaptable you are when you’re abroad. I now continue to encourage my kids to think about taking a gap year or going abroad for a co-op placement or work-integrated learning opportunity if they can.

7. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

Actually, I’ve been lucky to have a few people that I can turn to – each of them I met in different phases of my career. It’s been so useful to be able to talk to someone who can understand what I am going through. And because they have been with me through some significant periods of my career, they’ve been able to guide me towards my next steps. It’s also been quite helpful to have their support and to confirm that some of my decisions have been right for me at certain times of my life.

I would certainly recommend that young people take advantage of the wisdom of their “elders” and seek out this advice. It may not be something immediate that they get right away, but sometimes, that advice comes back later on as a voice in your head, and it just clicks!

8. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

Oh my… this one is a difficult one.

It is not really just one greatest achievement. This might sound sappy, but I have mentored some young public servants and other people coming into this sector, and just knowing and seeing when they have surpassed me in my own knowledge and capabilities is a truly wonderful feeling. For my management trainees, who in the past have come to me for guidance, and then watching them grow and flourish and seeing how they are now top executives within the Canadian government is honestly just so cool to experience.

There is another story that I feel really proud of. Within our program, we have worked really hard to get Canadian youth to want to go abroad. One of the communities of interest that we have worked hard on connecting with is indigenous communities. In 2018, there was a young man who I was talking to, and he was sort of hesitant at first about wanting to go abroad, but I continued sharing information with him and encouraging him to pursue these opportunities. Two years later, one of my colleagues actually ran into this young man again, and he not only credited our conversations and interactions for why he ended up working abroad, but he was getting ready to go to Italy to pursue a new career in fashion there. So cool!

9. How has COVID-19 impacted your work life?

Pre-pandemic, we were making progress in raising awareness of the IEC program and of the value of going abroad for work and travel/work-integrated learning experiences, promoting travel, and how young people could develop their skills if they travelled and worked abroad. We were out speaking to young people, their teachers, advisors, parents, and youth-serving organizations, and talking concretely about what information gaps were there and what we could do to support more young Canadians to go abroad.

With COVID, we could, of course, no longer promote travel. Instead, we switched our messaging to “Take the time now to research your options.” We hoped that we would be able to encourage young Canadians to learn about the possibilities and to research their possible destinations and pathways (co-op, internships, working holidays, work-integrated learning) so that when travel opened up again, they would have a plan.

We, of course, all worked from home, and the conferences and information sessions we attended and hosted all became virtual. It took a bit to get used to, but the team was able to take advantage of as many virtual possibilities as we could. I think the worst part of that virtual model for presentations was having to listen to a recording of yourself as it was played back!

Virtual presentations and conferences worked to some degree, but you can’t replace that personal connection with people.

10. If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

I think it’s been both difficult and enjoyable. The difficulty is, of course, not having that personal connection with people at various conferences and events and even missing the connection with your work team! We also had new people who started with us right at the beginning of the pandemic.

It was hard for them and for us to build that sense of team when some of them had never met in person. We had to really work on ways to build our social connections between team members virtually – those connections that would normally have happened naturally in hallways, coffee breaks, or lunchtime chats.

There’s also the tech difficulty – making sure that the connections are good enough, fast enough, stable enough! It took some time for employers to figure out what tools would also work from a WFH model.

The enjoyable part was, of course, not having the commute into work every day, especially in winter! We were, in many cases, speaking to some of our stakeholders via virtual means anyway, as many were not in Ottawa, so that part didn’t change. But we did really then focus on building the relationships more purposefully because of the pandemic that loomed overhead. I think we all just decided that this was important now, and we just automatically spent more conscious time getting to know each other beyond just being potential work partners/collaborators.

And we can’t forget the pandemic work wardrobe… work wear on top, pajamas on the bottom!

11. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement?

During the pandemic, I made exercise a priority. With some chronic health issues, going to a gym or other structured fitness activity was a no-go. And with no more commute, I had the time to exercise. I started doing virtual challenges – earning medals while running, walking, stationary biking, or other intentional exercise! I now average about 4000 km a year (and I get medals at the end of my virtual challenges, too)! This actually put me in a better mental space, and I had more energy to face the day in front of a camera!

For the social part, our team did make an effort to connect virtually, just for that social time, at least once a week. We would have an open chat going during the day, where we dropped jokes or observations throughout the day – the same way we would chat when we were in the office. That helped quite a bit – especially with the new people, since they were part of an ongoing team conversation that was not always about work.

12. What is the best advice you can give to others in a global industry right now?

I think for us, and for me in particular, it’s keep encouraging. Keep encouraging the youth and their influencers- keep encouraging the educators and the parents. If I can convince the parents, we are halfway there. If I can convince school advisors, we are halfway there. A lot of parents are not encouraging their children. I was at a secondary school promoting our work experience plan, and this young man I was talking to had everything planned out for his study abroad experience; he had such an extensive plan in place and ready to go. And his mother, from across the room, came running at me and said, “You can’t have him! He needs to go into law school first, and then he can do this later.” We have to show people that this is a valuable experience and that the students are not just wasting their time. After some discussion, the mother was finally able to say, “We will talk about this more at home.” It is really surprising the pushback young people get when considering going abroad. I don’t believe the parents know the importance of it and what it can do for their kids. Their thought is that they are wasting their time or that they will not go back to school after completing the program. And quite honestly, we have found the opposite of that to be true.

*This interview and the views expressed in it are solely those of the interviewee. They are not in any way reflective of the International Experience Canada program or the views, policies, or opinions of the Canadian government.

Grace Twardy

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 20:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH GRACE TWARDY

Grace Twardy recently took the time to share her experience working in the world of global education with us. Grace entered the field of international education in 2016, and had just transitioned into a new role with Boston University in 2019 right before the COVID-19 pandemic caused everything to come to a screeching halt. Because of that, her experiences have been shaped by this event. However, her passion for connection with others and finding community in cross-cultural collaboration has kept her motivated and enthusiastic about international education. Read on to learn more about Grace Twardy.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

Senior Manager, University Relations & Program Development, Boston University Study Abroad

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

I was fortunate enough to have been promoted to my current position! I have now been in my current role for almost six months after transitioning from my former role as a Program Manager. I have been working at BU Study Abroad for nearly four years now, and it has certainly been an interesting and unique time- having joined the organization in the Fall of 2019, right before the pandemic. I learned a lot about BU Study Abroad from my network and colleagues who were already working in the office, and I feel lucky to have gained such insights about the organization before even interviewing. There have been some great individuals who have come and gone from our office and many who still work there, and I knew I wanted to be working as a part of this team. BU Study Abroad was a place I really wanted to be, and I’m thankful to have had an opportunity to continue to learn and grow here in different roles in the organization.

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

While many might typically answer this question by saying how their own study abroad experience inspired them to work in international education, I wouldn’t say that was the main motivator in my case. Of course, my semester abroad in Spain certainly influenced my desire to work in the field, but I didn’t really know that jobs in “study abroad” existed at the time I was beginning my career and exploring my options. I was fortunate enough to work in my study abroad office as a student worker during my senior year of college, and I had some great mentors who encouraged me to consider applying for some jobs with study abroad providers upon graduation. What I love about the field, and what sparked my interest in deciding upon this career path, was the fact that international education combines a lot of my passions that help foster a sense of community: experiential learning, foreign languages, and cross-cultural connections.

4. What was your first job in international education?

My first job in international education was actually working for the same organization that I studied abroad with, CIEE. My role was part of a pilot program they were experimenting with at the time, the Campus Coordinator Program, and it honestly felt like a crash course in the field of international education. I supported the Institutional Relations team with student outreach efforts on campuses in the Northeast, and I was traveling around from campus to campus, tasked to find unique ways to connect with students and help them explore their study abroad opportunities, whether it was tabling, giving info sessions, attending study abroad fairs, or participating in student events. Many of the connections I made during that time are ones I still have to this day, and I’m thankful to have had such great mentors who took the time to let me shadow them and teach me the ins and outs of this particular area within the field.

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

My very first international experience was when I participated in a Spanish exchange program in high school and had the opportunity to travel to Madrid, Spain. I was very lucky to have attended a high school with a robust foreign languages department, and the exchange program allowed us to host students from a high school in Madrid to stay with us for two weeks in the fall, with us then having the chance to stay with them for two weeks in Madrid in the spring. I love learning foreign languages and learning Spanish and Russian in high school was the gateway for me to learn about the world and other cultures. I am the first in my family to have left the United States, and my parents actually still never have. To have been able to experience and see such a lively, multicultural city at that age really opened my eyes to all there is to be explored, and Madrid holds a special place in my heart because of it. I loved the exchange model because I also really appreciated and loved being able to connect with students our own age from another country, and to this day, I still stay in touch with my exchange student.

6. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I believe my job really allows me to have such engaging and creative conversations with our partners. I love getting to connect with so many different people from so many different types of institutions. While it can be a bit overwhelming at times, the fact that we do not have regional representatives on our University Relations team and that we cover everywhere across the country gives me the opportunity to meet with people outside of the region that I would never likely cross paths with.

Someone once told me that they believe working in university relations actually allows you to have more of an impact on our students because you get to be the one to work to understand an institution’s needs and challenges and work with them to support them in providing these experiences to their students. This has resonated with me a lot lately as I have continued to understand our partnerships and learn what their students’ interests are as they explore their study abroad options. On a systemic level, I hope that I can have an influence on the opportunities that are available to students and in supporting our partners to make these opportunities feasible for their students. I love when this leads to conversations about how we can collaborate with our partners to create new programs or new courses, and this area of program development that is a new part of my role is something I am really looking forward to continuing to dive a bit deeper into as we learn what the ever-changing needs and interests of our students are.

What I love about my job is what I love about the field of international education: the connections, the community, and the opportunities to continue to learn and grow from our networks and the various professional development offerings we have available to us as we try to ensure we are truly serving our students.

7. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

For me, while I do see travel as a benefit, it can also be quite draining when you are on the road for several weeks at a time. Coming back from the pandemic, I’ve struggled with continuing to maintain my sense of routine and balance. When I’m traveling, it’s even more difficult to keep up with some aspects of my routine that are easier to do when I am in the comfort of my own home. There are times of the year when I might be driving to Vermont, flying to Colorado, and then going right to California during the same week- or spending a whole week on the road for a conference. There are about two months straight where the travel can be intense, and for me, it is a challenge to maintain healthy habits and find times for myself when traveling- especially since I like to also try to take advantage of being in a new place and wanting to explore.

Another challenging aspect of my job is also something that drew me to BU Study Abroad in the first place, which is BU’s unique structure and identity in being both a provider and a higher education institution. This dual identity drew me to BU because I love feeling like part of the BU community on campus, but I also get to work with other colleges and universities to welcome their students to our programs. In many ways, I have both colleagues and teammates at BU and also at these other partner institutions, and I love the opportunities that BU’s structure provides and the reach we get to have with our programming. At times, however, there can be competing priorities dealing with these different audiences, and, of course, working for a higher education institution has its layers of bureaucracy that you typically don’t have to navigate when working at a provider, so it can sometimes be difficult working as a “provider” in a higher education setting and needing to work through the bureaucratic channels when implementing new changes.

That all being said, I do believe that it is when we are challenged that we will grow the most. That’s why I think it’s important to see opportunity in our challenges and why it feels like many of the aspects I love about my role and organization are ones I struggle with at times.

8. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

Yes, and I think the value and importance of mentorship cannot be overstated! I am very lucky that I have some incredibly supportive mentors from various stages of my career; some who have seen me at some of the more difficult times and at the early stages, and some who I have connected with recently who are at similar points in their career and where we have been supporting one another as we continue to evaluate our professional goals.

While I’m lucky to have a supportive manager who supports my career growth and helps me explore my personal interests, not everyone is always able to have these types of conversations with their direct supervisor. That’s why it’s so important to have others who don’t work directly with you act as mentors as well so you can get another perspective. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am in my career without the mentorship and support I have been given.

9. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

One thing that I’m really proud of is the work I did as one of the Boston Area Study Abroad Association (BASAA) Co-Chairs during my time in that volunteer role. The mission of BASAA is to provide a platform for international educators in the Boston and surrounding areas to engage in professional development, networking, and collaboration. I happened to take on this role during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused us to have to really think about our programming and how we could continue to support our community during a time that was really challenging for everyone in our field.

We ended up deciding that we would find a way to transition to a virtual format for the first time. I have to say, I think it ended up being a huge success, and we actually had a larger reach and participation rate in our programming now that these opportunities were virtual and more accessible to colleagues from all over, not just the greater Boston area. One session I was most proud of that we offered as part of our 2021 Virtual Spring Conference (Where Do We Go from Here? Moving Study Abroad Forward Sustainably) was our keynote panel, where we actually had the opportunity to connect with program leaders around the world to learn more about how the pandemic was impacting them abroad. We were very conscious of the fact that, of course, in education abroad, many of us were furloughed, laid off, and/or unable to do our work. For the sites, without having students on the ground, we felt it was important to hear their perspectives and provide them an opportunity to connect as well. We had people Zooming in from Greece, South Korea, Uganda, Ireland, and Peru, and via Zoom, we were able to learn what their experiences were like all over the world while navigating similar challenges and opportunities in their locations. For those of us who work with colleagues internationally, of course, we find ways to connect every day- but what an incredible opportunity to bring in their perspectives in a conference setting and be able to offer this type of session to our community.

While the shift was challenging, a big takeaway for me during this time was that we realized how much of a reach we could have with Zoom and creating a virtual space to be able to continue to foster a sense of community. In our tenure, we are proud to say we offered 16 unique sessions across four main virtual events, and that doesn’t include our makeshift virtual happy hours or monthly community discussions. While my time with BASAA was not at all what I thought it would be, I can honestly say that it was such an important part of my life, especially during the pandemic, where I felt a continued sense of purpose and connection to our community. The virtual space allowed us to connect easily, have a larger reach, and force us to be creative and intentional about our programming. I think this is something that anyone could organize within their networks across our field, which sparked a session that I co-presented at the Region XI Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, last year about how to create and support your communities in the virtual space.

10. How has COVID19 Impacted your work life?

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all of us in international education in many ways, and I think it’s important to recognize that we are still recovering and processing a lot of what we went through over the past three years. The pandemic impacted my work life quite literally, where I was furloughed for two months during the Summer of 2020. In the grand scheme of things, and compared to other colleagues, I do feel fortunate to still have my job, but it was a stressful time filled with a lot of unknowns. In many ways, I think we are still learning and unlearning as a result of the pandemic, going back to the basics and back to projects and ideas that we are only just now getting to after all this time. We’re still adjusting to being “back,”, especially for those of us who have returned to a mostly in-person work schedule.

I think that having worked through the pandemic and the transitionary period of trying to return to the way things were, I have come to appreciate the benefits of working from home. And having had the chance to pause allowed me to also recognize I need to learn when to intentionally take pauses at work.

11. If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

I think I might be one of the only ones I know (besides some of my co-workers) that is going into the office most days a week, not that I am complaining. I do actually like working in the office, although I often times find myself being a tad more productive working from home, not getting distracted by all of the social interactions. I think there are pros and cons to working from home, and certainly, everyone’s work style is different. When I was working completely remotely during the pandemic, I did find the adjustment difficult as I missed the in-person connections and collegial aspect of our work. But I did also find it easier to set a routine and more of a work-life balance.

12. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Right now, in many ways, I think we are still recovering from everything we experienced during the last three years. There was a lot of pressure to “get back to pre-COVID numbers” and go right back into the swing of things with our work, but so much has changed, and we are still adjusting. Our students have differing needs and require additional support, and as global educators, so do we. It’s important to remember that we are still building ourselves back, and that takes time. We’ve put a lot of pressure on ourselves, and we do need to celebrate our comeback and that we are sending students abroad again!

While many of us are experiencing burnout at times, for me, it’s really important to remember my “why” and why I love the work we do. A lot of those reasons have to do with the people I get to work with and the opportunities that working in this field presents. We are still recovering a bit, but I also think it is a really exciting time for there to be some real change. The pandemic forced us to think critically about our work and continues to highlight some of the issues we need to focus on. I’m excited to see what shifts might take place, whether that’s in regard to our programming and the opportunities we create for our students or the ways in which we advise and prepare our students for these experiences. As we continue to build ourselves back up, there are more opportunities than ever before, and it’s important we continue to pause, reflect, and not be scared to ask questions.

One statistic from the NAFSA Region XI Conference last year (that I helped plan as part of my role as Conference Chair Designate) which has continued to stick with me is this: 51% of conference attendees were attending their first regional conference. We have so many newcomers in the field right now, and for those of you who are new to the field, don’t be scared to reach out and connect with others in your network. For those of us who have been in the field for a bit longer, my advice would be that it’s important for us to help those entering this field understand the importance of our work and get them excited. Connections and community are so, so important for what we do- and my community, colleagues, mentors, and students are what motivates me to stay involved with this work and all that we do in international education.

Bob Specking

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 22:25:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH BOB SPECKING

The League is proud to share our very first LimeLight interview featuring a male colleague in International Education. We recently caught up with Bob Specking of Via, and learned more about his journey in education abroad and the path he traveled to end up where he is today.

Bob is a first-generation college student who grew up in rural Missouri. As someone with an unlikely background to be where he is now, he loves that his current company, Via, approaches international education in a very inclusive way. Bob has a passion for getting international education on the radar of underrepresented student groups and feels strongly about making global experiences applicable and accessible for all.

Read on to learn more about what attracted this self-described small-town Missouri boy to global travel.

1. What is your current title, and where do you work?

Vice President of Growth at Via TRM. I work remotely in St. Louis, MO.

2. How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

I knew some Via folks from various conference tabling over the years and always kept tabs on Via as a potential fit for my next career chapter. Mid-pandemic, Via’s previous marketing director reached out with the opportunity. Always be networking!

3. What sparked your interest in working in international education?

My childhood neighbors were the coordinators for international high school students coming to the area. I remember playing basketball in my driveway at about 13 years old and exchange students from Brazil and Germany coming over to play with me. I began developing cross-cultural understanding at a young age through the lifelong friendships I developed with those students. Without them, my world would have remained so small, and I knew I somehow wanted to play a similar role for others in my life.

4. What was your first job in international education?

My first paid job in IE was as an ESL teacher in the Persian Gulf (Bahrain). After this experience, I knew I wanted to continue working in IE but not as a teacher. So, I pursued my Masters at Hult International Business School in Cambridge, MA. I then started working at EF (Education First) in Cambridge, helping U.S. colleges and universities to develop faculty-led programs abroad.

(We also want to include that Bob shared he first met his wife at EF, and they reunited four years later and started dating; the rest, as they say, is history. It’s an education abroad love story!)

5. Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

Honduras 2005: Service learning trip in high school. I had become interested and decent at Spanish early in high school, and my teacher presented the opportunity to work with Honduran local organizations to build housing for underprivileged communities. It opened my eyes to the inequities in our global society as well as those here in the States.

6. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Like many in the field, I’d say the student impact is the most rewarding aspect. Via’s software empowers EA administrators and providers to engage more students in global opportunities and nurture their journeys from an early stage. I needed such support to realize my own dreams, so playing a role in that for all walks of students is very motivating.

7. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

As a (mature) start-up, the most challenging aspect is often quite fulfilling. We’re an all-hands-on-deck team, so I’m always wearing multiple hats and balancing various projects across functional areas. In a unique business space where we’re the “mighty mouse”, innovation is key and drives my team and I every day.

8. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

As a white cis male from the Midwest, my experience in IE has given me empathy as the “other.” This perspective informs my worldview, of course, but it also contributes to my professional competencies and my focus on leading with love.

9. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I’ve had many, and they’re a big reason I am where I am today. Currently, my CEO, Dave Saben, has been a wonderful mentor, coach, and ally that I feel privileged to learn from. He has helped me realize my potential in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. As well my mentor at EF was Jeff Penedo. He took me from feeling “junior” to feeling like I could lead and believe in myself.

10. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

Not necessarily one moment, but in my years with EF developing short-term, faculty-led programs abroad, I had the opportunity to join faculty leaders and their groups each year. It’s hard to overstate how rewarding it was to see the real-time experience and growth for so many students that had never left the US. Those moments really filled my cup and galvanized my drive to excel in this field.

11. What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement?

I’ve been working remotely since 2016. As a sales professional, most days are spent on Zoom, so I wouldn’t say I feel too isolated. This setting has allowed me to go about my days on my own terms and ensure I always create space for my family, friends, and two cats. But yes, so many hours in one room can make an energetic extrovert a little stir-crazy, so I regularly run outside, break up the days with chores, and turn other spaces into my “office” as often as possible.

12. What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now?

Be bold with your career ambitions. Ask for what you want, even if you don’t think you’ll get it. Throw imposter syndrome out the window and trust yourself. Never stop living curiously. Those in our field possess competencies that go far beyond one’s current role. The IE community is tight, interwoven, and supportive, which felt especially true over the last few years. And get out of your own way- something I definitely had to learn. And lastly, don’t let others define your potential.

Margherita Pasquini

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 03:07:45 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MARGHERITA PASQUINI

What I Bring to the Table

Margherita Pasquini sits down with us to discuss her career journey, how she came to be involved in climate change activism, and the gendered struggles that come with motherhood when you are a working woman.

“In Italian, there’s a saying,” Margherita Pasquini notes, as she discusses her own personal journey connecting her career in higher international education with climate change activism, “‘The newly converted are the most active fighters.’” As someone who did not originally connect study abroad with climate change, Pasquini openly considers herself one of these newly converted.

“I had some denial about this [issue],” she admits and -- upon attending a session led by CANIE -- says that “I felt so behind… I felt the urge of doing something… getting more committed.” Since having this realization, Pasquini has maintained her position in higher international education while becoming more actively involved in CANIE’s mission to increase climate change education and get people involved.

“What I bring to the table is my enthusiasm,” she says, “I know what it feels like to be completely unaware of the topic, and I want to make other people feel how I did.” In having a conversation with Pasquini, this enthusiasm is infectious. She is candid, honest, and unafraid to connect with people, which makes her an asset to our fight against climate change. She says her goal is to get more people involved in CANIE, perhaps more big names. Pasquini does not seem phased by the grandiose nature of this fight and continues to focus on inspiring people and forming human connections in order to expand awareness of CANIE’s name and mission.

Pasquini brings this enthusiasm to all aspects of her life. She has held a position as the Study Abroad Coordinator at her alma mater, La Universita Cattolica, where she has worked for the past 13 years and also works as the Regional Event Manager for Europe for the FPP. She continues to inspire students and launches European undergraduate recruitment events for high schoolers. Anyone, adult or child, can benefit from listening to Pasquini speak and getting to share the energy she exudes; although, to put her focus into inspiring high school students to live their life to the fullest seems like time well-spent on her part.

“I was helping people decide on their destinations and programs even before I got hired,” she says, smiling, “Traveling is a part of life. It’s part of how we experience this world.” In her own experience, Pasquini has expressed finding a sense of herself and family through

traveling, especially when she went to Mexico. “That is the place where my heart is, outside of my country.”

Hearing the certainty and passion in her voice is enough to convince any student who is doubting studying abroad to take the leap and experience it to the fullest. “I understood when I was [working in international education] that it was my thing.” She recognizes the importance of bringing this experience to students and has begun thinking that “many people in higher education want to go back to traveling as we used to do before. Traveling for business has always had a pleasurable component that, I believe, can’t be denied, but we [professionals] need to be more responsible and less selfish, even if it hurts because the people doing this job LOVE traveling. [We need to] think that if there’s a limited amount of C02 to be used for traveling on this planet, then it should be used by students who will benefit the most from international experiences.”

Pasquini is a devoted mother of two and candidly expresses how difficult it has been for parents to work at home during COVID for the past two years. “I don’t know if I do it right, honestly,” she says, “sometimes I struggle a lot.” Upon further discussion, Pasquini notes that when COVID hit, many of household responsibilities were placed on women, especially mothers. She states that over 90% of the people who lost their jobs during the pandemic were women, and much of that is to do with the sexist ideologies that makeup professional environments and continue to affect female employees today.

“It’s like a vicious cycle,” she observes, “When you hire a woman, there’s an assumption that at some point, she will have to take time off. So you give her less responsibilities. This ends up in her having a smaller salary. If there is something I want for my kids, it is gender equality.”

This gender barrier in the workplace has existed long before COVID and, as Pasquini notes, can deeply impact her own perception of motherhood. “I will never quit my job for my kids… for my own mental health and affirmations,” she says, “I feel there is such a different standard for moms versus dads… Whatever you do is never enough. Being a very committed professional with two kids, I sometimes feel like I struggle with accepting that.”

Pasquini has felt this pressure to prove herself as a working woman throughout her entire career. “I wanted to show that I didn’t even need maternity leave,” she says, “I worked from the delivery room.” Hopefully, we can reach a point where women who choose to become mothers do not feel this tremendous weight set on them. If women and men were held accountable in the same way for parenthood and career paths, perhaps this sense of guilt that torments so many of us would subside. Pasquini comments on this sense of guilt by saying that “We give birth to a child and a sense of guilt at the same time.”

At the risk of jeopardizing my journalistic integrity, I would like to share a part of myself that Pasquini made me feel comfortable enough to share with her. I was raised by a strong, working mother who brought me into her office when I was only four days old. Although I am sure that she faced the same struggles that Pasquini and so many women before her have faced, I saw nothing but an accomplished role model who did not ever leave me questioning whether my gender would be a factor in my life. I never doubted that I would achieve whatever I needed to achieve, and that was because of women like my mom and Pasquini, who push past the barriers that society sets down in front of them to pave the way for a better future for the next generation.

Upon hearing my brief story about my experience growing up with a working mother, Pasquini was moved to tears. She, like so many, has the weight of society bearing down on her and telling her what is and is not emulative of a good mother or a good employee. To sit down and speak so candidly with someone as strong and accomplished as Margherita Pasquini is nothing short of exhilarating. “I put mom on my CV now,” she mentions, smiling. Her enthusiasm, honesty, personability, and fierce work ethic are only some of the things that Pasquini brings to the table, both personally and professionally.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Sabrina Vitale

Bee Gan

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 15:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH BEE GAN

How Can We Do Better?

Bee Gan discusses her current position at Sheffield Hallam University as well as her current projects and the passion she holds for climate change activism and carbon literacy.

“How do you do better?” Bee Gan asks as she discusses the steps she is taking to increase carbon literacy among the students at Sheffield Hallam University. “How can I motivate young people to do more?” These are the questions that Bee chooses to live her life by and build her career through.

Driven by her passion to inspire people and in turn create a ripple of change, Bee holds the position of Head of Global Academic Development at Sheffield Hallam University after working there for almost 17 years. She is piloting Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a program she founded in an attempt to raise awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities and to work on climate action projects where students can apply [carbon literacy] in their own sector.

Students in this program are being asked to analyze data and advise on potential action/actions the University could take (or is currently undertaking) to meet its Climate Action Strategy target of net zero carbon by 2030. Allowing students the creative and academic liberty to establish their own solutions and suggestions surrounding climate action in their university is a refreshing tactic. Giving the power to the students is perhaps one of the most effective and empowering ways to encourage healthy learning and creative solutions.

“At the moment we do it as an extracurricular,” Bee explains, “Only a small percentage of young people are willing to go the extra mile. I don’t know how to reach or inspire them?” She is actively searching for solutions to this struggle such as interdisciplinary learning. “I am kind of a champion that multidisciplinary work is so important for students. I see this as a golden opportunity.”

Through all of these steps to encourage inspiration in the minds of her students surrounding carbon literacy, Bee is also an active voice in international education which has pushed her to search for more solutions surrounding internationalization and its relationship to climate change. “You can’t stop people from traveling,” she says, “People are what make the places I visit interesting… That human contact is not going to be replaced. Yes, we are creating a lot of carbon but there are actions we can take to reduce it in the future.”

This passion for reducing our carbon footprint partnered with her own love for travel is what makes Bee such an inspiring person to talk to. Surrounding her role in the Climate Literacy Project, she suggests that companies as well as her own establishment “need to look at the technology that you want to develop.” She believes that a bigger push for green technology while continuing to grow their economy can heavily benefit these institutions and help balance the harm caused by traveling. She encourages staff to use COIL and thinks there is more that we can do to better internationalization at home, for example, a push for bettering online education and support.

“COVID-19 has been positive in making us take this action,” she explains, “Even though we talk about digitizing, it's a very slow process. But COVID came and we had no choice and our IT support is getting better…” Being able to see the environmental advantages of technology improvement through a pandemic is proof of the ability Bee has to search for creative solutions rather than cower at a challenge.

More than that, Bee takes her love of problem solving and helping people find solutions and applies it to areas of her life separate from work. She currently volunteers for an organization called GoodGym that helps people get fit by doing good. The community group runs, walks and cycles to help local community organizations and isolated older people by doing practical tasks. Before COVID-19, Bee regularly ran to see an isolated older person for a chat and ran home. GoodGym calls the older people they visit coaches because they help motivate them to run and they share their wisdom. It’s amazing what you can learn from your coach. “Being part of an engaging community gives me a sense of belonging, doing good deeds, helping your local community makes us happier and healthier,” she says.

Bee brings that responsibility to all areas of her life. She faces challenges every day from a global perspective, choosing to remain focused on finding solutions. She also tackles her job from a different perspective than some of her predecessors and coworkers. Because of who I am and my background, it gave me a different perspective working here because I see things slightly differently than other people because of where I am from,” she explains.

Being a woman of color in the international education field, she believes that “Thinking differently is allowing me to progress because I’m doing something slightly different that makes people stop and think ‘Oh, We’ve never done it this way…That’s why I think diversity is very important because if you train all your staff the same, then you continue to do the same thing. As Matthew Syed said, "Diversity, in a real sense, is the hidden engine of humanity."

Disruption is perhaps the single most accurate word to describe Bee Gan and her achievements. She somehow simultaneously focuses on the power she holds as an individual while focusing on the bigger picture at all times.

“Climate change is everyone's agenda,“ Bee notes, “If we put everyone together, they could find more creative solutions.” Bee does not look at a problem and see a barrier… She sees an opportunity. Turning problems into a challenge rather than an ending is one of the bravest things someone can do, especially when faced with a problem as great as Climate Change. Much of the rhetoric surrounding climate change and the fate of our Earth is demoralizing... People see a problem so big and seem to lose faith in the power held by an individual. Sitting down with Bee Gan for even less than five minutes allows anyone to see the ripples that one person’s passion and hopefulness can have no matter the size of the issue they are tackling.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Sabrina Vitale

Jenny Wilkinson

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 21:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH JENNY WILKINSON

One Woman, Countless Hats

Jenny Wilkinson sits down with us to discuss her professional experience as the Director of Student Recruitment and Business Development at London Metropolitan University. She explains the steps she has taken to accomplish her achievements and her perspectives on music, upcoming projects, and being a woman in business.

As Jenny Wilkinson reminisces about her time interviewing women Vice Chancellors for her MBA dissertation, she mentions how grateful she was “just being able to sit with these amazing women… I was a bit starstruck just listening to their stories”. She does not realize that being given the opportunity to sit down with her can render anyone else just as starstruck.

Wilkinson, who has been working at London Metropolitan University for three years -- and assumed three separate positions in that time -- has been a voice for international education and climate change activism since her time in college.

Hat 1: Music as a Driver for Social Change

She completed her undergraduate degree in music with a specialism in voice and this continues to play a large role in her life. As a first-generation university student, Wilkinson’s driver was using music as a tool for social justice, which she now does at London Metropolitan Brass (no connection to the university).

“I want a community music organization that’s free for anyone,” she says, “[where] we teach for free, we give free instruments, we play together for the joy of it, and nobody ever gets kicked out because they’re not good enough.”

In the past eight years, Wilkinson and her team have educated over 200 players, most of whom are adults seeking community. “Loneliness is a huge thing in big cities,” Wilkinson notes, “[people’s] individual stories really have the biggest impact”.

London Metropolitan Brass has provided this education for countless individuals… From recent college graduates to retirees, anyone who wants to become a part of this community, regardless of musical experience is encouraged to. “You can’t just be around the same kinds of people all the time,” Wilkinson notes.

The passion she holds for social impact and community engagement directly translates to Wilkinson’s additional professional career at London Metropolitan University where she currently holds the title as the Director of Student Recruitment and Business Development. Her professional involvement in international education also dates back to her time as a university student.

Hat 2: Study Abroad and London Metropolitan University

As an undergraduate “I wandered into a building just to get warm and happened on a study abroad fair,” Wilkinson explains, “I’d never been on a plane before… I just took a leap”. She went on to study abroad at McGill in Montreal, Canada which she says “sparked my love for travel”.

Upon graduation, Wilkinson thought back on what brought her joy in college, and other than her degree in music, she thought of her time abroad. This led to her first job in the International Office at King’s College London, followed by her time at Queen Mary working as a study abroad officer then at the University of Roehampton. She continues to seize opportunities that present themselves to her due to her hard work and incentive and now looks after a much wider portfolio at London Met.

She strives to provide international opportunities for non-traditional students. “It’s not just for 19-year-old white girls; which, let’s face it, is what a large amount of traditional study abroad is,” she states. 92% of students at London Metropolitan have at least one underrepresentation marker and Wilkinson pushes to ensure that these students will be given access to the same study abroad opportunities as she was.

Currently, “Our institution is probably the most socially diverse in the UK so we are working with institutions like HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the US on developing various partnerships both for research exchange and for student projects to try and kind of have this bilateral knowledge exchange and understand how do we replicate that success for our students with underrepresented backgrounds on our campus?” Wilkinson is playing an active role in this project and silently seems to indicate that work like this is representative of what London Met stands for as an institution.

She describes London Met as a unique and special place to be and believes that adjusting to any more traditional institution would be very difficult after working there. “The people that you meet… everyone is so passionate about their agenda. You can’t work at London Met if you don’t want to change the world basically.” She further describes the institution as “driven by passion to make change for our students.”

Hat 3: Gendered Leadership and MBA Dissertation

Wilkinson brings these values of passion and thirst for change into her MBA dissertation which she has been working on over the past year and just finished this past September. After having to shift her topic when the pandemic hit, she decided to conduct her dissertation on the experiences of women Vice Chancellors and Deputy Vice Chancellors during the pandemic and how they had approached leadership during the crisis.

Through her work, she examines the ideas of gendered leadership and questions whether or not the women she interviewed identified with those concepts. She describes these interviews with immense pride and gratitude noting how fortunate she was to be able to interview these accomplished women in business.

This dissertation topic directly overlaps into Wilkinson’s career as, she too, is a successful woman in a predominantly male-dominated industry. “I think I’ve probably worked harder because I’ve felt like I have to prove myself every single day,” she says “I’m here because I’ve worked really hard.”

“It’s given me more drive, and it’s made me work harder and now I’m at the point that … I don’t really care as much what other people think,” she states, “But, certainly, ten years ago, even five years ago, I really struggled with that.” Wilkinson’s achievements and position in her career speak for themselves and, arguably, the exposure she has to the inequalities that accompany being a woman in business allow her to push even harder for change. This translates in her constant push for activism throughout her career.

Hat 4: Climate Change and PhD

Upon finding passion in international education, Wilkinson began to recognize that she is culpable for traveling so frequently which, in itself, contributes to climate change. She immediately began to think about how to fix this issue and quickly realized that there is not much data surrounding climate change and its relationship to travel. “No one has the data to help make informed decisions in higher education,” she states.

This revelation encouraged Wilkinson to study for her PhD and she now says that there is much more being published on the subject since a year ago when she started. She wants to create a framework that universities can use to demonstrate social and educational impact of travel, allowing students to continue engaging in international learning opportunities whilst balancing their responsibilities around climate action. There are too many international programs that willfully fail to take into account sustainability and too many sustainability programs that willfully fail to take into account internationalization.

“I love being given a problem and sitting down and figuring out how to solve it,” Wilkinson admits. Her passion for problem solving coupled with her drive to bring international education to a wider audience as well as her voice in modern-day activism is precisely what makes Wilkinson such a unique and inspiring person to sit down with.

With completing her PhD in the not-too-distant future, Jenny Wilkinson does not cease to render any interviewer or peer speechless. Her ability to surround herself with other accomplished individuals allows her genuine humility to shine through as she describes her own endeavors and achievements.

Along with her infectious optimism and the passion that shines through in her voice, it is almost impossible not to assign new meaning to one’s own life after a conversation with Wilkinson. She wears countless hats, from creating attainable music education to the public, to bringing her passion for international education to countless students, to completing a PhD, to actively contributing to climate change activism. I encourage anyone reading to lean on Wilkinson as an example and try on a hat that they might not usually. She is proof that you do not have to be any one thing. Why put that limit on yourself?

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Sabrina Vitale

Mina Emam

Mon, 02 May 2022 19:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MINA EMAM

One Woman’s Journey Through Culture, Language, and Travel

Mina Emam sits down with us to discuss her professional experience as an International Student Counselor in Tehran, Iran as well as her own perspectives on travel and the current state of our world.

Mina Emam’s smile is audible as she expresses what a dream it would be for her to travel to Ireland and experience its culture and the sights it has to offer. Her passion for travel shines through as she reflects on her career in international education over the past 12 years. Although travel has been almost impossible recently, Emam maintains an infectious and refreshing outlook of hope.

Despite the impact of challenges that recent events such as COVID-19, the Trump Administration, and Brexit have had on the students she oversees at Mava International Study, Emam seems hopeful that life and travel can return to what it was. “During these years, we’ve faced many challenges and many issues,” she says, “but, we continue.”

She is hardly one to back down in the face of a challenge. Being a woman in the international education field alone has had its advantages and disadvantages. “I believe my gender was effective in my career path as people trust me more than if I was a man and they rely on me and they feel comfortable with me,” she explains -- noting the benefits that her gender may have had on her career, “But the other perspective is if I was a man, I would earn more and I could be more successful financially.”

Regardless of gender norms, Emam continues to be a successful and powerful voice that instigates hope through her position at Mava International Study. As an International Student Counselor, she has forged connections with students who have studied globally throughout the past 12 years and made individual bonds so strong that she is still in contact with many of them today.

“The things I do for students changes their lives and their career paths,” she notes, “I see how I can be effective in other people’s lives.” She further mentions that the students themselves have worked hard to stay in contact with her over the years and that many of them have told her directly how much her work has shifted their lives.

What sets Emam apart from many international educators is the passion with which she herself discusses travel and cultural and linguistic immersion. The excitement that she exudes when discussing her own travels and experiences moves beyond treating this career as a simple job and shifts into sharing something deeply meaningful to her with the students and people that surround her.

Emam grew up and is currently based in Tehran, Iran and speaks about her country with tremendous pride and enthusiasm. “If you don’t visit Iran and its nature and people and cultures, I believe you are missing a big experience in your life,” she says, “ we have so much beauty here… It is a beautiful country and the people are very kind in every city.”

Traveling within Iran recently, Emam expresses that, “when visiting different people and different cultures, it is so amazing and new for [her], even being Iranian.”

Having grown up in Iran, Emam speaks Persian fluently, has been speaking English since she was a child, and has also studied German. Her interest in other cultures and experience in multiple languages makes her unique and deeply perceptive.

Emam has held this international education position for over a decade now and has faced countless challenges and obstacles. Her response to these challenges is that “I am hopeful for the future.” A refreshing and effortless response to the hardships that continue to impact her career and life every single day. Emam continues to push forward and bring life-changing experiences to an entire new generation.

Simply and elegantly put, “it is a great experience to know people.” Mina Emam seems to approach her career based on personal connections, fresh perspectives, and passion. Which is why, when met with the opportunity to discuss another potential travel endeavor to Ireland, Emam’s voice shifts and the excitement she exudes resembles what I can only imagine are the same reactions from the students she mentors every day.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Sabrina Vitale

Monika Setia

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 20:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MONIKA SETIA

Dr. Monika Setia is working as Regional Officer – Hyderabad with the United States - India Education Foundation (USIEF) – the Fulbright Commission in India - where she manages two U.S. State Department programs - Fulbright and EducationUSA. She has a work experience of more than 15 years in the education industry. After finishing her Ph.D. degree from The Pennsylvania State University in United States, Monika completed her postdoctoral fellowship from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore and then worked as an Assistant Professor with Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) for five years. Monika has published her research in international journals, worked with both state and national ministries of health in India and international agencies on various projects, and offered multiple training programs for students and professionals.

Monika has strong passion for educational exchanges and career development of individuals. She believes that exposure to high quality education, research, and professional systems along with right mentoring and guidance on choice of suitable education and career pathways are essential for personal, academic, career, and leadership development of individuals. Having pursued her Ph.D. degree from the United States and having studied and worked in the Indian education system, she is interested in utilizing her experience and skills to promote educational and scholarly exchange between India and the United States.

Monika Setia has worked as the Regional Office at USIEF - the United States-India Educational Foundation (also the Fulbright Commission in India) for nearly four years. Her role includes managing two U. S. Department of State programs - Fulbright and EducationUSA. Monika is responsible for promoting study and academic exchanges across India and the United States through these two programs. She does this from the USIEF regional office based at the U.S. Consulate General in Hyderabad.

USIEF is essentially a bilateral organization that promotes and manages programs strengthening linkages between Indian and American institutions and this is done through different programs supported by both Indian and American governments. There is an inherent element of U.S. and Indian diplomacy and furthering the relationships between the two countries in Monika’s work. Through her work, Monika contributes to the promotion of joint research, collaboration, student and faculty exchange between India and the United States, and also student admissions to U.S. institutions. A component of the Fulbright program also involves facilitating higher education administrators from each country to visit and experience the higher education system institutions of the other country and sharing knowledge and best practices from their own country.

It seems like quite an important diplomatic role involving India and the United States and we were interested in finding out what a typical day looks like for Monika.

She is very much involved in strategic planning for both the Fulbright and EducationUSA programs. On a daily basis, she is also intensely involved in the student advising process through EducationUSA, speaking to students who want to pursue their higher education in the United States. On the Fulbright program, she works with both Indian and American scholars on their exchange process between India and the USA and promotes bilateral relationships between the two countries. Besides the long-term strategic management of both programs and the day to day advising, Monika also manages the administration involved in office, staff, budgeting, etc.

Normal office hours are 8:30 am when the consulate opens, but due to COVID she was working from home till very recently. We asked when the working day typically finishes, and she laughs.

"Honestly there's no end to the day – on most days, because we work closely with U.S. institutions, we are hosting sessions late into the evening."

We are curious to find out how Covid has changed her work, apart from having to work from home.

She tells us how USIEF expanded its reach during Covid to students located in many small towns and cities that USIEF was not able to reach previously. Going online gave them a wider audience, it gave them access to regions they were not able to reach before. So, she is now connecting with students and scholars who she would never have had a chance to speak with earlier.

"USIEF explored options to provide more opportunities to increase the number of students and scholars in more regions across India."

Of course, when the pandemic first hit, like everywhere, there was a scramble to reach U.S. Fulbright students and scholars in India and likewise to monitor the situation for Indian students based in the United States. She thinks back to March 2020, trying to make sure U.S. students and scholars in India were safe, were given the options and support to get back to their country, and just at a very basic level, to ensure everyone was doing well. It was a very busy time, she felt there was a great responsibility to ensure students and scholars’ safety and it was quite challenging emotionally, something that people will all relate to when we look back to 2020. Of course, Fulbright has been unable to bring U.S. scholars to India since then, and there was a lot of work involved in adapting to the pandemic situation and this continued for months and months, but essentially, the main goal at that time was to ensure people’s safety and well-being. Monika shares how as part of her work on global higher education, the first need is to ensure the safety and well-being of exchange grantees.

Her role seems to be multi-faceted, requiring various skills and expertise, and we were curious as to what she loves most about these different tasks.

Monika loves interacting with students and scholars, guiding/mentoring them, taking care of their needs - sometimes psychological, sometimes operational, depending on what stage of their study or exchange process they are at or where they are located.

We reflect on how this is the basis for her work. Although she is dealing at a high level with U.S. and Indian institutions and the State Department to further public diplomacy between the two countries, it all comes down to facilitating processes to ensure that both U.S. and Indian students/scholars experience the other country and culture at its best!

On a parting note, we ask her to look into her crystal ball and think about what the future might hold for U.S. and Indian collaborations in higher education.

Monika foresees change in future, with likely more internationalization happening across the educational institutions - more overseas branch campuses coming to India, more joint programs between institutions in India and abroad, and many more opportunities for academic collaborations.

We have no doubt that at the centre of this change and advancing India-U.S. relations will be Monika Setia and her organization, and at the heart of her work, the students and scholars will always remain the most important elements!

- Interview by Global Leadership League members and volunteers, Noreen Lucey and Venkata Madhuri Gunti

Alethea Stoltzfus

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 22:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH ALETHEA STOLTZFUS

What is your current title, and where do you work? I am an International Student Advisor at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, CA.
How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting) I learned about my current job through an external job posting, but I also knew of an alumnus of my graduate program who already worked in the office, and we were able to connect to discuss the position. I have since moved up to a higher-level advising role.
What sparked your interest in working in international education?My study abroad experience at 18 definitely triggered my interest in the field, but during my undergraduate studies, I also tutored students (many of whom were international students), and I knew that whatever I ended up doing, I wanted to help students.
What was your first job in international education? My first international education job was as a Student Services Specialist at TALK English School in Boston. At the time, I did not have a graduate degree, and I didn’t have any luck finding jobs in universities. I found it easier to break into the field in ESL schools, but I still spent about 3 - 4 months job hunting before I found my job. I was also completing the Global Pro Institute at the time. I loved the job and working with ESL students; it was so rewarding to see them arrive at our school sometimes speaking little to no English and then start to gain confidence with the language and let their personalities emerge more.
Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad. My first experience abroad was a one-month educational program with Go Abbey Road in Italy, Greece, and France with about 30 other high schoolers from all over the world. It was my first time away from the United States, my family, and my comfort zone, and it was amazing, hard, educational, and eye-opening. It motivated me to go to college when I returned to the U.S. and seek out more study abroad opportunities in the future.
Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job. Right now, a typical week at my job involves lots of advising emails, Zoom advising shifts, processing student requests and new documents, and meetings. My work is also cyclical, so at certain times of the year, I review financial aid applications, or recruit and train our orientation leaders, or manage our work authorization workshops. UC Berkeley is a huge university with thousands of international students, and my office has been extremely busy since the start of the pandemic; and we have been managing a higher volume of advising, emails, and paperwork than usual.
What do you enjoy the most about your job? The thing I love the most about my job is the students. I love being able to help them, alleviate their stress and anxiety, and watch them grow.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job? Typically, I would say the most challenging thing about my job is having the bandwidth and time to do everything that we would like to do for our students. It has also been an adjustment working at such a large university with so many students, as my previous jobs were all in smaller offices serving much fewer students. During COVID times, I would also add that the current administration and rapidly changing immigration policies have been extremely challenging.
What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture? Working in international education has taught me just how important flexibility and open-mindedness are and that there is not always a “right” or “wrong” answer.
Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? I don’t have one specific career mentor, but I have had many professors and supervisors over the years who have helped me with my career growth, whether that meant directing me to apply to the Fulbright program or convincing me to stay in graduate school or guiding me towards professional development opportunities.
Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement. One of my greatest achievements and learning experiences was teaching English in Germany with the Fulbright program. It was a very tough year, and there were many times that I wanted to quit and go home, but I learned so much about perseverance, myself, and what I wanted both personally and professionally. After that year, I was really motivated to pursue the career path that I was interested in and make some big changes to my life.
How has COVID19 Impacted your work life? I am currently working from home for the foreseeable future.
If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable? Working from home has been both difficult and enjoyable. I do enjoy being home more and having more time and flexibility, but I miss the social aspect of work. It also has been difficult to find ways to create a separation between “work” and “home” when my workspace is now my bedroom.
What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement? I have started meditating this past year, and that has been a wonderful way to keep me balanced. I have also been trying to keep in touch with my long-distance friends more through phone calls and Zoom.
What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now as we move into the new year? The best advice I can give to global educators right now is to lean on each other! It is a very difficult time to work in this field, but being open and supporting each other can help to alleviate that. Staying in touch with my work colleagues and graduate school friends has been immensely helpful to me during this time.

Pouneh Eftekhari

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 21:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH POUNEH EFTEKHARI

International Coordinator, Strategic Partnerships and Networks

Lund University, Sweden

What is your current title, and where do you work? International Coordinator, North America at Lund University (Lund, Sweden)
How did you learn about your current position? I networked my way to my first role at Lund University in 2016 and was promoted several times until I reached my current position.
What sparked your interest in working in international education? Growing up as a minority in my hometown, I didn’t always understand why my different religion or the language I spoke at home made me the target for bullying or exclusion. I longed to be like everyone else and didn’t appreciate my uniqueness until much later in life. The intersection of my identity crisis, passion for learning/education, and interest in travel led me to a career in international education.
What was your first job in international education? I created some opportunities for myself to work with international programs/students during grad school, but only through networking and lots of compromises, could obtain a paid position in international education.
Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad. I vividly remember traveling to England when I was five years old. The most exciting part was riding on a jumbo jet and seeing Buckingham Palace. After that point, I was fortunate enough to travel internationally a few more times before embarking on my first study abroad experience in college. To date, I have studied abroad twice as an undergrad, earned my master’s degree abroad, taught English abroad, and worked abroad in several countries.
What do you enjoy the most about your job? I work as a project manager and love the process of bringing ideas to fruition. It’s exciting to work with different individuals and offices on campus and international stakeholders, like Embassies, partner universities, government agencies, etc. It is also fun to travel to different parts of the world to launch these projects and/or meet with partners to continue the management of such projects.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job? I am originally from the USA and currently work in Sweden. Learning how to be a professional in the Swedish context and having to learn the language has been a challenge for me. It is a very humbling experience to have to make a good first impression in a foreign language which you’re still struggling to learn.
Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? I feel very fortunate to have had several people throughout my career who have been integral in my professional growth and development. I have always sought out at least one person at work whom I admire and try to learn as much from them as possible. I have also reached out to individuals I didn’t know but were “known” in our field. Each and every time, these individuals have generously shared their time with me and offered their wisdom. The individuals I have been able to learn from have forever changed me and my life. Without their guidance, I wouldn’t have ever had the courage to apply for a Ph.D., ask for that promotion, or take a leap of faith and move to another country without having secured a job prior to the move.
Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement. I feel like each day that I have worked abroad is my greatest “lesson learned” because I am continuously humbled by the realization that I have a very narrow understanding of how things work.
How has COVID19 Impacted your work life? I started working from home in March and continued working from home until the end of the year (I am now on parental leave for 2021). COVID-19 made me realize how much of my job satisfaction had to do with where I worked and with who I worked. Having limited contact with colleagues and via a screen really changed things.
If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable? I have tried to keep things interesting at home by experimenting with new things for lunch/snacks and using the time I used to spend commuting to and from work for other things.
What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement? I have made an extra effort to reconnect with people I’ve lost touch with or don’t connect with as often as possible. It has also helped to make recurring video call dates with loved ones.
What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now as we move into the new year? Most people experience change as a stressful thing. They find it chaotic when the ordinary becomes unpredictable. But for me, I find change exciting. It’s an opportunity to take stock of what has been done and see how we can make it even better. So, my wish is for my fellow colleagues to use these uncertain times as an opportunity to take a step back, reevaluate what they’re doing and then make the changes needed to move forward in a more meaningful way.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Stephanie McCreary

Mon, 17 May 2021 17:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH STEPHANIE MCCREARY

Many people believe that trial and error is one of the best teachers. If you work in the field of international education, some might argue that it’s the only teacher. Unlike other professions such as medicine, law, or engineering, there is no clear-cut path or destination that will help you decide your career trajectory. Just ask Stephanie McCreary. Although she had envisioned traveling the world as a child, she had no idea that she would be able to translate that passion into a full-time job.

Stephanie shares a few valuable lessons she has learned along the way as an international educator while exploring Europe, Asia, and Africa.

1. Try new things.

At 16 years old, Stephanie had an opportunity to study abroad in Belgium through a program sponsored by the Rotary Club. Her interest in other cultures and traveling began as young as six or seven, so her parents weren’t surprised and offered their full support.

2. Don’t do what you think you should do.

Stephanie enrolled in the creative writing program at Antioch College because she loved writing and didn’t know what else to study. Although she naturally assumed that she’d become a writer, she took advantage of the college’s cooperative education program, which enabled students to alternate semesters of on-campus study with off-campus work in a domestic or international location. She opted to enroll in the Buddhist Studies Program which took her to India. At the end of the program, Stephanie worked as a volunteer ESL teacher at a private school for children in Southern India, an experience that would prove invaluable later on.

3. If it feels right, try it out.

After graduating from Antioch, Stephanie spent two years working at an adult education center. She used her time at home in Milwaukee to save money and pursue research opportunities that would allow her to return to Asia. A TESOL Certificate program in Thailand seemed like the perfect fit. Stephanie found a job teaching middle school students in northern Thailand almost immediately after completing a four-week TESOL course. When she wasn’t working, she took time to explore neighboring countries like Vietnam and Singapore. Although she loved the Thai culture, the people, and the food, she eventually took a better-paying position teaching in South Korea.

4. Go with your intuition.

Staying true to her desire to see the world, Stephanie applied for another teaching position at an English immersion school in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to arriving in Turkey, she had taken a trip to Chicago with her mom and attended a Turkish festival. Stephanie befriended a Turkish woman at the festival who connected her with a friend Stephanie would later meet in person after arriving in Istanbul. This small moment was a sign that she was on the right path. Stephanie says the energy and spirit of the city were palpable, and it was the first time since traveling abroad that she felt at home. The community of teachers and co-teachers afforded her an enriching social life and made the cultural adjustment easier.

5. Don’t be afraid to take risks.

Once Stephanie realized that IE was the path that she was destined to take, she decided to get a master’s degree from the School for International Training. The SIT program enabled her to participate in a short-term study abroad program in Senegal focused on language and social justice in the education system. She also spent six months as an intern with Barcelona Study Abroad Experience engaging with outbound students in Barcelona, Spain, and promoting study abroad programs to university students while working at the headquarters in Northampton, MA.

6. Don’t close doors when you get an opportunity.

Most recently, Stephanie was teaching abroad in Kurdistan, Iraq, for the Professional Development Institute at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. She accepted the 1-year position in October 2019. Everything was going well until the school completely shut down in February 2020 due to COVID-19. Stephanie thought she would be able to return to in-person classes within a month, so she took a trip to visit a friend in Jordan. In March, she realized that she would not be able to return to Iraq, so she booked a flight to Portugal to stay with another friend. As airports in Europe began shutting down, Stephanie ran out of options, and the only country that would allow her to enter was the USA. Stephanie returned to Wisconsin in mid-April, where she has continued teaching for PDI remotely while managing a huge time zone difference. The school has no immediate plans to open for in-person teaching until possibly Fall 2021. In the interim, Stephanie accepted a new position as an Academic Success Coordinator with Verto Education, a Portland, Oregon, based gap year program. She was hired with the intention of eventually working abroad in the South Pacific in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. However, due to COVID-19, the Fall 2020 program was coordinated to be online.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Liana Pinner

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:00:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH LIANA PINNER

I grew up mostly in western North Carolina in a family that never really traveled abroad. We didn’t do that much travel in the U.S., mainly taking family vacations to Florida or South Carolina. However, I knew as a child I wanted to travel and see more of the world. When I started high school, I studied French and became proficient in the language. My French teacher was really kind, supportive, and a bit quirky and didn’t naturally fit into where we lived, and I identified with that.

I took all four levels of French and continued studying the language when I got to the University of North Carolina at Asheville. I didn’t know going into college that I wanted to major in French – I figured I would minor in it. I was studying biology because I wanted to be a veterinarian or zoologist but decided that it was not for me, although I still love animals. I changed my major to French at the end of my first semester and added on K-12 Education. During that time, I had my first international experience. I boarded a plane for the first time to study abroad in France in the spring of my junior year at Université Catholique de l’Ouest. My main goal was to improve my language skills. I wish I would have done it sooner. I loved studying abroad, getting to know my host family, and gaining a better understanding of the local culture. It also made the world seem a lot smaller and a lot more connected.

My host family included two parents who had adult children that lived outside of the home. Their kids would come home to visit, and we would have dinner together. I also lived with another American student who was in the same program. It was great for accountability because they weren’t allowed to speak English with us. It was nice having someone to show us around town and explain the culture more in-depth. When I arrived in France, my written and verbal comprehension was better than my ability to speak. I returned from that experience having a better accent and improved French. It was great!

I graduated in December, so it wasn’t the best time to find a teaching job. Instead, I took a job working with youth and mental health. After a year, I returned to France to become an English teaching assistant for middle and high school-age kids in a very small town in France. I did that for about seven months and then went back to the United States and decided to get a master’s degree in international education. I got a job in youth development, working on internships and career development for high school students.

I didn’t get my first international education job until a year after graduate school, working for the UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism, which is where I work now as the Director of Global, Immersive and Professional Programs.

Fifty percent of my job is global. The other fifty percent is anything from managing any student experience outside of the traditional classroom to professional education programs. On the global side, I advise students on how to incorporate any type of global opportunity into their time at UNC. We have exclusive exchange partners from media and journalism and a robust visiting international scholars’ program for academics looking to gain professional development, conduct research, or take classes. I coordinate short-term programs and assist students who make independent reporting trips for capstone courses by making sure they have safety plans and are following travel regulations. I also help with coordinating domestic student travel for courses, lecture series, and professional workshops.

Since coronavirus hit, our department has been working from home. We still have students who are interested in studying abroad, but not as many. We are still communicating with the university partners and assisting our international scholars who are in the country. It’s been a lot less coordinating global activities and more about organizing budgets, looking towards the future and transitioning some of our programs to include virtual components.

For the role I’m in now, when I first got the job as a program assistant, I didn’t know it would be such a great fit for me. I was really excited about it, but I didn’t expect to be here long term because, in my mind, I pictured myself working in a study abroad office or at a provider. The reason I love my job so much now is that I do something different every day. Also, I know my students really well, which is so rewarding. I know what they are studying and what type of career paths they can go into. I enjoy being specialized in this area and knowing programs really well. I also get to travel with students and see their growth while on the trips. Students in the Hussman School are doing amazing things during their global programs, such as producing news stories, interning in the advertising industry, or creating great digital content. They impress me every day, and I feel lucky to follow their journeys.

I found this position just by checking job boards. The thing that attracted my former boss to my application is the “Global HQ” website that I created after enrolling in the Global Pro Institute. Even though I didn’t work in global ed for a while, I learned to leverage my other work experiences and translate them to the position.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Morgan Neubert

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 15:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MORGAN NEUBERT

When I was in high school, I participated in a Rotary Youth Exchange program. It was the first time I had been outside of the country other than taking tourist trips to Mexico. I spent three weeks living with a Rotary family in Paris, France, and their son came back to California and stayed with my family. My dad ran the international travel center at Cal Poly University, San Luis Obispo, so I was very aware of international travel from a young age. As part of his job, he took students on trips all over the world. I started down this path because of him. His work at a university seemed fun and unique. Universities are like mini-cities and allow you to get a sense of what the world will look like in the future.

That led me to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I studied abroad in Germany. Because I was older, I got a lot more out of the experience. I was studying language and culture. There were mostly American students in the program, but we lived in the dorms with German students. On the weekends, we got to travel and explore other parts of Europe. My undergraduate degree is in history and education, so I wrote my senior thesis on German education post-WWII. When I graduated from UCSB, I applied for the AmeriCorps VISTA Program working for Student Veterans of America in Washington D.C. This position allowed me to engage with universities all over the country, so the plan was to combine that experience with my study abroad involvement and eventually get a job in international education. Working with veterans gave me a well-rounded perspective on students and how to support people from different backgrounds and experiences. It was an excellent stepping-stone for me.

I had been applying to jobs in higher education, but I wasn't getting them, so I decided to get more international experience by volunteering in Tanzania through WorldTeach. I taught English to a class of 40 students between the ages of 14 and 20 in a small village on the Eastern Coast of the country. There was another American volunteer and two local co-teachers. That experience changed my life and made me more appreciative of everything I have. The students were so happy and excited to learn and loved having us in their village. We were followed around everywhere. They made up a song for me one morning, and whenever you asked for a volunteer, everyone raised their hand!

After I got back from Tanzania, I got a job at Stanford University working in housing. They have many international students, so even though I wasn't working directly in IE, I was able to get more experience with that population. I created a training program for our student staff and assisted the general student population with their housing needs. It was a great higher ed experience. From there, I decided to pursue a master's degree in higher and professional education at the UCL Institute of Education in London. While there, I realized the United States' university experience is different from other country's institutions. We have more programs and invest a lot more in the student experience versus strictly focusing on the academic experience. It was really interesting to talk to other international students about their academic experiences. My thesis for my master's was focused on intercultural competence development in higher education students via on-campus and study abroad programs.

After applying for what felt like a thousand jobs, I was offered a position at UCLA Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars initially as a Programs Coordinator. The director left after a few months, so I applied and was promoted to Programs Manager. It's been a great job! We serve 12,000 international students and scholars at UCLA. I manage a vast portfolio of programs and events with the goal of promoting global connections, international understanding, and cultural sensitivity. These programs range from classroom-style cultural learning programs to large-scale welcome events with over 800 people in attendance. It's been a whirlwind for international students with all the visa and travel regulations related to COVID-19, but my staff and I are working hard to still make them feel part of the UCLA community, even if they are thousands of miles away from campus!

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Gloria Kasang Bulus

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 21:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH GLORIA KASANG BULUS

Gloria Kasang Bulus trained as a Climate Reality Leader in Washington State in 2017. She lives in Kaduna, Nigeria, and directs “Bridge that Gap,” an NGO working on the climate crisis and various other humanitarian issues, furthering the education of women and children. Last summer 2020, former US Vice President Al Gore presented the Alfredo Sirkis Memorial Green Ring Award to four climate activists at the 44th Climate Reality Leadership Corps Global Training. This Training is a virtual event to train attendees with practical skills and knowledge to build an equitable and inclusive movement for climate action and climate justice. Gloria Kasang Bulus was one of these four climate activists and where I first heard her story.

We are delighted she agreed to share her story with the Global Leadership League, and we are honoured to share her inspirational story with you:

What got you into Climate Action, and how did you start?

I became very concerned and worried about the alarming rate at which climate change was impacting the world, especially in Africa. I knew there was a need for voices to be raised and people to take action. There was a need for people that can influence others to take action and lobby our elected leaders. Looking at the future and the coming generation, I realised there was a need for strong climate action, which has to take place now.

I also understood the need for a clean and healthy environment because we do not have another planet, we only have now. Therefore, it is our responsibility to protect and take care of our environment.

The impact of the climate crisis is worse on the most vulnerable groups, such as children, women, the elderly and the sick, and people living with disabilities. The impact of the climate crisis is also worse on poorer countries due to a lack of capacity for adaptation and mitigation of these crises… these reasons alone were enough for me to take climate action.

Starting out

I started taking action some years ago by visiting schools and teaching kids what climate change was all about and its impact, and how they can take climate action. I taught them using animated videos, games, etc., and also the planting of trees. I then registered a non-profit organisation in Nigeria that is focused more on environmental governance. Later, with support from other organisations, I started media roundtables with journalists to talk about the climate crises and support them in climate reporting.

I also brought together women to talk and advocate on climate action, especially with respect to energy-efficient cookstoves and climate-smart agriculture, through meetings, press briefings, focus group discussions, etc. With time I created a network called Network of Civil Society In Environment, which is comprised of different organisations and individuals working around environmental issues to support taking action collectively because together, we can have better results.

What led you on the climate action journey?

My passion for a sustainable, clean, and healthy environment led me on the climate action journey. My eagerness to save the world for the future generation and avoid the next generation asking questions about why we didn’t take action even when we knew and saw the impact of climate change is what keeps driving me on the climate journey.

Why do you think women are so key in the climate action story and combating climate change?

Climate change impacts everyone, but not equally. Climate change can have a greater impact on vulnerable groups, including women, people living with disabilities, the elderly, and the sick. Climate Change can also have a great impact on developing countries. Women commonly face higher risks and greater burdens from climate change impacts due to existing roles, responsibilities, and cultural norms they have to embrace as women.

If you agree with me, women and girls make up about 51% of the population. To meet the ambitious 1.5 °C target of the Paris agreement, it is critical that the needs, perspectives, and ideas of women are included in climate action so as to create just, effective, and sustainable solutions. Therefore, the role of women cannot be ignored if we truly want to combat climate change.

In climate action, indigenous women play a very important role because they have experienced the impacts of climate change for generations, and therefore, when it comes to environmental conservation and management, they take the lead.

Their knowledge, experience, and expertise will contribute greatly to building resilience to climate impacts. The traditional skills and knowledge that women have relating to natural resource management in areas such as innovation, waste, and energy are effective tools in climate action strategies that I assure you can bring the desired results in addressing climate change.

In building climate resilience in communities, women are very important. I can confidently say that communities strive better in resilience and capacity-building strategies when women are involved in planning. Women are more willing to adapt to environmental changes since their family lives are often more impacted than men. In terms of sharing information about community wellbeing that can involve climate action, which is important for resilience, women are good at this.

By tackling climate change from a gender perspective, women’s rights are also addressed, which means climate justice for women.

What role do you think education plays in climate change?

Education plays a vital role in bringing about behavioural change and plays an important part by teaching people how to live sustainable, eco-friendly lifestyles by becoming carbon neutral, energy-efficient, engaging in proper waste management, and reducing their own ecological footprint.

Education is essential in helping young people understand and address the impact of climate change; it encourages changes in attitudes and behaviour and helps young people adapt to climate change-related trends. In response to climate change, one can’t take away education because of the role it plays in bringing effective results.

How do you get your word across, how do you campaign for climate action?

Basically, I use more women groups and media (both traditional and social media). Media is a powerful medium to get the climate message across to targeted groups and places.

What obstacles have you come across?

Lots of people think climate terms are too scientific and complex to understand. Some people don’t believe there is climate change despite the impact that is evident. They mostly believe some of this is happening from God and can be explained or addressed in that way. Funding, too, is a big obstacle but does not limit me.

What motivates you, and what keeps you going?

My motivation comes from the fact I know that I am making some impact, and I can still make more impact. And that I am able to influence people to take action and speak about the climate crises. The messages of encouragement and commendations I receive daily keep me going, and when I see climate activists all around the world being active and taking climate action, I get motivated to do more.

What advice would you have for the readers reading this in other parts of the world, in education positions, leaders of universities, student advisors, college administrators, etc.?

The climate crisis is no respecter of persons, countries, class, or status. The only difference is some are most vulnerable than others. The responsibility for climate action is for everyone and not selected individuals or countries. We must take action now. We must advocate for a just transition to environmental sustainability. We must understand climate governance and lobby our elected leaders, and we must live eco-friendly lifestyles and continue talking about the solutions to climate change.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Noreen Lucey

Atembe Giles

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:28:15 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH ATEMBE GILES

What is your current title, and where do you work?

I'm an ESL teacher and the Program Coordinator for Children's & Cultural Programs. I work at the Gangnam International Education Center for the Gangnam District Government Office in Seoul, South Korea.

How did you learn about your current position?

I found the job listing on a popular job portal online.

What sparked your interest in working in international education?

My undergraduate degree is in International Studies (now known as "Global Studies"). I thought I would work for an international corporation, but I tried out working for major advertising and marketing firms, and it just wasn't my cup of tea. My favorite classes in college were anthropology, where I could really dig into the culture, and I knew I wanted to immerse myself in other cultures to learn and experience them more authentically. Also, when I studied abroad in France as a senior in college, my advisors really encouraged me to teach abroad. I wasn't really interested at the time, but coming from a family of educators, I realized that it could be interesting to at least try it out in an international environment, so I did.

What was your first job in international education?

My first real job was as an English guest teacher in Seoul, South Korea, via the EPIK (English Program in Korea) government program. The process isn't necessarily difficult, but it does have a number of steps: acquiring many documents and notarizing them; gathering reference letters; creating a resume; submitting a cover letter; answering essay questions; creating a sample lesson plan; getting a background check; etc. Overall the process took about nine months, from applying for my federal background check to applying and waiting for the results to landing in Korea. However, if you don't use EPIK and apply to schools directly, it can take less than three months if you already have the necessary documents for your visa.

Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

My first international experience was studying abroad in Toulouse, France, in college. I went through the SIT (School of International Training) program. There were about 10 of use from various universities in America, taking French language, history, and culture courses together at the university in Toulouse. We also had internships as part of the program, and I was able to work at a dance studio, translating promotional material and teaching dance classes (in French!). We also had many excursions and field trips: we learned about winemaking, wine pairings, and the importance of French gastronomy; we took historical tours and learned about the architecture; we also had a second homestay in rural French villages where we chose a research topic and conducted research with the locals, which we then presented (also in French).

It was an extremely eye-opening experience, where I learned many similarities, parallels, and differences between my culture as a Cameroonian-American and the French culture and their underlying social struggles as well. It also highlighted how race, nationality, and culture are viewed and handled outside of America and how much privilege our passport holds as Americans. I only wish I'd studied abroad sooner; I made ENORMOUS progress in my language ability and probably would've tried to study abroad again if I'd started earlier!

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

My work hours are from 9-4, though I stay later at certain points of the year if we have children's camp or other special projects. Our school is primarily for adult language learners, but when I was hired, they had just begun working on elementary programs. Since I have lots of elementary teaching experience, my director was very eager for me to join the team and help with the design of those programs. I teach adults from 10 AM to 1 PM, have lunch from 1:00-2:00, then depending on the day, I either have an elective with adult students from 3:00-4:00 or teach elementary students from 3:00-5:00, or I'm doing assessment tests and processing applications for elementary students from 3:00 until…I feel like I've done enough for the day. Every other month, we have a Culture Day for our adult students, and I'm in charge of developing activities and informative presentations on the theme. The themes are usually around American or Western holidays, though I try to add a more global spin to it. For example, in October, our Culture Day was about Halloween; December is about Christmas; May was about weddings, but since we have teachers from many different countries (such as the UK, Ireland, South Africa, and Kenya), we had each teacher do short presentations on weddings in their countries with Q&A discussions from the students, and activities to follow.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I like that I can work with many different age groups. I like that, for the most part, all of the students are very motivated to learn. I absolutely love my staff and co-workers and appreciate that our opinions and knowledge as educators are taken into consideration when implementing new procedures or selecting materials; it's very rare for a Korean school or educational institute to do that with its foreign staff. We all love teaching and want to help the students as well as we can, in fun and creative but meaningful ways, and we try to do that within the demands and confines of Korean culture.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Communication is not always clear or succinct, and some decisions seem illogical or more complicated than they need to be. In Korean culture, the order of power and respect is very seriously adhered to, and because of that, questions have to go all the way up all the rungs of the leadership ladder before a decision is made, then we have to wait for that decision to make it all the way back down to us teachers. It can be tedious, and there is sometimes a disconnect between us teachers, who are on the ground and directly understand the needs of our students, and the education heads at the government level who don't really see our day-to-day needs and challenges.

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

I've learned that I really value the push to be creative, unique, and outspoken that is instilled into American children. Growing up, I was very introverted but also very competitive. In America, and in my African family, trying your best in order to shine or be the best and be recognized is a good thing. It's not like that in Korea. While they value education, the motivation is different. They are taught to blend in and be one; it's almost seen as rude to "show off" how much you know or to just be a very eager student. This made it challenging in some classes where students would not raise their hands or answer questions if they were the only ones to do so. Also, the pressure to excel and succeed here, as well as the definition of success, is very different from what I was raised to believe. However, I've also learned that Americans tend to think we and our culture and ways of thinking are the center of the universe and the norm everywhere, and it's definitely not. Other cultures work just fine, and their people are thriving and enjoying themselves on ideals that are almost the opposite of American ideals. I've learned that there is more than one way to do something and to live your life.

Is there a value/principle from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?

I really like how Koreans tend to share, especially when it comes to food! When Koreans receive a gift, they tend to offer it to others around them first (if it's shareable), and they are extremely conscious of how others in a group feel or are perceiving them. It doesn't always work out well, but I appreciate the awareness—in Korean, it's called "nunchi," which is kind of like your intuition about others, and it's something I think many people could practice more. I also love the focus on skincare vs. heavy makeup—I never tended to my skin so much before moving here, but they really value good skin and also appreciate being in nature and spending time outside.

Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

At this point, I do not. However, I do keep in touch with a few supervisors from my college days, and I look to them for inspiration and as role models.

Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

As a personal achievement, it was the moment I learned that I HAVE to make the classroom fun for the students but also fun for ME. If I'm not having a good time, I know my students can't be. When I focused on this, it made lesson planning and teaching much more enjoyable, which was an asset to my students' experiences. In Korea, for English learners, one of the main challenges is that students are super self-conscious, shy, and critical about their speaking performance. It's more important to create a comfortable learning environment where they know they can speak freely and practice out loud without feeling afraid or embarrassed. Testing and assignments are important to the higher-ups, but the goal is to be able to function well in English, and sometimes you as the teacher need to make an executive decision on how your classroom and lessons will be. Other things I'm proud of - I was able to teach at a school for the deaf and blind, and it was such a fulfilling and humbling experience. The students (high schoolers) were so bright and just as eager and fun as any other student I've had. I also got to create many courses related to the arts and my culture. Korea values education but doesn't really see art, music, dance, or theatre as something that is as important as English, math, or science. They also don't have a lot of exposure to other cultures, so being able to share those things and help them connect those subjects with learning English was a great accomplishment. Finally, the International Institute of Education awarded me the Gold Prize for a video contest highlighting my life as an English teacher in Korea. It was very meaningful because it was my first year teaching, I was able to share my lessons and teaching philosophy with others, and as a Black woman, I was able to show other people who look like me that we can travel to ethnically homogenous countries and still be appreciated and make an impact on others' lives.

How has COVID19 Impacted your work life?

I'm actually on maternity leave right now, so I'm at home, not working. Before, I was working from home for a few weeks; before that, I was still commuting to school to teach online. Korea has handled this virus much better than many other countries, and there has never been a total shutdown or lockdown. Elementary schools are still meeting in person, with one-third or less of students coming in on their given days; all the higher grade levels (including university) are teaching online, either from the school or from home. The biggest impact is probably that student numbers have dropped at my school, so we have fewer classes and smaller classes. Some teachers also left because of all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic when it first began, so our staff has shrunk. Many of the programs for this year had to be canceled or postponed, so I've actually had a lot less on my plate in that regard. The biggest adjustment has just been transferring things to an online format. We do live classes, create more electronic materials, and I even hosted YouTube education segments for our elementary students as an alternative for the usual camps and culture programs we would do throughout the year. So, I've learned a lot of technical and presentation skills and have had to connect with students in new ways, such as lots of email follow-ups and actually having to schedule times to meet at least once per session versus seeing each other every day.

If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

It has been the absolute BEST! I actually only started working from home because I was pregnant, and my doctor strongly advised me to stop commuting and stay home; my school still had us coming in each day to teach virtually from our school offices. My commute was 45-60 minutes each way, so I'm very glad I no longer need to go through that!

What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement?

It's been very difficult with many places shut down. I was also pregnant for most of the year and now have a newborn to tend to, so I've been especially careful about where I go and what I'm exposed to now that I have a little one at home. The biggest things that have helped me are having schedule Zoom meetings with my family and friends, watching TV comedies, taking walks around the neighborhood, and just resting. I was feeling pressure to try and use this time to start this project and that project and basically try to monetize this time period, but that's also a very American, capitalist mindset, and it just doesn't work in my current situation. I've instead pursued hobbies that I've always wanted to do but haven't had time for, and I'm doing them just for fun, such as learning how to sew, polishing up on my French, and reading tons of new books.

Has enrollment of international students at your institution decreased?

Our center doesn't really accept international students; as a government institution, we are meant to serve the local residents of our district, so only Koreans are enrolled. As long as you are a resident of our district, you can enroll. We've had a few Japanese and Chinese students, but they were essentially Korean residents, not really international students.

Has participation in study abroad activities decreased?

It has definitely decreased. Many students enroll in our school to prepare for job certifications or to go abroad, either for school or work. The pandemic has halted that since the main nations where students go (the USA and the UK) are still seeing high cases of the virus. As an alternative to going abroad, we've offered more opportunities to speak one-on-one with a foreign teacher, but for the most part, students are just postponing their plans on their own.

How are students at your institution coping with the COVID19 restrictions?

We have moved completely online. It's good for students who had to travel long distances, or who didn't even live in our district, because they can participate now more easily. However, many of my students miss the face-to-face interactions, and since we have adult students, many of them are parents. This means they now have to watch their children during the time they would normally be taking classes, so many have had to postpone their studies in order to assist their kids with their own online learning.

What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now as we move into 2021?

Instead of thinking of COVID as a temporary problem, see it as a lifestyle change and as an opportunity to try newer, better, more creative teaching strategies. The sooner we accept that this may very well be a permanent lifestyle change, the sooner we can move forward with creating a new normal for ourselves and for our students. This time has shown us that virtual learning is TOTALLY possible and can be just as, if not more, effective as face-to-face learning. Cracks and holes in traditional education have also been exposed thanks to this epidemic, and I only hope that our government and education officials will really see the value we bring and the challenges we endure as educators and make more deliberate measures to support us—and by association, our students and their families—in the future.

Atembe Giles is an international educator, writer, and performer living in Seoul, South Korea. She has more than five years of international education experience and has lived in and traveled to more than ten countries since graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her specialties include utilizing the arts as a teaching tool and as a motivational device to encourage students to learn about the world around them while finding new ways to express themselves and excel in their language learning. She plans to continue her international education journey when she returns to the USA in 2021, either by helping international students enroll in American schools or helping American students to enroll in study abroad programs.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Adriana Smith

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 21:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH ADRIANA SMITH

I grew up in Miami surrounded by a large Spanish-speaking population, so whenever I heard someone speak the language, I got really excited and wanted to understand what they were saying. My brother and I even formed our own type of Spanish just so that we could communicate and pretend like we were bilingual. What really solidified my interest in the language was hearing a black woman speak Spanish fluently while attending a summer camp. I just remember thinking – I want to be like her. It wasn’t until high school that I had the chance to actually study the language, but I never really connected that to traveling abroad. Miami has a really diverse population of Caribbean people, so I thought that was pretty much it.

When I went to the University of Florida, I took Spanish courses. During my sophomore year, a study abroad advisor came to our class to give a presentation about a six-week summer program. My ears perked up! At that time, I had decided to declare Spanish as a dual-major because I was already pursuing criminology. The study abroad opportunity was a perfect fit because the credits from the experience would allow me to graduate on time instead of taking on another semester.

I immediately went back to my dorm to apply. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, including my mom. I called her right after I submitted the application and told her I was going to Spain that summer. All I heard was silence. While I didn’t have that initial support, I was motivated by the opportunity to see the world and gain fluency in Spanish. After getting my passport and booking the ticket, I still didn’t know what I was in for. I had never left Florida, so I had no idea what to expect.

When I first arrived, I compared Madrid to Miami, and that was a huge mistake. I dismissed an entire country and culture to fit my reality and comfort. Two days into the program, I got lost and was immediately hit with culture shock and homesickness. I thought – oh my gosh, what did I do?! I wanted to go home, but ultimately, I decided to stay, and I was so grateful that I didn’t leave. By the end of the program, I had an overwhelming appreciation for where I was and the opportunity to study abroad.

In my senior year, I applied for a master’s program and decided to study abroad again through New York University’s linguistic program. I returned to Madrid, Spain, for an entire year- reveling in the country, appreciating local people, and making connections. I traveled to other parts of Europe, and I felt like that was the first time I really got to see the world. I was much more humble and I didn’t allow my arrogance or pride to get in the way. However, the idea of having a career in IE wouldn’t hit me until ten years later.

After graduating from NYU, I took a position teaching at a middle school through Teach for America. It was one of the hardest years of my life. I was teaching math and science, which was already difficult, but there were also a lot of behavior issues with the students and pressure from the administration. Looking back now, it was a blessing in disguise because it made me tougher. On April 8, 2014, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t sacrifice my passion for money or anything else - no matter what. I call it the day of rebirth and the moment I knew that I wanted to work in international education.

I came across an internship position with GoAbroad on SECUSS-L. I applied and got a six-week internship in Colorado. Things started to align for me after that. Spending that time allowed me to really get to learn the ins and outs of an international ed provider. It was the perfect place for me. It took two years after that to get a full-time job in international ed, but I continued communicating with my contacts, and I took another internship as an education manager with Inside Study Abroad. During that time, I responded to an RFP to present a poster at the NAFSA convention in order to establish credibility and enhance my resume. While taking a lunch break from the convention, I met a woman who worked at Presbyterian College. She told me about an internship position for graduate students in the international education office. I applied for the internship and was hired, and the rest, as they say, is history! The person I met at NAFSA, left her position ten months later, so I applied for that job and became the Assistant Director of International Programs.

Adriana loves sharing her journey into IE and travel experiences as the founder and blogger at Traveprenuer. Through her platform, she has become a speaker/trainer on the topic FIRST Step 2 Resilience. She also published a book called Studying Abroad for Black Women to encourage other students and young women of color to pursue study abroad opportunities and careers in IE. Adriana also recently published a guidebook in response to COVID-19 called 5 Ways to Reset & Refocus: Your Mindset During A Major Disruption.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Becca Yount

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 00:15:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH BECCA YOUNT

Becca Yount was bit by the “IE bug” while taking German language classes, starting in middle school through high school. While in high school, she participated in an exchange program that enabled her to become a host-sister to a German student. Becca later traveled to Germany to spend two weeks with her own host family.

After graduation, Becca enrolled in Illinois State University to pursue a degree in education. The university had a strong international student presence providing the perfect environment for her to explore and learn about different cultures.

“From freshman year, I lived and worked on the international student floor. I was a live-in resource for the students. We had students from all over the world with significant populations from Brazil, China, Australia, and England. It was a fantastic opportunity and where I got my inspiration to study abroad.”

After talking to some of her fellow students, Becca decided to study abroad at the University of Limerick, one of the top-ranked universities for international students in Ireland. There, she took courses in Irish language, folklore, and music.

“Irish is complicated to learn but beautiful when spoken,” she says.

Upon returning to Illinois State, she took on a role as a Study Abroad Ambassador in the International Education office – a position she would hold for the remainder of her junior and senior year. Her primary job was to host campus presentations and setup information tables on the quad during various events.

Becca decided to go back to Europe a third time as she finished her degree. This time, she went to England and completed her student teaching requirement at a small school on the southern coast. She spent two months living with a host family and gained valuable insight and a completely different perspective on educating elementary age students.

“We were outside for a couple periods of the day, teaching students how to do boy scout type stuff in ‘forest school.’ I think it was better structured for young children. They had six terms in the year, and each term had a different theme. One of the themes was outer space, so every lesson that they taught incorporated that theme.”

Becca also appreciated the school's location, which was adjacent to a church built during the 12-1300s and a castle built during the 700-800s. She was in awe at the history and architecture but said the students were accustomed to sites and not as impressed by their surroundings.

Following a temporary stint at the Disney College Program in Orlando, and a part-time gig at a local living history museum in Naperville, IL, Becca found a home at the Chicago-based study abroad organization, IES Abroad, where she has worked for the past three years.

As the Senior Program Advisor, Becca oversees eight centers abroad in cities such as Cape Town, Dublin, Paris, and Granada. She helps students coordinate their academic trajectory and obtain travel visas, among many other things. Like other international education providers, COVID-19 has brought their activity to a standstill- with the exception of a virtual internship program.

“We had been following the spread around the world because we have programs all over the place. In China specifically, we had to stop the program before it started. I also saw things unfolding faster than many of my local friends because of our centers in Europe, but we thought we were going home for two weeks.”

When Becca realized that working remotely would be indefinite, she decided to move back home with her parents in the suburbs to avoid commuting on public transportation. Although she now enjoys working from home, she misses her colleagues and is eager to get back to in-person engagement.

“Working in IE during a pandemic is a fascinating look at what’s going on around the world. Hearing from my colleagues in other cities and listening to how they are doing and how their countries are managing is especially interesting to see. Many of my colleagues were very interested in the outcome of the US election the effects that will have on the next few months.”

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Tiera DiGiorgio

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:30:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH TIERA DIGIORGIO

What is your current title, and where do you work?

I am currently a Global Transcript Evaluator at Walden University.

How did you learn about your current position?

I found the job posting through a LinkedIn search and applied through LinkedIn.

What sparked your interest in working in international education?

I think my interest in international education originally sprouted off from my interest in languages. Studying German and Spanish in high school sparked an early interest in cultural exchange, which led me to a 2-week exchange program in Germany during high school. I loved that experience so much; it led to multiple study-abroad occasions throughout college and graduate school.

What was your first job in international education?

My first job in international education was as a Program Coordinator for Education Abroad at Boise State University. Knowing how competitive the job market could be for international education, I started preparing for my job search pretty intensively as my final semester of graduate school approached. I don’t have my original job tracking spreadsheet from that time-period anymore, but I applied for more jobs than I could remember. I remember the process being quite difficult, time-intensive, and draining. I applied for what would be my first job in IE in late December, interviewed by phone in January, had an on-campus interview in February, and received an offer sometime in March, I believe.

Tell us about your first international experience, either traveling or working abroad.

The first time I traveled abroad, I participated in a 2-week exchange program for high school students called the German American Partnership Program. A group of students studying German at my high school hosted a group of German students here in the US for two weeks, and the following summer, we went to Germany to be hosted in return. It was my first international flight, my first time being away from home for longer than a few days, and I loved it. We stayed in Berlin and Dresden for two days and then traveled to Chemnitz for our homestay, which was also used as a base for day trips to Leipzig and Weimar. We attended school and various social events with our host families. My host family was originally from Vietnam, and my host sister was dating a Swedish man at the time, so I was exposed to a really eclectic mix of cultures right off the bat. It was a very challenging trip --2 weeks is not a lot of time to adjust, but I walked away from it feeling like I hadn’t been there long enough like I wanted more!

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

A typical day at my current job starts with checking emails in the morning to see if anything urgent has come up. With emails out of the way, I move on to reviewing cases. My job relies heavily on Salesforce to review various credentials received by international applicants to the university and input relevant information so that the applicant can proceed with the rest of the admissions process. I spend most of my time reviewing international transcripts and consulting internal and external resources to determine US degree comparability. Some days are very busy, with multiple cases being submitted one after another, and others are more relaxed. I utilize any downtime that I have to review my training documents and continue learning about different educational systems around the world. I’ve only been in my position for a year, and credential evaluation is complex, so I still have a lot to learn. I also spend a lot of time consulting with my colleagues on specific policies or asking their advice about particularly challenging credential evaluations.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

My favorite thing about my job is the amount of variety in the credentials we see. I am constantly learning new things, encountering new credentials, researching, and adding to my notes. Some cases are like solving a puzzle, which I find very intellectually-stimulating. There’s always something to do or something to learn. It’s rare for anyone to be bored in this role.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

I would say the most challenging aspect is just trying to get a handle on the sheer amount of information you have to internalize in order to do the credential evaluator job effectively. There is a huge learning curve, especially when first starting out, and I remember feeling overwhelmed during my first few months. Over time, the knowledge starts to become second nature, but you are constantly adding to that knowledge, too.

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

Working in international education has opened my eyes to just how big the world really is and to how many opportunities there are to learn something new. I think, as Americans, it is really easy to get wrapped up in our own worldview. We are, to some extent, geographically and culturally isolated. It’s entirely possible to live your whole life without needing to learn a language or engage meaningfully with a culture other than our own, while for those in other countries, multilingualism and multiculturalism are daily realities. My work in international education has, I believe, helped me be more open-minded and inquisitive. It’s helped me cultivate diverse interests and points of view. And it’s helped me realize that there is so much more to the world than just my own personal daily reality.

Is there a value or principle from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?

It’s not a value or principle exactly, but I find that the German word fernweh is something that underlies most of my major life decisions. Fernweh is often translated as “wanderlust,” but the translation that resonates most with me is “the deep yearning ache to see far-flung places,” or the opposite of homesickness. I frequently feel a gaping restlessness, a lust for travel and new experiences, that is only sated when I throw myself wholeheartedly into something new and unexplored. I am always itching to broaden my horizons.

Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? How has that person influenced your career?

At the moment, no. But I do think that having a career mentor can be incredibly valuable and helpful, and I hope to have one in the future.

Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

I’m having trouble thinking of one single great achievement --I’m pretty proud of all that I’ve accomplished. Nothing really stands out as “the greatest” to me. I think what I’m most proud of overall in regards to my career is my willingness to always try new things, to remain open to new opportunities, and to take chances.

How has COVID19 Impacted your work life? Are you currently working from home or both?

We began working from home in early March and were eventually told the transition would be in place indefinitely. I am still working from home.

If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

It hasn’t been difficult for me at all. I personally love working from home --it’s what suits my personality and work style best. I have a lot of autonomy and control over how I accomplish my required tasks and can work at a pace that best suits me. It is really refreshing to be able to work peacefully without the constant distractions of a noisy office.

What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement?

To be fair, I’m both a homebody and an introvert, so I haven’t suffered as much during pandemic isolation as others might. Talking to friends or family on the phone every few weeks and with my husband daily is enough social engagement to keep me happy. I am someone that really enjoys access to nature, though, and that’s definitely been hard to come by this year. I’ve been making it a point recently to take walks outside and get some fresh air. Regular moderate exercise has also really helped me stay sane, along with sticking to some sort of daily routine.

Has enrollment of international students at your institution decreased?

Not to my knowledge. I don’t work on the enrollment side of things, so I can’t say for sure. But we are an all-online university, and I don’t think we’ve been hit quite as hard by some of the pandemic repercussions.

Has participation in study abroad activities decreased?

To my knowledge, we don’t currently have any study abroad activities.

How are students at your institution coping with the COVID19 restrictions?

As far as I know, everything has been business as usual. I don’t work with students directly, so I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think very many of the COVID19 restrictions have impacted daily student life since we were already all-online.

What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now as we move into the new year?

Ooh, this is tough. I would say to stay strong and don’t lose hope. Even though things are pretty horrible right now, the pandemic won’t last forever, and at some point, things will return to normal--or a new normal. I don’t think this year has signaled the “end” of the field or anything dire like that. Rather, I think it has shaken things up and called on everyone to adapt quickly. I think that giving ourselves grace for doing the best we can do and looking toward the future is all anyone can do right now.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Hailey Gouza

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:59:17 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH HAILEY GOUZA

What is your current title and where do you work?

Student Advisor and Marketing Coordinator at Barcelona Study Abroad Experience (SAE).

How did you learn about your current position? (Ex. Networking, Promotion, External Job Posting)

Initially, I discovered Barcelona SAE when I saw a SECUSS-L post for an International Education Internship and applied! Since then, I have moved up and had a few different roles at the company.

What sparked your interest in working in international education?

Growing up, my father was always very involved in our town's Historic Association and that sparked my initial interest in history. My first true cross-cultural experience was during an internship I had one summer during college. I worked with Somali Bantu refugees, offering job search solutions and resume building training. My interest in history and culture came together after a study abroad experience of my own, in Barcelona, Spain. I was fascinated by the intersections of history and culture and how each influenced the other in this city. After my experience, I was struck by the transformative nature of international education and realized the value of cultural learning coupled with personal growth and the coming-of-age journey it provides for college students.

What was your first job in international education? Did you have a hard time obtaining this job? How long did it take?

I started at Barcelona SAE as an International Education Intern. I graduated from college in May and it took me until February of the next year to land the position, almost 8 months. I had applied to hundreds of jobs across the US and abroad and was working on completing the Global Pro Institute. The internship with Barcelona SAE was the perfect fit for me, it provided me with a crash course in the field as well as practical job training and experience.

Tell us about your first international experience either traveling or working abroad.

My first experience traveling abroad was to Barcelona, Spain for my semester abroad. At the time, it was only my second time on a plane and first time leaving the country, first time traveling alone and my first official time being considered an “independent adult”. I was scared and nervous upon arrival and trying to remember every tip from my well-traveled grandparents. After a few weeks of adjusting and having some cultural hiccups- including buying mayonnaise thinking it was alfredo sauce- I quickly fell in love with the city and the adventure.

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

As Student Advisor and Marketing Coordinator at a small, but agile company, I wear a few different hats. My main responsibility is to advise applicants through the application process from initial interest through pre-departure. This includes form collection, data management, working with university partners, and the not-so-glamourous visa advising process. I spend a lot of my time talking to students (and parents) about their goals for the program and sharing my own experience abroad. For the marketing aspect of my position, I manage our social media channels, assist our Marketing Director in digital and print projects, and make suggestions for improvements.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I enjoy sharing my own travel stories with students and sharing in their excitement for a new experience. I love hosting pre-departure workshops, talking about culture and hearing about what students expect their study abroad experience to be like. On occasion, I get to travel to Barcelona and meet some of the students in person and hear how their experience is going. I then get to act surprised when they say it is nothing like what they expected!

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

I would say the visa advising process. Managing applications from students across the country means working with 8 different Spanish consulates, who all need slightly different documents from each student, some in Spanish and others in English. This process takes a lot of attention to detail and very strong organizational skills. Shout out to all advisors across the field who are championing this process every semester!

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

Working in International Education has greatly expanded my personal worldview. This work has helped me realize that education can be a tool used to combat racism, hate, and ignorance. Being able to understand others, empathize and, embrace differences are all skills that can result from an International Education experience. These skills make a difference in the face of injustices and empower people to advocate for others while spreading understanding.

Is there a value or principle from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?

The idea and value of a Siesta from Spanish culture is my favorite. I love the idea of taking a break when you need it without judgment. Work-life balance is so valued in Spain and something I think we need more of in the U.S.

Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? How has that person influenced your career?

A lot of my senior colleagues at Barcelona SAE have served as mentors to me. Each have their own specialties and have offered me something different as I have advanced in the company. Specifically, both Kristin Uyl and Christina Thompson have leant an ear when I have had questions or doubts. Kristin is a marketing expert and has been an absolute role model of what a strong female boss should be. Christina and I go way back and she was my study abroad advisor in college! She has mentored me through many transitions and has worked to help me understand my own privileges and grow my passion for DEI work.

How has COVID19 Impacted your work life? Are you currently working from home or both?

I am currently working remotely from home, but that has always been the nature of my position! Now, I am just working on reduced hours and, of course not traveling to visit our partner universities.

If you are working from home, has that adjustment been difficult or enjoyable?

Having always worked from home I have definitely had an advantage and it has been fun to share my work from home strategies with friends and family who are experiencing this for the first time. Specifically, at the beginning of the pandemic, my fiancé was complaining every day and thought he would miss the human interaction. Now, he is hooked on the work from home life, getting twice the work done and hoping he doesn’t ever have to go back into the office.

What type of things are you doing to balance your mental health and lack of social engagement?

Taking walks is a huge way that I have dealt with mental stress. It has been so helpful to just take a break and get some fresh air.

Has enrollment of international students at your institution decreased? What strategies will your organization use in 2021 to regain student interest?

Enrollment has decreased but we have been working on some innovative solutions both for student engagement and for professional engagement in the International Education field. For students, we launched a virtual internship program that utilizes our network of companies in Barcelona and matches students with great projects they can do from home. Barcelona SAE has also launched a “study abroad menu” for our university partners allowing them to choose a-la-carte services to bring intercultural learning into their classrooms, virtually. We arrange guest speakers, virtual tours, and intercultural leadership sessions that adapt some of our best onsite offerings to classrooms across the U.S. Finally, for our colleagues, we just launched our newest addition to our Diversity Initiative: The TODOS Sounding Board. TODOS (The Outcomes-Based Diversity Outreach Strategy) is aimed at increasing financial resources, providing inclusive academic programming, and expanding outreach and training to those in underserved populations. The Sounding Board is an invitation for colleagues in the field to discuss DEI topics, collaborate, and share resources.

How are students at your institution coping with the COVID19 restrictions? (Social distancing, virtual classes, on-campus testing, etc…)

Many of our virtual interns have reported they are attending online classes and are hoping to re-evaluate for the Spring or even Fall term. Many are patiently waiting for things to go back to “normal”.

What is the best advice you can give to other global educators right now as we move into the new year?

Remember that you are not alone, every single person in our field has been affected by this pandemic and even if it will be a while before we can all travel again, it will return eventually and the need for cultural learning will be greater than ever. It is easy to lose sight of that day-to-day but we must have sustained hope for the future. I would also say let’s keep checking in on each other and sharing resources and professional development. Reaching out to those in and outside of your network even to just say “Hi” means a lot in these times of social isolation.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds

Jessica Schüller

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 15:37:54 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH JESSICA SCHÜLLER

“I think pivoting is a big thing and you have to be aware of the fact that you’re going to have to pivot all the time,” says Jessica Schϋller, when asked how working in international education has prepared her to deal with the changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

You have to learn to be resilient, be able to pivot, and then be resourceful especially in this field because it’s so competitive and the perceived entry barrier is low.”

Pivoting is exactly what Jessica has been doing for the past 10 years. Growing up on a farm in rural Wisconsin, the idea of traveling or studying abroad wasn’t a popular education path. “Someone from my high school won a full scholarship to go to Russia and I thought that was cool and I wanted something bigger for myself as well.”

Her motivation to travel abroad was enhanced even further in her junior year after two exchange students enrolled at her school – one of whom she eventually married. Jessica had hoped to get a scholarship for a program in Spain but was accepted into a German program. She lived with a host family and was able to become fluent in German. The experience living in Germany proved to be crucial in shaping the rest of her career trajectory.

After graduating high school, Jessica enrolled in a first-year study abroad program at an American branch campus in Italy. She later transferred to the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota, where she received a bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in German studies. During that time, she spent the summers getting work experience in Germany through volunteering, interning, and teaching English.

Her fascination with migrants living in Germany inspired her to apply for the Critical Language Scholarship Program (CLS) sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. This opportunity would take her to Ankara University in Turkey for three months where she became conversational in Turkish.

Jessica returned to Germany and accepted a position in the international office at the University of Augsburg in Germany helping international students find jobs in Germany while also teaching German cultural studies. She used her personal experience with finding internships in Germany and founded the Germany Internship Program. Within three years she was able to assist ten students in obtaining summer internships, half of those from her alma mater. Three of those students are currently working in Germany or Switzerland and one of them has a Fulbright Scholarship in Austria and is planning to go to medical school in Germany.

She considered returning to the USA but was given the opportunity to get a fully-funded master’s degree in research and innovation in higher education from Tampere University and Danube University Krems. “I spent my first semester in Austria and the second semester in Finland. I was supposed to go to the USA, India, and keep traveling but the pandemic happened. I’m currently in Austria and in the process of submitting my thesis because they switched the program around so that we are completing it in the middle of the program instead of at the end. I have six months left.”

Once she obtains her master’s degree, Jessica is planning to intern with CIPES, a prominent center for higher education research in Portugal.

In addition to continuing to provide career coaching and support to internationals, she also designs, develops, and facilitates workshops on topics related to working in Germany through Germany Career Coach, which she also founded. Her passion and future doctorate degree will be focused on helping high school students from rural communities gain access to higher education and study/intern abroad programs.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds.

Meg Ramey

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 17:26:12 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MEG RAMEY

Like many professional women in higher ed, Meg Ramey had reached the pinnacle of success in the academic world. She earned a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and Literature from the University of St. Andrews, attained tenure status at Messiah University, and received a generous benefits package that included sabbatical time. However, she felt like she was not on the right path.

“When I was a professor, I had no time for anything else. I was working 70-80 hours a week and didn’t have much time for family, friends, or a life outside of my academic career.”

She recalls reading an article early in her career stating that among career professionals, female academics were one of the highest demographics to remain single, even more so than female lawyers or medical doctors. Out of the fourteen members of her department, the three women were single while all the men were married. “That was more or less my experience throughout graduate school and higher education,” she recalled. Wanting to find a better work-life balance, along with many other factors, helped Meg decide to leave her tenured position.

It was a natural transition for her to shift from academics to education abroad since during her eight years as a professor she had led students on many cross-cultural and service-learning programs spanning four continents and eighteen countries. When one of the program providers with whom she had worked—Tutku Educational Travel–offered her the position as Director of Education Abroad, she was happy to accept.

Even though she was traveling a great deal in this new role, she also had more free time than before. She joined the Board of Directors of YesLiberia, a non-profit that seeks to “empower young people in Liberia through meaningful service-learning opportunities in education, healthcare, and technology” and began volunteering with her local Harrisburg Keystone Rotary Club, which is where she met her husband.

“I promised to show him the world, and he promised to show me Pennsylvania,” she laughingly recalled, “because even though I had lived here for 10 years, I had never had much time to explore the area. In 2019, during our first year of marriage, he saw five new different countries. When COVID hit earlier this year, however, our roles reversed, and he began taking me around Pennsylvania. We’ve been trying to get outdoors as much as possible—taking walks along the Susquehanna river, going camping, and hiking along the Appalachian Trail.”

She is happy that she left academia when she did. Reactions among her colleagues were mixed when she made the decision:

“Some people felt like I blew up my career, and others would say, ‘Take me with you!’ My life is a lot more balanced now, and I am much happier. I love my husband. I love my life. And I’ll be happy if this new business venture takes off.”

Meg’s latest adventure is becoming the Founder and Executive Director of WorldKind Journeys, a teaching ministry that facilitates studying the Bible “on the ground” while journeying to historic places and into sacred spaces across the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Europe.

The business was birthed out of necessity and ingenuity in the aftermath of parting ways with her company, which suffered a reduction in staffing due to COVID-19. Part of her business development research included enrolling in the Brazen Business Institute and in Penn State-Harrisburg’s Launchbox program, which helps individuals develop their own business and organizes a pitch competition at the end. Meg won the pitch competition and received a small amount of seed money to invest in her new business.

“After that it’s been figuring out how to do graphic design, web building, marketing, and all these different pieces that were not part of my academic training.”

Along the way, Meg has had the support of other women impacted by the pandemic. She had just begun a Mentoring Circle offered by the Global Leadership League in March of this year.

“We were supposed to focus on salary negotiations, but we all just looked at each other and thought, ‘What’s there to negotiate?’ Half of us are laid off, and those who are still employed are not going to negotiate a salary because they are just thankful to still have a job. It morphed into us meeting once a month to discuss what was happening in the pandemic.”

She had also just been accepted into NAFSA’s Trainer Corps program and was placed into one trainer group with two other women:

“One still had a job, the other was furloughed during the summer, and I had just left my company, so we all had different stories. We still keep in touch periodically and hope that one day we will actually get to lead an in-person training session together.”

Starting an educational travel business amid a pandemic has had its share of highs and lows, but like most companies and individuals, Meg is focusing her efforts on what she can do as opposed to her limitations:

“The way that I’m making it work right now is that I’m doing a variety of jobs in addition to trying to build a new company. Next April and September, I am supposed to lead programs in Turkey, if there’s a vaccine by then, but I’ve also been teaching online and preaching at churches along with tutoring and editing online. Those are all the little pieces that have helped bring in money.”

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Kanette Worlds.

Lakshmi Iyer

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 19:15:19 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH LAKSHMI IYER

What makes a great leader?

This week was timely to ask myself that question. My lecturer in my “Leadership in Sustainability” course asked our class that question on Tuesday as part of my Postgraduate studies in Sustainability.

The definition of leadership I gave was “Leading from within, from the centre, with empathy, authenticity, acting swiftly and communicating clearly”, giving the examples of Jacinta Ardern and Angela Merkel.

But I could equally have given the example of my good friend and colleague, Lakshmi Iyer.

During our lecture we were reminded that the Anglo-Saxon etymological root of the words lead, leader and leadership is “laed”, which means path or road. The verb means to travel. Thus a leader was originally one who shows fellow travelers the way by walking ahead.

If anyone knows Lakshmi then she truly embodies the word, “laed”.

As we spoke for this interview, I realised that Lakshmi embodies the person, the people, the women we have watched in action during Covid-19, be it global leaders such as Jacinta Ardern, Angela Merkel or Tsai Ing-Wen, or the leaders within our organisations, the universities we work with, that have risen to the challenges of Covid-19 and have led from within.

It is said that management is about doing things right and leadership is about doing the right thing. Lakshmi tells me it is all about our behaviour and how we react to crisis, how we manage ourselves on a daily basis.

She is very honest and tells me some days it is really difficult to face into another day of working and living with Covid-19, there seems to be no end in sight, we have no control over the situation, no control over when we will get a vaccine or when borders will re-open.

The only thing we have control over, she tells me, is how we behave.

Historian Thomas Carlyle, stated, “the history of the world is but the biography of great men”. But I think we are entering into a new phase and adopting a new definition of leadership, which is that of authenticity, the notion of leadership as serving others, our clients, our employees, and the environment around us.

Covid-19 has shown us leaders who have been capable of showing compassion for their employees that were working from home, trying to home school children, care for elderly parents, adjust their entire lives around Covid, and deal with less than ideal situations. She knows many colleagues that have lost their jobs.

When I ask Lakshmi, how she is doing, she answers honestly and tells me how she has worried for her staff, has fought to keep their jobs, has worried about her colleagues, who are more than clients to her. She tells me anecdotes of colleagues who have decided to home-school children this year, rather than sit them in front of Zoom, how she knows clients who have lost family and dear friends to the virus. She is seeing the world through their eyes. This for me is the definition of a leader. Yes, a leader needs to show strength and be clear in their decisions and communicate effectively, but we can do this by also showing kindness.

Lakshmi feels we are on the cusp of a new world. In our own industry, international education, in order to survive, we have all had to adapt our way of working. Readers will recognise this need and how we are continually adjusting to an ever-evolving situation. I recognise Lakshmi’s challenge in putting both feet into this new world when part of her wants to hang on to the old or keep a connection to the old way of doing things. We are going through massive changes and Lakshmi faces these changes every day. The need of business to change, the need to protect her staff, and the need to stay ahead of the market for her clients.

But Covid has ravaged our world and it is going to take huge resilience and ability to keep up with the changes. We reflect on the surge capacity that is required and how we are still in fight mode. There has been so much uncertainty that there is no time for reflection. We are, after all, still in this time of uncertainty. We talk about having to over-engage with people, to put on the war paint each day, to face personal challenges, and a compassion for clients, colleagues, and staff can often leave you so spent at the end of the day. So often we find ourselves doubting ourselves asking if we are doing enough.

Each morning Lakshmi wakes up, these are the battles she faces and we talk about these as mountains you have to climb, every day, but if you know Lakshmi, you know that she can take on this challenge.

Resilience was a word we often used in theory pre-Covid – but since March, it has been well and truly practiced.

Lakshmi has not seen her parents since January or her brother since February. Her US visa ran out during the summer and being unable to renew that visa with her brother living in the US, prioritised for her what was truly important in her life. I think we can all relate to the pain of not being able to see our loved ones.

Lakshmi and I both come from cultures where we have strong burial traditions and we talk about the impact Covid has had on people that are not able to mourn their dead, and what legacy this is going to leave. She hopes we do not forget the people this has had such an impact on, those this has taken a toll on mentally.

We look back on how naive we both were in February and March when we both thought this would be over by the end of the year. We look to the future and what that might mean. Lakshmi remembers as a student in 2000/2001 and coming to the UK, having to show her inoculation card and a cleared TB test in order to obtain her visa. This will be the future where we will need to show proof of Covid-19 inoculation.

As we speak we come around to talking about the amazing work that is being done by people like Bill Gates. As happens with every conversation I have with Lakshmi, we come back to the positives, the Hope Index is always replenished after a chat with her and she always finds the Silver Linings.

The key thing to remember, Lakshmi reminds me, is that it can be easy to feel isolated, we can have our good days, but we can have bad days in equal measure. Her words that the only thing we have control over at the moment is how we behave ourselves is such great advice and I think that might just get us through the next few months.

Olivia Moss

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 14:37:00 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW WITH OLIVIA MOSS

Imagine leaving your job, your home, a way of life you have known for 3 years and flying with your 15-month-old daughter and husband from Australia to Ireland to start all over again. Imagine saying goodbye to your friends and colleagues in Canberra, flying home with all your possessions, and landing at Dublin Airport to begin a new job and a new life.

Now, imagine doing that all in the midst of a pandemic…

Having to travel through an empty Sydney airport. Meeting all the strict travel requirements. Having to apply for and receive exemptions to the travel restrictions. Be Covid-19 tested, be met with hazmat-suit-clad temperature testers, all before you even got on the plane… and then, once you had landed, exhausted at Dublin Airport, you then had to start a 2-week self-isolated quarantine.

Starting a new job whilst still in quarantine, not being able to see your friends and family, having to adjust to another new normal, and trying to deal with your toddler’s jetlag doesn’t sound like much fun, yet Olivia Moss, the new Director of International at the National College of Ireland, seems to be taking all this in her stride.

After all, she is no stranger to change. She made a huge leap of faith by moving from Ireland to take up her position at The Australian National University (ANU) having never been to Australia. She and her husband arrived in July to Canberra in the middle of winter with a suitcase full of summer clothes. She had her first skiing lesson in Australia, living closer to the snowfields than the beach, something she just did not imagine doing in Australia! She settled in very quickly to the Aussie way of life, making lots of friends and calling Canberra her second home after a short time.

I loved talking to her about her previous role at ANU as Senior Manager for Future Students. This role encompassed domestic and international recruitment as well as community and government engagement. A demanding yet hugely satisfying role that could vary between engagement with International Strategy, Marketing, and Recruiting, or liaising with ANU’s offices in China, Singapore, and North America and ANU’s Public Policy and Societal Impact Hub.

The Australian National University needs no introduction to readers, it is one of the leading global research universities with over 20,000 students, ranked number 1 in Australia and 31st in the world by QS, and 59th in the world and 3rd in Australia by the Times Higher Education. It was a big move to make to come back to Ireland and take up her current role at the National College of Ireland.

While the move is certainly a big change, Olivia makes the point that every institution can have the same challenges when it comes to international recruitment- it is the way they do things that differs.

Working for a large public university, high in the rankings, with so many stakeholders working together can prolong the decision-making process for example. This is necessary to include academics and administrators to ensure all the strategic goals and measurements are being met with each decision. She loved her time at ANU but can already see the differences between working for a large group of 8 Universities to a smaller private institution. Sometimes, in the decision-making process, the smaller college can be more flexible, more agile, and can make decisions more quickly. This is just one of the differences she can already see from her new role yet she understands where the value comes in working for both.

At the moment Olivia is working from home and not seeing friends and family because of current travel restrictions in Ireland. Now, instead of Zooming from Canberra, she Zooms from her home in Ireland. Her mother, who lives in Spain, arrived back in Ireland at the same time as Olivia and her family from Australia so they could all self-isolate together. Contemplating how they had to manage this just reinforces what a strange and difficult time this is for so many people.

Sadly, Olivia’s father passed away suddenly this May and it has been a tremendous year for her, personally and professionally.

When asked how did she manage it all, Olivia talks about Ruth Bader Ginsberg and an article she read about her following her recent passing.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg talked about how being a parent made her better at her career and Olivia says she can relate to that. She explains that she differentiates the time she is with her daughter and being a mother from the time she is working. She appreciates the work-life balance so much more now because she can enjoy being an adult and strategizing and creating and working with colleagues when she is at work, but when she is not working, she enjoys playing, and telling stories, and being creative in a different way with her daughter.

I looked up the Ruth Bader Ginsberg quote Olivia referred to:

“When I started law school my daughter Jane was 14 months, and I attribute my success in law school largely to Jane. I went to class about 8:30 a.m., and I came home at 4:00 p.m., that was children’s hour. It was a total break in my day, and children’s hour continued until Jane went to sleep. Then I was happy to go back to the books, so I felt each part of my life gave me respite from the other.”

Having a work-life balance is necessary. It doesn’t have to be spending time with a child, it can be your pet, your elderly neighbor, the trees in the park, or spending time with yourself.

I think one of the lessons Covid-19 has taught us all is that it is ok not to be perfect. It is ok to tell people, I can’t take that call at 6 pm this evening because I will be having dinner with my family, or having a socially distanced walk with my friend, or just sitting at home with a cup of tea by myself with my own thoughts.

I am inspired by the choices Olivia has made and the changes she has undergone this year. It has been a year of transformation for her and maybe there is a lesson in that for all of us- that we can make changes in very difficult times in our lives. We can allow time for our family and friends and ourselves and we should remind ourselves of that.

Olivia is a truly inspirational story and we at the Global Leadership League wish her every success in her new role and thank her for sharing her story!

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Noreen Lucy

Melinda Massaro Ingersoll

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 22:08:45 GMT

LIMELIGHT INTERVIEW with Melinda Massaro Ingersoll

I often wonder if working in International Education is more of a vocation and a calling than a career choice based on earning capacity and job security. I sometimes see myself as an inventor, devoting myself to developing new programs, a counsellor, speaking to students around the world on how I can help them achieve their dreams, and an advocate for social justice in trying to bring equality to global education and create opportunities for all.

I recently started working with someone who embodies this notion that International Education is a vocation and someone who probably knew she wanted to work in this field when she was a child, and despite being laid off from her job as Director of Global Programs at La Salle University during Covid, knows she will return to this field and work again with students in International Education.

My conversations with Melinda Massaro Ingersoll have been inspiring and motivational and a reminder of why I work in this field also.

I started working with Melinda as part of a project with the Global Leadership League and very soon it was evident we had a lot in common and saw the world through the same lens. Notwithstanding the fact, we had both lived in and loved Manchester and China, we had a lot to talk about.

Sometimes a career choses you and I think this was the case with Melinda.

She tells me that as a child, she was encouraged to be interested in learning about different cultures.

She was always exposed to diversity, supported by her parents who were excited for her to have many friends from different nationalities, learn about different cultures, love their food, and learn their language from a young age.

When her teen friends were hanging up posters of pop bands in their lockers at high school, she hung up a picture by a National Geographic of an Indian woman during the Holi festival and remembering this being the most beautiful thing she had seen. She wrote to the National Geographic for career advice as she wanted to be a photographer, travel the world, learn about cultures, meet people and celebrate their differences.

And the National Geographic wrote back to her advising her to focus on a college degree incorporating photography but not exclusively, and from that advice she studied a degree in journalism and sociology. She still has that letter from National Geographic by the way!

You could say that Melinda’s career in International Education was born as an Undergrad student in college. Like many of us I think, she didn’t know this was a field or an industry but when she started working with exchange and international students as an RA with the International Office at SUNY Buffalo, a new world was opened up to her, and she has lived in and loved that world since!

During Grad school she became director of the International Building and with this exposure to international students, she thought she would also like the opportunity to study abroad.

Coming from a family of 8 and with little study abroad opportunities available to her at the time, Melinda had to create her own pathway and found an internship at Manchester Metropolitan University. She paved the way to her first international experience, by securing a job at the international student accommodation office in Manchester.

This was the start of a long career engaging with students, doing assessment surveys and helping them to solve problems and find solutions to improve their international experiences.

Returning to Grad School back in the US, she started working as a TA for her Chinese sociology professor and when he asked her if she wanted to join the Chinese Studies program and have the opportunity to visit China as part of the program, she jumped on it.

And thus began her love affair with China, an experience that would lead her to bring her own students back to China four years later as part of her own study program bringing US and Chinese students together. She reminisces on her time in China, that was not without its challenges. Her stay as a teacher in Dalian Medical University was during the SARS epidemic and marred by ill health during her stay, followed by advice by her father, who then worked with the WHO, she had to leave China and come home early which disappointed her deeply. But she would return four years later...

Her time in China was also when the US invaded Iraq leading to the Iraqi War which China was against and she saw the impact of geopolitics first hand on a country’s brand, the danger of stereotypes and how the actions of our governments can damage personal relationships. She saw the need for on the ground collaboration between students from the US and China to build a better understanding of each other’s cultures and the impact that forming relationships can have on better cultural understanding.

After coming home from China, she started applying for jobs with International Offices at universities and got a job with Skidmore College at Residential Life. But it was a move to Philadelphia where she started working with La Salle University that would lead to her dream job. She started doing programming and working in an activities centre and slowly started building her connections with the International Office collaborating on different activities and programs and she knew this is where she wanted to be. She had been continually applying for jobs at International Offices but when a colleague at La Salle was leaving his job in the International Office and encouraged her to apply, she took the opportunity.

She didn’t have the international experience but after successfully getting the job, her new boss told her afterwards that you can always teach someone the skills but you can’t teach them the personality. She was she was told the perfect fit!

What impresses me most from my conversation with Melinda is how she has continuously returned to her ethics and ethos and what led her to international education since putting up that photo of the Indian lady during Holi in high school.

Whilst working as an international education coordinator in her new role at LaSalle, she also started teaching a Chinese history courses and brought students back to her beloved China each year. She closed the circle on the Dalian experience by returning four years later and met many of the colleagues and friends she had to say good bye abruptly to during SARS.

She loved bringing students to China and showing them the China beyond what they knew from mainstream media, beyond Beijing and Shanghai, travelling south, meeting minorities, getting off the tourist trail and was always very excited for her US students when they saw a different China and understood the diversity, cultures, history and anthropology of that country.

She did the same for her students by bringing them to India, pulling back the curtain from the usual tourist spots and studying and meeting people discussing social stratification, the caste system, arranged marriages and helping students correlate this back to US, for example with the issue of racism.

She tells me she felt very honoured to be able to bring students on this journey, to see them face the challenges of culture shock, studying ethnic minorities, social injustice issues, human trafficking in Nepal, social stratification but importantly that correlation back to US society and the US system.

Her goal through it all was working with history, travel and social justice issues – through this she wanted students to get an understanding of where US culture lies and the challenges in the US. Being able to show that the US was not perfect either in terms of challenges, in terms of poverty and social injustice.

I am made very aware of how Melinda’s programs were probably ahead of their time when we see the social justice uprisings in the US recently.

She has seen the impact of these study programs. Students on their return from China and India formed lasting relationships, looked beyond poverty and cultural challenges to create lasting connections. Students felt more empowered to understand connections better, they reached out to the Chinese and Indian community in Philadelphia when they came back, promoting cultural understanding and a more inclusive community…

And surely this is at the very core of all of our work as Global Educators...

For her, the ethos of international education is to give students that nudge and bravery to step out of their comfort zone. She has seen her role as a guide for students, to be able to encourage them, to give them the opportunity, to square the circle for them, to provide them with such unique experiences, as they gain so much out from these experiences.

So now, having been laid off from her job, her work which was her true passion, I ask her how Covid-19 has impacted her life and does she see a return to her career in international education someday?

She is currently volunteering with several organisations as she still wants to be part of global education, she wants to return to this career, does not want to feel disconnected and therefore is doing her best to return to the work she loves.

She sees the role of communities such as the Global Leadership League as being very important now that people in our industry are being laid off, furloughed, or are under pressure financially, or have been through difficult times, trying to homeschool children, care for relatives and are under significant pressure in their personal and work lives.

With Covid-19 and the impact it has had on international education, she and so many of our community have lost all the passion and excitement, that came with their jobs. There is a loss now where there was so much passion before.

We ask ourselves, had we put too much commercial value into International Education and is that why we have lost so much so quickly? Was there so much tied up in international education commercially that it was the first to go at so many institutions.

Melinda sees international education as a service to students and there were huge personal losses as a result of layoffs. Students, both incoming and outgoing were cut off from opportunities, personal connections were lost, and so many stories were behind these job losses

People such as Melinda have made such an impact to Global Education, their connections run deeper than the job and the university … and this is why she knows she will return to this field

What advice does she give to fellow colleagues and readers that have lost their jobs, are being furloughed and are experiencing stress and challenges due to Covid 19?

If you can wait this out, for people lucky enough to find another job, do other things on the side, and when we are able to, she knows there will be a chance to return to this work. It is very important to stay connected, volunteering with organisations such as NAFSA, Forum on Education Abroad and the League. It is important to stay connected, feel connected and stick it out.

She is currently completing her MBA, has been caring for her family and has been busy with side projects. Some days it is difficult to overcome with uncertainty when so much stability is gone from her life and so many of our readers will relate to this.

We are all in this at some level and we have all been affected at some level and she believes it is good to remind ourselves of this and that we are not alone. It is comforting but also very difficult when so many of our colleagues are going through tough financial times.

So many are struggling.

She sees the positives of being able to spend so much extra time with her daughter. She also realises she is now out of her comfort zone, something she so often told her students they needed to do. Her father often told her, the best path in life to go down is the least unknown path.

She is now on that path so is taking her own and her father’s advice.

She says to stay positive, stay connected and use this time to be ready for when we have the chance to come together again and do that work we love as global educators

I have been inspired by my conversation with Melinda. I would encourage every reader that has been affected by Covid 19 to reach out and connect with people in similar situations. There are huge challenges but it is important to feel connected, you are not alone.

- Interview by Global Leadership League member and volunteer, Noreen Lucy

Christie Johnson

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 22:12:06 GMT

What was your dream job as a kid and why?

If it changed, what led to that decision?I was rather fixated for on becoming a dentist. I came to realize as I grew older that I didn’t actually want to spend my waking hours looking in the mouths of strangers. When I entered college, I planned to teach high school German. Prior to graduation, my fiancé (now husband) got a job in a different state that would have required different certification, so I decided to focus first on finding a job to pay the bills. As luck would have it, I discovered an opportunity in the field of education abroad, and have not looked back since.

Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your current career choice.
I grew up as the child of career diplomats, so I didn’t actually live in the U.S. until high school. I was born in Colombia, and lived in Burma, Hong Kong and Austria. I spent my pivotal childhood and adolescent years in Vienna, where I attended an international school, which was comprised of students from around the world. This exposure to a multitude of cultures engrained in me a deep desire to foster intercultural understanding, as I greatly enjoyed living among and learning from people whose heritages and cultural norms are so different from my own. This environment produced its own culture of open-mindedness and appreciation of differences that it has been my life’s goal to facilitate that same opportunity for future generations.

What was your first job in international education?
I learned about my first job in through a Washington Post print ad. Just a few months out of college with a degree in German and Spanish, there wasn’t a clear career path for me. I applied for an position at the College Consortium for International Studies (CCIS). The idea of working to facilitate educational experiences abroad piqued my interest. Fortunately, I was afforded the opportunity to work at CCIS by two people who took a chance on a recent graduate, and it is perhaps the single most pivotal experience of my professional career. I quickly fell in love with the work and the people within the field, and my professional trajectory has evolved entirely due to that first opportunity.

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.
Oh, if only there was a ‘typical’ day! It depends on the time of year and world events! Much of my time is spent working with the API University Relations team. I also get to meet with new API staff across divisions to provide the historical context of our work and to provide new professionals with an overview of international education in the U.S. I also communicate regularly with U.S. university partners, answering questions ranging from program-specific details to emergency management. My responsibilities also include planning site visits and serving on the API Crisis Management Team. I am responsible for ensuring that our partners are fully informed of our response to any crisis that occurs. Finally, I work with our Advisory Board to discuss current policies and future initiatives, which allows us to gather external feedback to ensure that we continue to employ best practices.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?
My job allows me to work with the most incredible people. My responsibilities are broad enough that I have the fortune of working closely with both API domestic and on-site staff, and I could not ask for a better work family. I enjoy working with new professionals in our field, as I love seeing them grow. As I age further away from the college student demographic, it’s also informative for me to learn from the younger staff just what drives the current generation. I also am afforded the opportunity to interact regularly with U.S. institutional partners across the entire country. I enjoy visiting campuses all across the U.S., and it is fascinating to me to see just how different each campus culture is, and how a student’s background and institutional choice informs their awareness of and feelings about study abroad.

If I had to name my favorite part of my job, it is the chance to work with our students, both prior to and following their term abroad. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing how international education has impacted the student, their family, and their community, and the fact that my work may have played a tiny role in their journey is profoundly moving.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
I am intrinsically a people-pleaser, which makes it challenging when I can’t make everyone happy. When it comes to managing staff, I try to ensure that each individual feels supported and valued, and that I am advocating for their best interests. However, there are few circumstances in life that allow for every person involved to be 100% thrilled with the outcome; given how much I care for those I supervise, I always struggle with decisions that may lead to somebody being disappointed. Similarly, I want each of our students to view their time abroad as absolutely perfect; however, there will always be students who don’t love every moment of our programs, almost always due to circumstances beyond our control. At the end of the day, I have to be comfortable knowing that I’ve done everything I can to make the majority of people happy, and I remind myself that out of disappointment comes personal growth.

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?
I can say with some confidence that the vast majority of Americans have not traveled outside of the U.S. It appears from my personal experiences with people who live elsewhere and with people who have never left, that Americans tend to be less apt to explore different cultures and tend to be less comfortable traveling to places where they do not speak the language nor understand local customs. I also think that we, as a culture, may not fully appreciate the privileges and conveniences we have come to expect. If it’s all you’ve ever known, then It’s hard to appreciate that it is not a given that you will have the right to vote or the right to protest peacefully, or guaranteed public education, etc. In terms of conveniences, so many in the U.S. take for granted things like running water, air conditioning, cell phone service, etc. I think this lack of awareness plays a role in intercultural misunderstandings on a micro level, and factor into the isolationist or anti-immigrant narrative that seems prevalent today.

On a positive note, I have traveled widely and spent almost half of my life living in other countries, and I can also say that Americans do tend to be among the friendliest in the world. I appreciate the American ethos that service to others is important and critical to the success of the community. Volunteering is something that is commonplace. It’s also common for those with lesser means to donate to causes important to them, which is something that I have heard from other countries is “inherently American”, and I love that!

Is there a value or principal from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?
While I was immeasurably fortunate to grow up traveling as much as I did, one byproduct of this lifestyle was that I rarely saw my extended family. In my experiences with other cultures, family is paramount and time spent with relatives is valued above all else. I have seen this across cultures, across continents, and I absolutely wanted to provide this kind of experience for my own children. As such, we have remained in the same area for the last 18 years, in large part because we want our son and our daughter to grow up near their extended family, as we so appreciate the importance of fostering strong, intergenerational relationships with our family members, who themselves bring their own varied cultural and personal lenses to every interaction.

On a different note, as an American, I’ve heard time and again the old adage, “never discuss religion or politics at the dinner table.” This is completely contrary to what I have witnessed in many other cultures. While I do generally tend to shy away from conflict, I also firmly believe that the political polarization and divisive discourse that seems to be so prevalent in the United States today could have been mitigated if we were willing to have open and honest conversations with those who may not agree with us on important issues. I try to encourage open dialogue with my children on topics that could be construed as delicate, as I hope they will learn to seek out opinions different than their own to foster better understanding, and hopefully this will allow them to explore new ideas and formulate their own values based on what they learn from others.

Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? How has that person influenced your career growth?
I have been blessed to work with the four women who founded API 22 years ago, all of whom have served as personal and professional mentors. Each one has taught me how to balance work and family life, and have truly led by example. They inspire me on a daily basis, and have proven that women can successfully pursue their passion and can succeed in a landscape often dominated by men, while managing to retain a supportive and welcoming work environment. The four “founding mamas” of API have always encouraged me and all of my colleagues to lead with compassion, to advocate for myself and for those I manage, to walk with confidence and trust that making the ethical decision will always lead to greater fulfillment and professional success, and that every voice matters when making decisions.

Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.
My proudest professional accomplishment is a direct result of a personal circumstance. Specifically, I have been blessed to raise a son who falls on the autism spectrum. I have learned more from him, and from being his parent, than I could ever have imagined. In my role as his parent, I researched autism day in and day out so that I could understand and support him better. I also wanted to advocate for awareness of the reality of autism. As autism diagnoses have increased in the U.S., it was only a matter of time before we started to receive questions about how to support those on the spectrum should they wish to study abroad. I have been able to work with our on-site staff as they prepare to host our students abroad, and I have also been fortunate to serve as a resource in the field for those who are hoping to send their students on the spectrum to study abroad. In 2015, I had the honor of presenting at the Forum on International Education Conference with a panel of likeminded individuals, all of whom wished to increase access to international education for those with disabilities or special needs. This opportunity was without question a highlight of my professional career, and I am beyond grateful to have been able to share what I’ve learned to hopefully advocate for greater participation in education abroad for those on the autism spectrum.

In my own research and personal experience, I discovered a lot of parallels between neuro-typical students in the throes of culture shock and those on the autism spectrum. I wrote an article on this topic that also provides advice on how to support students on the spectrum abroad, which can be found here.

What’s one piece of advice that you would give your younger self in high school or college as it relates to your career?
I would reassure my younger self to have faith that things will work out, even if the path seems obscured or unclear. Virtually nobody I know is doing exactly what they thought they’d be doing when they were 16, and I am personally much more fulfilled than I ever imagined, in spite of my career being dramatically different than anticipated.

Secondly, I would remind myself that the number one thing that led to my own professional opportunities is the development of professional and personal relationships with individuals in the field, or within organizations that support my field of interest. My transition to API was facilitated due to a personal connection with somebody who developed study abroad websites, who was able to introduce me to management at API. My subsequent successes at API have stemmed in large part from the relationships I have developed with colleagues, both domestically and abroad. In a field as insular as education abroad, it’s all but guaranteed that your path will cross with others repeatedly, and you can never underestimate the value of a solid relationship. I often think of the international education field as more of a large family, as it seems that we’re all separated by no more than a few degrees… and we all ultimately just want the best for others. It’s incredibly rewarding to work in such a supportive environment, and I would not be where I am today were it not for the friendships I have developed with people across the country and across the world.

Ailsa Lamont

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 22:02:36 GMT

What is your interest in tackling climate change?

I first became aware of climate change when I studied as an exchange student in Germany at the age of 16. It was this international education experience that first led my awareness of climate change. My native Scotland was far behind Germany when it came to recycling policies and environmental awareness. This awareness, instilled in me a constant awareness in my career and personal life.

What is your interest in tackling climate change and how do we address this in international education?
I first became aware of climate change when I studied as an exchange student in Germany at the age of 16. It was this international education experience that first led my awareness of climate change. My native Scotland was far behind Germany when it came to recycling policies and environmental awareness. This awareness, instilled in me a constant awareness in my career and personal life.

I worked with Rob McDonald who researched the carbon footprint of international education and I became painfully aware of my own carbon footprint and that of my colleagues as our jobs necessitated getting on planes on a weekly basis. During my tenure at CQUniversity , I was managing the international office of a multi campus university and separated by huge distances. The only option was taking regular flights for meetings.

For 16 years, I worked in international education within Australian universities. For the last three or four years, I looked at social innovation and at the student experience to make that more meaningful and tangible. She was working on how to give students an experience that was more impactful environmentally and socially. It was at this stage that these paths converged and the awareness I developed in Germany all those years ago, was now being met with an understanding of how we contributed to climate change in the international education industry.

How did you start and how did you grow Pomegranate?
I spent three months researching climate change, and the more I learned, the more I knew there was no turning back. I ran my first workshop and confesses it was horrible. In the workshop, I focused too much on the problems and not on the solutions. Following this, I thought I had made a terrible mistake. However, that night, I had a dream that the waters were rising around me and I was shouting at everyone through a megaphone that we needed to wake up and do something to tackle climate change. If that wasn’t a sign to keep going, the next morning I received an email from the Al Gore Foundation inviting me to attend their next Climate Reality Project training in Pittsburgh, USA.

Was this the turning point for you and your resolution to continue with the topic of climate change and running your own business?
The Al Gore training was a great resource and provided me with great support. The training is all about amplifying peoples impact and spreading the message, but also how to spread the message. I learned how to deal with media, got plugged into a wonderful network of people and tapped into resources that enables me to professionalise more. The network is collaborative and just what a one woman business needs starting out.

Has the message been getting through and how do we reconcile climate change in our industry where we travel so much and promote international travel amongst students?
I explained that it is certainly an ethical dilemma. We need to start with ourselves, start understanding where our emissions are coming from and how we can counteract that. Yes, we need to reduce our travels and become aware of what is necessary and what is not. I personally uses the company 15 Trees whenever I have to fly for work to offset my carbon footprint from flying. It is estimated that we need to plant one tree for every hour that we spend flying.

The message is spreading. I am now part of an informal network including environmental and climate change advocates around the globe. I gave a presentation at EAIE this past September with likeminded people on the topic of the greening of comprehensive internationalisation . We explored what strategies and techniques international educators can employ to aid the ‘greening’ of internationalisation? The session looked at the six pillars of comprehensive internationalisation through a 'green lens', offering practical things educators can do to respond to climate change, declining biodiversity and habitat destruction. I delivered a poster session on “How the international education sector can take action on climate change”.

I also participate in CANIE - Climate Action Network for International Educators, a grassroots initiative formed by a diverse group of people working in international education who see the need for action to reduce our sector's greenhouse gas emissions and the opportunity to use climate action as a vehicle to improve the student experience. Our aim is to shine a spotlight on the issues, and to provide training and resources to help individuals to take action and drive change within their institutions and organisations.

There are lots of ways universities can address climate change, and the message is finally getting through that they now need to. Time Higher Education has introduced a new impact ranking on a university’s performance on sustainability goals. If it is not the carrot, then will it need to be the stick to wake up universities to the need for climate change response?

Do you ever feel you are facing an insurmountable task or that the problem is just too huge for a small number of people to solve?
I feel that there is an opportunity for everyone. Individually, we can all make changes and that is why education is critical. I have held workshops where students have entered the room knowing nothing about climate change or not caring much about what they can do. After the workshop, they are enthusiastic and keen to make a change. It is not that difficult to get people on board.

Collectively and within our sector, there is an opportunity. We can really think about travel, what is necessary and how we look at designing programs with more of an environmental impact. How we recruit, using online rather than printed marketing materials, calling on conference providers to be more environmentally friendly. What banks do we use on campus and how ethical are they with their investments, channel the students towards the more ethical banks and the other banks will start noticing. These are just a small number of obvious changes we can make. But, if we collectively make these changes, we can have an impact.

Some of the statistics are depressing, and you do need to demonstrate how serious the situation is but without focusing overly on the doom and gloom. You also need to give people hope. Al Gore calls this the hope budget. If people do not have hope, they can become paralytic to change. People feel good when they are making a change, even if that change starts with one small thing every day. We do not all need to be climate scientists, we just need to understand what small changes we can make, and build these into bigger changes .

You might worry that what you do won’t count for much, but collective action mounts up and can help tip the scales. Even more importantly, taking individual action gives you the satisfaction of knowing that you are making a difference and contributes to building a broader consensus in society around the need for change.

Fabiola Estrada Valtierra

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 21:02:45 GMT

What was your dream job as a kid and why? If it changed, what led to that decision?

When I was a kid, I never gave too much though to what I wanted to be when I grew up. I recall always feeling inclined to discover the world since a very young age. When I was eight years old, I remember saving for the longest time to buy myself a globe. I had never even been on an airplane and only knew a handful of people that had, but I loved to fantasize about all the different places I would go when I was older.

Alanna Dick

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 21:14:45 GMT

  Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your

  current career choice.

  I was born in Wellington, New Zealand so my first

  international experience was when I was six months

  old and my family moved to Maine, USA.

  Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your

  current career choice.

  I was born in Wellington, New Zealand so my first

  international experience was when I was six months

  old and my family moved to Maine, USA.

  Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your

  current career choice.

  I was born in Wellington, New Zealand so my first

  international experience was when I was six months

  old and my family moved to Maine, USA.

Tell us about your first int'l experience and how that influenced your current career choice.

I was born in Wellington, New Zealand so my first international experience was when I was six months old and my family moved to Maine. My mom, from US, met my Kiwi father on a backpacking trip in Europe. Traveling was in my blood from the beginning and we returned to New Zealand as a family about every four years when I was younger so my brother and I could have a relationship with our New Zealand family. READ MORE

Isle Damkoehler

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 19:39:19 GMT

INTERVIEW WITH AN EXPERT

What is your current title and where do you work?

I’m currently the Senior Manager, University Relations & Campus Outreach at Boston University Study Abroad where I’m responsible for marketing and recruitment activities on-campus and with non-BU partners, and manage the Study Abroad Ambassador program. I am also a co-chair of the Boston Area Study Abroad Association (BASAA).

What was your dream job as a kid and why? If it changed, what led to that decision?

As an adolescent I was enchanted by the idea of becoming a hairstylist. I loved the idea of helping people and making them feel more confident. When I discovered I was no good at styling my own hair, let alone others’ hair, I decided to let that dream go. Luckily, I still get to help folks by working in education abroad.

What was your first international experience? How did it influence your current career choice.

I lived vicariously through my mother's work travels. The gifts she brought home were fascinating; a huipil from Oaxaca, a bowl from Ghana and candies from all over the world. I remember a puzzle from Thailand that enthralled me with an alphabet I’d never seen before. It was no surprise that I caught the travel bug. My study abroad experiences ultimately led to my career in international education.

What was your first job in international education? Did you have a hard time obtaining this job?

My first job in international education was at Spanish Studies Abroad as a Program Assistant. I started at the organization as an unpaid marketing intern while doing my Masters in International Education at SIT Graduate Institute, and it just goes to show that networking is everything!

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

No day or week is the same. I’m constantly interacting with students on campus, department administrators, and partner institutions. Between planning events, social media marketing, managing the Study Abroad Ambassador program, and working on strategic outreach, the role is dynamic and always keeps me on my toes.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

I love that I get to see students in the best phases of the study abroad experience: before they have decided to study abroad and when they have returned, either as a Study Abroad Ambassador or an excited returnee. It’s so exciting to see how much they’ve grown and changed when they come back.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

The most challenging aspect of my role is realizing you can only do so much. The Marketing & Outreach team at BU Study Abroad has so many ideas, but we are a team of three. The scope and budget sometimes get in the way of achieving everything we want to.

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

I’ve learned that having an open mind and a willingness to learn can lead to immense growth. I’ve had the opportunity to work with different people from all across the globe, and am grateful for those experiences and how they’ve shaped my life, both personally and professionally.

Is there a value or principal from another culture that you have embraced & applied to your life?

While on a short-term program to Turkey, I felt incredibly welcomed by the locals. Whether it was our host families or vendors at the local bazaar, everyone genuinely wanted to welcome us into their lives and culture. I’ve tried to apply that in my own life by being more welcoming and inclusive to others.

Do you have a career mentor? How has that person influenced your career growth?

I’ve been lucky to have had several supervisors and mentors who have helped, in both small and large ways. As a co-chair for the Boston Area Study Abroad Association, I’ve also had a sounding board of peers who are supportive and a great resource to workshop ideas and hear about others’ career trajectories.

What piece of advice would you give your younger self, as it relates to your career?

Take every opportunity to learn! Although my career path has been mostly linear, it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. I took unpaid internships, low paying jobs and volunteer leadership roles because I knew they were a great way to network and learn. Each professional experience has had a positive impact on where I am today.

What type of hobbies or activities help you balance your work/life experience?

I’m working on my sixth year of what I call ‘Positivity in a Jar’. Each day I take a post-it note, write the date, and jot down something positive that happened that day. I fold it up and put it in a jar, and on New Year’s Eve, I open all the notes of positivity and am reminded of how lucky I am. It’s a nice way to remain positive when the day-to-day is sometimes stressful and overwhelming.

KRISTIN BEAVERS

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 16:31:10 GMT

INTERVIEW WITH AN EXPERT

KRISTIN BEAVERS
Director, Center for Global Education, Chapman University

What is your current title, and where do you work?Director of the Center for Global Education at Chapman University

What was your dream job as a kid, and why? If it changed, what led to that decision?
I wanted to become an Artistic Roller Skating Coach. I was involved with competitive artistic roller skating for 18 years and saw how physically challenging and financially unstable; it is for a coach…and no benefits. So, that dream was short-lived.

Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your current career choice.
Oh, wow. Flashback! It was a trip I took in my late teens to France with my mother and sister - a week of skiing at Alpes d’huez and a week touring Paris and Bordeaux. We were complete rookies at international travel…and learned a lot from that trip. We took a plane, train, bus and cab to get to our room on the mountain, in several feet of snow. Mom traveled with two sets of skis and I had two bags. Such newbies! Also, I thought my French was much better than it really was at the time. I quickly learned when we had to call the rental car company and they spoke no English. Despite our ineptitude and rookie mistakes, I loved this trip and started planning more international travel. I just needed to be better prepared.

What was your first job in international education? Did you have a hard time obtaining this job? How long did it take? How did you learn about it? (Ex. Job posting, networking, promotion)
My first job in international education was as the coordinator of internships at Chapman. I was hired as the domestic internship coordinator for the (then) Career Development Center and began developing the university’s first summer international internship after a program provider approached our business school. After we implemented this first program in 2003, international internships really took off and we started several more. In 2007, I moved to Center for Global Education at Chapman to manage international internships and exchange programs.

I was very targeted in my job search. I had enjoyed my college experience thoroughly and wanted to work in higher education. My husband and I were living in Oregon at the time and wanted to move back to California, so I began seeking out positions with all of the local universities via their employment websites. I interviewed at two universities and was hired by Chapman after nine months or so.

Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.
My day involves working on operational and human resources aspects of the reorganization: budgets, job descriptions, etc. There isn't as much student interaction as there is during the academic semesters. There is still plenty of prepping for the upcoming fall semester that is part of our daily lives: orientation, incoming exchange students, overhauling of marketing materials, just to name a few.

What do you enjoy the most about your job?
Strategic planning, fiscal management and staff development.

What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
Staffing levels -- how to work on the things we want to accomplish with the limited staffing we have. I'm hopeful that our reorganization will streamline processes and allow us to take on larger projects.

What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?
Empathy and self-awareness. Understanding perspectives and perceptions, non-verbals, space and time differences, has given me more patience with the unknown or "different."

Is there a value or principle from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?
The French work/life balance culture which emphasizes separating personal and work life responsibilities.

Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? How has that person influenced your career growth?
I don't really have a mentor, presently. However, I have a friend who is a great resource and support person. I've gone to her for advice on many topics and she's been a wealth of information and understanding.

Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.
Making our center through QUIP midpoint reporting was huge for me and a great learning experience.

What’s one piece of advice that you would give your younger self in high school or college as it relates to your career?Be open to whatever might come along. You don’t have to have it all figured out when you when you apply to college. I was a non-traditional student and graduated with my BA at 33. Even if I could, I wouldn’t change my path as I was much wiser and clear on my direction at that age.

What type of hobbies or activities help you balance your work/life experience?
Vegetable gardening and cooking. I can never find enough time for these!

LEAH LIPKA

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 04:31:30 GMT

LEAH LIPKA
North American Language and Cultural Assistant, Spanish Ministry of Education

Questions

1. What is your current title and where do you work?

I am a North American Language and Cultural Assistant for the Spanish Ministry of Education. I teach in a public bilingual high school and instruct course in subjects ranging from English, Technology, Art, Social Studies and Physical Education. This position is through the Spanish government and here in Spain it is called an Auxiliar de Conversacion. This is an assistantship in conjunction with my Master’s Degree in International Education through the Universidad de Alcala-Instituto Franklin.

2. What was your dream job as a kid and why?

Growing up when people asked me what I wanted to be, it would cause my a lot of stress and anxiety. For a long time, I didn’t know and I thought I had to impress people or make them comfortable by having a canned answer. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to be happy, well traveled, do good for the world and go on big adventures. Now, I have found ways to do all these things and work at the same time.

3. Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your career choice.

When I was 2 my parents lived in Australia for a year, although I don’t remember it I grew up hearing stories and knew the world was accessible and the importance of international exchange. When I was 12, my parents moved again but this time to Israel for 5 months. I learned a little Hebrew swam on an Israeli swim team and immersed myself in a new culture.. This was my first real taste of life abroad and kicked off a serious case wanderlust.

4. What was your first job in international education?

I became an ESL teacher in Daegu South Korea as a way to combine my love of working with children and interacting with new cultures. It was an excellent way to work, travel and meet people from all over. The job was fairly simple to land I used Dave’s ESL Cafe (Eslcafe.com) and worked with a recruiter. The process of obtaining the visa, packing up my life, selling my car and gaining the courage to board the plane was not! The requirements are generally a Bachelor’s Degree in any subject and often (but not always) a TEFL Certificate. No Korean language skills necessary although it certainly helps to be able to read, and easier thank you think to learn.

5. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

I start school at 9:15 am an generally work until 2 or 3. I have a bit of a commute on the train where I enjoy coffee and doing reading for my Master’s program. When I am teaching English, I take small groups out of the classroom for speaking activities, I prepare review activities, I try to use games and role play as often as possible. I have prepared presentation on Alaska , major holidays and life in the United States. I work with kids in Physical Education. I also tutor private lessons. Friday evenings I attend classes for Master’s.

6. What do you enjoy most about your job?

I love the chance to really get to know a culture. Working abroad is a great way to really make local connections, sink deeper into the place you are, and not just learn about a place but experience its systems, daily life and nuance. I love getting a chance to speak about my culture with the kids help open their eyes to new parts of the world and ways of life different than their own. I have them do the same for me. I also love the coffee the food and the warm, relaxed Spanish culture.

7. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

It can be frustrating to be working in a school system that you don’t really understand. As a language assistant I am learning where and how I fit in and managing different teacher's expectations of me. I am new to this country, dusting off my language skills and learning a lot for the first time. I can feel like an outsider or that I missed the memo on something. It is all a part of the learning experience.

8. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

Particularly in Spain, I will find myself in a rush for no reason. I get frustrated that things take so long, restaurant service can be slower than what we are used to the US. But then I remember how hard I worked to get here and that the point is to enjoy it.When I can remember that I’m not really in a rush to get anywhere, I’II take a deep breathe and relax and enjoy the experience. I’m trying to match Spain’s pace and slow down and be in the moment.

9. Is there a value or principal from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?

Korea is collective culture and whatever you have you share with the people around you.I remember some school children having a heated fight but still sharing their snacks with everyone around them. In Spain, I was extended an invitation to move in with someone during my first tutoring session with the family. People are mostly good and kind and a little trust can go a long way. I have tried to adopt this welcoming, open and empathetic attitude in my daily life.

10. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth?

I met Marsha in a running club in South Korea. She ran workshops for expats preparing to return home. She helped us reflect on our experience, process new skills, create a vision for what we wanted moving forward and an action plan for how to go for it. We have kept in touch, she often offers me little bits of wisdom. I am currently teaching in Spain and she is teaching in Budapest and we plan to meet up somewhere in Europe soon.

11. Describe a moment in your career that you consider your greatest achievement.

In South Korea, I was given the task of teaching the book Number The Stars by Lois Lowry to a group of teenagers. They had never heard of the Holocaust. I felt pretty intimidated to take on such a large subject in a different language no less and I really had my work cut out for me. I was proud of the way I handled the topic, opening their eyes to past injustices and sparking thoughtful conversations about important social justice issues.

12. What’s one piece of advice that you would give your younger self in high school or college as it relates to your career?

Relax. Take a deep breathe. Follow your dreams and the things that excite you and don’t give any worry to the judgement of others. Live your life in a way that makes you happy, not a way that is easy to explain. There is plenty of value in travel, adventure and widening your perspective.

13. What type of hobbies or activities help you balance your work/life experience?

I love to swim, do yoga, run in races, write and read. Maintaining my hobbies is so important to me. It gives me time to reflect and process and when I am abroad it is a great way for me immerse and also to stay connected to my identity from home. My biggest piece of advice for someone moving abroad is to join a club doing something you love in your new country, it is a great way to connect and break out of the expat bubble while exploring your unique interests.

Check out Leah's guest blog on Lessons Abroad to get her insight on teaching in Korea here.

WANAYRAN ANGERER

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 04:26:40 GMT

INTERVIEW WITH AN EXPERT

WANAYRAN ANGERERCEO
Wanny Angerer in Moving Cultures

It is not every day I have the opportunity to speak with someone like Wanayran Angerer, world traveller, international woman’s rights advocate, singer and cultural promoter. I had been looking forward to finally speaking with the singer and artisan, affectionately known as Wanny for what seemed like an age. Her journey which started in Honduras has thus far led her to the USA, Austria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Colombia, India, Panama and Thailand and her involvement in various projects and life experience over the past thirty years would give us plenty to talk about.

Wanny is involved in a number of social development and advocacy projects including the use of music and arts as a means of developing self-esteem in children, women and the elderly.
She was born in Honduras, into a diverse community that traces its ethnicity from Spanish, Native Honduran, and African. It was in Honduras that Wanny would work as a hosting co-ordinator for AFS Honduras, while simultaneously launching her singing career. During this time she was a founder of the first organization to promote female arts in Honduras, called Women in Arts (Mujeres en las Artes), which is still alive and active after 20 years.

She is also a very active member of cultural and development programs and organizations in her home country and host countries of Zimbabwe, India, Colombia and Panama. These include AFS intercultural Programs, Women in Arts Honduras, Women in Culture in South Africa, SHARE (Showing How the Arts Rejuvenate and Enlighten project) in Zimbabwe, Fundacion Formemos, Fundacion niños de los Andes, Fundacion Hogar Nueva Granada (Colombia),“Sanando Cantando Boleros”, Make a Wish Panama and InterNations Panama

On to Kenya, where her initiatives are bundled under the heading of “Moving Cultures – Unity in Diversity” and there she is connected to a number of active projects and initiatives in the social and arts sector. She is also a supporter of the Magoso School in Kibera and gives music-therapy lessons at Faraja Cancer Support Trust for women who have survived cancer. In the NEST home she works with women who were victims of domestic violence, and the Kariobangi Women Promotional Training Institute is where she works with women to produce clothing. Her own design of Latin American ponchos in African fabrics is called“Ponchos Wanayran”.

Along with all of this, she regularly sings at concerts and events and is a renowned Jazz Singer ….

Thus, you can imagine my predicament of not knowing where to start in my conversation with Wanny, and was relieved when she started our conversation for us, with a simple, “Noreen, let’s just talk”

Let’s talk.

Wanny very kindly agreed to speak with the Global Leadership League, for what I thought would be an interview about her life, her projects and her work with women in the countries she has lived in. What I did not expect is how much her current work resonates with every woman, not regionally specific, and what we as members of the League can all learn from her experiences and insights.

Talking is the starting point of Wanny’s work with women and in her groups, the first thing women learn is how to find their voices. Conversations must be honest and it starts very simply.

How does she achieve this?

Wanny uses body language, music and art to encourage this conversation. It is all towards the same goal of helping the women she works with to first gain confidence and find their individual power, then later on, finding how they can apply that power. Wanny explains it is not enough to learn confidence, we also need to learn how to use this confidence, to stand out of the ground.

It can start very simply with basic affirmations about ourselves. Start at the foundations she tells me.

Listen to your voice. It will sound different in every situation. Do we know our voice and how it connects with our bodies? Are we aware of the sounds our voice makes? Whatever is on your mind will come through your voice and also through your body language. Know your body. Listen to your voice.

Your mind might say one thing but your body will say another.

She tells me she will often start with a group of women by asking them to say to themselves, I AM.

By listening to their voices.

By loving themselves through saying I LOVE YOU, and after loving themselves, say, I AM POWERFUL. It is only after doing these things that we are empowered to love ourselves, to be powerful, to have the capacity to give and when we have the capacity to give, we can then receive. This is universal and something we have in common with women everywhere, be it in Kenya, India or Panama.

Wanny starts working with women very slowly. It might be they start to ground their feet, raise their arms and physically reach for things they cannot imagine and to remember those words of affirmation. To look at themselves in the mirror and start loving themselves.

Music and the Arts

Wanny’s style of work is through language, and also through music and the Arts. After all, music, arts and entrepreneurship are universal languages. She provides a safe circle for women in her workshops to tell their stories through language and also through song and music. Women talk about their personal and work lives and do not separate them.

Why would we want to separate them? This makes perfect sense to me but we are all guilty of not recognising these two are inseparable.

After listening to Wanny and how she works with women through her various singing, musical and entrepreneurship projects, I started asking myself what was so different to the women she worked with in Africa and other places, and that of League members reading this in the USA, Australia, Ireland, Peru, or anywhere else in the world?

There is no difference.

We can all be victims of not using our true voices, or connecting with our inner selves. We may all have issues that need to be discussed and situations that we may not even know about. No matter what society we live in, women’s backgrounds can be similar, they have come from different families, core values, upbringing, but what it means to be a family and raise a child, gender issues, equality issues, etc is similar. What expectations has Social Media set for women in different societies for example? Women can face the same challenges set by themselves. Challenges to be perfect, to look perfect, to have the perfect public persona, to manage it all, to have it all, to lean in, to keep all the glass balls in the air. We can be bombarded by social media, and the message that we should be perfect, and yes, to manage and to have it all.

These issues are always present, but as Wanny points out, it is how we cope with these issues. These issues are not going anywhere so we need to learn how to cope. And this is also part of what Wanny teaches women through her various projects.

The Mentor and the Mentee:

Wanny and I spoke about the League and how we can support each other as women facing similar challenges. One way to bring women together is through mentoring and becoming a Role Model for other women. Wanny points out there must be trust between the mentor and the mentee and their relationship is two way. We must relate to each other. The mentor must firstly listen to themselves, and be able to cope themselves, then they can listen and support.

We need to look within, be honest with each other and be our authentic selves. Being fake and living a false image will only last for a certain period of time before the truth will shine through, Wanny believes, and it is easier to be consistent than live under a false image.

Again I thought how do we apply this to the League as members supporting each other? We are all guilty of portraying a perfect work-life balance when the situation is far from that. Where else can we support one another and be honest with each other, in a perfectly safe circle than in the League?

How did Wanny create and build so many projects and have such a wonderful insight into helping women, empowering them and giving them the confidence and teaching them how to use this confidence to build their lives, businesses and mentor other women?

It all evolved throughout the journey of her life and her family roots in Honduras.

Wanny comes from a family of educators which created an environment of sharing. Music, ballet, the Arts, were always present in her childhood, but her parents instilled in her and her siblings the importance of always sharing their knowledge. If their neighbours didn’t have these opportunities, they were told to pass on and teach whatever they had learned with them. As a child she didn’t realise she had opportunities other people didn’t have but as she grew older she understood this, and realised what an asset they had, and the importance of sharing this asset.

Wanny and her siblings were educated in the shape of a triangle:

Education

Community Service

Spirituality

And at the centre of this was always Art.

Her grandparents and parents taught her family the value of education, community service, spirituality and art and now she teaches her own children these values. Again I am reminded of our community of women in the League and how we can help each other.

I am curious about what she advises people who are not “into” music and the arts? Are these people doomed?!

She explains to me it’s not about the music or arts. It so happens these are her media of communication … essentially it is about the method of communication. It doesn’t matter how you do it, the important piece is that you need to find your voice. And learn how to listen to that voice, and be able to tell the authentic from the false voice.

Intrigued I ask her what she thinks of the imposter syndrome and faking it until you make it?

When you are confident, you don’t need to fake it, you can still be yourself, be creative, accept that it might take a long process but being true to yourself on the journey will be worth it.

But what about the expectations to be perfect and overachieve and overdeliver and manage it all?

She talks about many of these expectations as being set by ourselves. We should consider not looking at everyone else and trying to change their expectations of us. Know your limitations, everyone has limitations, and know your expertise. Once you know this, then this is when you start to mature and become more available to yourself and to other people

Times have changed, she tells me. She works with intergenerational groups, a lot of adult women in their 50’s 60’s and 70’s who lived in a different world than women in their 20’s for example. She tells me the value of these intergenerational groups for young women to see how different it was for older women at a time when gender issues were very different. Exchange of knowledge and bringing women from different cultures and nationalities and ages promotes learning and support.

Again, I am reminded of the power of the League for women from different backgrounds and how we can learn from each other through honest conversations.

Wanny has a lot of advice based on her unique life story and her propensity to share with her community.

Listening to her explain why she had moved country every five years to follow her husband’s work, made me think that not everyone would have done so much for the community they were living in. She has taken advantage of everything that has been put in front of her, be it in Thailand, India or Africa. She did so because she believes there is a bigger purpose. She doesn’t take things for granted. She seems to have put herself together in the way she asks women in her groups to do so and has very strong foundations herself.

Again I am reminded of the opportunities, we, as women working in International Education have to support other women and students that do not have the opportunities we do. Some of us are in influential positions, parts of large organisations, or have grass roots levels in many countries, and I ask myself, how can we learn from Wanny’s experience and utilise our connections to empower more women and girls?

I have written just a fraction of what Wanny and I discussed and there is so much more she has to say. Wanny will be guest speaker at the Forum on Education Abroad in Colorado next March. I urge anyone thinking of attending, to go, if not just to meet this amazing woman and hear her speak … and sing if you are lucky enough!

DR. LINDA C. ANGELL, PH.D.

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 04:35:07 GMT

Do you play basketball at lunchtime?

From the UK to the UAE and a few places in between, Linda Angell spoke to me about how adapting to change, opening to opportunities and accepting support from family and community, led her on a wonderful life adventure and to her current role as the first Director of International Exchange Programs at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

Linda’s academic beginnings started with a love of sociology. A self-support student, she funded college by working part time and graduated with a Bachelor in Sociology, minoring in Women’s Studies. Next step was finding a career to pay back college loans and this led her to applying for an MBA. Having worked since she was 14, she had the work experience required to enrol on an MBA program, and it was this move that led her to her first international experience. As part of her new studies, she completed an internship in London on Baker Street with Horwath and Horwath, a fascinating company that offered consultancy on infrastructural and tourism projects.

Going to an English speaking country was not supposed to be the culture shock that is was! It was here that Linda discovered what a “brolly” and “lorry” were, along with swapping pounds for stones and relearning to use a washing machines and television. Speaking to Linda, it was clear that an early love for international travel started here and following a few months backpacking around Europe, and the seed was planted for living another life outside of the US. Linda’s experience in the UK reminds me of how a semester abroad can really change a young person’s direction in life. Coming from a family that had never travelled much before, that internship gave Linda an opportunity and an insight that we as international education administrators can also give students.

After completing the MBA, she spent several years in Research and Development and also received her real estate brokers licence… just as the market crashed.

Readers, we should be grateful we didn’t lose her to Real Estate; that crash was International Education’s gain in the long term.

Linda’s story resonates with how being flexible to change and being willing to take the risk and make sacrifices can ultimately lead you to where you want to be. It was during her time working with ’rocket scientists from MIT’ in her R & D role that she decided to go back to academia and obtain her doctoral degree. After a long process selecting her subject area, she was offered entry into the Operations Management doctoral program at Boston University… under a full scholarship covering the first two years. After that funding ran out, Linda was again faced with the challenge of securing additional funds and it was this “opportunity” that led her to Germany via the Fulbright Scholarship programme.

Being open to change but also seeing opportunities in challenging times, Linda and her husband moved to Muenster where she studied new recycling legislation recently introduced in Germany, i.e. the German Packaging Ordinance. Remember the ‘Green Dot’ recycling logo that appeared on all European packaging in the 1990’s? That was Linda focus, specifically the impact this all had on the development of green manufacturing practices.

Not only was she completing her PhD research in Germany, Linda and her husband also became parents with the birth of their first daughter during their time there. Their German housemates played a critical role as ‘family’ and support network during that period, allowing Linda to continue her research activities.

After a two-year stint in Germany, it was back to Boston for Linda, where she began writing up her dissertation research results. Her husband had just taken a one-year contract to work in the IT industry when Linda was offered her first academic role at Penn State University, an eight hour drive away. During the next six months, Linda’s mother was instrumental in providing child care support as Linda juggled motherhood, writing up her research to complete her PhD, coming to grips with her first teaching job, and buying a house.

Whilst finishing her dissertation and interviewing across the US for a permanent faculty role, Linda became pregnant again. After defending her dissertation proposal while six months pregnant with her first child, she ended up defending her final thesis when her younger daughter was just six months old. Linda described those years as the crazy years.

The next step in her career progression was completely unexpected. A conversation, a chance meeting, at an academic conference in Barcelona led Linda on to her next adventure. A colleague that was teaching in New Zealand invited her to apply for a position that had opened up. She did not apply for that position but promised herself that if another position opened up she would be ready to take the leap. And when another opportunity did open up a couple of years later, she was ready to commit herself and she and her family packed up their US lives and moved to New Zealand where she took up a faculty position with Victoria University of Wellington

After a couple of years at Vic, Linda became restless again, and felt the need for an opportunity to ‘practice what she preached’. She had the opportunity to leave academia to implement a business excellence program at a quasi-governmental R&D organization, and eventually ended up at the Ministry of Social Development, having come full-circle back to her passion for Sociology. She spent several years there, working for both the welfare arm of the Ministry, and as a manager within the Center for Social Research and Evaluation..

At about the time that her daughters were about to start secondary school, it was time for the next adventure. Again, her next international move came about after meeting a friend and academic colleague at a party, discussing career opportunities available at American University of Sharjah (AUS) in the United Arab Emirates. Although Linda and her family had never even considered the Middle East as a possibility, they had learned that a willingness to take chances often leads to exciting opportunities for personal and professional development.

The importance of remaining flexible and open to change, and to always being open to options, seems to resonate throughout Linda’s career. Her family moved lock, stock, and barrel once again, relocating half way around the world from New Zealand to UAE. The family moved into a villa on the AUS campus, her daughters began attending a British High School, and Linda began her new role back in academia, on the faculty within the School of Business Administration

With 250 families living on campus, all expatriates, the tight-knit AUS campus community really take care of each other. Linda was once again reminded of the importance of support networks when this campus community served as a lifeline for herself and her family throughout a serious year-long illness in 2010, the same year that she took up her dream job as founding Director for the International Exchange Office at AUS. Through this period, Linda learned to open herself fully to the nourishing healing powers inherent in this outpouring of community support.

The theme of support from family, friends and community is a common thread throughout Linda’s story and reminds us that there is a support network around us, even if this network comes to us in non-traditional ways. Linda’s husband has been constant in his support throughout their 30-year marriage, and they have worked together as a team from Germany, to Boston, to Pennsylvania, to New Zealand and now the UAE. Her mother ensured that Linda could achieve her goal of teaching at Penn State, and her community in the UAE supported her throughout her illness and became like family shortly after moving to a new, foreign country.

We work in a very rewarding and privileged field. Our work in international education can contribute to peace and understanding by bringing students from different cultures together in a setting they would never otherwise experience. We help people experience study abroad or internships abroad, we open up the world to so many students. We have the opportunity to experience other cultures, to see ourselves and our own cultures through other lenses. We can travel, we can explore, but we can also be part of a community Our work is challenging, yes, but by supporting each other, we can overcome those challenges.

Linda described another important network that developed during her time at Victoria University. After reading an article about the powerful impact that female social interaction has on improving well-being by increasing oxytocin hormone levels in women, she and her female colleagues set up a ‘Voxies’ Club (i.e. V for Victoria University; Oxies for Oxytocin), and regularly met-up outside work and family to share ideas and provide additional support.

The ‘Voxies’ tradition continued upon her arrival at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE, and remains active to this day.

I can imagine all the readers smiling at this!

Another interesting story Linda told me highlights the importance of ‘Voxies’ support networks. During her time at Penn State, one of her male colleagues – one of the 27 males in her department of 30 - asked her how she could possibly know what was going on around the office when she didn’t join the guys to play basketball at lunch. He went on to explain that this was where he learned about everything that was going on with his colleagues and the university more generally. A very telling comment, revealing how women can so easily be excluded from networks that promote new ideas and opportunities. The exclusion is not necessarily intentional, nor is it part of a conspiracy. Her male colleagues simply had developed a very effective, but exclusive, networking group by way of their daily basketball games Linda was not privy to the information that came out of those informal meet-ups because she was too busy and wrapped up in just trying to stay on top of everything as a young mother and new teacher.

Likely all of us have experience with these ‘basketball at lunch’ clubs that we cannot be part of. We are not partaking in these informal gatherings as we try to stay on top of everything and keep all those glass balls in the air. But what kind of important conversations are we missing out on? Can we replace the basketball at lunch with the Voxies?

After speaking to Linda, the main lesson that I have learned is that we can always find and connect with a support network. Networks may not always be husbands and mothers, families or communities – in fact, you may find the support you need right here in the League. Find the women you think can help you and that are having these conversations. And let’s not forget to share the insights we gain from those conversations.

Linda’s story is a wonderful adventure with unexpected plot twists, made possible by a willingness to accept and embrace challenges and change, by being open to opportunities and by welcoming support.

ABBY FALIK

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 04:38:59 GMT

What does your company do and why did you found it?

Global Citizen Year (GCY) is on a mission to make it normal for kids to take a year between high school and college. Our model offers leadership training for students from diverse backgrounds alongside deep, long-term immersion (10 months long) in either Senegal, Brazil, Ecuador, or India. I founded GCY in 2010 to try create systemic change in our education system and make this bridge year an integrated part of how we think about a pathway to college.

2. What's the biggest challenge you've faced as a founder and director?

Balancing my vision, ambition and aspiration with the reality of how hard it is to build something from scratch. I have learned to embrace the mantra of going slow to go fast, to grow deliberately from a strong foundation. If you are a big thinker, reality is just never fast enough!

3. What is your proudest moment? Shining minute?

I was very proud to see Tufts University take this model on as their own. I had lunch with the Provost years ago and he decided to launch a 1 + 4 model. Students do 1 year with GCY and then 4 with Tufts. It's the sign of a school that is ahead of its time. They have created incentives and pathways to help more kids see this as the greatest advantage they could have in the world.

4. Any particular mentor you had who you'd like to give a nod to?

Wendy Kopp, the Founder of Teach for America. Now she leads Teach for All, which is modeling the Teach for America model in 40 countries around the world. She has been a consistent source of support and guidance, clear-eyed feedback, warmth, and encouragement when I need it. She helps me keep my eye on the bigger picture. She has been honest and vulnerable about the early challenges of Teach for America. How it took a decade for it to get traction. This has given me patience and comfort.

5. Any advice to rising female leaders in this field?

Think big. Think without constraints.

Biography:

Abigail Falik is the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year, and an award-winning social entrepreneur. Falik is driven by the conviction that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. Prior to founding Global Citizen Year, Falik applied her entrepreneurial instincts to innovative educational initiatives in the U.S. and around the world. She was an early team member at College Track, an organization focused on ensuring college success for low-income students, as well as a strategic advisor to Room to Read, an organization that helps build literacy skills in Africa and Asia. During her tenure at NetAid (later acquired by Mercy Corps), she designed and launched a flagship initiative to engage U.S. high school students in the fight to end global poverty. A recognized expert on social innovation and the changing landscape of education, Falik has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The Washington Post and The New York Times. In 2016, Fast Company named her one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business, and for her achievements as a social entrepreneur, she has been recognized as an Ashoka Fellow, a MindTrust Fellow and a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur. She currently serves on the advisory boards of World Learning, Teach for All and the Harvard Business School. She received a B.A. in international relations and an M.A. in international comparative education from Stanford University. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School.

MERI PRICE

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 04:37:10 GMT

What is your current title and where do you work?

As an International Exchange Specialist at the Smithsonian, I work in the Office of International Relations, which is a central unit serving all 19 Smithsonian museums, 9 Research Centers and the National Zoo. We support Smithsonian-wide international activity, and in my role I facilitate international exchanges, acting as a point of contact for D.C.-based embassies, the State Department and other international organizations.

2. What was your dream job as a kid and why? If it changed, what led to that decision?

I kind of loved being a student when I was a kid. Right out of college, I spent two years searching for the right professional fit, but more than anything, I felt like I wanted to be back in school or traveling! I eventually obtained a TEFL certificate and went back into a classroom to teach English abroad in Chile and Spain, followed by graduate school. I’ve worked in an educational/international setting ever since, on a career path that I didn’t realize existed when I was a kid!

3. Tell us about your first international experience and how that influenced your current career choice.

The first time I left the U.S. was to participate in a two-week high school exchange program when I was 16. I lived with a Spanish family in Alicante, Spain—and the following semester my family hosted the Spanish exchange student who I had lived with. Spanish was one of my favorite subjects in school, and having the opportunity to immerse myself in the language was transformative. Language study had always been fun—and the immersion experience allowed me to apply what I had learned in a practical way. Although I didn’t realize it then, my love for languages and culture, and my appreciation for international exchanges would eventually lead me down my career path.

4. What was your first job in international education?

The first step I took toward a career in international education was to become an English teacher in Chile. At the time, I saw it as a step away from the “real world” for some adventurous travel, but it ultimately led me to my current career. On returning to the U.S., I pursued a graduate degree in International Education at the University of Maryland and obtained a graduate assistantship in the International Student and Scholars office to support my studies. I’ve been working in the field ever since!

5. Describe a typical day/week at the office at your current job.

The Smithsonian is a place of constant activity and excitement- and working in a central office, we are at a crossroads for all kinds of activity. Typically, I am either supporting international scholars, or coordinating/attending visits for international delegations. As an example, I work with the Department of State, International Visitor Leadership program (IVLP), and just yesterday they sent a group of Russian language preservation specialists to meet with representatives from the Smithsonian’s “Recovering Voices” program to explore efforts to preserve and document disappearing languages. I act as something of a matchmaker for 50-100 groups of international visitors annually, connecting them with Smithsonian colleagues and resources. Later that afternoon, I supported a colleague with a panel discussion on Cultural Heritage Preservation, which included various U.S. ambassadors discussing their experiences with facilitating preservation efforts in other countries. All to say that every week offers something new and exciting!

6. What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Who doesn’t love the Smithsonian?! I love that I get to work at such a unique organization that wears so many different hats- and in my role I have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world and learn so much about the sciences, humanities and more.

7. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

Working for a large and diverse organization with many moving parts, it can sometimes be difficult to navigate through various bureaucracies, especially since part of my role involves working with immigration policy. After all the red tape, it is always worthwhile to see successful international initiatives happen!

8. What has working in international education taught you about yourself and your own culture?

Some helpful attributes for working in the field of international education include patience and empathy. Every time I work with international visitors coming to the U.S., I remind myself how it can be both exhilarating and exhausting to navigate through a new environment. Kindness from strangers can go a long way in a foreign country, and I try to recognize and integrate this into my work.

International travel and dialogue with foreign visitors to the U.S. also enables me to reflect on American culture and values. There are many things we share in common with other cultures, and many ways that we are different. I find that an attitude of openness and willingness to learn can only make us better global citizens.

9. Is there a value or principal from another culture that you have embraced and applied to your own life?

Somewhere along the line, I went from being obsessively punctual to always running a few minutes behind schedule. It may have been the years I spent in the Spanish-speaking world, where sense of time is different than in the U.S. But I like to believe that it’s accompanied by a more relaxed attitude about life in general. In some areas of the world, relationships and work-life balance are more important than deadlines. I’ve tried to integrate this mindset in a way that works with my current lifestyle.

10. Do you have a career mentor or someone that you consult with about career growth? How has that person influenced your career growth?

I have been lucky to meet a few great friends, who are also career women who I look up to! One friend who is a few years ahead on her career path always seems to have the right guidance to give when I reach any hurdles. It’s also been extremely helpful to have professional networks like the Global Leadership League to create communities of like-minded professionals, and mentoring circles with action-oriented activities. Career growth is made easier by having a framework, resources and a community to guide the process.

11. Describe and experience that you consider your greatest failure. How did you bounce back from that?

My most difficult career experience was when I changed from one employer to another to do the exact same job. After a few years of developing my professional expertise under one employer, I was very confident in my ability to do the job. I did not anticipate the difficulty of doing the same job for a new supervisor, in a very different office culture. I stayed less than a year at the new job, and struggled the whole time. The important takeaway from that experience is that the people you work with are just as important as the job you have, and it’s helpful to ask about this during the interview process.

12. What’s one piece of advice that you would give your younger self in high school or college as it relates to your career?

Stop worrying so much, and start enjoying the ride more! Each academic and career step will eventually flow into the next opportunity—It is so worthwhile to take time to live in the present.

13. What type of hobbies or activities help you balance your work/life experience?

While I love my job, I also spend the majority of my week in an office and interacting over phone or email. Some things that help me balance that include regular travel (day trips, major international vacations and anything in between)- I am fueled by adventure. I also love the outdoors, and make sure to get outside regularly- exploring the many wonderful hiking trails around the DC area, jogging, or just enjoying a sunny day.

PAAIGE K. TURNER, PH.D.

Global Leadership League ADMIN — Sat, 13 Jul 2019 04:42:10 GMT

PAAIGE K. TURNER, PH.D.
Associate Dean and Professor, School of Communications at Webster University

Questions

1. What was your dream job as a kid and why?

I wanted to be a dancer who traveled the world and I also wanted to be a scientist who would figure things out. As a scholar who studies the body in the workplace and consults on international education I have blended all of those into what I do today.

2. What has been your leadership path?

My path has been both average (a mathematical fact) and “not” normal (a socially

constructed expectation). Average in that most women do not take a “normal” career path where they move through high school, college, entry position, management position and then c-level.

My first pass at college ended 8-weeks into the Fall semester of my sophomore year when I decided that I really didn’t know what was going on in my classes. I dropped out and went to a secretarial school where I learned the “new” word processing technology, shorthand, and filing. After working as a secretary for 4 years I returned to earn my BS in Rhetoric, Marketing and Real Estate Finance and then my MS and PhD in Organizational Communication. As an assistant professor I volunteered for service opportunities that gave me a breadth of experience across the university including student affairs, human resources, finance, curriculum, technology and housing. After five years as an associate professor, the Vice President of Academic Affairs’ office created a position and invited me to apply. I was repeatedly warned not to take the position, since I was not a full professor, had not served as a department chair nor had I worked as an associate dean or dean. While all of these were true, the experiences and knowledge I gained as an Associate Vice President allowed me to understand the pressure points and opportunities that are part of a university. During this time, the Vice President asked me what I wanted to do next and I said, “Seems like international is going to be important” and I became the institution’s first Senior International Officer. I asked everyone and anyone, “Who do you read in international education, what organizations do you belong to, what are you worried or excited about?” I attended NAFSA, AIEA and ICCI. I quickly became involved in initiatives where I learned about internationalization while sharing my background in higher education and organizational communication. Using my planning and facilitation skills, I established a globalization taskforce at my institution, implemented the AIEA’s Senior Adviser Program, became a co-facilitator at the Institute for Curriculum and Campus Internationalization, and was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru International Education Administrators Award for India. After four years, I returned to faculty status to complete research projects on women in the workplace which allowed me to move to Webster University as a Professor and Associate Dean. As Associate Dean, I have used the knowledge I gained about university-level processes to work on college/school level issues such as assessment, course scheduling and advising across our domestic and international campuses. As women, we tend to make decisions or judge success against a normal or expected career path. The problem is that normal is defined according to what is possible for those who are in power….and today that is an unlikely trajectory for anyone. How many people can you name whose career path looks “normal?” Instead, I have always asked myself, “What can I learn from the opportunity in front of me?” and “How would I recover if it didn’t work out?”

3. What skills do you use most often in your leadership role(s)?

My academic area is organizational communication which means I have developed skills for identifying the meanings people hold and the processes by which they create or challenge those meanings. For example when working with higher education institutions on internationalization I work to identify what internationalization means (e.g., more international students, increased mobility, more international publications) and what processes are in place that support or undermine that meaning (e.g., international student services, transferable scholarships, international travel fund for faculty). I will then work to either shift the meaning or align the processes with the desired meaning. I also talk with and listen to every individual or group I can so that I know what matters to them. This allows me to put together what may appear to be divergent or unknown goals in a way that benefits multiple groups. For example, a conversation in a parking garage with an English professor, a meeting with institutional technology, a walk through of a building with a department chair, and lunch with a learning center director led to the development of a budget-neutral, retrofit for an award winning innovative classroom. Finally, I look for alternative venues to use my skills. I have excellent meeting facilitation and planning skills and have taken these into my academic research, administration, and service. While I may not be an expert in the subject area, my skills are often in high demand so I get to learn something new and provide a valuable resource.

4. What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership today? What will be the biggest challenge for the generation of women behind you?

There are two, entwined challenges that women will continue to face. First is the imposter syndrome and the second is the belief that women no longer face challenges in the workplace. The imposter syndrome is when you worry that someone is going to ask you an answerable question and discover that you are an imposter who doesn’t really belong. Overwhelmingly, women undervalue their contributions, self-depreciate or attribute their success to luck. One small act that can help change that meaning is how you respond when thanked for your work. Do not reply, “No problem” or “It wasn’t a big deal” because in that moment you diminish your contribution. Instead answer, “Thank you for noticing,” “I’m glad I could be of help,” or ‘You’d do the same for me.” In the US the latter plays off our cultural expectation that help should be reciprocated and opens a space to ask the individual to contribute to a future project. At the same time, women ARE imposters in the workplace but are increasingly being told that the struggle is over. Setting aside the pay differences, the workplace is still designed around the male body. In classrooms, my pregnant body could not fit into the desk. The workday presumes that there is someone at home taking care of the children, parents, laundry, vacation planning, or other non-work activities. Assertive, masculine communication is the preferred form of professional communication, yet women are sanctioned for using it. Professional consultants tell us to ask for opportunities and promotions, yet when women do so they are criticized for being too ambitious. Women must move past feeling like an imposter while simultaneously recognizing that the workplace defines them as one….all while being told that the fight is over, yet feeling that it really isn’t. Now, imagine these same challenges as we work across international borders and expectations. How do I, as a professional, value intercultural differences while working in a context whose very structure and expectations may challenge the idea of a woman as a professional? This is going to take some effort.

5. You’ve written quite a bit on women’s issues in the workforce. In your opinion, what is the most important message, or advice for current and aspiring female leaders in international higher education?

At the individual level, when someone compliments your work thank them and ask them to send you and your boss an email to document your contributions. I personally keep all of these in a drawer that I open and re-read on days when I feel overwhelmed. It reminds me that I have done it before and I, likely, can do it again. I also strongly recommend that women maintain a personal inventory of their skills, knowledge and activities to counter the imposter syndrome and to share when opportunities arise (Turner, Norwood, & Noe, 2013). Identify situations where your knowledge or skill might be helpful but not readily apparent. Is your institution building new residence halls? Could your background in international education help with the design? A new initiative for recruiting domestic students? What can your experience dealing with diverse populations contribute? According to Babcock and Laschever (2003), women undervalue themselves when asking for raises and opportunities. If you know what you have done, you are more likely to ask and be able to provide substantive reasons for your request. At the macro level, one of the most popular forms of leadership in the United States is Transformational Leadership. In Transformational Leadership leaders work with and inspire others. They demonstrate genuine concern for the needs and feelings of others and allow for innovation and creativity. In sum, the skills and behaviors of transformational leadership are the very skills and behaviors expected of women and the goals are the same as those set forth by leaders in internationalization. This means that right now, in this moment, the behaviors women have been told to develop, the educational goals of internationalization, and the skills recognized as effective for leadership are aligning. We can be successful transformational leaders by being “good” women leaders in international higher education. As leaders we can raise questions about what is or is not appropriate behavior as we learn together about cultural differences while inspiring others to think about how they work with each other (including us as women). As leaders in international higher education, we can recognize that when we value the practices of others we are simultaneously valuing ourselves as professionals even in a simple act of wearing a hijab. When confronted with a workplace that defines us as imposters, we can engage in thoughtful conversations about cultural values and global changes exposing the system while honoring the differences. We, as women in higher education internationalization leadership positions, are uniquely poised to identify shared goals, respect differences, celebrate small steps that lead to large successes, and honor the unique value each and every individual brings to a project.

Relevant Publications:

Babcock, L., & Laschever, S. (2003). Women don't ask: Negotiation and the gender divide. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Turner, P. K., & Norwood, K. (2014). The elephant in the room: Negotiating visible pregnancy in job interviews. Women and Language, 37, 41-62.

Turner, P. K. & Norwood, K. (2014). 'I had the luxury...' Organizing breastfeeding support as privatized privilege. Human Relations, 67, 849-874.

Turner, P. K., & Norwood, K. (2013). Unbounded motherhood: Embodying a good working mother identity. Management Communications Quarterly, 27, 396-424.

Turner, P. K., & Norwood, K., & Noe, C. (2013). A woman with a plan: Recognizing competencies for ascent to administration in higher education. NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education, 6 (1) 22-47.

Biography:

Dr. Paaige K. Turner has over 20 years as a researcher, faculty member and administrative in higher education. She has served as a director of graduate studies, interim director of women’s studies, associate dean and associate vice president. Dr. Turner received the Cheris Kramarae Dissertation Award (1998), Central States New Teacher Award (2000), the SLU Faculty Excellence Award (2003), SLU Star Award (2007), Presidential Citation for Service, National Communication Association (2007), Learning Happens Everywhere Award (2015) and is a four time finalist for the SLU Outstanding Teaching Award. She was the 2012 recipient of the NAFSA Region IV Dorothy Brickman Outstanding New Professional Award and a 2013 Fulbright-Nehru International Education Administrators Award to India. She serves on five editorial boards and has published over 30 book chapters and articles in the general area of organizational communication, specifically on topics of organizational socialization, customer satisfaction, midwifery and birth, breastfeeding and the body in the workplace. These have appeared in Management Communication Quarterly, Qualitative Inquiry, and Women & Language. She is an Associate Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication, past chair of the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association, AIEA, Senior Adviser Program and a principal associate in Communication Resource Associates.