By Kate O’Connor
Educational Policy Studies Master’s program

Having spent some time working and living in Ecuador, Guatemala, and Botswana, I could not ignore the disparities in quality of life and resources between my life in Canada and the lives of the people I met and saw during my travels and time abroad.

The connections between foreign policies in the north and economic injustices in the south, as well as the relationship between the consumption patterns of the wealthy and the working conditions of the poor, were impossible for me to ignore. I couldn’t help but ask: what if everyone could see what I am seeing? What if everyone could learn about the world from the people of the south? Could we not transform the economic, social, and political state of our planet?

Now as a graduate student in educational policy studies, I am focusing my research on global education, an emerging field in education that seeks to teach our children about global injustices and to provide them with transformative curriculum and pedagogy that moves them to take action as responsible, conscientious global citizens.

Given the nascence of this field, little evidence yet exists about the efficacy of global education in achieving its goals. My master’s research will examine student responses to global education, precisely the responses of immigrant students, in order to gain some sense of the effect of global education on some of our youth.

Kristy Kelly recently returned from 14 months in Vietnam, where she was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship. Kristy is currently a dissertator in Educational Policy Studies where she specializes in Gender and International Comparative Education.

My dissertation looks at the context in which gender trainings are taking place, and the transformative potential of these trainings, as a part of national gender mainstreaming policies.

The aim of gender mainstreaming is to integrate women and gender into overall development planning, rather than conceptualizing women as a separate category needing special attention or special programs. However, in Vietnam, gender mainstreaming is taking place at a time of highly politicized debate about women’s appropriate rights, duties and obligations to the state.  Government leaders are dealing with tensions between needing to meet national goals for economic, technological and cultural modernization for the developing market economy on the one hand, and cultivating traditional domestic virtues and national identity on the other.  Domestic roles for women are promoted in the state-controlled media as the country’s best defense against the “social evils” of a capitalist global economy. To this end, international donors as diverse as the World Bank, European Union and the United Nations have trained and deployed gender experts to teach and explain gender mainstreaming concepts and skills to national policy actors, and substantial support has been provided for the development and availability of Vietnamese gender experts for teaching, training, researching and consulting on mainstreaming issues.

Using ethnographic research methods, and drawing on theories of gendered citizenship, nationhood and education, my research raises questions about what it means to be considered a “gender expert.” More specifically, how being placed in the role of teacher/trainer impacts opportunities women and women’s groups have (or do not have) for moving gender mainstreaming policy beyond national action planning, or beyond discursive strategies, to affect fundamental cultural change.

Prior to starting graduate school, I spent 12 years working in and around Vietnam for a variety of educational exchange organizations, where I learned Vietnamese. It is here that I became interested in issues of gender equity in the context of development and political-economic transformation in Southeast Asia.

My two children, Lua-Xuan (age 11) and Kim-Dan (age 9) accompanied me to Vietnam and were also supported by the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, (which gives generous support to dependents of its grantees).  I am now in the throws of data analysis and dissertation writing and hoping to defend my dissertation in May 2009.

Nick Holt graduated from UW-Madison in 2002 with a BA in International Relations [now International Studies]. He studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt. After graduation he worked for international relief organizations in the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon. He graduated with an MPA from Princeton University in 2006, and joined the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in 2007. Nick is presently serving at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where he coordinates political reporting on Iraq’s southern provinces. His 15-month tour will conclude in September 2008.

What’s a favorite memory about UW-Madison?

I wasn’t much of a high school student, and I remember the day freshmen year when I realized I was actually enjoying going to class.  That feeling never really left me, and it marked a turning point in how I saw myself and the world around me.  Oh, and all the partying.

How did UW-Madison prepare you for what you do now?

The Arabic classes certainly helped.

What drew you to study Arabic?

I wanted to study something different and considered Chinese and Arabic. I’m more or less tone deaf, so settled on Arabic. At the time, I endured a lot of skepticism from people who thought Arabic was useless. That changed four years later.

Why did you choose to study abroad in Cairo?

I knew the only way I would ever really learn Arabic was to live somewhere in the Middle East.  What I didn’t realize was that, seven years later, I’d still have so much Arabic left to learn.

What is your most memorable experience while studying abroad in Cairo?

I represented the U.S. in the annual Model UN simulation, and managed to convince all of the Egyptian students to join a coalition against Russia (I happened to be dating the ‘Russian’ delegate at the time).  If only I could be as successful a diplomat in real life…

What skills did you learn while studying abroad that help you now?

Cairo was a plunge into Egyptian culture.  In some ways this tour has been a plunge into the culture of the U.S. military.  Very different, but the same rules apply: treat people with patience and dignity and always be willing to learn.

What languages do you use everyday?

English and Arabic.

What advice would you give to an undergraduate student with ambitions to go into international diplomacy?

As a senior at UW, I failed the oral exam for the Foreign Service.  It was the best thing that ever happened to me, and led to a very interesting couple of years working abroad in conflict zones.  All that’s to say, don’t stress out too much about your long-term career, as hard as that might be, but find something you enjoy doing and do it.  The Foreign Service will always be around, and the more experience you have before entering, the better a diplomat you’ll be.

What do you see the role that American international diplomacy will play in the next five years?

Ask me again in November.

The tipping point was when a 10th grader asked me who movie star Mel Gibson is and whether he actually is, as the “Cool News” section of her textbook stated, “the most beautiful man in the world.”

No joke. The headline actually read: “Mel Gibson: The Most Beautiful Man in the World.” The rest of the article would be best described as an ode to Gibson in the key of Gag Me.

Finding a bootleg copy of a Gibson blockbuster like Mad Max or The Passion of Christ in Indonesia is easy; finding relevant teaching material is another story - a story that, for me, started with a Fulbright ETA assignment in a remote district of Sumatra, called Sekayu, and - in just six months - has evolved into a national Radio for Education (or Radio Ed) initiative in classrooms throughout the archipelago.

As a journalism major, my background was in radio—I knew nothing about being a high school English teacher.  But luckily radio turned out to be the perfect teaching tool in this rural, information-starved area.

Thanks to Mel Gibson, and other random celebrities like him, I decided to ditch the text books and search for more relevant teaching material.  This turned out to be a lot more difficult to find than it sounds—until I stopped looking and started listening.

I started using segments from a bi-lingual current affairs radio program called Asia Calling to substitute the textbook’s “cool news” with real news and information. To my surprise, real news turned into real debate and discussion. The more I used Asia Calling, the more critical thinking, analysis and questioning (in other words learning) actually took place in my classroom. And all I had to do was turn on the radio, prepare a few questions and define some vocabulary. Asia Calling’s engaging content and the kids’ curiosity take care of the rest.

Students “get” radio. Radio Ed gives them something back: the confidence to engage ideas.  I discovered that drawing the students in with sounds and story created a critical buffer of curiosity, questions and information that motivated them to face the more challenging and less familiar structural barriers to learning a foreign language like English.

Thousands of schools throughout Indonesia have access to the weekly programming from Asia Calling. Now, thanks to a partnership with Indonesia’s largest Educaiton Foundation, the Putra Sampoerna Foundation, classrooms throughout the archipelago will be charged with the ideas and information from this award-winning program from the country’s only independent radio news network, KBR 68H.

The aim of our ten-month Radio for Education pilot program is to create the materials, resources and support network to help teachers “turn on the radio and tune in to learning.”

The project has come a long way since Sekayu. But the recent support of the Putra Sampoerna Foundation and the Indonesian Association for Media Development has fast-tracked our progress, spreading Radio Ed throughout Java, Kalimantan, Bali and Sumatra.

Mel Gibson may have got to them first, but Radio Ed is on the way!

Stay tuned for more.

“Learning, reading, recitation, the ancient books are all corrupt…” (Dharwadker, 2003) This saying, attributed to the 15th century Indian poet-saint named Kabir, would seem to throw a cloud over all academic ventures, not least of the entire research trip I am currently engaged in. But rather than spending all of my time in India in ancient archives, I am trying to discover how modern members of the Kabir Panth (a sect in North India devoted to the saint) view the central figure in their tradition. People have been telling stories and writing books about Kabir since before he died. However, I argue that when someone says or writes “Kabir said…” or “Kabir did…” it is not just a narration of a story or moral, but it is intimately intertwined with relationships of class and power. I am trying to discover how modern devotees of Kabir view him, what sort of ‘Kabir’ they construct, and for what purposes. I intend to find out how the stamp of Kabir’s name and authority is applied today by members of his following.

Varanasi was the city where Kabir lived and preached; today it is the home of the largest Kabir Panth center in India, the Kabir Chaura Math. I have spent the first two months in Varanasi acclimatizing myself to the routines in and around the Math. I will soon begin to conduct formal interviews with local members of the lay and monastic community. I am trying to speak with as wide a range of people as possible; pilgrims from faraway places and locals, regular attendees and festival-goers, people who work at the Math and people who beg there, and people who have never been to the Math but may live or work nearby. I aim to find out the social, economic, and religious backgrounds of those who come, as well as their motivations for coming. Do they feel devotion, duty, inspiration, or something else? Why do they think Kabir warrants such feelings and actions?

My wife and I are also currently planning a month-long trip around Rajasthan and Gujarat to visit other, smaller Kabir Panth centers there. After the Fulbright Conference in Jaipur, we’ll head south to Jodhpur, Ahmadabad, Baroda, Jamnagar, and Mumbai. Once we return to Varanasi, I also plan to visit other places of worship unrelated to the Kabir Panth; I want to know what sort of Kabir is presented in Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Sikh gurudwaras, and anywhere else I can find. I want to find as many different images of Kabir as I can, along with reasons that people might present the saint in such different ways. This research will be combined with some previous historical work I have done when I return to the U.S. and used for my Master’s thesis, as well as possible publication later on.

It’s New Year’s Eve in Cagayan de Oro, a city of 500,000 people on one of largest of the Philippine archipelago’s 7,107 islands. The pops and bangs of firecrackers join the usual jeepney honks and tricycle engine drones to make for a noisy night. The ubiquitous gun-toting security guard sits outside my hotel smoking a cigarette, as if he wasn’t already ingesting enough toxic chemicals from the steady barrage of vehicles careening down the streets. The predominantly Catholic Filipinos enthusiastically embrace Christmas, and the hotel lobby is a testament to that holiday spirit. A Christmas tree and two wreaths bring light, and red and green paper stars the sizes of stop signs add color to the otherwise nondescript setting.

After a meal at Jollibee, the Filipino archrival of McDonalds, that included the common rage-inducing occurrence of someone cutting in front of me in line, which was quickly neutralized by the very friendly, although thankfully not bubbly, demeanor of the young woman taking my order, I walked around the city looking for pirated DVDs, CDs, video games, and software. I’m researching intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement in the country, so when I’m traveling outside of my base Manila, I try to take some time to get a feel for the level of pirated and counterfeit goods. Not surprisingly, I don’t have to venture far to find an alley packed with stalls of pirated DVDs and video games. As I walk by, I see a woman loading a DVD into a player hooked up to a TV so that a potential buyer can check out the quality of the recording. IPR infringement, after all, is a business here. Vendors often hand out their cell phone numbers and provide receipts. Two movies recently released in theaters in the States and other parts of Asia but not yet in the Philippines—“I Am Legend” and “Atonement”—stand out among other, older films such as “Stardust” and the single disks containing twelve or more films featuring Nicolas Cage. “DVDs, sir?” some vendors ask. I just shake my head and occasionally smile as I pass by.

I’m in the Philippines because I want to know why it’s still possible to buy pirated DVDs or software or counterfeit watches and bags. The country has for the most part enacted the necessary IPR legislation to comply with its international obligations. However, similar to other developing countries, the problem lies not in the laws on the books, but in the lack of enforcement of those laws. So in order to better understand the IPR enforcement situation, I’ve been meeting with people in business, government, and academia, attending government agency seminars and trainings, and reading extensively. The key reasons I’ve uncovered so far are ignorance and indifference among both government personnel and private citizens when it comes to IPR and larger systematic problems that plague the entire country such as an overburdened judicial system, a constitution that limits foreign competition in the economy, and a cultural tolerance of corruption.

Overall, I’ve had an incredible experience in the Philippines. The country’s unparalleled beauty, great weather, and overwhelming number of warm and friendly people make it a rewarding place to spend nine months. Most people overlook the Philippines as a tourist destination—they shouldn’t.

by UW-Madison student Catherine Skroch

Read more about Catherine’s Adventures in Africa.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am majoring in Political Science, International Studies, and an individual major in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution. I came to Senegal knowing that I wanted to research the little-known conflict in the southern region of Casamance. Frankly, I knew almost nothing about it either, except that it has been going on for a long time and that it has mostly been ignored by the international community. So I started doing my homework.

Most violent conflicts are born out of complex webs of fears and rivalries, spirals of retribution, and civic frustration. It is often difficult to determine who fired the first shot, and normative judgements like ¨who’s right and who’s wrong?¨ are near to impossible. When it comes to civil war like this one, it is hard to tell the difference between civilian and soldier. The Casamance Conflict is no different. Everyone has been affected. Everyone’s got scars.

The Casmance Conflict is a small-scale civil war that has been waged between the Senegalese government and the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance since 1984. The question was originally over the independence of the Casamance region, which is separated from greater Senegal by the Gambia and inhabited mostly by the Jola people. However, as conflicts seem to do, the reason behind the violence began to shift as the Casamancaises began to feel marginalized by the Senegalese government, whom they felt was cutting them off economically and socially as a form of punishment for the separatist movement.

It is said that Senegal’s first president, Leopold Sedar Senghor, made a promise to Casamance’s leaders at the height of the independence movement from France in 1960, that if they joined Senegal for 20 years they would be able to have their own independence afterwards. The government did not follow through on that promise in 1980, recognizing the value of the resource-rich region. Indeed, most of the country’s fruits and vegetables come from Casamance, which is lush and green for most of the year. The MFCD, led by the Father Augustin Diamacoune Senghor (no relation to Leopold), held peaceful demonstrations around the region, until 1982, when the organisation’s leaders were arrested and the debate turned violent. There were riots in the streets of the region’s capital of Ziguinchor, and MFDC and Senegalese Army bases were attacked in the region, with civilian casualties resulting.

The conflict gained a little international recognition when four French tourists disappeared in the region, with both sides blaming each other. Tourism started to dwindle, as did the economic situation in Casmance. There were several ceasefires, but they were all short-lived. In March 2001, the Abbey Senghor and President Abdoulaye Wade brokered a peace deal, which allowed for the release of prisoners, the clearance of landmines, and the return of refugees, most of whom had fled into Gambia or neighboring Guinea-Bissau. Soon, the MFDC itself split up into factions, with some groups willing to compromise, and others still staunchly planted on the idea of independence. Today, most of the violence occurs between these factions.

The Senegalese government still refuses to consider independence for Casamance, and even though the conflict has all but fizzled out, the MFDC is still alive and breathing, and violence still flares up in the peripheral forest regions. The death toll is roughly estimated around 700 since the original riot in Ziguinchor, but the number of displaced persons is significantly higher. A 1998 Caritas census gave a figure of 62,638 internally displaced people out of a total Casamance population of around 1.1 million. UNHCR figures indicate that a further 10,000 people are refugees in Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia.

A death toll of 700 over 20 years is not flashy enough to create waves in the international media, so I was surprised to learn about the actual gravity of the situation. I decided to check this all out for myself. My original question was: ¨What is being done on a local level to ameliorate the conflict?¨ I wanted to see what the Casamancaises were doing to help their own local communities. I wanted to find out, also, if this proactivity was effective and if the people involved think that the best solution lies at a local, national or international scale. I realized that it is easy to pass the buck, putting the blame and the responsibility for recovery solutions all on the national government, or even to blame the international community for its forgetfulness. However, what I discovered there in the tropical paradise of Casamance astounded me.

I took the 16 hour boat ride from Dakar to Ziguinchor, a lazy little town on the Casmance river. It was hard to believe that there had been riots and violence in the quiet streets that now are the home to fruit vendors and cafes underneath the palms and baobab trees. I came to Zig with a hazy vision: I wanted to listen and collect a lovely and moving collection of histories from people involved in the conflict and conflict resolution.

I started by making appointments with humanitarian organizations and teachers at the local high school. These meetings with journalists, humanitarians, professors, and government officials were informative and led me to other contacts within the city. I learned about the huge role that women play in the local resolution of conflict. I learned about the mystical Boite Sacree ceremonies that are held to gather combatants for negotiations, involving animal sacrifices and led by community matriarchs. I learned about the Non-Violent Management of Conflict class that was started at Ziguinchor’s biggest high school, Lycee Djignabo, to educate this generation of students who have grown up with violence swirling all around them. The program has proved to be effective, as is demonstrated by the peer mediation tactics that were used when one famous student strike turned violent. I learned about the students in the village of Sidnian who started a program to rebuild their own destroyed homes brick by brick by organizing ¨Brick Making Days¨ for their communities.

The goal of my voyage to Casamance was to listen. When I wasn’t having interviews with organizations like Handicap International and USAID, I would go into the streets of the city and try to strike up conversation. The Senegalese are so welcoming and inviting, and the idea of terranga –or hospitality- is the highest Senegalese value. Easily enough, I would be invited to sit and drink tea and chat in the shade. What was not easy, however, was to get people comfortable enough to talk about the conflict that is still fresh scars for some. I ended up going back to one quarter in the city and sitting with this group of young men for 3 days before the subject of my research came up.

This motley group of guys, from the Cartier Tableau Pares, taught me one of the greatest lessons I learned in Casamance. They have started a gang they call ¨Begga Liggey¨, which means ¨Want to Work¨ in Wolof. All of them are under- or unemployed, and fed up with the neglect of their beloved Casamance. They are so frustrated with the inefficiency of the government that they hold concerts and soccer games and charge a little money. With that money, they themselves go and buy the materials to reconstruct the crumbling roads in their neighbourhood, and they themselves lay the brick and cement. These punk kids also organize community clean up days. Extraordinary.

The most profound experience of my sejour into the world of peace building and post-conflict reconstruction came with my last interview. I had already bought my return boat ticket to Dakar. I interviewed Demba Ba, who works for an organization called ANRAC, with a special program for the reconstruction of Casamance. This includes physical reconstruction of homes and infrastructure, and also social reconstruction with programs for the prevention of conflict and management of peace. ¨It is the community at the base who must construct peace.¨ He told me. ¨You cannot just reconstruct homes, but also mentalities.¨ I liked him right away.

We got to talking about ANRAC’s program for the re-insertion of ex-combatants into their communities, which has been difficult since the diminution of violence. I asked him specifically how this is done and he replied, ¨Well, we’re going to do it tomorrow. Why don’t you come along?¨ This opportunity, to go into the ¨hot zone¨ as Ba calls it, and to watch the peace process, was a once in a lifetime event, so I changed my return ticket and went with him and his two associates, Landing Badji and Moussa Ndiaye, into the forest of Cabrousse, to talk peace.

The peace conference was held in a run-down but brightly-painted nightclub in the centre of the city village. Village chiefs, priests, nuns, Muslim Imams, animist leaders, leaders of women and youth organizations, the prefect, ex-rebels, and victims of landmines were all assembled for this workshop to establish ¨cells of peace¨ in their village. I was even introduced to the ¨King of Ossouye¨. The goal was to talk about the trauma that has occurred there and then to have to villagers elect a team of leaders from amongst themselves who will be the monitoring system if conflict ever starts to bubble up again.
There was much pomp and circumstance, with many introductions and speeches, to make sure that everyone felt included, to give legitimacy to the importance of the conference. We needed everyone behind us for this to work. Everything was presented in French and translated into Jola. We began (a few hours late, of course) with a time of sharing stories. At first people were hesitant, but after the first volunteer, the histories and the tears started flowing. One man recounted a time when everyone in his community was gathered into the town square and mowed down by ¨armed men¨. I don’t know who was the guilty party- government or rebel- and I don’t think the man knew either. He just knew that he had been an innocent witness to a horrific event as the conflict swept like a tidal wave over his life.

This much I know is true: everybody’s got their something. Everybody has their something that makes them who they are, that influences their thoughts and lifestyle and personality, which we don’t recognize or don’t care to share. Having this something means that you cannot judge or rank or classify other people, because you do not know their somethings. Everyone has a story. Mr. Ba told me that ¨You must listen with a third ear, because our two are already conditioned to listen how we want them to.¨ It takes patience to listen and understand, but listening is the most central part of the peace process. So many people are hurting to be heard and to have someone hold onto this something, to recognize it as valuable, and to ameliorate the pain that might come with it. These wounded villagers in Cabrousse wanted relief to come from their suffering, which was internal, and not curable by any policy or program. Curable only by letting it go.

We discussed stress and trauma and the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder there in the woods with men and women who have experienced enough for many lifetimes. We talked about how trauma can change a person, but that does not mean that that person is not responsible for their actions, thus excusing a cycle of retribution. After a couple days, the villagers elected leaders for 3 different rural communities, who will be in charge of the management of conflict. A group of youth in the village heard what we were doing, so they wrote a short musical skit to perform for us about Aline Sitoe Diatta, the Joan of Arc of Casamance. It was extraordinary to see how a community, at the breaking point of trauma, is able to change completely their path, being fed up enough with violence that they vow never to let it happen again. It is extraordinary that everyone, from school kids to ex-combatants, agrees on this change. Everyone was primed for this shift.

Througout the conference, I kept thinking, who am I that I should be so privileged to observe this process? Throughout the days, there were tears and shouts of anger and laughter and handshakes and Jola greetings of ¨Kassoumaye¨, peace. There were not just a bunch of Africans in a room, complaining about their low estate. No indeed, as I sat there with my notebook filling up with priceless wisdom, I began to observe this quiet shift. I believe that this shift is made from the same fabric as the something that influences a parent to work every day so that their children will be better off than themselves. It is the same something as the moment when children stop saying ¨mine!¨ and start sharing toys. It is the same something as the hope of the tired teacher who believes in the value of timeless lessons. It is the same shift that made me see, from across the room, an ex MFDC rebel shake hands with a landmine victim. This shift that brings people from a place of bitterness and hurt to a haven of reconciliation is the shift that changes the fabric of nations. It is a shift to dignity and a better life for the new generation. And the concussion begins in the run-down nightclubs of tired villages.

The most important question I would ask in my interviews was question number 12. In your opinion, what is peace? I received diverse answers: peace is the cessation of fighting; the absence of violence; to be able to travel, work, and eat without being violated; it is a calmed state of mind; peace is the satiation of needs; peace is this new Western idea of human security; peace is stability, economic, social, cultural, and mental. My favourite definition, however, came from Pierre-Marie Bassene, the Director-General of ANRAC in Dakar. ¨Peace,¨ he told all of us on the eve of a profound shift ¨Peace is pardon.¨ It starts with forgiveness, it starts with listening.

In asking my interviewees if they had any questions for me, I would often hear the same sentiment. How will your research help the people of Casamance? Will we ever see you or this work again? Indeed, I did not want to step into this beautiful culture, rich in traditions, languages and values, observe like a kid in a zoo, only to write up a nice neat report and stick it in a drawer again. I did discover that the solution to the conflict in Csamance lies at local, national and international levels. I did discover that there is profound work being done on the ground, in local communities and villages in Casamance. I did discover some interesting propositions for amelioration, like a need for positive discrimination for Casamance by the national government. However, I left Casmance and there is still violence. In fact, a peace negotiator was just killed 2 weeks ago in a village 70 kilometers north of Ziguinchor. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know, and the more I experience, the smaller I feel in the face of all of this. Frankly, it is just all too much for me to look at.

So, I promised to write. I promised to interpret and share my experiences, microcosmic and profound. How can this model be applied to other conflicts? What will these villages look like in 10 years? Will my friends in Begga Liggey ever find jobs?

This much I know is true: the quiet shift has taken place within myself too. I have learned and now my life is made new.

“I don’t feel I’ve ever had a career,” says Constance Konold without apology as she sips Earl Grey tea in a fashionable café on Paris’ Left Bank where the maitre d’ knows her by name. No, she explains, hers has been more of a non-career just doing what she wanted to in life, a life that, so far, has taken this businesswoman, executive coach, consultant and self-described adventurer around the world to posts with top international companies. What’s made it possible, Konold tells you, is UW-Madison. It gave her the language skills, cosmopolitan attitude, and job contacts necessary to succeed.

Drawn to UW-Madison by Hoofers and the French House, Konold majored in French. It was a language she had begun studying, along with Latin, at St. Mary’s Academy in South Bend, Indiana, the town she moved to from the New York area when she was ten. She remembers having classes with some of UW-Madison’s “greats,” acclaimed French professors Germaine Bree, and Helen Cassidy. In the History department, her favorite was French historian Harvey Goldberg. “He was spellbinding and unorthodox, people hung from the rafters,” Konold says, recalling how hundreds of students would cram into Goldberg’s lecture hall. Konold has kept her notes from her course with Goldberg. “He gave us such insight,” she says, keys to understanding the world.

In Madison, Konold was a member of the International Club and lived at the French House, experiences that offered another opening to the world. “I was rubbing elbows with an international crowd,” she says. It would be one of Konold’s friends from the French House, hailing from Mount Horeb, who would be instrumental in bringing her to France several years later, after graduation, a merchandizing job in New York at Macy’s, a failed marriage, a master’s in teaching from Notre Dame, and a stint in the Peace Corps in Cameroon.

In Africa, Konold lived in Pitoa, a small village of about 300 people about a two-day drive from the capital, Yaounde. She taught English, sewing and hygiene. Back in the U.S., she got a job on Wall Street with Institutional Investor magazine organizing international seminars for government officials and financial investors at the magazine’s newly created institute. That’s when Florian Chollet, the husband of her French House pal, Margaret Henze Chollet, called her from Paris offering her a job with the international accounting firm of Arthur Anderson.

Chollet was the manager of the company’s Paris office. A Frenchman, he had met Margaret at UW-Madison when he was a Fulbright scholar. Now, he was looking for staff who were bilingual and sensitive to cultural differences. Konold arrived in France on July 14th, 1972, Bastille Day.

She was put in charge of helping Arthur Andersen’s executives relocate. The know-how later made it possible for her to establish her own executive relocation company, one of only a few such firms in Paris at the time, she says. One of her clients introduced her to an executive with Seagram’s; Konold worked there for several years as the executive’s chief of staff. Other business connections took her to Malaysia, where she ran trade delegations and taught English at the Ecole Française in Kuala Lumpur.

Back in France, she helped a friend restore his centuries-old chateau in Brittany by establishing an informal work/study program with UW-Madison and Notre Dame, called “Restore and Explore.” In exchange for room, board, and lessons in French language and culture, the universities’ students helped rebuild the castle’s crumbling stonewalls. Other jobs followed, including chief of staff for the president of the Saudi-European Bank in Paris and with the International Packaging Association, a group of independent metal-packaging companies around the world. Today, Konold is a career and life coach, writer, trainer and education consultant. Her company organizes executive education programs for clients such as ESSEC, one of France’s leading business schools. She also writes content for hand-held wireless devices and teaches master’s level strategic Human Resource management as well as Intercultural management at schools in Paris.

Working around the globe has made Konold realize not only the value of her UW-Madison education but also the importance of international studies for today’s undergraduates. “The world is getting smaller and if the U.S. doesn’t really mesh gears with other cultures, it’s going to slip,” Konold says. She believes Americans are too insular and need to learn about, understand, and enjoy other cultures, especially if the U.S. wants to continue to have a positive influence on the rest of the world.

As a young man, George McReddie didn’t plan to travel or have a career in international finance. He had no idea he would become Senior Managing Director at Bear, Stearns & Co., a leading global investment banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm based in New York. Back in the 1960s, he was just your average American teenager growing up on Long Island, New York.

Then one day, when McReddie was a sophomore in high school, his father, who was born in Argentina, announced to the family he was moving them to Buenos Aires. A few months later, McReddie (BA, Political Science/Ibero-American Studies,’76) was living in that capital city, enrolled at the American Community High School. “It was quite an upheaval,” he says. He spoke very little Spanish at the time.

Fate stepped in again when it was time for McReddie to go to college. His high school principal in Buenos Aires, Thomas Kalish, had earned his B.B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. (Educational Administration) at UW-Madison. Kalish encouraged McReddie, who was becoming interested in both political science and Latin-American studies, to go to Madison. “It was a campus that was engaged in world affairs and that appealed to me,” McReddie says.

At UW-Madison, McReddie threw himself into studying the history, politics and economics of Argentina and the rest of Latin America. “What better place to try and figure it out, or at least have the tools to gain some academic perspective,” McReddie says, “than in Madison.”

He took courses in Spanish and Spanish literature, as well as Portuguese. His senior honors thesis focused on the failure of the Argentine military government from 1966-1973. He befriended international exchange students from Mexico and joined Community Action on Latin America (CALA).

McReddie’s three and one-half years at Madison gave him a strong educational foundation in Latin American studies, in his words, “the academic framework and perspective to pursue a ‘Latin Americanist’ career within an international business context.” From Madison, he went to Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management, in Glendale, Arizona, where he earned an M.B.A. in International Management. McReddie then embarked on what would become a multi-faceted career in commercial and investment banking, capital markets, and brokerage.

Shortly after graduating from Thunderbird in 1978, he married his wife, Lisa, whom he had met at the American Community High School in Buenos Aires. They have three children: Sarah, 24, Adam, 20 and Matthew 14.

His first job was at Republic National Bank in Dallas, which sent him to Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1980 to be assistant representative covering Argentina and Chile. This led to a position at Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, which took him back to Buenos Aires. After returning to Chicago, McReddie worked in Argentina again, this time for Bankers Trust. In 1987, he joined Bear Stearns in London, and then New York, and has been there ever since. He currently manages a group that provides equity sales and trading support to institutional clients, such as hedge-funds, pension funds, and asset managers in the major financial centers of Latin America.

“Bear Stearns has an extraordinarily entrepreneurial culture,” McReddie says, appreciatively, adding that the company has grown from 6,500 to over 14,000 employees worldwide in 20 years.

McReddie recently returned to UW-Madison for meetings with students, faculty, and staff in the International Institute’s Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies program. While he was in Madison, he offered students interested in international careers some advice.

According to McReddie, there will be ups and downs in every career, times when an individual needs to “read the tea leaves” and be flexible. But McReddie believes that some things will remain constant over time. Among these are language and area studies skills, which help graduates better understand the environment in which they’re operating.

“A solid understanding of the socio-economic dynamics and political risks that are so prevalent in Latin America is critical for success in any endeavor that involves this region,” he says.

Also important, McReddie believes, is for students to make themselves “different plus,” to build, as he did, on interests and background that set them apart.

“Capitalize on your strengths and try to differentiate yourself,” McReddie says.

The little, picture postcard Swiss village of Nyon has a big reputation. Founded over two thousand years ago by Julius Caesar, it can lay claim to Roman ruins, a 16th century castle, and beautiful views of Lake Geneva. It can also boast it’s the home to Novartis Consumer Health, a division of the international health products company, and to Novartis executive and UW-Madison alumnus Ricardo Blank.

Blank never would have predicted when he was a UW student some thirty years ago that he would wind up here, heading the division’s medical marketing department. Back in Madison, Blank had his heart set on a career in America, but fate and his father intervened.

Blank (B.S. ’74, M.B.A. ’77) was born in Santiago, Chile, the son of Jewish immigrants who had fled Hitler’s Germany in the late 1930’s. In Santiago, Blank’s parents sent him to a private school where he learned English. Closer to home, he conversed in Spanish with his friends, and German with his parents. His facility with languages would become a significant theme in his personal and professional life.

Blank wanted to study business but his father was convinced one didn’t need a degree in the field to be successful.  After all, he had built his own cosmetics company, later sold to Proctor and Gamble, from the ground up. “Study something worthwhile like chemistry,” Blank’s father counseled. The two made a deal. Blank would get a bachelor’s in chemical engineering, then a master’s in business administration.

Blank had originally hoped to go to university in Santiago, but he says the election of socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970 made remaining in Chile impossible. “I knew what was coming,” Blank says, referring to Allende’s assassination and years of political repression. Blank packed his bags and left for the U.S. the day Allende was inaugurated.

Blank recalls that adjusting to life in America initially wasn’t easy. Americans looked physically different, bigger, he says, from people back home in Chile.  He had never met Chinese- or African-Americans before. He also arrived shortly after the bombing of Sterling Hall and remembers National Guardsmen in the streets. On top of that, his engineering professor advised his freshmen students (there were no women in his class at the time) that only a third of them would stick with the program. “It was extremely tough,” Blank says.

Still, it didn’t take him long to get his bearings and become accustomed to American life. He lived in a dormitory, had a foster family who, he says, couldn’t have been more affectionate than flesh and blood parents, and, with time, found an American girlfriend, too.

He did well scholastically, and, as he was finishing work toward his M.B.A., started receiving job offers from U.S. companies. He says he was extremely marketable. Not only did he have a first class education at UW, his backgrounds in both chemical engineering and business were unbeatable. His language skills were also very valuable.

But, again, Blank’s father had other ideas. He wanted his son to consider Switzerland, where he and his wife had taken up residence after also leaving Chile. Although Blank could speak German he couldn’t write it, so his father offered to send a letter to the Roche pharmaceutical company in Basel, midway between his parents’ house in Lugano and his sister’s in Frankfurt, Germany. As Blank tells the story, while he was visiting his parents, Roche made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He returned to Madison to receive his M.B.A., reluctantly broke up with his girlfriend and moved to Switzerland.

The transition from America to Europe and from university life to the work world was as difficult as the one Blank had experienced years before when he left Chile.  “It was an enormous culture shock, the fun years were over,” he says. At Roche, Blank was given broad training in all aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. Because he was fluent in Spanish, he was given responsibility for dealings with Latin America, meeting with Spanish-speaking visitors and handling regulatory issues with Spanish-speaking countries.

Other management jobs followed, first with Baxter Health Care in Brussels, Belgium, Pharmacia (acquired by Pfizer in 2003) in Freiburg, Germany, Ciba-Geigy in Basel, and finally Sandoz in Berne. In 1996, Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to become Novartis, a world leader in the research and development of health products. (According to the company’s Web site, Novartis Group achieved sales of over 28 billion dollars in 2004, and employs over 80,000 people in 140 countries around the world.)

At Sandoz, Blank specialized in product development in medical nutrition. He says he enjoyed the opportunity to innovate – to design new concepts and products, develop new retail markets, establish good relations with important opinion leaders, and negotiate successful international contracts. Today, he travels the globe for Novartis, especially to Asia and Latin America, where the company is market leader in medical nutrition in Brazil.

Along the way, Blank became fluent in French, Italian, and Portuguese. Knowledge of six languages has made his traveling easier but it also has contributed toward improved communications at work. When Blank meets with his sales force in other countries, he is able to speak to staff in their own language. “They respect that tremendously,” he says. Nevertheless, he says English has become such a dominant language in international business that mastery of other languages is not as critical as it once was. More important is an understanding of other cultures. “If you want to work in an international environment, it’s key,” Blank says. If you aren’t sensitive to other cultures, if you don’t have “cultural understanding,” you won’t get the business,” Blank says.

Although Blank may not have realized it at the time, UW helped him prepare for an international career. By Blank’s own admission, the UW welcomed him as a young man from Latin America and from a relatively protected background, and introduced him to another world. “The UW made me think, made me study, made me learn,” Blank says, but he adds it also encouraged him to be more independent, to know how to get along with others, and to be more mature.

UW also gave him a second chance at romance. Blank lights up when he tells the story. After 9/11, he found himself in Minneapolis on business, unable to fly back to Europe. He decided to head to Chicago to visit friends. On the way, he passed through Madison, unable to stop because he still felt guilty for breaking things off with his sweetheart many years earlier. In Chicago, with his friends’ encouragement, he located and phoned her sister and parents in Wisconsin, finally tracking her down. She’d received a Bachelor’s degree in political science and a J.D. degree, both from UW-Madison, and was practicing law in Colorado. After a 30-year separation, the two are back together again.