Having traveled to London before, Marty Rubenstein’s decision to return there to study abroad her junior year was an easy choice. Delving into her comparative studies classes on economics and law at the London School of Economics, Marty found her viewpoints challenged and worldview expanded. Returning to the U.S. with a new sense of independence and self-confidence, Marty embarked on a career in the federal government and earned a Master’s degree. After ten years in the White House in the Office of Management and Budget, Marty joined the National Science Foundation (NSF), a U.S. government agency that funds fundamental basic research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Serving as CFO since 2010, Marty oversees the NSF’s budget of $7.5 billion (FY16), resulting in 11,000 awards supporting 350,000 U.S. research scientists and students annually. In our interview, Marty shares how study abroad has helped her succeed professionally and why one of the best souvenirs from London was coming home with a new name.

IES Abroad: As a student at American University, what motivated you to study in London?

Marty Rubenstein: I had been to London a couple of times, I was a huge Anglophile, and I loved to travel, so it was a simple decision for me. I had a lot of support from my parents because my mom had been a Fulbright Scholar. And my parents took us overseas when we were younger, so I was always eager to go as a student. American University only had one or two international programs, and I needed a program where I could get all the credits to transfer and support my double major. My college roommate went to IES Abroad Vienna, so I might have heard about it from her. I wanted a program that wasn’t constraining, that didn’t view this as a chaperoned tour experience where you weren’t allowed to go off campus. I wanted to be an adult, and if I skipped a class and went to Scotland for the weekend, that was my choice of a learning environment.

IES Abroad: What are one or two of your most impactful study abroad memories?

MR: Another girl and I shared a tutor for an economics class. We met with the professor periodically and read and wrote papers in between. It was like an independent study class. I remember before going that I had this impression, and we were told, that Americans were behind the Europeans academically and we had to be prepared to work harder. So when we began this tutorial class and one of the books the tutor wanted us to use was one I had used in my sophomore year at AU, I thought, “Well, they aren’t so far ahead of us after all!” 

We coalesced into groups of people we shared a flat with. Early on, one of the girls had to back out of the lease for the flat, and none of us had any extra money. We really needed to replace her.  We tried a variety of options to find another roommate, including going to the LSE and looking at the roommate board where we found a guy to take her place. He moved in, and he actually became one of my closest friends for decades. I returned to London year after year after college and stayed with him and his wife.

IES Abroad: How did you change most during your time in London?

MR: Traveling on your own and going to a program like IES Abroad helps you understand that you can figure out things on your own, you are an intelligent person, and you can make things work, no matter where you are and whether or not you speak the language. So there is that level of self-confidence you gain. And it gives you a great perspective on the U.S. and explodes certain viewpoints you have. It was great as a junior to get away from my college friends who thought they knew who I was when I was still figuring that out. One thing was that I didn’t like my name “Martha.” So when I went to London, I said “OK, now I can change my name,” and everyone in London called me “Marty.” So now I can tell when someone met me—before or after my time in London—by what they call me. I’ve been “Marty” ever since!

IES Abroad: In what ways did study abroad influence your career path? Were there skills learned while abroad that were particularly useful as you embarked on your Federal career?

MR: It was all very helpful because all the classes were comparative studies. It was about how the different European systems – economics and law – compare to the U.S. and how they do things differently. I really wanted to live overseas again, and I never did make that happen because I got into a career path and it became kind of like golden handcuffs to remain within the Federal system. I’ve been with the government for 36 years. When I finished my Master’s degree, I looked at the private sector, but it made more sense to stay within the Federal system. Once I decided to stay, I was focused on my career. I spent 10 years in the White House in the Office of Management and Budget with Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton before I came to the NSF. The fact I had classes at the LSE was a big deal on my resume, and I knew and worked with people who got Masters degrees from LSE. Becoming independent and having a different perspective on the U.S. was a really important outcome of study abroad. I had this idea before study abroad that other places had to be better than the U.S. Living in London and traveling later for an extended period to Australia and New Zealand, I realized there were many ways that the U.S. was actually ahead of the curve.

IES Abroad: You’ve been at the National Science Foundation for nearly 20 years, serving as CFO since 2010. What is the mission of the NSF and how did you get your start?

MR: The mission of the NSF is we fund basic research at American colleges and universities and help build the scientific infrastructure in this country whether it is in people, facilities, or knowledge. If you look at NASA or the Department of Energy – they do mission-oriented research. They fund the mission they are trying to accomplish, whereas we fund all non-medical scientific research. The NIH funds the medical research. We do everything else – zoology, astronomy, anthropology, math, physics, cybersecurity – any type of fundamental basic research. We’re trying to increase the knowledge base and discover and understand what we don’t yet understand. What’s great about NSF and why I came here is the mission is a simple one to understand and support. We have an essential impact on the welfare of this country.

IES Abroad: As CFO you oversee a budget of $7.5 billion (FY16), resulting in 11,000 awards supporting 350,000 U.S. research scientists and students annually. Tell us about your role.

MR: When I came the NSF, we had a $3.4 billion budget. We have doubled the budget in 20 years. As CFO, I have an organization of about 150 people, and we’re in charge of the fundamental business process that underlies what we do. Out of the whole budget, we send 94% to the research community. We have scientists who decide how that money is awarded. My organization is the one that makes the awards and legally obligates the government. I oversee the budget staff who request the money from Congress and allocate it, the grants officers who actually make the awards, and then those who financially oversee the awards and make sure the money is being spent appropriately at the academic institutions. It is the business of the agency that I oversee. Because most of the projects are awarded over a three to five year period, the outstanding portfolio we are managing this year is actually about $28 billion for over 42,000 active awards.

IES Abroad: What are the biggest challenges in your role at the NSF?

MR: To continuously improve operations and meet new legal requirements that come out of the White House and Congress. And to help fight reports in which our science investment is taken out of context and retitled to be a sound bite to make it look like the taxpayers are being fleeced, when they haven’t even talked to the scientists doing the research and understood the value of their work. We always have to clearly communicate the value of the investment we are making.

IES Abroad:  What was the value of working at the White House in the Office of Budget and Management (OMB)?

MR: I was there for 10 years, and when I saw that the budget director job at the NSF came up, I asked a budget examiner at OMB if she thought I’d be good at it.  She told me she thought I’d like it as long as I would be comfortable being a “second-class citizen,”  because if you don’t have a Ph.D. you’re just not considered to be on par with the rest of the senior staff. But my attitude was, after 10 years in the White House OMB, I had a post doc in Federal Budgeting. There weren’t a lot of people at that point who knew as much about the budget as I did. So I came to the NSF knowing more about the Federal Budget than the whole budget division combined (I hope they don’t read that!). The OMB job made it possible for me to become the CFO here.

IES Abroad: The research funded by the NSF transcends U.S. borders with the potential for catalyzing breakthroughs impacting the entire world. How important has having an international perspective been for you professionally?

MR: The former CFO, in conjunction with our Inspector General, started an international accountability workshop. For years, I have been a member of this international community of people who are responsible for overseeing the business aspects of awarding money to the research community. I have been to Paris and Oslo, and we’ve hosted here in Washington, DC. We have very close ties with our Irish, British, EU, French, Hungarian and other counterparts. NSF is considered the premier research funder in the world, and many organizations come to us to find out how we do things from a science perspective, a business perspective, IT systems, processing of proposals – how we manage the business of research investments. For example, I went to China to talk about how we do things. Both the Chinese NSF and the Irish NSF were predicated almost entirely on our model. Science is international, and the “business” of science is also international. I have colleagues and counterparts all around the world.

In so far as a physical presence abroad, some examples would be our astronomy facilities in Chile and the operations in Antarctica at the South Pole, as well as our international ocean drilling program, all of which support scientific research.  We also maintain overseas offices in Brussels, Tokyo, and Beijing.

IES Abroad: When you look back over your career, what are you most proud of?

MR: Looking across my career, I’m very proud to have been an analyst for the White House OMB, and that gave me a great bird’s eye view of the government and politics. That created the framework and context for me. The work ethic was intense, and I realized if I could succeed there, I could succeed anywhere. More recently, at the NSF, we participated in the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey where they take the temperature of what people think about their job, their bosses, and their workplace. Across 320 components throughout the Federal government, our unit – the Office of Budget Finance and Award Management – came in 5^th as a best place to work in the Federal government. I am very proud of that.

IES Abroad: What advice do you have for students today who are interested in studying or interning abroad?

MR: Don’t think twice – just do it! Today’s students have so many options at their fingertips. In some ways, it may be more difficult and more expensive to study abroad, but through the internet, students can connect with so many wonderful programs. I remember even back in the 80s when I took an extended trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji that I had to write a letter to a B&B on the South Island of New Zealand to get a room reservation. You couldn’t afford to make the phone call, and there was a 16 hour time difference. Now you just get online and search for flights, read reviews, and make reservations! Back then, travel was like stepping off a cliff, and today it is much easier in many ways. Study abroad is a huge opportunity to put your country and your own life in perspective, think about where you fit in the world, and grow up! London was one of the best parts of my college career.

With a strong urge to reconnect with his heritage and learn Italian, Chris Marianetti didn’t hesitate when he saw an opportunity to study abroad in Milan. His life was changed forever as a result. Studying music composition from professors who were themselves students of some of the great European composers of the 20th century had a profound effect on him, and Chris began developing his own voice as a composer for the first time. After graduation, he returned to Milan to work with IES Abroad students and met his Italian wife, a law student and IES Abroad resident assistant at the time. Upon returning to the U.S., Chris co-founded Found Sound Nation, a music collective and network focused on making a social impact, which was a take-off from an elementary school music project he had worked on in Milan. In 2009, he was selected as Artist-in-Residence for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, where he worked on a new musical outreach initiative. Then, in 2012, with his Found Sound Nation co-founder, they won a grant from the U.S. State Department to launch OneBeat, an international collaborative and youth engagement-facing music festival and exchange that is now in its fifth year. Read on to learn more about how the IES Abroad Milan experience influenced Chris’ life and his belief in the power of exchange.

IES Abroad: How did you hear about IES Abroad and what motivated you to study in Milan?

Chris Marianetti: As a child, I had a close relationship with my grandfather, Oliver, whom I can sort of describe as American-Italian. Oliver was born a U.S. citizen to recently immigrated Italians settling in Montana, but after the death of his mother was immediately sent back to Italy where he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Tuscany. Before he was 20 years old, he immigrated back to the United States during one of the major immigration waves in the 1920s. I can remember very early on, even in middle school, wanting to learn Italian in order to be able to communicate with him on that level. He passed away before I finished high school, but my first year of college, I had the chance to take Italian classes and took a bus to a different college at dawn every morning to do so. If you knew how terribly traumatic transitioning to a waking state is for me, you would realize how badly I wanted to learn Italian; I am not a morning person. Nonetheless, I spent two years learning the language, and when I was a junior at Macalester, I saw an IES Abroad opportunity to study in Milan. I didn’t hesitate. 

IES Abroad: What are some of the most influential memories from your time in Milan as an undergraduate student? 

CM: I lived with two Sicilian brothers and another much older American student who had come back to college later in life. To be honest, I might have learned just as much from my fellow American roommate, living outside of his country, as I did from the Sicilians. Milan was one of the first and more potent examples of the power of exchange – how leaving your culture and living someplace outside your context of comfort plunges you deeper into the very culture you’ve left. The separation is illuminating. Like the act of mediation, silencing your own internal communication and leaving your daily thoughts and patterns, you reveal yourself to yourself.

IES Abroad: How did you change the most during your time in Milan? Did the experience shape the way you think in a profound way today?

CM: My studies in Milan, specifically music composition, had a profound effect on me. I grew up in a relative music desert in New Mexico. My college had a potent but small music program, so the chance to connect directly with historic and contemporary Italian music scenes was tremendous. Learning from professors who themselves were students of some of the great European composers of the 20th century was an incredible opportunity. As a composer, this was one of the first moments where I felt I started developing my own voice. Before this, I wrote a lot of pretty derivative works, working mostly from within romantic or jazz traditions, but in Italy I found techniques that helped me to reveal a much more personal musical perspective. 

IES Abroad: After graduating from Macalaster College, you returned to Milan to continue your studies in music at the Civica Scuola Di Musica, and then you worked with music students at the IES Abroad Milan Center. How did your previous study abroad prepare you to live and work there? 

CM: Several weeks after graduating, I packed all the belongings I could fit into a portable piano case, along with a digital piano, gave away everything else, and left for Milan. The very first day back in Italy, while at IES Abroad Milan reconnecting with former professors, I met the woman who would later become my wife, an Italian IES Abroad resident assistant studying law at la Cattolica. (When we married years later in Puglia, our celebration turned into something of an IES Abroad reunion with friends and staff from those years.) I was incredibly fortunate to have studied with Dr. Roberto Andreoni (Roby), and his generosity both as a composition teacher and as Center Director helped set the stage for the career I have today. Dr. Andreoni saw that incoming American IES Abroad students were intimidated by the conservatory system and hesitant about taking advantage of some of the courses being offered at the Civica Scuola di Musica. He gave me a job at the Center where my experience in the program and my language skills could be beneficial to new students. I organized events for incoming students, curated weekly music listings, helped translate the Civica’s website into English, and accompanied students on performances. 

IES Abroad: Upon returning to the U.S., you co-founded Found Sound Nation, a music collective and network focused on making a social impact. What inspired you to establish this organization and what is its goal? 

CM: Our organization is a collective of artists who leverage the unique power of creative sound-making to build bridges that connect people across political, cultural, and economic divides. We believe that engaging in music creation is an important way to unlock the creative potential of youth, to give voice to underrepresented communities, and for creative leaders in civil societies to develop inspiring ideas for building more peaceful and harmonious societies. Not only were the artistic seeds of the organization developed during my studies in Milan, but my relationship with New York new music organization Bang on a Can, who have been our great mentors and partners for the last seven years, began there as well. 

While I was working with Roby in Milan, he connected me to an elementary school in need of music programming, and I began a project working with Italian elementary students. At the time, I was studying composition and electronic music at the Civica Scuola di Musica. But I wanted to find a way to somehow connect more advanced musical concepts from these studies with much younger students – to encourage young people to reach for something just outside their grasp rather than pandering to musical sensibilities. I had students record ‘found sounds’ and objects within the school that had specific timbres (a sonic scavenger hunt), then categorized these sounds and created a library of the recordings. We projected visualizations (waveforms) of these sounds on a large classroom wall and collectively composed short pieces one sound at a time by having students listen, locate sounds on the wall-projections, and place them within a timeline. As we repeatedly played these sonic-amalgamations back, short little cohesive compositions started emerging. I remember Dr. Andreoni being surprised by what we were able to make together. Several years later, while living in New York, I used this model and these experiences to begin Found Sound Nation with a friend and colleague, Jeremy Thal. There are some very clear threads between our current work and that very first project at the Italian elementary school: the power of collaborative creative composition, the importance of musical exchange, and the art of listening. The art of listening extends far beyond the practice of making music – it is one of the major ways we can become aware of the beauty, tragedy, and hidden potential present in our neighborhoods, institutions, and families. 

IES Abroad: In 2009, you were appointed Artist-in-Residence for Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. How did this come about and what was your role? 

CM: In 2009, Carneige Hall’s Weill Music Institute was beginning a new musical outreach initiative under the leadership of Manuel Bagorro, who, in addition to being a gifted pianist, had managed for the last ten years to run one of southern Africa’s largest music festivals under the eye of Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe, which, all considering, was no small feat, indeed. Manuel’s vision was to create a music exchange program in New York where composers and musicians worked in places throughout the boroughs that had hitherto been bereft of substantive musical programming: hospitals, community centers, youth detention centers, and homeless shelters. Working with Manuel and Carnegie, we created audio production and composition labs with people young and old, but worked mostly with incarcerated youth in Brooklyn and the Bronx. During these composition and production laboratories, we also brought in jazz and contemporary musicians from a number of exceptional New York-based groups, to perform and create songs with these young people. These workshops – and the resulting concerts held inside these detention centers where staff, other young detainees, parents, and family members gathered to celebrate the creative spirit and awesome potential of these young men and women – were some of the more powerful examples of music’s ability to transcend situation, place, bonds of culture and race and to speak somehow directly to the soul, revealing to us of the humanity, the utter complexity of it all, that we share living together on this planet.  

IES Abroad: One of the projects you are currently working on is OneBeat, an initiative of the U.S. State Department. How did you and Found Sound Nation get involved? 

CM: OneBeat began with a missed email. Luckily for me, ‘the purge’, while indeed horrifying, involves the digital cleanses I force upon myself and sometimes reveals a buried, hidden gem or two. Here in my backed-up inbox, as layers upon layers of junk and unanswered emails were finally clicked and sorted, I saw a message announcing that the U.S. State Department had a ‘call for proposals’ out that involved the creation of a new international music exchange program. I remember I called up my partner, Jeremy, and told him to come over straight away. The deadline must have been fairly imminent because he slept on my couch over the next week, and we devised a proposal. Truth be told, the call gave me an incredible feeling of synergy because we had, for the last year, been dreaming up a vision for a new kind of collaborative and youth engagement-facing music festival and exchange. Our program involved bringing young musicians (ages 19-35) from around the world to the U.S. for one month each fall to collaboratively write, produce, and perform original music and develop strategies for arts-based social engagement. We sought to employ collaborative, original music-making as a potent new form of cultural diplomacy. Several months later, we were told of the award but couldn’t believe it. 

In the past four years, OneBeat has performed in over 20 cities and towns across the U.S., collaborated with thousands of students, teachers, organizers, and leaders in U.S. schools and community organizations, and upon returning home, OneBeat Fellows have independently raised over $250,000 for post-OneBeat projects using musical collaboration to encourage meaningful cross-cultural dialogue and build peaceful, harmonious societies. As one of the co-directors and creators of OneBeat, I’m truly proud of our network of musical and social innovators, and I feel incredibly fortunate to get to continue to work on this initiative with amazing musicians the world over and with our very adept partners at the State Department. 

IES Abroad: For more than ten years, you have traveled all over the world making music composition, production, and education your career. What drives you, and what are some accomplishments you most proud of? 

CM: My work emphasizes a mobile, accessible, and collaborative way of composing and producing music. I feel as though the field I’m working in, while steeped in tradition, is actually still being created and defined, and I don’t know quite what to call it – sonic-production-composition-education-exchange – perhaps the German language has already some hybrid word for this. Regardless, I feel as though there are new techniques we are developing all the time, often by jumbling up and combining art music traditions, musique concréte, hip hop, audio-journalism, and contemporary composition. I like adapting to different environments, finding the unique sounds and resonances of each space, drawing upon talents of musicians of a particular local scene, and examining issues most relevant to specific communities.

IES Abroad: What words of wisdom do you have for today’s aspiring musicians and the impact of gaining an international experience?  

CM: I’m not ready to answer that! But I will say that I believe firmly in the power of exchange, and I’d encourage it in whatever form possible, be it super local, international, scientific, or linguistic, and for people of all disciplines. Take these opportunities of exchange whenever and wherever they come, and seek to actively create them in your life. I’d also share a few words that have always rung true to me. John Cage reminded us that we have to “create the space” within which our own music can exist and thrive; Joe Campbell challenged people young and old to “follow their bliss”; Anne Bogart emphasizes the importance of sheer action in a “heady” unpredictable world of art. Also there’s a particular passage from Hermann Hesse’s advice to a young poet that I’ve just read and love, and I think, while specific to poetry, applies to many other disciplines: “To follow the way of the poet, not simply to practice the use of language but to learn to know oneself more profoundly and more accurately, to advance one’s individual development farther and higher than the average of mankind succeeds in doing, through setting down unique and wholly personal psychic experiences, to see better one’s own powers and dangers, to define them better – that is what writing poetry means for the young poet, long before the question may be raised as to whether his poems perhaps have some value for the world at large.” I believe this revelation of self to one’s self, is a wonderful outcome of cultural exchange as well. This drives much of the work we do at Found Sound Nation and OneBeat.

From summers in Mexico City as a child to summers in Paris in high school – study abroad was a given for Johanna Oliver Rousseaux. During her junior year in Paris, Johanna sought out opportunities to speak French with locals and fit in. Determined to stay as long as she could, she secured a summer internship after the program finished and was offered a job with the company after graduation. But within months of her moving back to Paris, the company went under and Johanna found a job that would keep her in Paris but didn’t set her up for the international career she sought. Ultimately, Johanna returned to the States to pursue a law degree, convinced she would immediately go back to Paris afterwards. Instead, determined to regain her Spanish fluency, Johanna headed to Costa Rica after law school for an internship at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and then began working at the Arias Foundation. Intending to stay for only a year or two, Johanna’s plans changed drastically when her boss died suddenly and she was asked to take over the project he had led. She remained in Costa Rica for five more years, working closely with Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Returning to the United States after six years abroad with no professional network proved difficult, but in the end, it was her language skills and cultural understanding – critical for an international case – that landed her full-time work at the law firm of Jones Day. Today, Johanna serves as Of Counsel in the Global Disputes practice and works on several of the firm’s pro-bono projects, which bridges her unique skill set and background. In our interview, Johanna shares the story behind her journey from nonprofit to litigation and explains how her experiences abroad shaped her path all along the way.

IES Abroad: Why did you decide to study abroad and what drew you to Paris?

Johanna Oliver Rousseaux: There was never any doubt that I would study abroad – and I never even considered a semester – it was always going to be a full year.  I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t drawn to life abroad and all things international. My mom will tell you it is her fault and my dad’s that I have this “international bug” because I was born in Germany while my dad was stationed there in the military – even though we came back home to the States before I was three months old. Then as a kid, we spent our summers at my grandfather’s house in Cuernavaca, outside Mexico City, where he had worked for many years. I was tutored in Spanish during the year so that I would be able to play with kids in the neighborhood and otherwise get by when we were there. Sadly, we stopped going to Mexico probably around the time I was eight or nine, and I was left with my fluent “little girl” Spanish. Then, a few years later, France came into the picture. My parents had divorced, and my dad had met my stepmother, who I consider the quintessential European – she was Austrian, had studied at Cambridge, but lived in Paris, and spoke five languages. I started spending a few weeks to a month each summer at her house in the suburbs of Paris, where I also got to take French at the Alliance Française. Those summers getting to know the city and the surrounding suburbs also opened up an insider’s Paris to me that normal tourists don’t experience. So I had a real connection with the city. That’s a really roundabout way of telling you that I never picked Paris, I think Paris picked me.

IES Abroad: What are a few of your most influential memories from your time studying abroad?

JR: I was there from 1987-88, and back then, without internet or cable and satellite TV, France and the United States were two very different places. As Americans, we really stood out, which I hated. I wanted to be a chameleon and blend. I wanted everyone to think I was French, but that was almost impossible to do, not only because of the language but because of how we dressed and what my French friends teased was my “tête américaine” – literally my American face. I remember that a group of us all went out and bought these suede jackets that everyone was wearing – we each got a different color, but it was the same jacket. I’m not sure that helped us fit in any better though! Now when I go to Paris and see everyone dressed in jeans and tennis shoes and baseball caps – like I would see on any street in any city in the States – I realize how much the cultures have melded. But back then, it was really a question of us trying to fit in and how different the cultures were. The French students our age seemed like such grown-ups compared to us. As part of the IES program, I went to “Sciences Po” because I was a political science major, and there was this guy that used to walk around with these dress shoes, pressed jeans, a buttoned-down shirt, a cardigan on his shoulder, and a pipe in his mouth! (I guess, the pipe would explain the ashtrays built into the desks…) There was just this whole different level of formality that we really weren’t accustomed to as U.S. college kids. I also remember sort of bungling the formalities when I worked that summer. The company was basically the equivalent of a tech start-up, so most people working there were fresh out of school and just a few years older than me. Every morning they would gather in the lounge area for a coffee and when I would walk in I would do this very American generalized wave and “bonjour.” And every morning, the VP of the company would see me do that and yell (kindly) “No!” The he would make me walk around and properly greet every single person, either with a kiss on the cheek or a handshake. I kept on thinking one day the formality would fade and I would get away with my wave, but it never did. That is very French, and it’s still that way today – proper greetings are an essential part of how life works there, and I think it’s pretty neat, even if it seemed so excessive to me at first.

IES Abroad: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced studying abroad, and how did you overcome them and grow as a result?

JR: When I studied abroad, my stepmother was in the States, but she still had her apartment in the Paris suburbs, so I lived there with a couple of girlfriends. It was really fun. We had this huge flat and a lot of freedom, and other students studying around Europe would come and stay with us – we even did a big Thanksgiving weekend gathering. There were people in the building who I had known for years who kind of looked out for us, but we didn’t go home every night to a French family that helped us work on our French during a formal family dinner or that taught us things about the city or life in France. We had to fend for ourselves in terms of opportunities to learn about day-to-day life. Fortunately, I had learned a lot with my stepmother in my previous visits, so we actually lived like French people in a lot of ways. For example, we would go to the fresh market held twice a week and buy food, which became this really great thing because we built relationships with the vendors and could observe so much there. We also had to work hard to find opportunities to speak French. It’s not easy to speak French among yourselves, so we had to engage with the people that we came across during the day and use our French in the street, and Parisians are very tough on you and immediately switch to English if your pronunciation is bad, so we had to be perfect. I think living on our own meant that it was more of a challenge for us to make sure we were getting the most out of the experience, but in a really good way.

IES Abroad: You returned to Paris after finishing undergrad and before going on to law school. In what ways did study abroad influence your career path?

JR: That’s all an IES Abroad connection. I had wanted to stay in Paris so badly that I talked to the director of the program at that time, and he got me a summer internship. He was super excited because the guy that he had gotten me an internship with had a champagne vineyard and he assumed I would be working on something related to that. What could be more French?! But it ended up that the guy also had a tech company out in the suburbs where he wanted me to work. I spent the summer there and made amazing friends that I am still in touch with today. I left (kicking and screaming) in August to go back to Sewanee for my senior year, but I knew I wouldn’t be in the States for long. The company had offered me a full-time job after graduation, and while I was back at Sewanee, they went about getting my working papers. As soon as I graduated, I was back on a plane to Paris with all of my worldly belongings because in my mind I was never coming home. But within a matter of months, the company went bankrupt and I was scurrying to find another job. As luck would have it, a girl who had gone to Sewanee with me and had stayed in France after our junior year told me that she was leaving her job at a French modeling agency and really wanted to put someone she knew and liked in her job, because she loved her boss. So I took the job. I was in charge of billing for photo shoots, fashion shows, and other work and then paying the models. These gorgeous girls and guys would come in, and I would count out huge cash advances for them because they were in Paris for the weekend and needed to go shopping for a party or wanted some mad money. Talk about being in the middle of an amazing world if you are in Paris! While it was fascinating on many levels, that job was never a career choice though. It was survival choice – it was the job I took so I could stay in Paris.

When I started looking for something more in line with what I wanted to do – which then was mostly some vague notion of international business – the problem I had was that the French people interviewing me would ask, “But what are you trained to do?” Our education systems are so different, and at least back then, French students were trained to do something specific. So when I would say, “I have a liberal arts degree, a bachelor of arts,” they would scoff and tell me that was the equivalent of a baccalaureate [high school] plus two years. I felt like I was never going to get credit for my education or my experience up to that point. Law school had always been on my mind, but I hadn’t found a really compelling reason to go. After my disappointing job search, I figured that if they wanted to know what I could do, why not go to law school and then come back with an answer. So, I studied for and took the LSAT and did all my law school applications while still living in Paris and eventually decided to go home to Austin and law school at The University of Texas. It never even occurred to me that, when I finished, I wouldn’t turn around and go straight back to Paris.

IES Abroad: After receiving your J.D. from The University of Texas, you served as a legal intern at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica. What led you to Costa Rica, and were there skills learned in Paris that you were able to draw upon?

JR: When I left Paris, I was completely fluent in French and even spoke with a Parisian accent, which still today is one of the accomplishments I’m most proud of. Back then, I still could understand Spanish, but I couldn’t really speak it, and I remember my dad would always say, “When are you going to get your Spanish back?” Over the course of law school, I had become much more focused on working in international law, so the whole “go back to Paris and show them what I can do” thing kind of fell by the wayside. During my last year in law school, I was the Editor-in-Chief of the Texas International Law Journal, and we organized a symposium with a number of panelists, several of whom, coincidentally, had contacts in Costa Rica. At the same time, one of my classmates had studied abroad in Costa Rica and offered to put me in touch with the school he had attended. It all just kind of came together that Costa Rica seemed like a good option. One of the contacts worked for the Organization of American States and, when I followed up with him, he told me he had arranged an internship for me at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. So, I signed up for this school my friend told me about, got on a plane, and flew down to Costa Rica thinking I would go for a year or two to nail down my Spanish. I knew I had to live and work there and be part of the culture – just like I had in France – to get my Spanish to the level I wanted.

When I got to San José, I was the only student in my school, and I was assigned to live not with a local family but with my teacher, which basically meant that I was constantly working on my Spanish with her. After a couple of weeks, with my Spanish flowing pretty well, I went to the Court of Human Rights to check in and discuss the details of my internship, but they had never heard of me. Fortunately, I was received by a really nice American lawyer who was working in the legal department, and he said, “I don’t know what or who you are talking about. I’m not aware of any arrangements, and we already have an intern. But actually, that person no-showed. So, you’re more than welcome to the job if you want it.” That got me working, which helped my Spanish improve exponentially. I also followed up with the other contact I had in Costa Rica who was at the Arias Foundation. He had a project to create an international law institute that would focus on a South-South dialogue among Latin America, Africa and Asia in an attempt to counter the conversation that, at the time, was dominated by the West. That was right up my alley, so once my internship at the Court of Human Rights was over, I agreed to work on another project he was running while he figured out how to launch his international law institute. That is how I ended up at the Arias Foundation.

IES Abroad: You went on to become a program officer at the Arias Foundation, founded by Oscar Arias, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and former president of Costa Rica. What led you to this work, instead of immediately becoming a practicing attorney?

JR: After about six or eight months of working on this project at the Arias Foundation, I started to get restless because there was no forward motion whatsoever on the international law project. The project I was on was primarily academic – a comparative study of the causes of conflict in the third world. Although it was interesting and I was learning a lot about the recently ended civil wars and other unrest in Central America, it really wasn’t a legal project at all. I had planned to stay as long as two years, but I also was aware that I didn’t have much of a window in terms of getting back on track with my legal career, so I started to think about returning to the States. Right about the time I was considering some job offers from law firms back in Texas, the man that had hired me was killed while traveling within Nigeria for a work conference. It was horrible – the plane had crashed in a lagoon, there were even rumors that it was shot down, and everyone on board was killed, including several people from our project, government ministers, and oil industry executives. When that happened, one of the leaders of the Foundation pulled me aside and said, “We don’t know what this comparative study is that you are working on, but it’s with really important international donors, and we need you to see it through.”

I ended up in Costa Rica for another five years, which was never my plan. But that gave me the chance to work closely with Oscar Arias, who is amazing and who I am privileged to count on as a mentor. At the time, he had just finished his first term as President of Costa Rica, during which time he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. He created the Arias Foundation with the Nobel prize money, and it was really active in the region working on peace and development issues and other public policy initiatives as part of the wind down of the various conflicts in the region. It was fascinating work at a critical time in that part of the world. And once I began running the comparative study, I weaved in as much international law as I could, focusing on the role of the UN and the OAS and the many international efforts to end the wars. All in all, it was an amazing experience. I really went off track in terms of how people normally push through a legal career, but I wouldn’t give up that experience for anything.

IES Abroad: How did you make your way back into “mainstream” legal work and eventually make your way to Jones Day?

JR: Through a very humbling, character-building experience! When I moved back to the States, I didn’t have a lot of contacts, and I was struggling anyway with whether I wanted to try to be a “real” lawyer or stay in the non-profit world. I spent two very tough years in Miami and then moved to DC and started working as a contract attorney while I got my bearings and figured out what I wanted to do.  As luck or fate would have it, Jones Day was my third contractor assignment. My first two assignments had been pretty demoralizing – crazy hours stuck in huge workrooms in basements with dozens of other people who for the most part weren’t much better than drones. But walking into Jones Day felt different from the get-go. First of all, they specifically needed Spanish speakers, so I knew I had a real chance to shine. And we were working directly with the legal team, at the firm, not at some satellite or third-party site. For whatever reason, back then it was hard to find litigators with language skills. I think most lawyers with language skills go into transactional work because they think you need the foreign language when you are making the deal.  But they forget that you need it just as badly or even more so when that deal falls apart! 

It ended up I was brought on for one of the biggest international cases of recent times. Within about eight or nine months, Jones Day hired me as a full-time associate. That was 12 years ago. So, like with the modeling agency in Paris, and the Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica, I was in the right place at the right time and just landed on my feet. I worked on pretty much nothing but that one case for over ten years. But I was able to do it – and I think this is what is important – not just because I was able to speak the language, which is critical, but also because I understood the culture. I’ll never forget that in one of my annual reviews, one of the more senior lawyers called me the “case team ambassador,” because I was the one who really was able to bridge that gap between us and the people in Latin America who we were working with, whether they were our co-counsel, witnesses, experts, or just people that we had to interact with to get what we needed for what we were doing. A few years ago, when Jones Day opened an office in Miami, I was asked to move down and help develop the firm’s practice in Latin America, so that knowledge of language and culture is still one of my most valuable skill sets.

IES Abroad: You also lead a pro bono project within Jones Day's Rule of Law initiative that researches civil and human rights issues and prepares training materials for lawyers in Latin America. What inspires you to do this work?

JR: I have always had this tension: I loved the case I was working on and the work that I was doing, but I also am really from a public interest background because of the years I spent at the Arias Foundation. The opportunity came up to do these human rights manuals, and it just so happened that they had to do with a country that I was very familiar with and had visited on numerous occasions, always staying among the locals and seeing their day-to-day struggles first hand, and not ever really doing the tourist thing. I was selected to lead that project because I had this unique connection to the country but also because the project really took advantage of all of my experience at a non-profit where you are focused on facilitating things and creating training materials and spreading your knowledge base to other organizations. It was just a natural fit. Now we also are doing a big project that involves representing the kids that are coming from Central America and crossing the border into the United States without their parents – “unaccompanied minors” as they are called. Again, that is something that I have been able to get very involved in helping design and oversee because people recognize that I have the background that I do. I’m really lucky that my firm’s commitment to pro-bono matches my own philosophy and drive to do that kind of work and that I’ve repeatedly been given a leadership role that takes advantage of my other, non-lawyer skill set.

IES Abroad: What advice would you give to students about studying or interning abroad today?

JR: If you are passionate about an international career or working and living abroad in the future, you have to do a deeper dive during your study abroad experience. Even if you are just there for a semester, you have to do more than just the program. You somehow have to engage in a way that really invests you in the community and that really teaches you the culture. Because speaking the language, or thinking you speak the language, is only a very small part of it. My being able to navigate cultural differences was as important, if not more important, than my language abilities. Nowadays, most foreign professionals are fluent in English. They either studied in the United States or Canada or Europe and they don’t need you to speak their language. But boy does it help! Because generally they would rather speak their own language, and it endears you with them in a lot of ways once you can – you will bond differently with them than the folks who are connecting only in English. But take that further step and know their culture, and you will be really far ahead of the curve, because no matter what language people are speaking, they don’t lose their culture.

Studying abroad will change your life forever, no matter what. It already is such an amazing thing that makes you dig just a little bit deeper inside and shifts your comfort zone. That’s a huge checkmark on the list, but if you want to stand out, you have to do more. It is so hard for Americans to compete, especially in the international organizations because there are so few open positions – most of those organizations have quotas and simply don’t hire that many Americans. But even in the private sector, you really have to get out there and have something that sets you apart. And you have to be willing to do things that are a little bit different, a little bit scary, especially at the very beginning when you are young and resilient. Take those risks early on while you can because they will pay off in the end.

Coming from a rural background, Kate Wolford was drawn to study abroad as a way to broaden her horizon. Once in London, Kate made the most of her semester exploring history, diverse neighborhoods, and even took up volunteering with a Member of the British Parliament. In class, Kate honed her skills in policy and economic analysis that have proved useful throughout her career in the nonprofit sector. After working on humanitarian efforts in Latin America early in her career, Kate went on to work at Lutheran World Relief, where she spent 13 years as president of the global grantmaking and advocacy organization. Since 2006, Kate has served as president of The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation. In addition to overseeing the Foundation’s assets of $2.2 billion, Kate has led their sustainability efforts and implemented an innovative impact investing program that has become a role model for others in the field. In our interview, Kate reflects on her experience in London and shares why having a global perspective continues to be instrumental for her work today.

IES Abroad: Why did you decide to study abroad and what drew you to London?

Kate Wolford: I grew up and went to college in rural areas; I wanted and needed to broaden my horizon. During my sophomore year I read these lines penned by writer Samuel Johnson, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."  I suppose I wanted to see if that would ring true for me two hundred years later!

IES Abroad: What are one or two of the most influential memories from your time studying in London?

KW: While studying abroad, I had the opportunity to volunteer with a Member of the British Parliament. Doing research for the MP as well as meeting his constituents gave me a unique vantage point and appreciation for a different form of government. It was instructive to hear how U.S. history and politics were viewed from the other side of the Atlantic. I loved exploring the history, theater, and diverse neighborhoods of the city and interacting with students from colleges from across the U.S. 

IES Abroad: Were there any lessons learned that have remained a constant throughout your life?

KW: Bring respectful curiosity when entering into other cultures and communities; and be willing to be challenged, enriched, and transformed in the process.

IES Abroad: You spent much of your early career in Latin America and the Caribbean working for faith-based social service organizations. What inspired you pursue this type of mission-driven work and in what ways did studying in London help prepare you to work abroad?

KW: I was blessed to work in program, policy, and administrative roles in organizations that put faith into action for peace, justice and the dignity of all human beings and creation. My studies in London honed my skills in policy and economic analysis in ways that were useful for my subsequent professional duties.

IES Abroad: Since 2006, you have been president of The McKnight Foundation, one of the nation’s largest family foundations anchored in one state, and oversee around $2.2 billion in assets. What drew you to the Foundation?

KW: I was drawn to McKnight by its approach to philanthropy and the opportunity to work on some of the most pressing societal issues of our day. A major focus of our work is accelerating the transition to a low carbon economy, which is key to the future health of our global community and the planet on which we depend.

IES Abroad: In 2014, The McKnight Foundation launched an innovative Impact Investing Program dedicating $200 million, about 10%, of its endowment assets. An additional $100 million has since been allocated. What does the Foundation aim to achieve with this program?

KW: Private foundations are legally required to distribute 5% of their resources each year toward charitable purposes. Approximately 95% is invested in the market—through impact investing, we are aligning more of our investments with our mission; for example, in climate solutions, conservation, and affordable housing for low income families. In this way, we can provide more societal benefits with our resources.

IES Abroad: Although the Foundation’s work is primarily focused on Minnesota, significant support is also directed to strategies across the U.S. and in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. How important has having an international perspective been throughout your career?

KW: It has been the common thread throughout my career. I knew McKnight because I led one of its grantee organizations, LWR. In addition to its international work, I was attracted to Minnesota-based McKnight because of the growing diversity of the state’s population. Minnesota is home to some of the world's largest diaspora communities, including Hmong, Somali, and Karen populations. I hope that understanding the context from which many of these newer neighbors have come makes me better able to recognize the assets and contributions they bring to Minnesota.

IES Abroad: Looking back over your career, what are you most proud of?

KW: I stand on the shoulders of mentors and unsung heroes who have paved the way for my leadership opportunities. I am committed to doing the same for others in ways that encourage them to act with purpose, integrity, and courage.

IES Abroad: Why do you believe study abroad is important for students today?

KW: The world is ever more interconnected and interdependent. Authentic engagement with other cultures and experiential learning opens our eyes and our imaginations to new possibilities. At its best, it takes us beyond our comfort zones, challenges our assumptions, and brings new insights and a deeper sense of our shared humanity.

Eager to see the world, Cincinnati native Tom Theobald studied abroad with three other classmates in post-war Vienna in 1956. The city was grim, but amidst the rubble, it was an exciting time of revival that exposed Tom to a variety of new perspectives. Motivated to work internationally, Tom’s experience in Vienna served as a building block, giving him skills necessary to succeed as an international banker and investor. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Tom started a 27-year career at Citibank, rising to Vice Chairman and head of international banking, and served as Chairman and CEO of Continental Bank Corp. until it was sold in 1994. Today, an active private investor, Tom takes us on a look back to his study abroad days 60 years ago.

IES Abroad: As a student at College of the Holy Cross, what led to study abroad in Vienna?

Thomas Theobald: I ended up at Holy Cross College without properly understanding what it was. I really didn’t much enjoy my time there (rest assured, the college is a lot less harsh now), and I was looking for some way out. I didn’t want to transfer to another school, and I heard by accident about the Vienna opportunity. Vienna was particularly interesting at that time in 1956. The Russians had just left. It was as grim as Berlin. You could walk for blocks, and there would be just wood fencing around rubble. It was devastated. Clean up hadn’t really begun because no one knew what would happen until after the Russians left. It was really exciting to be there. There were spies! Of course, it was a very plain style of life. In the winter, no matter who you were, the vegetables were sauerkraut and potatoes. The opera had just reopened. It was very different from the United States, which, of course, had not been war damaged. The other attraction, besides the political situation in Austria, was that I was coming from a German-speaking background from a hundred and fifty years before. My ancestors had come from Germany to Cincinnati. After studying Latin and Greek, which had no immediate prospects of usage, learning a living language, one that related to my family background, sounded like fun.

IES Abroad: What are some of your greatest memories from your time in Vienna?

TT: No sooner had the academic year started then the Hungarian Revolution occurred. It was the first big breakdown of the Eastern Block. The border opened, not in a true fashion, but the guards were overwhelmed, and 100,000 to 200,000 people left Hungary and walked over the border to Austria. They were pouring into Vienna, and the reaction was, “How do we help?” There were posters around the University about how you could go to some abandoned barracks used for military training in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The buildings were in terrible condition, and the rats were pretty big! People were streaming in with nothing but maybe a small handbag filled with clothes and big ambition. Students were recruited to clean barracks, cook, serve food, and so on. It was an amazing experience. It went on for a couple months. Ironically, not more than 10 or 11 years later, I ended up in Sydney, Australia working. All of the real estate moguls were Hungarians who had left in 1956. I probably had seen them in the barracks! 

Also, we went on cheap excursions, and certainly one of the more memorable ones was over Christmas break when a group of us went skiing and stayed in some farmhouse type place. I don’t recall any lifts. On Christmas Eve, we went walking through the woods looking for a chapel that was out among the trees lit by candles. There was a Christmas Mass there with probably thirty people in this tiny church. It was snowing. It is a fantastic memory that one would never see anywhere else. I think about it every Christmas Eve.

IES Abroad: What were the most formative experiences or classes you took while studying abroad?

TT: I went with a particular interest in history. We had some really outstanding teachers, people who later showed up as professors at Yale and elsewhere. Modern European history was being taught in Vienna by people who had lived through it until just a few years before. The intricate mess of different countries and cultures, what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was now all these little countries with small populations. As an American, you are used to one big, open country; whereas, in Europe, it was all these little bits and pieces. It was an amazing reduction of perspective from the whole world into a bunch of narrow little valleys where people hated each other or got into wars over small disagreements. It taught us that the world was a whole lot more complex than the little attention American history books gave to the rest of the world. We came to understand that there was no talking about Europe – Europe was just pieces of geography. For example, the French are different from the Germans, but it didn’t explain how they got into wars and other unpleasantries, which doesn’t make much sense from the typical U.S. perspective.

That was really useful exposure. If you read newspapers published from different locations, even today, it is a different world. It really impressed me that “Hey, wait a minute, these people see it from a very different perspective!” That has been a very useful lesson. Another thing that I had not had exposure to was the world of art. You could go wondering free through the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum or you could go to the opera with no advance preparation. I remember buying tickets for the standing section at the opera. It was 27 shillings, around $1.10 at the time. You could just drop in. We all saw lots of opera.

IES Abroad: You have had a remarkable career as a banker and investor: 27 years at Citicorp/Citibank rising to Vice Chairman and head of international banking, Chairman and CEO of Continental Bank Corp. until it was sold in 1994, partner with private equity firms William Blair and Chicago Growth Partners, and now an active private investor. What inspired you to become an international banker and investor?

TT: I knew growing up in Cincinnati that I wanted to see more of the world, even though I didn’t know what it was like. I went to Vienna because it sounded exciting to see some stranger parts of the world. It seems odd to say that about Vienna today, but back then, it was a dark, grim place. Studying abroad was along the path rather than a big turn in my interest to work internationally. All during the time I was at Harvard Business School, I took classes in international business. I went to work for Citibank because it was by far the most international bank or business of any kind at the time. They were operating in over 100 countries. It was certainly useful to have spent time in Vienna. Every time I got off an airplane while I was with Citi, I had to reassemble my bearings to adjust to the culture.

IES Abroad: Did your experiences in Vienna influence your career path?

TT: My study abroad experience in Vienna was a building block. It was a piece of what sounded good to me. It was a reaffirmation that it would be rewarding to see the world. Another thing that may be harder to grasp today…when I got out of graduate school in 1960, it was sort of exotic, even in a big company, to go outside of the U.S. People would say, “It may not be good for your career path. Who is going to remember you? What you are learning may not be relevant to what goes on here in America.” It was a very different attitude. Now, people look at it as great experience as we move to being more global. Back then, it was dubious. You needed a certain amount of conviction that this would be a good idea, something that everyone today takes for granted. 

IES Abroad: What skills have been most important to successfully navigating your global career?

TT: There are cultural differences in the U.S. Growing up in the Midwest, people were considerate, willing to listen, and treated others with respect. I worked in New York for 25 years, and it wasn’t the same. If you didn’t go out in the morning wanting to ‘kill’, you probably wouldn’t have a successful day. I guess there are too many rats in the cage. You had better be the stronger rat. I had a big advantage, just by the accident of where I happened to be born, of being open. I was interested in the rest of the world and, even more fundamentally, I was curious. “Why is that happening?” “Why is so-and-so over there doing something?” I would find somebody to have lunch with and ask, “What do you do here?” That, I think, is one of the career advantages that I had. I was put in all sorts of different jobs – radically different – because I was curious. That is different than saying, “Here is my job. Let’s get the damn thing done and go home and have a nice party.” That is a universal value. In school you have a syllabus, and they are going to teach you A, B, and C. But when you are on your own, you have to open the doors and ask, “What is this?” That is fundamental career advice, no matter where you are. You want to distinguish yourself by having a broader understanding of where you are, and what you are doing.

IES Abroad: You have supported scholarships for students from economically disadvantaged Chicago families to study through IES Abroad. Generally-speaking, what drives your philanthropy?

TT: I have tried to use what resources I have in a fairly focused way on what I see is a big problem. The one that struck me, and that has seen the least progress, is educational achievement in the primary and secondary years, K-12. I have focused on trying to help on an individual level to achieve better outcomes. If a student is in a totally dysfunctional home, it can be terrifying. Homes matter, no matter what. You can offset a difficult family background, to a degree, by having a well-organized school that operates in a coherent way. I started several approaches on this in Cincinnati, Chicago, and New York. Mentoring is important in this success as well. I am intrigued by the IES Abroad opportunity for a kid to broaden his or her horizons.

IES Abroad: What advice do you have for students who are considering studying or interning abroad?

TT: Expand your horizon constantly by always asking, “Why is that? What just happened? Why does someone do that? What might happen next?” To me, curiosity is always a positive. There is a saying, “Curiosity kills a cat.” But I don’t think so. Looking and asking in a work situation or a social situation is very rewarding. It is an exercise to do all your life. You can learn constantly by just observing and asking why. It is a life skill!

Growing up in New York City in a family of artists, Sophie Elgort had plenty of exposure to travel and culture. But when she studied abroad in Buenos Aires, she took full advantage of every opportunity for immersion. From watching soap operas with her host mom to making friends with restaurant owners to interning in the ER at a public hospital, Sophie made certain this would be a standout experience. She learned lessons about taking risks and managing the unknown, skills that would prove useful as a young entrepreneur launching a multi-channel business in fashion photography. To date, her work has been widely published in publications such as Teen Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Paper, Tatler, Visual Tales, and The Financial Times; and she has shot for top brands including Bloomingdales, IBM, Clinique, Etienne Aigner, Mercedes Benz, and Vince Camuto. Learn more about Sophie, why she feels it is important to mentor aspiring young photographers, and what she is planning next.

IES Abroad: Why did you decide to study abroad and why did you go to Buenos Aires? 

Sophie Elgort: I was a Comparative Literature concentrator at Brown University, and they encourage all Comparative Lit majors to study abroad. I was also very interested in the opportunity as soon as I heard about it. I was studying both French and Spanish literatures within my concentration, but I picked Buenos Aires because I felt like it was a place I might not get back to as much in the future. I go to Europe a lot for work now, but it is true, I don’t really make it back to South America as much, so I am really glad I ended up studying there. 

IES Abroad: What are some of the most influential memories from your time in Buenos Aires? 

SE: Oh, so many. I had a really great host mom. She was single and loved soap operas. She was just the best. She wasn’t a very good cook. She would stick something in the microwave and heat it up for both of us. And she didn’t speak a word of English, not even one word, which was great. We really got along and loved watching soap operas together. One night I didn’t go out since I was exhausted after multiple nights out in a row, and she was so shocked she asked if I was sick. I will never forget her. She was a really positive experience. 

Also, I was lucky enough to be there at the same time as another friend of mine who I grew up with, starting in lower school in New York, who was in Buenos Aires on another program. We didn’t actually know at the outset that we would both be there. We had mutual family friends that let us know that we were both over there. We ended up having a lot of fun adventures together. In having one other person in each other, we were able to make a lot of friends locally and meet a lot of owners of small businesses, like restauranteurs and shop owners, and explore together. 

IES Abroad: What was your personal journey to taking up a profession in fashion photography, and how did your time in Buenos Aires influence you as you launched your career? 

SE: My time in Buenos Aires was a very formative time, in general. It was definitely one of the most standout experiences, even to this day. I’m comfortable traveling; I’m comfortable being in new places; I like exploring; and doing all of that. You learn how to take risks and are able to appreciate adventure. In the beginning of a career, especially when you are an entrepreneur, there is a lot of uncertainty. You have to be able to dive in, take the risk, and believe in yourself. Having studied abroad certainly helped prepare me for this. I remember the first week abroad was just challenging. You are in a new place, living in a new home, speaking a different language. I think it just prepares you for your career, and entrepreneurship, in particular. 

IES Abroad: Has the experience informed your photography work in any way?

SE: With photography, you pull things from a ton of different places and experiences. Randomly, the other day, I was looking at a photograph of mine, and it reminded me of an experience in Buenos Aires. I have been trying to figure out what I want to do my next exhibition on, but now part of me thinks I may focus on this one subject in Buenos Aires and go back to capture some of these images.

IES Abroad: You have had some pretty incredible assignments and have worked with several well-recognized brands and publications. What has been one of your most exciting or fulfilling assignments? 

SE: They are all fulfilling in different ways. One that was really exciting was photographing Coco Rocha, who is a pretty big super model. I shot her for a campaign earlier this year, and that was a really exciting moment for me because it just felt like it was at a different level. I felt like I had accomplished something by getting pulled into a job like that. Also, I was working with her and the team, working with these amazing teams of people. Every new opportunity is really exciting. I was just interviewed by Sotheby’s about their upcoming photography auction, and that was cool, because they are a huge global name. It’s always exciting, and part of me thinks, “Whoa, why would they want to talk to me?” But at the same time, you have to realize that every single little accomplishment is a win in your life, and you just appreciate it. 

IES Abroad: Last summer, you launched your own lifestyle website. Why did you decide to pursue this direction with your work?

SE: The “lifestyle website” is more like a diary. Actually, it’s funny because when I did an interview for it on Women’s Wear Daily, they called it a “lifestyle website” or something like that. Then, Hollywood Reporter picked it up and did this huge story about how I was launching this massive lifestyle website. I was like, “Oh no! I’m not launching a lifestyle website! I said a diary, an online diary!” It’s really more about sharing my personal pictures and experiences, the ones I am not commissioned to do. I was trying to think of where I could find a platform to put these images, and I thought a diary online would be a cool way to show them. For example, I was just traveling in Australia for ten days, and I took all these pictures. I want to be able to share them and write about the experiences. It is about showing people my voice – people who don’t know me – so, not only what do my pictures look like, but what do I sound like, and what do I sound like when I’m writing. I’m also going to do a video component soon, which I am still figuring out because it is a little more time intensive.

IES Abroad: Tell us how you have used your influence to support aspiring photographers, particularly among younger generations.

SE: There are so many young aspiring photographers in middle school, high school and college, and I get all these comments on my Instagram or via email asking me to check out their work. I always try to take the time to look at it or meet with them if they are in New York. A lot of times, I have them come meet me, and they are with their parents – they are that young – and then I look at some of their pictures, and I talk to them about what they are thinking in terms of career goals and going into college, how can they pursue it, or coming out of college, what makes sense next, because a lot of people don’t necessarily think of the arts as a career option. Especially if someone is talented, it is important for someone to be able to encourage them and for them to have a role model, see that this can be a career, and that you can make money doing it.  

IES Abroad: What do you aim to achieve with your work in photography and your other creative outlets? 

SE: There are a few goals I have been focusing on for the last couple of years. One is growing my photography career, meaning shooting more and more, bigger and bigger publications and campaigns. That is the commercial side. On the personal side, the art side, I really want to have my first solo exhibition on a topic that is important to me. I am also working to get more on-air opportunities. I would like to be a host or a judge having to do with fashion or photography on a TV network, or maybe now it is more current or modern to do it on a digital platform, but still video. That is what I am working on, but they all go hand-in-hand. As one of them grows, it will help the other, and vice versa. 

IES Abroad: What has been one of your most satisfying accomplishments to date? 

SE: There’s a lot of different things, but I would say just getting my photography career organized as a business. I’m in the arts, but it is so important to think about this other side. If you want to make a living in the arts, you also need to look at the business side and realize, “How am I making a living doing this? What are my financial goals? How am I looking at it on the business side as well as the creative?” I really think that I’ve managed to learn about, set up, and organize the business side pretty well. Probably in the last year, I have really focused on that, and I’m pretty excited about what I have done. That’s something I never really knew about, thought about, or thought I could do. It’s not the glamorous part, but it’s so important. 

IES Abroad: Why do you feel studying abroad is important? 

SE: I think study abroad is really important. Everyone makes it into their own experience. It’s important to get out of your comfort zone and go explore. When you’re just traveling, like I just was in Australia for ten days – and I spent three days here, three days there, and so on – you don’t really get to know a city like you do when you study abroad. I think it is a really cool thing to be able to live in a different place and experience a different culture, not just as a tourist but as someone who lives there. I also think that language is important. It challenges your mind. Through language, you can also really understand other cultures – the phrases, the nuances, etc. It gives you perspective into other cultures the way nothing else can.

“Nantes chose me!” says Ambassador Howard F. Jeter who was selected to spend a year on the IES Abroad Nantes program in 1967-68. His foundation in language learning and intercultural understanding set the stage for a 27-year career with the U.S. State Department where he served twice as a U.S. Ambassador – first to Botswana and later to Nigeria. After retiring from the State Department, he pursued two more rewarding careers working to develop business relationships with African countries, and now is working on eradicating neglected diseases around the world. For Ambassador Jeter, it all started in Nantes.

IES Abroad: As a student at Morehouse College, how did you choose to study abroad in Nantes?

Ambassador Jeter: Morehouse has a longstanding relationship with IES Abroad, and every year they selected a group of students, known as Merrill Scholars. I was chosen as one of six students to study abroad on an IES Abroad program. I did not choose Nantes. I was told that because I was studying French I would go on the Nantes program. Other students went to IES Abroad programs in London, Vienna, Madrid, and Paris. I was really happy in Nantes. It was a small but vibrant city with a lot of history, and it had many advantages over a larger city like Paris. We went to Paris several times, but living in Nantes was preferable for me.

IES Abroad: What are one or two very special memories you hold from your time in Nantes?

HJ: The first week of orientation was a sojourn in the Loire Valley and a wonderful introduction to France and French culture. We also got to know our cohort of students. Even at that point, we were strongly discouraged from speaking English, and that really set the stage for intensive French language study.  My host family, M. and Mme Leland and their son and daughter were a close-knit family. Typical of many French families, they did a lot together. I was impressed with the warmth and inclusiveness with which I was received. Moreover, Jimmie Milhouse, a fellow Morehouse student, was my roommate and we often studied together and helped one another a lot. I liked all of my classes at IES Abroad, except for my phonetics class. I told the Center Director, Madame Hugues that I did not understand why I needed to take that class, but she said I did, and in the end, I did! The classes were very, very good, and the professors were excellent. I learned very quickly that the more I spoke the language, the better I became.

IES Abroad: What challenges did you face while studying abroad and how did you overcome them?

HJ: Adapting to a new culture and a new way of doing things and being away from my family were challenging. But I viewed these obstacles just as things I had to work through during the first few months and I did. Probably the biggest challenge concerned the Moped that I purchased when I was in Nantes. Learning to maneuver on French streets was difficult, and I did have one accident when I was there. It happened on a cold, rainy evening, when riding a moped was always a particular challenge. But I used it to go everywhere in Nantes. It was really essential to getting around in the city.

IES Abroad: What skills that you developed during study abroad did you apply to your 27-year career in diplomacy?

HJ: Oddly enough, I only occasionally used French in my career. Later on, I learned Brazilian Portuguese when I was assigned to Mozambique, and Kiswahili, which I used in Tanzania. But having learned French, it made learning Portuguese much easier. There were a lot of similarities. In retrospect, I realize how much the IES Abroad program taught me to adapt to other cultures. Living in Europe is not so different for Americans, but once you go farther afield, the differences are greater. Europe was a great stepping stone for me down that path. It also gave me a strong foundation for intercultural understanding and appreciation of other ways of life. It all began in Nantes. Otherwise, how could I have done it? I credit the program for that. IES Abroad Nantes left the most indelible mark on me of anything I’ve ever done. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. It was the springboard for me to do so many other things, and it was how I became involved in international affairs. Having been bitten by the “travel bug,” a year after Nantes, I took advantage of an opportunity to do three months of volunteer work on a rural development in Africa. The rest is history.

IES Abroad: You served as U.S. Ambassador to Botswana (1993-1996), Nigeria (2000-2003), and as Special Presidential Envoy to Liberia (1996-1997). When you look back at your career with the State Department what are you most proud of?

HJ: The most difficult assignment I had was as the President’s Special Envoy for Liberia because of the volatile issues we were dealing with in trying to end a very devastating civil war. Nigeria was one of the biggest players in that situation, and we had a difficult bilateral relationship with the country at that time. We had to gauge how to best handle that relationship, and that difficult task was entrusted to me.  I traveled to Nigeria over fifteen times during my assignment. The U.S. Government decided that while we differed on many issues, ending the war in Liberia, which was destabilizing the entire West African sub-region, was the one area where we and Nigeria had common goals. The Nigerians agreed. The job entailed an enormous amount of global travel, especially to Europe and West Africa. I think I clocked nearly a million air miles. It was difficult to deal with so many different interests and personalities, sometimes with warlords, governments, regional organizations, and civil society groups. So, to have played a role in halting that war is probably one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in my career.

I am also proud of what I accomplished in Nigeria as Ambassador. Nigeria is such a big, hubristic country with a rolling set of challenges 365 days a year. It is the number one country in Africa in terms of influence, population, wealth, energy resources, and reach. The Nigerians are very active diplomatically. They are a very highly educated and highly motivated people. To grow the close relationships that we did with the Nigerians, gain their confidence and trust, and get them to do some things they might not otherwise have done took a lot of patience and hard work. Likewise, they probably got us to do some things we otherwise would not have considered. It was very professionally rewarding and intellectually stimulating. 

IES Abroad: Following your career with the State Department, what has been some of your most fulfilling work?

HJ: After I retired from the State Department, I joined Ambassador Andrew Young’s consulting firm, GoodWorks International. I helped to establish and managed their Washington, DC office. We did lots of work facilitating mutually beneficial business and investment relations between U.S. companies and Africa. When I left GoodWorks International, I served briefly as Interim President of the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation. Subsequently, I started my own small consulting firm, including service on the Boards of two small but promising start-up oil companies.

But what I’m doing now, as a volunteer, is probably one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in my life. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation, I work in my spare time with three well known non-governmental organizations: Books for Africa, The Carter Center and Rotary International. Through Books for Africa, the Foundation is now the largest donor of books and computers to schools, libraries, and universities on the African continent. So far, more than 2 million books and over 1,000 computers have been donated with a cumulative value of more than $22 million.

The Foundation’s work with Rotary International is primarily focused on polio eradication, although our founder has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to Rotary programs on maternal and child health care, education and literacy, and peace studies. His donation of $2.5 million to Rotary’s global campaign on polio eradication was matched 2-to-1 by the Gates Foundation and is one of the largest individual donations made to the Rotary Foundation. In Nigeria within the next 22 months, if mass immunization continues on its current trajectory, the World Health Organization will declare Nigeria polio-free. This will be a huge victory over one of the world’s most debilitating diseases. I have seen the human suffering that polio causes and if one can claim even a small role in its eradication, this is something very meaningful, very special.   

Nigeria has over 40 percent of the world’s cases of River Blindness, a disease which could potentially affect up to 30 million people. You have probably never heard of River Blindness. That is because it is a truly neglected tropical disease. Few donor governments, global foundations or major non-governmental organizations have paid much attention to this sight-robbing disease. To help meet this challenge, The Sir Emeka Offor Foundation has entered into a partnership with the Atlanta-based Carter Center with a pledge of $10 million to accelerate The Carter Center’s field work to eliminate River Blindness in Nigeria. With continuing support from the Government of Nigeria and Merck and Company, and the Carter Center’s outstanding field work to eliminate this disease, we at the Sir Emeka Offor Foundation are confident that this six-year goal can be achieved.

My work with these philanthropic endeavors has given new meaning to my life. The empathy, kindness, caring, commitment, and generosity of the people and organizations that I have encountered and with whom I work have made me a better, more hopeful, and a much more determined person. For this, I am grateful. 

IES Abroad: Having perceived the world from so many vantage points, in what fields would you most like to see U.S. college graduates apply their skills?

HJ: Young people today need to understand that we now live in a global society, a global economy, and a global political system. In order to be competitive, they are going to have to do things that perhaps their peers did not have to do several decades ago – like learning languages. Because if they don’t, they will not be competitive. They’re not just competing with their classmates in their town, city, state, or even their peers in the United States. They are competing with people from all over the world. So, if you want to work for a multinational corporation, for example, you may be competing with people from China, Britain, France, Brazil, Malaysia, Egypt, Nigeria, and beyond. I look at some of the big oil companies in the U.S., and they don’t only have staff from the United States; they have Nigerian and Angolan headquarters staff, for example, because that’s where they operate. They want those employees in their U.S. offices because they speak the languages of their home countries and they know what is going on there. You’ve got to know at least one foreign language, and two or more if possible, because your competitors will know several. You have to be able to adapt to different cultures and be culturally sensitive. Students in college today need to understand that studying abroad is really not a luxury, but rather a necessity for career success in our inter-dependent, globalized world.

IES Abroad: Where will you encourage your grandchildren to study abroad and why?

HJ: There is always value in learning a romance language, so study abroad in a European country where a romance language is spoken is still very valuable. (My daughter studied in France, Italy, and the UK, and is currently studying Chinese in Shanghai, where she lives with her family). But there are several emerging countries that now warrant exploring that are going to be big players in the years ahead. The so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) come to mind. It would be good to learn Portuguese, Russian or Hindi, and Chinese is especially valuable. In Africa, learning Hausa or Kiswahili would be useful because those languages are widely spoken in multiple countries. What I’ve found in my work and travel is that if you go to a country and can speak even a few basic words and greetings, the people are more receptive. And, if you speak the language conversationally, you are then set to be ‘in’ the culture, and people will share more with you than they otherwise would.

For students who are contemplating a career in international affairs, study abroad is a must. And international affairs is not just the State Department or other agencies of the U.S. Government. That is only a small part of a much larger mosaic of career possibilities. There are so many career opportunities in multinational corporations, journalism, international institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Study abroad is one of the best things you can do to enhance your career prospects and broaden your life choices.

From traveling behind the Iron Curtain to watching the Berlin Wall go up, Tom Tusher took advantage of every opportunity study abroad had to offer. At a time when few American companies had international divisions, Tom returned to the U.S. determined to pursue a career in international business, even if it meant charting his own path. In 1969, he joined Levi Strauss & Company and was instrumental in building the company’s international brand from the ground up – navigating their entry as one of the first American companies into Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia – places he had experienced first-hand while studying abroad. In our interview, Tom explains how studying abroad laid the foundation for his professional success as President and COO of Levi Strauss & Company, and why he supports study abroad scholarships for today’s students.

IES Abroad: What led you to study abroad in Vienna?

Tom Tusher: I was born and raised in Oakland, California, and my parents were not world travelers, but I always had an interest in things outside of California and outside of the Bay Area. It appealed to me to spend some time abroad. I then started to look at what programs were available. IES Abroad stood out from all the rest in terms of being the best of the programs, and it was important to me that I could receive credit for all of the time I would be spending abroad. Vienna didn’t have a specific draw for me going into the process. It was the best program available. That was the main draw. Once I got to Vienna, of course, I loved Vienna!

IES Abroad: You studied in Vienna during a period of continuing recovery after World War II. What was it like to be in Europe at that time?

TT: This was the 1960s, almost twenty years removed from the war, and you would have thought that things would have changed dramatically or have been forgotten. That wasn’t true at all! In the capital of Bucharest, there were billboards with anti-American slogans, basically associating Americans with Nazis. It was amazing! I was struck by how stringent life was for people who were behind the Iron Curtain, how little they had, and how stunted they were in their knowledge of the world by their governments. The other contrast was going into Germany. The West Berlin side of the Wall was either already fully reconstructed or well on its way to being reconstructed. The place was rebuilt. When you went to the East Berlin side, every building was either bombed out or had bullet holes in it. It was incredible to me that within a couple of hundred yards there would be this contrast. It wasn’t just the couple of hundred yards of distance, it was twenty years of time! That had one of the biggest impacts on me.

IES Abroad: What were some of your most memorable experiences studying abroad?

TT: I remember going into Berlin when the Wall was going up. I went into East Berlin, which was easy to do, and even at that time, it was supposedly easy to get out. On my way out, when I got within 100 yards of the Wall, suddenly the German shepherds and the police made it very clear that I wasn’t to come any closer. I suddenly had the sense of what it was like to be behind the Iron Curtain. I was there on a Friday and was planning to leave that same day. When I got ready to board the train to exit, I was told that I had to have a visa to get out. I didn’t need a visa to get in, but I needed one to get out. “Ok, where do I get that?” They said that I had to go to the other side of town. It was an hour to closing, and if I didn’t get there in time to get my visa, I was going to be stuck for the weekend. That was another experience of not having the freedom we are used to. In any event, I did make it in time and got out. I made a point when the Wall came down of going back to Berlin. I saw it go up, and I saw it go down. 

IES Abroad: You began your career at Levi Strauss in 1969 and went on to become President and COO. How did studying abroad influence your career path?

TT: We traveled a lot behind the Iron Curtain. I went to Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. That certainly influenced me when I got into my corporate career. Those were the three first Eastern European countries Levi Strauss set up in. Hungary was number one. We were one of the first American corporations to go into Hungary, and subsequently into Czechoslovakia and Poland. We set up a large production facility in Poland that is still there today. Studying abroad influenced my life, there is no question about it.

When I came back from Vienna, my career objective changed focus to international business. Interestingly, I ran into one of my classmates from IES Abroad while standing in line to register for business school at Stanford. We were the only two people in our class at Stanford who had an interest in international business. My classmate went to work for an international bank while I was interviewing with consumer product companies with the objective to be part of the international division. What I discovered is that very few corporations at that time did much internationally or, if they did, they did it through third party distributors. They didn’t have their own programs. The only one that did was Colgate Palmolive, so I went to work for them after graduating from Stanford.

IES Abroad: Were there lessons learned in Vienna that helped you in the early days of your career?

TT: I think the main thing was being exposed to cultural diversity abroad, which led me to want to pursue an international career. It was a unique opportunity, since very few people were pursuing international business careers. Nor were there many American companies that had programs focused internationally. Whereas the world has changed today. My belief, at the time, was that my exposure to international cultures was going to benefit me in a business career. You could just see that the world was changing and that there was going to be a bigger, broader world. Having had the opportunity to be an early adopter at the time was going to be advantageous. It turned out to be the case.  

IES Abroad: How important has having an international perspective been for you in your career?

TT: Huge! When I joined Colgate Palmolive, their company, which was always thought of as an American company, did 55% of sales volume from overseas but over 100% of their profit came from international. Therefore, the international part of Colgate was significantly important to them. They had a full-scale international program where they brought in six to 12 new graduates and put them through a training program and then assigned them to posts overseas. This is what I wanted to do, so it was a perfect company for me to join. I was exposed to a highly, highly, highly, internationally global organization. When I joined Levi’s, on the other hand, it was not at all. It was only a $200 million dollar business – a small business – almost all in the U.S., with a small amount of export business. They had a president of international, whom I was working for initially. Of course, the brand was iconic, but they had to build the brand internationally. It was a real opportunity for me to grow the international business from the ground floor. I had assignments in Mexico, Australia, the UK and Europe, and then returned to San Francisco to run the entire International Business.

IES Abroad: What is one thing you learned while abroad that remains a constant in your life today?

TT: If I had to put it down to a couple of words, it would be “cultural diversity.” It made me more tolerant of different cultures, whatever they may be. Traveling through Turkey, an Islamic country, as a college student, I had met a lot of Turkish Muslim students. When I was in Morocco, same thing. Even traveling in France, I experienced when they were having problems with the independence of Algeria. I stayed in hostels and met a lot of Algerians students. Cultural tolerance and diversity is probably one of the things I took away most from my experiences in Europe – learning to get along with people and tolerance of other ways of thinking, other religions, and simply cultural differences. I met some wonderful people. I got invited into homes to have meals. Sometimes it was a student who invited me home who spoke some English and their family would speak no English, but we always found a way to communicate.

IES Abroad: Since retiring from Levi Strauss in 1997, you and your wife, Pauline, have devoted yourself to philanthropy, including establishing the Thomas Tusher Scholarship for Study Abroad at Haas School of Business. What motivated you to pay it forward, enabling students for whom study abroad would be out of their reach financially, to have this life changing experience?

TT: I didn’t come from a strong economic background. That is an understatement in terms of “lack thereof.” I recognize how expensive college has gotten. I have been very fortunate to have done very well in the corporate world and have the financial ability to do something. Sometimes you try to do things that mirror your own background. In my case, it was having had the opportunity to study abroad and how it impacted me in terms of my business career. Having come out of the very parochial U.S. environment and seeing that in a lot of the students I met when I was on the Advisory Board at the University of California-Berkeley, I wanted to try to encourage students to study abroad, particularly those interested in a business career. This is why we started the scholarship at the Haas School of Business, rather than the full university. It was to take students interested in a business career in the undergraduate program and give them an opportunity to have some time abroad at an early age, recognizing that not everybody necessarily would be desirous of an international career or would come back and pursue one. But at least it would broaden their horizons in whatever they were going to do for the rest of life or their business career, by giving them exposure to other cultures and other ways of thinking.

IES Abroad: What advice do you have for students who are studying abroad today?

TT: For students at large: apply to go abroad. Many students do not even begin to realize what an opportunity study abroad is and all that they would get out of it. For students studying abroad: be adventuresome. Get out there, meet people, see the world, and experience! I stood in line the day before for some of the special operas in Vienna. I am not an opera buff nor have I become one since, but it was important to me to experience some of the culture of Vienna. It was stepping outside of my comfort zone. I would encourage students studying abroad to also step outside their comfort zone, to go find things that they might not even know they have an interest in. Having traveled throughout Europe, going through the great museums of the world on my own, I began developing a greater appreciation of the art world. When I came back from Vienna, I enrolled in some art appreciation courses to develop an appreciation of the cultural things that probably would have taken many more years to develop had I not had that exposure. I continue to have a life engaged with the international world, with homes in New Zealand and Mexico. We own a lodge in New Zealand (www.blanketbay.com) where we host guests from around the world.

When Fred Zollo studied abroad in IES Abroad’s first London class in Spring 1974, he didn’t expect the experience would help lay the foundation for a future career in theater and film. From going to the theater three to four times a week, including seeing Laurance Olivier’s final performance, to producing a one-man show for a class – Fred lived and breathed theater in London. Coming from a family of Italian anarchists, Fred was brought up in the tradition of social justice. But witnessing the coal miners’ strike first-hand while studying abroad brought the issues of social justice to life – themes he has continued to focus on as a producer. Winner of six Tony Awards and 18-time nominee, Fred is best known for his work on Best Picture Oscar Nominees Mississippi Burning and Quiz Show. Read on to see how studying abroad impacted his career and why he believes every American student should study abroad.

IES Abroad: What led you to study abroad and why did you chose to go to London?

Fred Zollo: I had always planned to go to the London School of Economics (LSE) for undergrad but didn’t. The IES Abroad program was a perfect way for me to attend LSE (one of IES Abroad’s foreign partner universities at the time), so that is why I chose it. I eventually went to graduate school there. What was so wonderful about IES Abroad was that I ended up making lifelong friendships with members of the faculty that I had met during the spring of 1974. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

IES Abroad: What are some of your greatest memories from your time in London? 

FZ: It was a very tumultuous time in the United Kingdom. There was a coal miners’ strike and elections, which brought back Harold Wilson. We witnessed that first hand. Many of us were even active in the campaign. I spent some time in Wales where I observed the strike first-hand and went down in the mines with the striking miners. It was a remarkable period. We also went to Germany, traveling in the Black Forest, and to the University of Freiburg in Germany. It was a very tumultuous time not only in the U.K. but across Europe. The Vietnam War was finally coming to an end. It would take another year. In retrospect, it seemed like any other year, but it wasn’t. It was a profound time to be in Europe. I look back on it as one of the most important six months of my life.

IES Abroad: How did your experiences, classes, and the people you met while you were studying in London impact your interest in theater?

FZ: I did a little bit of theater while I was there. I worked on a project that was actually involved with Philip Windsor’s class at the LSE about George Bernard Shaw. I did a one-man show related to this called, Conversations with Myself. It was some random thoughts of Shaw shuffled together in a 25 minute presentation. When I think of it now, it is rather embarrassing. The great thing about IES Abroad and the LSE is that they welcomed us and embraced us. It was a very special and rare experience. Everyone got to do stuff that was unique to them. They encouraged things that we were interested in. I don’t know what it was like for those who followed us, but remembering back, we couldn’t have been more excited.

As far as an educational, cultural, and social experience, study abroad was extraordinary. I think we went to the theater at least three times a week, sometimes four. In those days, the West End was extraordinarily inexpensive. For two and a half pounds you could go to any of the West End theaters, and I was able to see some legendary performances. They were building the new National Theater, and it was Laurence Olivier’s last season. During this period – my spring 1974 term – Laurence Olivier performed in his last three plays. I saw all three. In fact, I saw the last performance of his final performance. It was a watershed time. It was a remarkable place for the theater. I was young, of course, and had an interest in the theater, and little did I know that I would go into it professionally.

IES Abroad: After graduating, how did you get your start in theater? Were there skills learned abroad that helped you in the early days?

FZ: My start in the theater is, of course, based on nepotism. My father was involved in theater and film production. We did some things together before he died. He passed away in 1977. The first thing I worked on on Broadway was a play by David Rabe, with Al Pacino, about the Vietnam War, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, which my father did just before he died. I had the good fortune to work on that with him. I have done a number of plays with Mr. Rabe since. I thought that it would be an experience in my modest life, but it turned out to be a career.

IES Abroad: A recurring theme in the plays and films that you have produced is equality and justice. Did your experiences while you were in London help shape your attitudes and ethics? If so, how?

FZ: I come from a family of anarchists, very much of the tradition of the early twentieth century and the immigration of Italians to the United States, many of whom were abused, mistreated, and, eventually, deported. The whole social justice movement, the anarchist movement, is highlighted, of course, by the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927. This was the tradition that I come from: of looking at the world a little bit differently. Being in London, in England, and on the Continent in 1974, in particular, was very important because it is not often you are in a country that basically shuts down for a couple of months because of a miners’ strike. It brought to the fore all of the issues of social justice. I don’t remember the exact average pay of a miner in 1974 (40 or so pounds), but the notion that somebody would think someone else would do that incredibly dangerous job for a pittance in the 70s—we are not talking about the 1870s—put the world in a clear light.

Again, the Vietnam War was still going on, and those of us who were of age had to deal with the possibility of having to go there and the injustice of the war. Theater and film were a platform for social justice. To quote H.L. Mencken, the purpose of what we should do is “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That is the intention, with some exceptions, for most of the work I’ve done – whether it is Angels in America or Pavlo Hummel, or all of the August Wilson plays that I have had the honor to be involved in, or films like Mississippi Burning, Quiz Show, Ghosts in Mississippi, and others – all attempt to do that, some with more success than others.

IES Abroad: You have won six Tony Awards, have been nominated for a Tony 18 times, and won many other awards for your work. What are you most proud of?

FZ: That I’m still here. I’ve been doing this for forty years. I am just happy that I’m still doing it and that we are able to continue to do films and plays about things that matter. When I started making movies, we had a company called Movies That Matter. We hoped that the movies we made would matter. So, when a movie like Mississippi Burning was on the cover of Time magazine in those days, it was very rare. It wasn’t an article about a movie star; it was an article about a film. The second Mississippi film was about the murder of Medgar Evers and the thirty-year hunt for and prosecution of his murderer, Byron De La Beckwith. Rick Bragg of the The New York Times described it as telling our history through celluloid. For better or worse, and some more successfully than others, the idea was to try to earn conscience with celluloid. That is what the greatest filmmakers have done, and that was always our hope. In terms of theater, I have been very blessed to do plays by people like David Rabe, August Wilson, David Mamet, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Tony Kushner, Christopher Hampton, Eric Bogosian, among others.

IES Abroad: Without revealing a ‘spoiler’, what projects are you engaged in or considering?

FZ: We have a whole list of things coming up. In terms of the theater, I’m redoing a play that I did with Mike Nichols 20-25 years ago about social justice in Chile called Death of a Maiden by the great Ariel Dorfman. We are also in the process of making a film about the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, which galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.

IES Abroad: What is one thing you learned while abroad that remains a constant in your life?

FZ: I think that study abroad is the best thing for Americans. Again, I’m a pacifist. My parents were Italian, so I had been out of the United States several times. The most important thing we Americans can learn is that it is a big world out there. It is very important to see how we are perceived and how what we do in the world is perceived by others. You learn a lot about how we are perceived when you are in Britain, France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, or Asia. You begin to see that the world does not rotate around us. Just because we say it, doesn’t mean that it is true. It is a great learning lesson for Americans to understand different cultures, languages, literature, music, and history. All of it is very, very important. All of us were very fortunate to be taught the lesson that our place in the world may not be what we thought before we studied abroad. Plus, LSE would not be described as a conservative place. I was inspired by Bernard Shaw and others. The lesson that we all learned there tilted us a bit, and should have. I also remember Edward Mowatt (Founder of IES Abroad London and Center Director). We played cricket in his backyard in Kent. He was lovely, talented, giving, thoughtful, and supportive. He was an extraordinary influence on me and all of us. He welcomed us in a terrific way, and he ran interference for us with the very impressive people at the LSE, like Philip Windsor and Frederick Northedge. We couldn’t have been more fortunate.

IES Abroad: What advice would you give to a student who is considering studying abroad today?

FZ: Study abroad should be a requirement for American students. And if they can’t afford it, there should be scholarship funds. I’m talking about a national scholarship fund where the government helps them, and not a government loan that some bank is going to hound them for the next 20 years. It is an essential part of every American’s education, regardless of class, creed, or economic standing. You will have a much different discourse in this country if people actually spent six months or a year abroad in an important institution studying and thinking and looking at the world. Americans are more insular than they have ever been. If more young Americans were able to avail themselves of a program like IES Abroad, it is a life-changing thing, not just for them but for the country.