FEBRUARY 2012-WINTER 2015

Global Studies Program

In 2012 I was recruited to launch and develop a new Global Studies program - and I moved from the United States to Japan to make it happen. Over the course of three years I was able to design and develop more than ten original course curricula for students from Asia, Africa and North America. As if the creative freedom that comes from launching a new initiative was not enough, I also was fortunate to be entrusted to found and launch a Tokyo Foundation Funded “Global Studies, Peace and Leadership Summer Seminar”- this became a 5 week international program the included two weeks of Virtual Classrooms, a 1 week Japan based Peace Component (using the Hiroshima A-Bomb memorial week as a learning case study, followed by a 10 day immersion experience with Social Entrepreneurs and communities across India, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia- my students then segued into a semester long course "Designing for Social Innovation" where they crafted their own SE ventures leveraging various tools and methods (i.e . business model canvas, storytelling, design thinking, pitching, etc). We ran the pilot in 2012 and iterated and scaled for a 2013 run as well. As a lead for this I was managing multiple cross-cultural teams, field budgets and stakeholders including a media team to capture some of the impact. You can see some of the videos of students and their impressions here. For me, it was a passion project that allowed be to facilitate an awakening and connecting across cultures- having worked at Ashoka and already launched my own venture previous to my moving to Japan, I wanted my students to understand that they can be the creators of their own destiny- they can turn challenges into opportunities and make impact. The end game was to understand what it would take to run and manage their own projects- should they choose to convert lessons learned in the classroom into their real world careers.

Cross Pollination and Idea Networking

thinking out loud helps the world move forward, further, and faster -find my reflections on Medium, latest updates on LinkedIn and curiosities on Twitter

thinking out loud helps the world move forward, further, and faster -
find my reflections on Medium, latest updates on LinkedIn and curiosities on Twitter