Advertise on podcast: Internationalie

This week, I am joined by Aarya. Aarya is an Indian woman born and raised in the UAE, with a formative chapter at a boarding school in Kodaikanal, India—an upbringing that shaped her global outlook from an early age. She completed her undergraduate education at Loyola University Chicago before earning her Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she focused on humanitarian policy and international conflict resolution. Her work spans policy and humanitarian contexts, including experience with the U.S. Department of Defense and frontline advocacy on human rights and crisis response. Now based in Dubai, she works on global health and policy initiatives while building a career focused on navigating complex conflict environments, protection of civilians, and strengthening humanitarian systems. In this episode, we talked about the cost of being international students whether it is how it affects our identity, the way we see the world and most importantly the sacrifices made behind such a life-changing decision. We discuss the current climate international students are in with particular emphasis on uncertainty and how to best navigate this time of transition. Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by Noah. Noah is a San Francisco–based builder, traveler, and community creator. Born to an Ethiopian family and raised just outside of Washington, D.C., he’s always been drawn to new places, big ideas, and bringing people together. He graduated from Pepperdine University with a degree in Finance. By day he works in tech as a Product Manager at Google, and by night he’s usually hosting something, chasing a new project, or planning his next adventure. Noah loves good conversations, spontaneous trips, staying active, and creating spaces where interesting people can meet. In this episode, we talked about how we each navigated finding our people in college and how the friendships we made then still impact us today. We discussed the importance of being open-minded and self-aware as we navigated a challenging and new environment. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate our experience as college students! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend and honorary roommate Alda from Indonesia. She studied her Master's in Human Rights at Columbia University (US), and Psychology at Universitas Nusa Cendana (Indonesia) for her undergraduate degree. Currently, she’s working at Plan International Indonesia as Project Manager. Plan International is an NGO focusing on fulfillment of children's rights and equality for girls. At Plan, she manages a project called Girls Football, focusing on integrating sport as a platform to promote girls' leadership and transform the community into a safe and equal space.  In this episode, we talked about what it means to move from complete strangers to close friends in a short time. We discussed not only how we navigated the challenges of sharing space with roommates but also the rewards that come with it. A candid and personal one-on-one conversation that lets you see a glimpse of what’s it’s like to live with roommates in New York City! Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Kuleni. Kuleni is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is currently a cybersecurity consultant with a passion for all things digital defense. She majored in Cybersecurity Engineering at George Mason University and went on to earn her master’s in Digital Forensics and Cyber Analysis. Outside of work, she’s an active mentor with WiCyS (Women in CyberSecurity), supporting the next generation of women in cybersecurity. In this episode, we talked about the unwritten rules of success whether it is identifying helpful habits early-on, self-awareness, networking, mentorship or how learning new things such as hobbies will help us lean into joy. We delve into the behind the scenes of what success looks like and how it is different for everyone. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Bereket. She was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She received her Bachelors degree from Brown University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and her Masters from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She is currently pursuing her PhD as a Chemistry graduate student at Columbia University. In this episode we talked about the idea of belongingness and how that played out in our college experiences as international students. We discussed the importance of finding belongingness in ourselves and how it’s a lifelong journey and not a destination.  Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week I am joined by Elyas Tecle. He is currently a Cloud Sales representative at Google, originally from the Philadelphia area. His parents are from Ethiopia and Eritrea and he has lived in New York for the last 5 years. He studied International Relations and Consumer Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, but pivoted towards tech in his career - working his way through roles at IBM, Salesforce, and now at Google.  In this episode, we talked about the struggles we faced to prioritize our mental health particularly as children of immigrants and international students. The constant need to fulfill the expectations set by our parents and ourselves can sometimes be draining. We discussed the stigma associated with seeking professional help in our community and addressed the importance creating a support system that we can lean on during difficult times. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Susan. She is from Maputo, Mozambique and graduated from Smith College with a double major in Economics and Government in 2019. Susan is currently pursuing a PhD in international studies, with a research focus on sustainable economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her current research projects investigate the effects of foreign capital investments from three emerging economies (Brazil, China, and South Africa) on development outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa.  In this episode, we talked about the importance of mentorship and the significant role it played in both our personal and professional lives. We discussed how to identify a potential mentor, what to look for in a mentorship relationship and the importance of giving back to others. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week I am joined by Sinafik who is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and is a Mount Holyoke Class of 2015 graduate. She currently serves as the Executive Director for Your Ethiopian Professionals (YEP), a 501(C)(3)non-profit organization founded in 2010, that aims to be a global connection point for the professional community. Outside of her tenure at YEP, she works as Account Executive, Assistant Vice President for Employee Benefits in Lockton Northeast's Washington, D.C. office and serves as the primary business contact for clients. She also founded and co-manages Birara Genet, a non-profit organization that empowers under-represented community members in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia through targeted and job-relevant skill training programs. In this episode, we talked about how we each maneuvered the unique challenges we faced as international students and shared some tips that worked for us to successfully navigate the journey of being an international student. Major takeaways include finding belongingness in the space you inhabit, stepping out of the scarcity mindset, tapping into resources, diversifying your network and most importantly giving yourself agency and being kind to yourself as you discover what success means to you. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week I am joined by my dear friend Weza. Weza is currently building a goldsmith company in Switzerland with a strong focus on sustainability and blockchain technology. He gave a TEDx speech, with insights in his personal entrepreneurial journey on how blockchain technology can enable justice within the jewelry industry. Weza is completing a Double Master’s Degree with a M.Sc. in International Management and M.A. in International Law and the Managing Climate Solution program (MaCS) at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), where he also founded the Africa Association – leading with the purpose generation in mind. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community Zurich Hub and was most recently elected as the Youth Ambassador for Climate Change at EC 22’.   Weza mostly focuses on psychological spheres and writes a Memoire “The Power of Perspective Taking” about Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and its success factors. On a personal note, Weza is Angolan and Italian, and grew up in Switzerland and is always seen dancing since fifteen years old, being a Salsa/Bachata dance teacher in Zurich. In this episode, we talked about how emotional intelligence helped us navigate our journeys as international students and also the importance of open-mindedness and how that helped us become adaptable to our new surroundings. “In a world where knowledge is abundant, emotional intelligence becomes the true differentiator.” Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Stuti. Stuti is from Gurgaon in India and was an international student at Smith College, in western Massachusetts. She majored in Quantitative Economics with a minor in Statistics and Data Science and graduated in 2022. She currently works in the international development space, at the The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab or J-PAL and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  In this episode, we talked about the different discomforts we face as international students ranging from the weather, food, culture and even our identities. We talked about how we each navigated through the different hurdles we faced and the importance of leaning into healthy habits to cope with our discomfort. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my dear friend Soriene. She is originally from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She completed her undergraduate education at Bryn Mawr College in Mathematics and Economics. After graduating in 2020, she worked at Yale University as a Research Assistant. She’s currently an Economics PhD student at Northwestern University. In this episode, we discussed our experiences when it comes to finding internships during college as international students and also securing full time jobs afterwards. We talked about the struggles we faced when applying to these positions as international students and how we overcame them. Furthermore, we highlighted the importance of networking, taking advantage of our college’s career service centers and cultivating our relationships with our professors in helping us secure jobs and internships. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am very excited to be joined by Zeresenay “Zee” Berhane Mehari who is an award-winning writer/director born and raised in Ethiopia. Zee moved to the U.S. to attend film school and founded Haile - Addis Pictures to produce his first narrative feature film, Difret, which was Executive Produced by Angelina Jolie and won Audience Awards at both the Sundance and Berlin International Film Festivals. His next feature film, Sweetness in the Belly, based on the international best-selling novel of the same name by Camilla Gibb set during the Ethiopian revolution in the 1970s, was a Canadian-Irish co-production starring Dakota Fanning and Yahya Abdul-Mateen and had its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was distributed by Entertainment One and Gravitas Ventures and was the first feature film helmed by an African director financed by Canada’s public Telefilms fund. Zee was most recently co-founder and Head of Original Content for Kana Television, the popular free-to-air, private satellite entertainment TV channel in Ethiopia which was recently acquired by Canal Plus. Zee is currently Head of Production and a co-founder of A51 Pictures, an independent film production company based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is currently developing a slate of films for the local and international market. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. In this episode, we talked about the importance of building a community and serving as a bridge between communities. We discussed how vital it is for international students to become part of different communities in college and how those new communities can become family away from family. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week, I am joined by my dear friend Zoya. She is from Karachi, Pakistan (although she was born in Lahore, and spent a good part of her childhood in the Punjab province of Pakistan). She completed her undergraduate degree in the U.S. at Smith College, where she double-majored in Quantitative Economics and English Language and Literature. Currently, she is based right outside Washington D.C., where she works at an economic consulting firm. In this episode, we talked about how we navigated our different identities in college whether it was our place of origin, our religion or even our gender. We discussed how our identity shifts and the importance of learning to be comfortable with our ever-changing identity and how that impacts the people we interact with and the friendships we form. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week I am joined by my very dear friend Maëlle. She is from a small city in the East of France, near the border with Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. She’s very passionate about dancing and gender equality. MaëlleI studied Political Science and International Public Management at Sciences Po in France and did a one-year exchange program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Currently, she works in a think-tank focusing on Africa-EU relations, where she conducts research and analysis, mainly on conflicts, peace-building and gender equality. In this episode, we talked about how to overcome shyness as an international student and how it can help us break down barriers with strangers. We discussed how we each navigated through our experience with shyness and some lessons that have helped us to confidently connect with people and share our ideas more openly. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth

This week I am joined by my dear friend Makeda. She was born in Houston, Texas and moved to Addis Ababa when she was 10 years old. Once she finished high school, she attended Rice University in Houston, Texas where she studied Economics. She is currently working as an Associate in Agro Processing with the Tony Blair Institute. In this episode, we talked about our experiences with dating in college and the reasons why it can be a bit challenging to date while being a student in college. We discussed the value of self-awareness and understanding your priorities before dating someone and the importance of balancing friendships in building a healthy relationship. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to [email protected] or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth