As part of our Kennedy Center fortieth anniversary celebration, we set out to learn from the way our alumni and friends see and navigate the world. After meeting with them face-to-face in Uzbekistan, Spain, the UK, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, and Los Angeles, here’s a little of what we learned.
Miles Hansen | Tashkent
The Spiritual Underpinnings of Global Experience
As I sit here in Baku and reflect on the experiences I’ve had over the past nearly twenty years since I began studying at the Kennedy Center, I can’t state strongly enough the deep impact it had on my life and my career. It set me on a trajectory, opened doors, and provided the experience and education that accelerated my professional development. I hope that I’ve been able to have a positive impact in the various roles and responsibilities I’ve had in government, business, and now with a philanthropic foundation. But I can trace all that back to the experiences I had at the Kennedy Center.
When I consider the impact of the Kennedy Center over forty years—where I’m just one of thousands of students and you multiply that by orders of magnitude across all the different students—the world has been transformed thanks to the Kennedy Center and the leading role it plays at BYU in helping to educate and catalyze students for a career in international affairs.
How does the Kennedy Center make this happen?
From my experience, international internships and study abroad programs provide a unique opportunity for a student to get meaningful experience across the world. You can learn a lot in the classroom, but you learn even more when you’re engaging with people in a different country, cultural context, or professional environment. It becomes an investment that a student can utilize in order to create new opportunities—and it’s a key differentiator between them and all the others who will be applying for grad school or a job.
How did you find the Kennedy Center and International Relations on campus?
In Professor Valerie Hudson’s class. I remember my first day in that first International Relations class—I wasn’t certain if I wanted to pursue it as a major. She read this scripture that has become my life motto:
Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand;
Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—
That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you. (Doctrine and Covenants 88:78–80)
I felt the power of what she was teaching—that all of us have a responsibility to understand what’s happening in the world. We each have different missions and purposes and callings.
Since then, I met my wife in Israel, and we’ve lived in Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, and Armenia and have been together in at least seventy-five different countries. We’ve dedicated our life to doing work internationally. And it all traces back to having a desire to learn about kingdoms and nations and the wars and perplexities and figuring out how to take all that knowledge and then distill that in a way to fulfill my mission and purpose—and, ultimately, to find a way to make the world a better place.
How did you end up in Central Asia?
After I decided on the International Relations major, I signed up to do an internship [in Switzerland]. After a few weeks, Aaron Rose [from the International Study Programs office] called and said, “We’re having a hard time finding something in Switzerland, but we found an internship in Kyrgyzstan. Are you interested in going there instead?”
I didn’t know for sure where Kyrgyzstan was, so I went home and pulled out a map. [Kyrgyzstan was formerly a constituent republic of the USSR, and Russian is one of its official languages.] I had served a mission in Russia and spoke some Russian.
That internship ended up being transformational for my career. I worked for the International Trade Center for four months on economic development projects with the UN Development Program throughout all of Central Asia. I think I was the first BYU student ever to do an internship in Kyrgyzstan.
I was able to travel throughout Central Asia—my first experience in Muslim-majority countries—just a few years after 9/11. What I experienced was so different from just having experience in the
Middle East or from watching cable news.
What happened next?
When I returned to BYU, I began studying Farsi; that created an opportunity to live in Tajikistan for a year after I received a Boren Scholarship. Back in Central Asia, I applied for grad school and different scholarship programs.
I am certain that with no work experience, straight out of BYU, the reason I was able to get into a top-tier program with a full-ride Pickering Fellowship and automatic entry into the Foreign Service was because I was applying from Tajikistan. I had this unique experience in Central Asia that was teed up thanks to BYU and the Kennedy Center.
This whole Central Asia arc took me with the State Department to Armenia, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia and to the White House, working on Iran and Middle East issues. Then I took a position leading the World Trade Center Utah, working on creating business and trade connections around the world. And now I work for the nonprofit The Stirling Foundation, where we have partners across all of Eurasia.
Last week I was on a phone call with the Uzbek Ambassador to the United States and he said, “You’ve lived here before. You understand Central Asia, and so I really appreciate everything you’re doing to help these other U.S.-based organizations engage here.” I’ve fortunately been able to be a bit of a conduit, and it’s something that I’m very grateful for. But without that internship in Kyrgyzstan through the Kennedy Center, none of this ever would have happened.
Ryan Newell | Barcelona
Small and Simple Things
It sounds as if you’re partial to Spain.
Barcelona is the best city in the world. I’m biased, but it’s just an incredible city. You’ve got people from all over the world here, and it’s a gateway to Europe that people don’t think about. Plus, you have this Mediterranean atmosphere and way of life, so it’s very family oriented. For example, it’s normal for parents to stop work at a reasonable hour to pick up their kids from school and take care of them in the evening.
Startups that I began paying attention to six years ago when I arrived are now big players in this space; more investment and jobs are coming, along with more international people to fill those jobs. So it’s really a fun city to be in. And the food’s incredible: Tapas and the Mediterranean diet are just fantastic.
How did you create your path?
I graduated from BYU about the same time that I shut my business down. So I was at an inflection point. I knew that I wanted to live and work internationally—that was the reason I went to the Kennedy Center in the first place!
After talking about it, my wife and I decided on graduate school. Business is my thing, and I wanted to make an impact—do some sort of socially focused business. And I wanted to make sure we would be living and working outside of the U.S. I basically just pulled up a list of the top business programs in Europe and applied. My dream schools were Cambridge and Oxford, and I actually got into Oxford at the time.
Why did you come to Spain?
While I was going through the interview process at IESE Business School—I can’t describe it other than that the Lord guided me. I flew out to New York for the interview and had a very powerful experience where the Lord said, “I need you in Barcelona.”
My first thought then was How do I tell my wife? She’s not going to be on board with this. What do we do?
But as I talked to her about it, she said, “Yeah, that’s where we need to be. I already knew that. I was kind of waiting for you to come around to that understanding as well.”
Fortunately, I was admitted, and we moved here having never been to Spain previously. At least I’d served my mission in Latin America and briefly studied a little Spanish literature at BYU. Ultimately, we showed up with three suitcases and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and found an apartment in Barcelona—and we’ve been here ever since.
Are you a big proponent of business school?
I’m honestly baffled as to why more Kennedy Center students don’t do an international MBA in Europe. I think the Kennedy Center is set up to help students develop a global perspective. The whole mission of BYU is enter, learn, go forth, and serve, right? And the world is our campus. I think a lot of times Kennedy Center students who are interested in business get distracted since there are some really good programs in the U.S. But there are many outstanding programs here in Europe—top-notch schools. One of the advantages is the cost is a little bit lower because the programs are typically shorter here in Europe. Plus, you are in an international setting from day one.
How did the cultural shift help your learning experience?
We had many nationalities in my class. Among seventy of us, only five were from North America. I was interacting with so many people from different countries all day, every day. It positions you right into an international career path because international companies are recruiting. I had opportunities to work for Amazon in Luxembourg, and I know people working in banking in London and consulting in Dubai—all of which was possible because they came to Europe to do an MBA.
How has this led to Church service opportunities abroad?
In 2015, Elder M. Russell Ballard came to BYU for a multistake conference in the Marriott Center and said, “The Lord has plenty of people in Utah to build the Church. The Lord needs you to graduate from BYU and get out as quickly as possible.” And that was one of those experiences that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Fast forward to when we’re here, and it’s amazing to see how the Lord is gathering Israel around the world. I remember growing up and hearing “Europe is dead. They’re not baptizing. Everyone left Europe and came to Utah a hundred years ago. That’s it.” Well, it’s not true. We’ve got people coming from all over the world and being baptized here, especially from Africa and Latin America. I am blessed every day to be able to be part of this work in this area.
Honestly, I never thought I’d be in Spain serving in the Church, let alone as a stake president. But to me, it is just a testimony that the Lord really will put you where He needs you if you let Him. That whole thing that President Nelson talks about—letting God prevail? That’s real. I saw that through my whole experience at BYU, I’ve seen that here, and I see that in the lives of so many people in my stake. If we let Him, He’ll put us to work because He’s gathering His people right now for the Second Coming.
What skills did you develop at the Kennedy Center?
We have people from North and South America, many countries in Africa, all of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. We really have the world here, and learning how to work with them has been key.
I think back to my time in Model United Nations and Model Arab League, learning how to build consensus across different cultures and with people who have different motivations and priorities—it was quite formative for me. I learned what my leadership style was in those situations, and I learned how to read other cultures and their body language, understand what’s important to them, and then build agreement.
What is the importance of study abroad—even for college students with financial limitations?
My wife and I did a study abroad the year after we were married. We actually celebrated our first wedding anniversary in the UK. And we only did that because Professor Paul Kerry in the Undergraduate Education office saw me looking at a study abroad bulletin board and said, “Hey, are you interested in doing a study abroad?”
I said, “Yes, but I’m newly married and have no money and no idea how to go about this.”
He said to come with my wife to his office the next night at 7 p.m.
My wife was skeptical and said, “There is no way we’re doing a study abroad. We can’t afford it. I’ve never left Utah. Forget about it. But I’ll go with you to the meeting.”
And that’s all it took because once we met with Dr. Kerry, we realized that there are so many other opportunities. We had to sacrifice a lot to make it work, but it was worth it. Those three months in Cambridge were some of the best, and they put us on a trajectory.
I went from there to doing a peace building and conflict resolution course in Austria a few months later that I sourced on my own through that experience in Cambridge. I discovered so many other programs and professionals here in Europe that helped me have a career in Europe.
Do you have any advice for students in Provo today?
Don’t overlook attending office hours with professors. I remember doing this with no agenda or ideas at first.
And get involved in anything you can. The weekly Kennedy Center Lecture Series is a great program. I still remember the lecture by the Ambassador of Moldova. I knew nothing about his country before that, but I remember coming away thinking about his teeny, little country stuck between Russia and the European Union with so many decisions that will impact generations. Also, journalist and BYU alum McKay Coppins spoke about his latest book—I had no idea who he was, but now I follow him in The Atlantic—and I learned a lot.
You can very easily get caught up in classwork, social pressures, and working to pay tuition and miss out on the little experiences and extra opportunities that the Kennedy Center offers.
Cecilia Peek | London
The Legendary London Centre
What is it about this place?
London is an extraordinary city. It is one of the world cities in terms of its diversity, its international personality, and the wide variety of languages, cultural traditions, and ethnicities that you encounter in London. So by working in London, you effectively meet all of Europe.
The London Centre seems to have developed a reputation among alumni.
I can emphatically assert that among study abroad programs, BYU London Centre is our flagship in many ways—at least in terms of Europe. It’s been around a long time, and we always fill the program. I wish—truly, with all of my heart—that every student at the university could have a study abroad experience like this.
How did this come about?
I’m currently here in the BYU London Centre, which Brigham Young University has owned since the early 1970s. Ever since then, BYU has been running study abroad programs here. I’ve served as faculty director on four London programs, and then for the past year, I’ve been here as the resident academic director of the London Centre.
The program here is educational. Students come and take courses that include general education classes, so the Centre is open to students from any major program on campus. It’s an amazing
way for them to get those credits. Basically, London becomes their classroom.
Part of your role involves outreach across Greater London and beyond. What’s our connection to Pembroke?
Pembroke College is one of the many colleges at Oxford University, and BYU has a relationship with the Reverend Dr. Andrew Teal [chaplain and lecturer in Theology at Pembroke College]. He’s established relationships with Elder Matthew Holland and has come to know President Jeffrey R. Holland and the university. Also, my husband and I have become closely acquainted with Reverend Teal, who is just the most gracious, ecumenical Christian person—such a kind-hearted soul.
He recently invited me to give the Evensong sermon at Pembroke College Chapel. Choral Evensong is a regular, beautiful religious liturgical practice in the Anglican church; sometimes it doesn’t include a sermon. Sometimes it does. I’ve been invited to give a short Evensong sermon for their choral Evensong on Remembrance Sunday this year.
How else do you help BYU connect?
Our BYU program is first and foremost academic—the educational experience that the students have. But one of the ways that students can give back to the city, so to speak, is that for the duration of their program they are assigned to LDS wards throughout one of two stakes here. The wards make excellent use of them: Students are giving talks, playing the piano, leading music, and assisting in Primary.
We have also actively become involved in specific service opportunities, such as volunteering at the clothing bank of Kensington, which serves refugees and asylum seekers. All of our students participate in a Saturday project where we help them get set up for the next several months of clothing donations and get everything cleaned, hung up, and organized.
Can students experience the global Church in London?
We have amazing language programs at BYU and there are many students who speak foreign languages because of having served full-time missions around the world. But in Provo you don’t tend to hear four, five, or six different languages constantly around you. London is a world city, and the experience of living here is meaningful to students.
They attend and serve in various wards; some are predominantly made up of international people who’ve moved to the UK and converted to the Church, or they converted in their home countries and now live in London. So our students are getting a world Church experience as well and are making the city their own. They’ll never be the same because of it.
Who gets to study abroad from BYU?
In fall 2023 our faculty directors were Eric Dursteler (History) and Ben Gibbs (Sociology), and they pushed to make the London Centre opportunity available to students who wouldn’t always get a chance. Because study abroad is not an on-campus experience and, obviously, it’s more expensive, sometimes students don’t go on study abroad because of financial issues.
Among the approximately forty students on the program in fall 2023, nine were first-generation college students, which is remarkable. I think that’s the most they’ve ever had on a London program. And the faculty really worked to help these students find funding support and scholarships.
Faculty bring their own families on the program too. Is that unique to BYU?
As a student, generally you don’t get a lot of exposure to faculty family members or a sense of who they are. Because faculty come and bring their families with them, it’s very different in London with everyone eating, learning, and traveling together. You are living in close quarters, eating regular meals six days a week. My husband and I are certainly participating in all of this.
Students meet your spouse and children and get to know your family. They start to interact with you in ways that are quite different than if you only saw them two or three times a week in a classroom—including, “Does someone need a priesthood blessing?”
It sounds like it could be stressful.
Study abroad sounds very romantic and exciting, and it is. But our students get homesick. Some of them are away from their families and outside of their home setting for the first time. The London
Centre is a stunning facility, but the dorm rooms can feel a bit crowded. And so that presents some unique stresses that arise in that kind of living situation.
How do you help students adjust?
At family night on Sundays, they have a mental health moment where they talk. This has been great. When you know the faculty and their families, you feel connected in a more personal way that makes you feel: This is someone I can turn to if I am experiencing stress. This program has done a brilliant job of preparing students to deal with some of those stresses, concerns, and anxieties—and knowing how to forestall them in some cases.
How is the dual nature of a BYU education evident in the Centre?
I think the educational experience at the BYU London Centre marries the dual nature of BYU—in many ways more fully than almost any experience could. The entire London experience is academic, but at BYU, the sacred is deeply embedded in the teaching, the conversations, and the content of everything we do. It’s part of students’ training and education and what will allow them to go into the world, have careers, and contribute to society.
Everyone I’ve ever discussed this with at BYU who is a full-time employee feels it’s as much a calling as it is a career—a kind of vocation. You see that in the London Centre particularly because you live and serve together and have regular devotionals, family nights, and prayers together with faculty and all of your fellow students. The sacred part of BYU’s mission is so deeply integrated into the London Centre experience that I wouldn’t know how to separate them.
Blake Herzinger | Singapore
Big Picture from a Tiny City-State
I’ve lived here in Singapore for almost twelve years. I kind of washed ashore here from a career in the Navy. Since then, I’ve touched all parts of the corporate space in and out of defense, tech, and now financial services. It’s been a long, maybe accidental career that formed during my time at BYU through the Kennedy Center. I’ve fallen backward into every step from there—and it’s worked out.
Is globalization diminishing?
I’ve now worked around the world, and I’ve spent the last twelve to thirteen years in Asia between Okinawa and Singapore. The fact is that this is a globalized economy. Nearly every job matters internationally. I think being able to get outside the U.S. and see that in kind of a reverse perspective is invaluable.
There’s a lot of work that’s been done trying to illustrate this idea at the state level in the United States. For example, I’m from Idaho, a state heavily focused on agriculture. How much does the international community and the globalized world matter for Idaho’s agricultural industry? Maybe we don’t always think about it, but without the international market, U.S. agriculture is in big trouble.
Global business matters for the tech industry and financial services. If you make widgets in a factory in Wisconsin, they are sold all over the world. You can see how that value in the supply chain and economy connects us to Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
When you understand how we are affected when things go wrong somewhere in the world, it’s invaluable for a student who may come from a small town—like I did—and has no frame of reference. It helps you to get outside yourself and to understand the problems and opportunities. I think that’s the value in that experience.
How did you begin learning at the Kennedy Center?
I did a Middle East Studies minor by accident; my counselor recognized that I was one class away from completion—but I was simply taking classes I thought were interesting.
In the Navy, I didn’t end up in the middle of the global war on terror at first. I went to Europe, North Africa, and Asia, but in 2019, I ended up back in the Middle East—right in the middle of all these things that I minored in at the Kennedy Center.
Studying there is worth it because you’re building a knowledge base and skills that you’re going to take with you.
Was there a professor who made a difference to you?
I think a lot about the time that I spent in Professor Stan Taylor’s class on intelligence and national security. Sadly, he passed away in 2022, but my time in his class was probably one of the more focusing experiences I had at the Kennedy Center. He was such a kind and thoughtful mentor in the way that he treated his students, and he found the things that you were good at and made you better. He helped you bring along nascent traits and skills that you didn’t realize you had. Also, he wasn’t scared to give you constructive feedback, which I appreciate. I went from there to my early career as an intelligence officer in the military largely because of that experience. Professor Taylor was an extraordinary man—obviously a big part of the Kennedy Center’s founding and an extraordinary person.
So you went from learning theory to putting it into practice?
I was on the front edge of all the things that I learned at the Kennedy Center. We were part of a NATO operation in North Africa, and everything I studied and wrote about I put into practice—
certainly at levels far above my level as a very junior officer. Doing all of this teaches you a lot about the tremendous influence that the U.S. government and other countries wield—their impact on people. I expect any graduate at the Kennedy Center gains an appreciation for the human cost of bad policy and the opportunities to help people. I think that’s why these jobs exist: to do good and avoid harm.
What skills do you think are important to build?
Some of the skills that are important to operate globally include building a sense of self-awareness and understanding—your strengths and weaknesses. It could involve things like strategic problem-solving, taking part in an organization and figuring out how it could work better, analyzing smaller problems, finding trends, or whatever your job is teaching you. Those skills won’t just be useful in your job, and the things that you learn at the Kennedy Center shouldn’t just be things that you use at university and forget about when you leave. They are skills that you need to take forward, polish, and think about how you can apply them no matter where you land.
What have you learned working in national security?
The most important thing I’ve learned working in national security is to think of the people that these policies are supposed to be about—the people whose lives these policies are supposed to help. National security is not a good unto itself and needs to exist for a reason: to provide for the safety and security and happiness of the people who have to live within those policies. So for me, that’s the most important thing. Think about the second-order consequences and have the courage to speak up if you think something’s wrong. I think those are all things that are ingrained in how the Kennedy Center trains students—to have a personal code of ethics and stick to it.
How did the Kennedy Center shape who you became?
Obviously, service is a part of the BYU experience, not just the Kennedy Center. I think that in today’s political environment, service may be construed as serving a party, an individual, or particular objectives. The broader objective of service is to get outside yourself. Consider the people around you, the greater good, and where you can make a positive difference. Service is not zero sum and doesn’t have to be one person winning and another person losing.
I would say that the service aspect is the thing that is most ingrained in me from BYU—being able to lose yourself in a cause that’s bigger than yourself, although that doesn’t have to be the same experience for every student. The Kennedy Center lends itself so well to helping students approach issues from that frame of mind: going forth from BYU to make a difference, to help. The world can use more of that.
Most people are approaching their life trying to do their best and look after themselves and their families. Understand that it’s a big world out there and there’s a place for you in it. You’re going to work alongside many different people who you can learn from and who you can teach. There’s a huge amount to learn.
What started you on your career path?
I was convinced in my early years at the Kennedy Center that I wanted to work in the development space, for the Department of State or maybe in the Peace Corps. Obviously, I ended up about as far from the Peace Corps as it gets, but I thought the sure way to that path was an internship with the Department of State, which the outstanding staff at the Kennedy Center helped me put together.
It took two years—the wait was a little lesson in resilience—but then I heard from embassies in Sofia and Yerevan. Because I’d served my mission in Bulgaria, I decided to try something new and went to Armenia after taking coursework from the Kennedy Center. I researched the contested region between Azerbaijan and Armenia, worked for diplomatic security, and was allowed to drift around the embassy and see how consular and political officers did their jobs. I was part of the embassy family in a far away, relatively small post.
When the internship ended, I went backpacking across Europe with a friend who had joined the Marine Corps after high school, together one of the embassy Marines—on trains, planes, and automobiles. I came back to BYU after a very full summer, having seen so many things that I learned about in my courses; it was tremendous to go and see firsthand—all through that internship experience.
What other advice would you give to students?
Some of the greatest opportunities at the Kennedy Center happen outside of coursework. Seek out professors. Ask questions. Go to office hours. Even if you don’t have questions on an assignment, just go ask how things work. If you want to know about a job that’s in their field, ask, “How does it work? How do I apply? How do I make myself competitive? How do I stand out?”
If I could do it over again, I’d go to twice as many speakers in the Kennedy Center Lecture Series. It featured many people from across the spectrum—in development, international affairs, conflict and security, and other areas—who shared their perspective. I remember listening to one of the prosecutors from the International Court of Justice working on West African war crimes. I still remember this twenty years later. I remember Dodge Billingsley [filmmaker and founder of Combat Films and Research] came and talked about the global war on terror and the simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here in Singapore, I was on a panel and met another Kennedy Center graduate. We discovered that we overlapped by maybe a year or two. Recently, I saw that he went back to Provo and spoke on his experience at the Department of State in East Asia. There are people who are doing the work that you want to be doing, so don’t be afraid to ask them. It’s the best way to move forward. Don’t try to do it yourself. You have great minds and great experience right in front of you; go take advantage of it.
Heather Willoughby | Seoul
The Social Life of Sound
After returning to BYU from my mission in Korea, I changed my major to music. But I remember asking some of the professors, “Where’s the rest of the world?” because we only studied the Western canon. I asked, “Where’s Korea? Where is Afghanistan? Where is Turkey?” It was very disappointing to me that it was so narrow. Now, BYU has expanded a great deal and opened up more to the possibility of studying music from other places, but when I decided to go to graduate school and found ethnomusicology, that changed my world—I could study Korean music.
How did you discover ethnomusicology?
I met a professor at BYU who taught music therapy classes. She mentioned her daughter, Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson, and said she was an ethnomusicologist. I didn’t know that word or what that meant, but as I learned more I thought, That is my destiny. And it turned out to be true. I applied to Columbia University; Francesca actually became one of my professors and was very influential to me. I was impressed with her experiences, and she helped me a great deal.
For those of us who haven’t discovered it yet, what is ethnomusicology?
Ethnomusicology is studying the social life of sound—I think that’s a beautiful way to think about it. How do people use music? Why is music important? What role does it play in society? It’s a perspective of studying music as well as the idea of studying things outside of the Western canon.
What led you on your path to Seoul?
One year after I graduated with my PhD—I went to Wittenberg University in a small town in Ohio—I was looking for jobs everywhere. I found a position here at Ewha Womans University in Korea with the International Relations Department. They were looking for a culture specialist, and I thought that I could be a culture specialist. When they asked me for a job talk, I had two days to prepare, and I had no idea what to say. But I came and sang pansori, which is the Korean music that I study. After hearing that, they said that I was more Korean than they were. They were impressed, and they hired me. That was in 2004, and now I’ve been here twenty years.
Do you spend all of your time in South Korea?
Of course I still go back to the United States to visit my family, but Korea feels like home. One day I was walking down the street and I caught a glimpse of myself and thought, “I’m not Korean!” It’s not that I’m so fluent in Korean or that I look Korean or am completely Korean in any sense, but I feel at home here. This is a core of my existence now.
What does your current teaching look like?
At Ewha University, I’m a cultural anthropologist. We have four majors: International Business, International Trade, International Relations, and Development Cooperation. I hover around all of them and teach the international part of International Relations, including comparative culture and cross-cultural communications. I also teach some gender courses on women of East Asia.
It seems as if you have embodied an international, interdisciplinary education.
The Kennedy Center started about the same time that I went to BYU. It was in its early stages, so I didn’t actually have the opportunity to do any exchange programs or even to take classes through the Kennedy Center at that time. But because of my interest in people and cultures and different ways of thinking and doing and being, so much of what I do today coincides with the mission of the Kennedy Center.
How has this helped you navigate different cultures?
You can embrace your own culture while also studying the culture of other people and other places and become truly educated. You learn to accept others and look at differences but still become the best of whoever you are. And so to me, that coincides with the mission of the Kennedy Center in raising global awareness.
Is there a meaningful area in Seoul that connects people across cultures?
One of my favorite places in Seoul is called the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery. The reason I like going there is that Mary Scranton, who founded Ewha, is buried there, as are several other teachers and past presidents, along with many other missionaries.
In 1986, when I first came to Korea as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes I thought, Woe is me. I don’t have hot running water in my house, or There’s ice forming on the windows for three months because it isn’t very warm.
But then I look at the sacrifices that these early missionaries made. Mary was here in Korea one hundred years before I was,
and she wrote in her journal extensively. One of the things that she said was that there was never unhappiness—she had joy to be here and to teach about God and Christ and to educate the Koreans. This is coming from a woman who also wrote that for about three months she had one egg a day to eat. Yet she never complained.
Other missionaries that came at that time were setting up hospitals, clinics, and schools that became universities. And through their hardship, they just found joy. And so I love to go to that cemetery and find joy myself by thinking of the sacrifices that others have made to be here and to introduce a Buddhist nation to Christ.
I very much accept Korea as a Buddhist and Confucian nation, and I don’t try to impose my thoughts on those who don’t want to accept them. But for those who are open, I will always try to follow Mary Scranton, Alice Appenzeller, Josephine Payne, and these other women who were so strong and who glorified God in all that they did.
We spend a lot of time “making the world our campus.” What does a study abroad experience look like from your perspective?
When I first came to Ewha University twenty years ago, there were almost no foreign students. They were all Korean, and very few of them had been abroad. My job was to bring internationalization to them and to try to introduce them to a world beyond their own. I found that it changed them, just as coming to Korea changed me. Many of them, because of this educational experience, ended up going abroad to work.
I think there really is something so important about stepping outside of our known world—we can have blinders on and not even know it. In a new environment you see that people do things differently and then you begin questioning yourself: Why do I do what I do? Is it the only way to do something? Maybe there’s a different way—a better way. Even if we continue to live as we were before, if we learn to accept people for who they are, a whole new world opens up to us.
That mirrors our tagline “Expand your world” as well as university’s motto.
I was taking to my sister-in-law recently, and she thinks of BYU’s mission as those who come to BYU then go out into the world, which becomes their campus. Those who spread out across the world and share their Christianity also go and experience something different that, again, opens up a whole new perspective.
Has it been hard to live in Seoul?
I understand that I have made sacrifices living abroad. It means that I haven’t been as close to nieces and nephews or others, so not everyone’s going to make this choice. But there are communities within the United States that are different from your own. Go to them and learn. You don’t have to isolate yourself just with like-minded people. Understand why people think different politically. Think about why they live culturally different experiences. This is part of contact theory, which was an idea that came out of the 1950s, but I still believe in it.
How did your time at BYU impact you?
My BYU experience was grand in many ways, and a couple of things stand out. On my first day in Provo, I met a woman who later became my roommate. She was Korean American—my first exposure to Korea. But she wasn’t the only one. I made friends who I still know today, along with connections and networks. Although I didn’t have the opportunity to be an exchange student while I was at BYU, I know people all over the world because of my experience at BYU.
Also, at BYU I learned how to think critically. And this is core—to question why do people do what they do? And what meaning does it have? And why is it important to them? Because it may be different from me.
Takuya Hirano | Tokyo
Map Versus Compass
I think the great thing about being at the university is how it allows you to think and explore different things. You have permission to make mistakes and test ideas. Today, I think the internship is more common, as well as trying out different courses—that’s a good thing.
How did you navigate that as a Kennedy Center undergraduate?
Back then I don’t remember seeing as many internship programs. I wanted to have a real-life simulation during college, so I decided to go to Washington, D.C., and try government. There was no Internet, so I called different government agencies and couldn’t find anything. But I decided to go anyway.
Two days before leaving Provo, I had a call from the Department of Commerce offering an internship, so I flew out. After that, the Kennedy Center and the International Relations major gave me opportunities to reach out and have different work experiences, and I made two more internships on my own.
How did these experiences help you create your path?
When you go to college, you don’t know what you want to do—many students have no idea what they want to do after they graduate. So you take the job that is offered to you based on money or title or vocation or friendship or whatever it may be.
Often people give this career advice: “Follow your passion.” I think that’s a mistake. I don’t know what my passion is, nor do most people. I’d suggest students take two steps back and be more curious. Pay more attention and think about what’s going on so you can learn what work means to you. Explore more and try different things. That allows you to think about which space you want to go into as a career so your happiness is not limited to your work.
A lot of people expect so much—in my view, too much—from their job. I think you have to find curiosity in different elements of your life beyond just work, even though your job naturally takes a lot of time and becomes much more significant in terms of your commitment. But that’s how I think about where I try to find fulfillment in my life.
What advice can you give to students who are struggling to pick a career path?
At the Kennedy Center, you have to carve out something you like with a degree that doesn’t necessarily provide a road map. There might be some unconscious bias by some recruiters because liberal arts degrees do not offer a path as explicit or clear as hard sciences and professional majors.
On top of that, picking a job is kind of hard, isn’t it? On your first job, you don’t have a whole lot of options. For a second job, you have some knowledge of what you like to do. After your first few jobs, it does get easier because you’re not performing against your major
but are delivering results based on your speed, learning agility,
and outcomes.
So how do you pick a job? Is it going to be based on salary, title, or experience? I think they’re all part of a good decision-making process, but I believe that it should be based on principles. In other words, be guided by career-compass thinking versus following a map. The key is to pick a company where your values are closely aligned, and then you can put all of your energy to your tasks and job.
When there’s a misalignment with values, you can work for a year or two for money, but you feel like you’re compromising something and cannot sustain yourself. That’s why my decision was value-based.
Whether you study International Relations or something else, the BYU learning experience nurtures principle-based thinking, which allows you to be guided by a compass in making careers.
But don’t many professions already have clear maps?
When you work for a company or enterprise, they teach you to make a career map. You do these activities, acquire certain skills and experience, and they will take you to this level. And then you do something more and that will take you to a higher level. I worked at Microsoft for eighteen years, and prior to that at different software companies where I gained experience and discipline. That helped me to become a leader in organizations. After a while, you start thinking about how the career map is nice because there’s clarity.
But at a certain point, when you have knowledge and experience, you should start relying on your compass—meaning what does your gut tell you? Where does your curiosity guide you versus strictly following the map of what kind of promotion and job you want? That’s what I mean by the difference between career map and career compass; you need to have them both to have a fulfilling career and a meaningful life.
Did you travel a lot in your work?
In Central and Eastern Europe, I was responsible for sales, marketing, and supporting end-to-end responsibilities in over twenty-five countries. I primarily promoted Microsoft products.
From 2011 to 2014, I was based out of Munich and flew somewhere every week—traveling two hundred days a year—to meet a lot of people in places like Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania. I had already led Microsoft Japan’s sales organization, service, and strategy, so I knew how to run the business in a mature organization and in a sophisticated way.
At that point, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, these countries and the technology industry were fairly new. Young people wanted to be like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. On the other hand, there was a super-high level of piracy and governments were trying to have control over IT and the intellectual property as well. It was very chaotic.
That sounds like a crazy time.
Once I had an appointment to meet with the president of Bulgaria. That night there was a coup and the president had to resign. The country manager in Bulgaria called a week later and said, “Takuya, we talked about my career, and I’m grateful for your help—but I just had a call from the government. They asked me if I’m willing to be a candidate for the interim president of the nation.”
That’s the caliber of people that I was working with. You don’t have these types of conversations in America or Japan or established big countries. It was chaotic, but still a fantastic experience.
How was your understanding of culture important?
I was in a meeting with a government official in Georgia and my staff was translating. During the meeting my staff said, “Hands up, Taku, hands up!” What was I supposed to do? I waved my hands—I had no idea.
After the meeting, I asked him why he said that and he replied, “There have been acts of terrorism and violence, so you’re supposed to show your hand on top of the desk to show that you’re not carrying any weapon. It is a sign of peace.”
You usually never think about that—but when you go to certain countries, you understand and have empathy.
In most countries I don’t speak their language, so I nod a lot. I know that 97 percent of communication is not verbal but body language and eye contact. After one meeting my staff told me in that country “This means no and this means yes.” I was aggressively saying no to the customer, a government official, while I was trying to convey the message of yes.
You need to gain more understanding as you connect with other people across cultures. That’s a great thing about international business interactions.
Did these experiences help you when you ran Microsoft Japan?
It was an incredibly valuable experience to go through a transformation journey of this massive company. When I was assigned to be the president of Microsoft Japan, it just so happened that the CEO of Microsoft headquarters changed as well.
Because of Bill Gates, Microsoft’s culture was learning about everything. “Knowledge is power” was the organizational culture, so you had to memorize all the details, information, and data points and be ready to debate to get your business agenda set. We had twelve hours and two hundred pages of data analysis to memorize for the business review.
Even so, there was a common theme of empathy toward customers in the way we communicate—and even with our competitors. It requires you to learn why you exist as an organization and how you can grow the business year over year to accomplish big things. That was a big takeaway for me.
Alex Sorensen Steele | Los Angeles
What Remains from Study Abroad
How did Southern California become your home?
I never really thought I would end up living here as an adult. When I was a kid, I always dreamed of having a family and moving far away—but I never thought I would live here.
Nate and I both grew up in Orange County, just about an hour away. We still have family there. We love living by the beach, and most of all, we love our community.
We have the best ward. Maybe everyone says that. And we love our neighbors, we love our school. Our kids’ schools are friendly.
How did you and your husband meet?
I met Nate at BYU in between study abroad programs. We were together in Southern California for the summer and then went back to Provo for our junior year. That’s when I was accepted to the Photography program, and I got engaged to Nate a few days after that.
We were married in the middle of my first year in the major. After Nate graduated, we went to Chicago for a little under three years and had our first baby. It was so cold—and so wonderful. I still miss Chicago, where the Church rented a space in an elementary school. It felt familiar after going to church in office buildings on my study abroad.
Then we we moved to West Hollywood, had another baby, and lived there for about two years until we moved to Kansas City for about four years. A lot more cold winters, a lot more incredible people, incredible barbecue. We became Chiefs fans in Chicago and in Kansas City. We absolutely loved Kansas City. I wish I could move back there sometimes. And then Nate’s job brought us to Manhattan Beach, and that’s where we’ve been for almost six years.
Tell us about your study abroad experiences. What was your first program at BYU?
When I was eighteen, I went on a study abroad to the South Pacific with my sister. We were in New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji through the BYU Recreation Management program. We learned so much from the people there and from our guides, especially in Fiji.
We were able to visit islands that were only inhabited by local people. They didn’t have any tourists, and our guide had become friends with locals who wanted to invite BYU students and to show us their culture. It was very humbling. We camped the entire program, and that was a very new experience for me. I didn’t grow up camping, but that was unforgettable.
How did study abroad influence you?
I had kind of caught the study abroad bug and decided to do as much as I could. It really helped me to understand how much bigger the world was as I hadn’t really thought much about the world outside of Southern California or BYU. And so when I was able to go and actually walk around and experience places as an outsider and then be welcomed into those spaces, I felt very lucky.
I had always been into art and couldn’t stop thinking about all the photographs I would get to make on this program. I was right at the beginning of applying to the photography program.
Looking back, how have your international experiences influenced you spiritually?
Now that I’m raising kids, I’m trying to use and squeeze every little bit of wisdom from every past experience. I’m trying so hard to pull from all of that to give my kids the best of what I’ve been offered.
On my second program, Global Diplomacy Study Abroad, in each different city that we visited across Europe, we met people who had dedicated their lives to careers in the Foreign Service or the Department of Defense or who worked for the UN. I will never forget standing at the podium in the UN General Assembly with that iconic marble background and the globe and thinking, This is so important. I don’t know if I’ll ever be here in this room again. This is a sacred space. This is where children of God gather to make decisions on behalf of millions of other children of God. My little kids are four of God’s children that I’ve been entrusted with, and I take that really seriously.
As you go around the world, you see other people and see that you can’t easily communicate with them or know anything about their life experience because we grew up in these two different places with completely different backgrounds. For me, the idea that I am a child of God is my strongest, most core value both in my faith and in my identity as a woman, a parent, and in every role in my life. I’m a child of God—and the person in front of me or behind me who’s honking or being rude to me—they are too.
So when I think back to traveling on my programs, that is when I first started to realize that the “I’m a child of God” thing is really true. It finally began to make sense. I realized that this is what everyone has been talking about at church and school and everywhere in my life. This is the world that was created for us—to have joy and these amazing experiences and beautiful memories. I am just so grateful that I got to do those things.
So how would you see your BYU experiences continue to shape you as a parent?
Well, I did land my dream job. I think a lot of people go to college with the expectation that it’s going to lead them toward their goals. And for me, parenting is my dream job, even though being with my kids day in and day out is really challenging.
I just told my oldest daughter the other day when we were talking about her career dreams: “I do this because there’s nothing else that I’ve found in the world that I want to do more than this—creating a life together with you and being here in our home.”
I’m so immersed in this moment of parenting small human beings. I don’t get to go travel. I don’t get to just pack a bag and pound my way through some amazing gelato and stay up catching whatever bus to that train so that we can get to Paris by the morning or see everything and pack it all in. That was such a thrill in college. To have had that experience on my study abroad, I am certain that I could never recreate that now. But this is what I’ve chosen. I’m so glad I have those memories and can tell my kids about them and give them an idea of a dream that maybe they wouldn’t have ever known about if it wasn’t something that I was able to do as a student.
Did others in your family have the same study abroad experiences?
My parents and my husband, Nate, didn’t go on study abroad—so I’m my kids’ only ancestor who went abroad in college. And now that’s something that I hope all my kids get the chance to do. We’ve started saving for their education: They do little jobs and we talk about their dreams, such as where they would want to go to study abroad. It feels really good as a mom to be able to add a little kindling to the fire for their dreams. I’m the only person who can do that for them, and it feels like a reward as well as a responsibility.
It sounds like you’re already talking about lifelong learning with your children.
College is hard, right? You have a lot of moments that are not glamorous. You’re working really hard. You spend so much time studying—only to get a mediocre grade. That happened to me more often than I wish it had. After all of that grunt work and those challenges—including walking to school and work late nights and early mornings in the cold and dark—some of those moments were when I really did feel This is my education. This is why I’m here. Those were some of the small glimmers in my life in college.
But for me, the study abroad experience really is the crown jewel of my college education. It is the thing that I look back at as a gleam and a sparkle. I feel so deeply enriched by those moments—not only the classes and the coursework that I was doing while on those programs that would have paled in comparison if I had been doing them on campus. I added this other dimension to my education by doing coursework when abroad.
What else stood out to you on your study abroad programs?
On my first program, our faculty advisor was a mother of two and she brought her boys and her husband. On my second program, my faculty advisor was a father of three, and his wife and kids came with us. On both programs I was experiencing this family element along with rigorous travel, a ton of coursework, and very little sleep. We were moving cities a lot on our programs, so it just made sense that the professors’ families joined them.
It was wonderful and enhanced the experience to see my faculty advisors taking their job really seriously—and also taking their family really seriously. As you know, in our religious culture in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, family is central to our theology. We believe that we’re children of loving heavenly parents and that sealing families together is important work that we can do on the earth—the gathering of Israel, right? And so it feels like the most obvious, beautiful thing in the world for the families to stay together while dad or mom is going to work.
It really enhanced the experience. For example, when we would go to church, our faculty advisor was still our faculty advisor. We all went to church together, and he sat with his family—where he was supposed to be. He was being a dad and being part of his family, which was just as important to him as his work that he was doing. For us to get to see that in this setting—it is something I’ve kept with me throughout my adult life.
And at the time, I was seeing my faculty advisor being a very hands-on dad with his kids and with his wife—bringing them into the experience with us, the students, and letting us experience their family, which was such a privilege. Now my husband, he is that kind of dad.
Were you able to attend Church services on your programs?
I’ll never forget singing hymns in church in Vienna. There was just this sound—it was a small building, but it had a high ceiling. We weren’t singing in English, but the music was familiar and reminded me of home and the hymns of my childhood and youth. Just being there with these other members of the Church who were singing the same songs, all worshipping together—it was a really powerful moment. I had never experienced anything like that before.
Also, I remember going to church in Istanbul. I think our program doubled the size of the branch we attended, and the people were so warm and excited to see us. I felt humbled that we were going to church in this small, rented office space. There was an eight-by-ten paper on the door that said, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Visitors Welcome,” so we knew we were in the right spot. But it was very different from BYU campus, where practically every building on campus is used as a church, and Provo, where there are churches all over.
I thought about my home-ward building, the Alicia building in Laguna Niguel, where I grew up going every Sunday. It just couldn’t have been more different. And yet the things that really mattered were the same—the people were there, Jesus was there. And this was what we were doing there: trying to get closer to Christ.
What advice would you give to students—or their parents—who may not see the benefits of study abroad in their education?
I’ve been serving in my ward’s Young Women for the last four years, and I’ve seen a lot of teenagers grow up and graduate. The biggest piece of advice I give to all of them, no matter where they’re going to school, is to study abroad while you’re in college. Spend time traveling, and do it in this safe, organized way where you can bring coursework into it. There’s just such a richness that comes from travel that you cannot accomplish any other way in life. And BYU made it really affordable for me to go travel.
It’s fortunate that so many programs exist at BYU—including for certain majors, general education requirements, or simply broad personal growth.
Whether it has something to do specifically with your major or not,
it will enrich you as a person and that will enrich your education. It will enrich your family and your whole life because it helps to find who you are, and who you are defines who you will become. It has a lasting effect.
So the memes aren’t true? Study abroad isn’t just a fun trip?
I’d have to say that study abroad is very different from a vacation. When we were in the South Pacific, I remember our faculty advisor saying to us that it was a beautiful place and we might be tempted to think we were on vacation because we were snorkeling and we were in a kayaking class. But it was not a vacation. It was a study abroad, and that’s what we were there to do—study. That made the trip better—the fact that it wasn’t a vacation and we really had skin in the game as far as our own education went. It was up to us to gain something from that experience.
Find even more interviews on the Kennedy Center YouTube channel. These Kennedy 40 interview shorts were produced by Dodge Billingsley, founder of Combat Films and Research and a past Kennedy Center Fellow.