Still on the run

Mehboba Ahdyar, the only woman on Afghanistan's 4-member 2008 Olympic team, is still missing after disappearing nearly two weeks ago. Now reports are surfacing that she may be claiming political asylum in Europe, that she may be dropping out of the Olympics, that her parents may be imprisoned in Afghanistan if they can't convince her to return. Not surprisingly, this story hasn't really gotten as much press attention as it deserves. Because, you know, the American media has important things to cover -- like Heidi and Spencer, or Sean Preston holding a pack of cigarettes.

The Olympics are supposed to be a symbol of pride and unity, hope and change. Countries send their best talent to represent them. A good team can give even a country rife with civil war and poverty something to cheer about side by side. Just look at the Iraqi soccer team of 2004! The Olympics give the world a chance to unite over something, if only for a few weeks every four (or two) years, all politics, gas prices, and wars aside. It's considered a victory to see countries like Afghanistan and Iraq participating, but at what cost? Their female athletes still struggle against all odds to compete. The two Afghan women who competed in 2004 faced constant threats from extremists. One even left Afghanistan after the Olympics with her family out of fear for their lives.

"This is important," Robina Muqimyar, track sprinter and one of the two Afghani women who were the first to EVER compete in the Olympics, said back in 2004. "The women of Afghanistan will know they can do anything, if there is hope in the heart."

Did anyone even hear her?

Future Perfect

A blog I've become obsessed with lately is Jan Chipchase's Future Perfect. Jan Chipchase has to live what is possibly one of the most interesting, exciting lives on the planet. I first read about him in the New York Times a few months ago:

If you need to reach Jan Chipchase, the best, and sometimes only, way to get him is on his cellphone. The first time I spoke to him last fall, he was at home in his apartment in Tokyo. The next time, he was in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa. Several weeks after that, he was in Uzbekistan, by way of Tajikistan and China, and in short order he and his phone visited Helsinki, London and Los Angeles. If you decide not to call Jan Chipchase but rather to send e-mail, the odds are fairly good that you’ll get an "out of office" reply redirecting you back to his cellphone, with a notation about his current time zone -- "GMT +9" or "GMT -8" -- so that when you do call, you may do so at a courteous hour.

Keep in mind, though, that Jan Chipchase will probably be too busy with his job to talk much anyway. He could be bowling in Tupelo, Miss., or he could be rummaging through a woman’s purse in Shanghai. He might be busy examining the advertisements for prostitutes stuck up in a Sao Paulo phone booth, or maybe getting his ear hairs razored off at a barber shop in Vietnam. It really depends on the moment.

Chipchase is 38, a rangy native of Britain whose broad forehead and high-slung brows combine to give him the air of someone who is quick to be amazed, which in his line of work is something of an asset.

--"Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?", NYT, April 2008

(Can you say dream job?)

His blog is amazing. Chipchase travels the world in a quest to view life from every perspective in every corner of the world and research how his company (nokia) can help make life easier for every person he meets. No person is insignificant to Chipchase in his line of work; he wants every single story to be heard. On his blog, Chipchase posts pictures and thoughts from his travels. Some seem very simple -- children's haircuts in China, unique cuisines in Tajikistan -- but if you stop to think for a second it's amazing. This guy has been everywhere, all over the world, studying how cellphone technology has changed the world, but he can still appreciate how amazing even the simplest thing can be. Pretty cool.

"Future Perfect is about the collision of people, society and technology...Future perfect is a pause for reflection in our planet's seemingly headlong rush to churn out more, faster, smaller and cheaper.

Somewhere along the way we get to shape what the future looks like."

www.janchipchase.com

On Leadership

I used to think the perfect leader would be one so great at his/her job, that no one could dislike or criticize them; that they'd be universally loved by all. And I thought I knew a leader like this -- I had the privilege of working with her for over a year -- and naturally, as a sophomore in high school I completely idolized her.

Five whole years later, I've come to the startling realization that 15-year-old Nisha's vision of what a good leader looked like couldn't be farther from the truth. That ideal doesn't even exist in the real world. Leadership is impossible without critics; the good leader is the one who can handle his critics well and remain impervious to it. And the biggest weakness and leader can and will face is insecurity when that happens. Who wouldn't be? It's tiring, but also an indicator of how successful one can ever be in a position of leadership.

It's kind of sad to realize that my old naive concept of what "the perfect leader" would look like doesn't really exist. What real leadership entails seems to be a lot less fun and a lot less glamorous than my high school mind could have ever grasped.

shoutout

I have been hearing all the fuss about the Twitter "phenomenon" forever now in tech blogs and business blogs and even the New York Times. I think it's funny because it seems like Twitter is a huge hit but hasn't yet really infiltrated the college crowd yet, from what I can tell. Aren't we supposed to be the ones addicted to Facebook, MySpace, RSS feeds, and IMs? Yet why is Twitter hot shit for 25-35 year olds but not really noticed by college kids, when we're the ones who grew up permanently attached to our PCs?

Anyways, I got bored today and I need to figure out why Twitter is so popular. So I jumped the bandwagon. If anyone else is on Twitter let me know... and "follow" me!

a small rant on the "AIESEC Experience"

Recently *someone* said :

"We stand together in our resolve to ensure that AIESEC, its mission, its vision, and its student-run core prosper in the United States. We act for the benefit of future AIESECers, that they may someday enjoy the AIESEC Experience no longer possible in AIESEC United States."

So many of us spend months, if not years, of our lives dedicated to the pursuit of the vague concept known to the truly hardcore as just "The AIESEC Experience." Well what does that even mean?

The AIESEC experience is about a community, change, and growth. It is made up of millions of moments and experiences that leaves each individual who experiences it forever changed. It's about the fact that you can travel to a random country and have friends you haven't even met yet. It teaches you to be a stronger and ultimately better person and leader, no matter what country you live in. It removes the concept of borders, as you make friends in Shanghai and Rwanda and the Netherlands and beyond. You shell out thousands of dollars to travel to random locales around the country and around the world each year for the experiences and people that you can't find in any other organization, despite the fact that your non-AIESEC friends just don't quite get it. It teaches you to care about something bigger than yourself, your friends, and next weekend's party like every other university student, and to strive for something much greater than anything we have ever cared about before. It makes you realize it has all been worth it if you can change even one single life -- and even better if you can change thousands.

It doesn't have to be about rigidly tracked I2A-TR-LR-EX-H4TF stages. It doesn't have to be in exactly the same exact format in all 106 countries. The bottom line is about changing lives, no matter what format the AIESEC Experience comes in. It is NOT about power and control. It's not about whether the LCPs or the MC have more power. It's about IMPACT. How many lives did you change this past year? Or did you waste all your time bickering and complaining that you didn't have the "power" that you want? Did you get mired down in internal politics and complain all the time, or did you actually use the amazing resources and opportunities we have been given to make a difference? It saddens me to see so many leaders squandering the time and resources given to them by such a unique organization because they instead are getting caught up in politics and losing sight of our mission.

Think about how many people in your LC you are not impacting right now because you are trying to fight a battle that has no purpose. Think about every conference and LTM we have been to over the last year, every session you have facilitated, every member you sent on a traineeship who came back so grateful, every road trip you have taken to visit another LC, every faraway conference in Canada or Madrid or Hong Kong where you were welcomed with open arms by complete strangers who love you unconditionally because you believe in the very same things! Think about every conversation you had with an AIESECer from another country and how surprised they were to realize that not all stereotypes about Americans are true. Think about the countless hours you have spent recruiting new members, and the ever-proud feeling we know we all get from watching those newbies who truly get AIESEC in ways that others just don't quite get. Think about the late-night conversations with trainees and conference roommates, the nights spent AIESECing instead of studying, the countless Global Villages, and of course, the ridiculous dances, and the feeling you got when sharing those dances with people from 30 countries.

THAT is the AIESEC experience, and you have all had a taste of it and the amazing things it offers.

Think back to the day you joined AIESEC and the person you were then -- and the person you are today. Then tell me again that "the AIESEC Experience is no longer possible in AIESEC United States." That is a claim full of shit. That is a dishonor to the very AIESEC experiences that you have lived every day for the last however many years.

The AIESEC experience is not about power. It is not about control. It is about taking what you have been given, and then giving back as much of yourself as you can to your organization for the purpose of impacting more people and changing more lives. Whether you are an LCP, an EBD, an MC member, or a new member, or whatever, it's about doing what you can to impact others. Just because your AIESEC Experience looks different from that of other countries doesn't make it any less important or impactful.

In an organization striving towards something as vague as "peace and fulfillment of humankind's potential," why don't you start demonstrating that you ACTUALLY care about peace by making peace within your own organization?

politics

This past year I've watched the campaign of the century. I've watched one of the harshest, most brutal primary election seasons America has ever seen and became completely enraptured by the internal workings of campaigns -- one in particular. That of a candidate who may not be president, but has emerged from battle stronger then ever and poised to become a superstar in her own right.

She's on the cover of New York Magazine this week, a magazine I loved already but love just a little more this week; the headline "Hillary Clinton, Superstar" may have played some role in that. a clip from the article:

"On the night she pulled off her unlikely twofer, she opened her victory speech with this refrain: "For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you."

With that speech, Clinton had finally found a theme: the resilient fighter, the underdog, the victim. And with each successive contest, as the calls for her to fold grew louder even as she continued winning (nine of the final fifteen primaries, for the record) that theme only became sharper. Having abandoned her corporate, Establishment campaign, she seemed more than liberated; she seemed intoxicated. Suddenly, she was giving terrific, well-modulated Election Night speeches--speeches that were every bit as good, in their way, as Obama's more-celebrated orations. Suddenly, she was loving the rope lines, working them feverishly, hungrily, as if...well, as if she were her husband. Suddenly, the hustings were no longer for her a royal pain in the ass but instead a source of sustenance, vitality, and even joy.

What changed? What turned her from someone roundly dismissed as an automaton into a campaigner whose skills were routinely given props by the likes of Pat Buchanan?"

I love the game of politics for a million reasons, but most of all I love how something that is such a complicated and at times ruthless game can parallel life in general. At some point Clinton treaded and eventually crossed that fine line between tough automaton and human being, and became immensely more successful for it. it's something I've been even more fascinated by in the last few days for how common a theme it seems to be in so many people's lives and work and mostly in AIESEC. It made me think back to the near argument I had with a trainee months ago about whether people know when to cross that line and stop being all business and start being human. It definitely has been on my mind a lot in the last couple weeks as I have questioned whether some of the AIESECers closest to me have a very tight grasp (if at all) on where that line between the two stands, and whether falling too far to one side can hurt your relationships-- or hurt the success of the organization. How long can you keep playing the "professionalism" card and when does it go too far?

"Racism is deeper, but sexism may be wider in America today. In polls, more Americans say they would be willing to vote for a black candidate for president than for a female candidate, and sexist put-downs are heard more publicly than racial ones.

Presumably in part because of sexism (and also because of self-selection), women today are still hugely underrepresented in the political arena. Women constitute about 23 percent of legislators in the 50 states, a proportion that has risen only slightly in the last decade. In addition, the political commentariat is overwhelmingly male, which is one reason that Mrs. Clinton's supporters felt unfairly battered.

We aren't always aware of our own biases. Some of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are sure that she was defeated by misogyny, while those who voted against her invariably are dismissive: The reason I didn't vote for her isn't that she's a woman. It's that she's a dynastic opportunist who voted for the Iraq war and...

The catch is that abundant psychology research shows that we are often shaped by stereotypes that we are unaware of. Many studies have presented research subjects with the exact same C.V., alternately with a male name and a female name. Usually, the male is perceived as a better fit for executive posts--even among well-meaning people who are against gender discrimination, and even among women.

At the end of the day, none of this proves or disproves the thesis that gender bias played a role in the election. But if Mrs. Clinton was hurt by gender, her problem wasn't misogynists so much as ordinary men and women who believe in equal opportunity--but also are conditioned to think that a president speaks in a gravelly voice."

--Nicholas Kristof, New York Times