20 Years of Success: Stories from our FLEX Alumni — “FLEX was definitely a good start to my further achievements”

This story is part of a series of blog entries to mark the 20^th anniversary of the Future Leaders Exchange program (FLEX) in Ukraine. FLEX is the U.S. Government’s premier high school exchange program. For more information about U.S. exchanges please click here.

 Posted by: Antonina Radzihovska

Future Leaders Exchange Program 1996-1997

Tottenville High School

New York, New York

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FLEX alumni – Antonina Radzihovska

In 1996-1997, I participated in the Future Leaders Exchange Program. I was lucky to live in one of the biggest cities of the world – New York. My first trip to the United States gave me a good start to my future education abroad, which eventually led me to a successful career.

In New York, I graduated from Tottenville High School with a Diploma with Honors. I felt it was not enough, and soon after I got my education in economics at Nottingham University Business School, London, UK where I majored in Marketing and General Management.

After finishing my education I worked for the investment fund SigmaBleyzer.  After that, I worked for one of the largest cell providers in Ukraine – Kyivstar, where my project “djuice” brought in over $2 billion in the six years of my work there. Now I run my own consultancy business “Acctiva Consulting”.

I am sure my first trip to the U.S. helped me in achieving what I have now. It was definitely a good start to my further achievements.

 

9/11 Eleventh Anniversary: 11 Days of Remembrance. Day 3: For Chilean Trade Negotiators, September 11 in Washington Compounds the Darkness of the Anniversary of Pinochet Coup

Posted by: James Wolfe, Press Attaché 

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I could barely make out what the announcer was saying on a quiet radio in a noisy coffee shop when I heard the first reports of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center and there being a fire. Those first reports on radio were not delivered with much urgency, as many assumed as I did that one of the many small tourist planes and helicopters that flew around Manhattan had been involved in an accident. I left the shop on Connecticut Avenue near the Van Ness-UDC Metro station and walked on toward Howard University Law School, more curious than alarmed. As Trade Policy Officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, I was one of the Department’s main liaisons to the Free Trade Agreement negotiations between the United States of America and the Republic of Chile, which were beginning their second day of a week of talks hosted at the university.

The remaining lower part of the World Trade Center in New York City

When I arrived in the front lobby of the building where the negotiating groups were meeting, my colleague, Chris, asked me if I’d heard the news – a second plane had just hit the other tower. We immediately looked at each other and simultaneously uttered the same two words: “Al Qaeda.” One plane could be an accident; two was an attack. We had served together a few years earlier in Bosnia, while the war’s devastation was still fresh and violence still reared its head; and we were still there during the NATO action against Serbia in defense of the Kosovar Albanians. As we stared at the small black and white screen of the TV in the security guard’s booth and saw the Twin Towers burn, it felt like we were suddenly back in that element. And the news started to report a plane striking the Pentagon in DC, with at least one other plane in the sky still unaccounted for, possibly headed our way. There were even rumors of a car bomb at the State Department, although these soon proved to be false. As we prepared to head over to the lead negotiator’s room to decide whether to send everyone home, the guard announced that the South Tower had just fallen. Two months earlier, I’d stood there with my wife, her parents, and her nephew. Now it was gone.

The talks were cancelled for the day, with everyone fearful of what might come next. Another plane aimed at DC? Bombs or other attacks planned for the Metro? As government buildings in DC were ordered to evacuate and people told to go home, businesses and schools did likewise, and Howard U went along with this, so that talks could not have continued even if we’d wanted; and no one did. We soon learned that the day was already considered a dark one for Chileans, being the anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup against President Salvador Allende. Many on the delegation were among those whose families had been in exile or suppressed during Pinochet’s 15-year dictatorship. Their sense of isolation from the families thousands of miles away in Santiago was acute. Our first concern as their hosts became to help them return to their hotel in a city where the Metro was considered a possible target for more attacks, taxis were not available, and most workers were evacuating. We rounded up enough cars among the US negotiators with some difficulty (many, like me, had ridden Metro that day) and managed to return them to their hotel before heading home ourselves. Chris gave me a ride most of the way to my apartment in Foggy Bottom, ten blocks from the White House. Virtually all traffic was going the other way.

My wife was home when I arrived and we spent much of the next couple hours glued to the TV and trying to call friends in New York City to make sure they were all right (it would be three days before I heard that my friend who worked in the World Trade Center had left her job a couple weeks earlier). We also fielded countless calls from friends and family around the United States and from Europe, all wanting assurances that we were OK. Mobile phone service was down most of the day, with the circuits overwhelmed by callers seeking news of loved ones. We finally decided we needed a break and went for a walk through Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, and over to Memorial Bridge, where we could see the smoke rising from the nearby Pentagon. The streets were mostly deserted, almost like on a snow day. Almost. It struck us immediately that there were armored military vehicles and soldiers with weapons on most intersections. Once again I had this feeling of displacement, as though I’d been transported back to the streets of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. It was clear that the world had just changed for the United States of America.

We resumed trade negotiations with the Chileans at Howard the next day. What else could we do? Life had to go on and their delegation was stuck there, as all airports remained closed for the next few days. I had planned to host the Chilean delegation on behalf of the State Department as a Baltimore Orioles baseball game during the week, but all cultural and sporting events were canceled during those early days, so they were deprived of that distraction. In the end, I got a refund from the Orioles and we provided them with a tour bus and tickets for the National Aquarium in Baltimore so they were not stuck mired in their anxiety in the hotel. That weekend, the Chilean delegation was among the first to fly out of Washington Dulles International Airport. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (much closer to the city) remained closed for weeks; I was among those to land there in the first days it reopened, coincidentally returning from Chile, and the place was like a ghost town, mostly deserted.

New One World Trade Center under construction in January 2012

Washington remains a changed place since September 11, with greater security in most government and other public buildings, but we have fortunately moved past the uncertainty and fear that gripped so many those first days and in the weeks and months that followed. Gone are the frequent announcements of heightened security alerts, reports of anthrax mailed to government offices, and fears of riding the Metro. Bin Laden is dead. But people don’t forget that the United States cannot consider itself untouchable. And as we complain about how unpleasant airport security has become, thanks to September 11 and those terrorists who have attempted to add to its legacy, we know there is no return to the easier times of September 10, 2001, and before. I feel fortunate that my family and friends were not among the thousands of victims that day, but each year at this time I remember my sorrow for all those who were lost and my gratitude to the Chileans for being there, our duties as their hosts giving us no choice but to go on.

 

9/11 Eleventh Anniversary: 11 Days of Remembrance. Day 2

Posted by: Chris Smith, Economic Officer

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The morning of September 11, 2001, began like many. I was a bit late to work at the Commerce Department in Washington, DC, so I hurried to my desk a bit after 9:00. After I started to check my e-mail and get ready for the day, the office windows rattled with the sound of a distant explosion. Of course, I didn’t think it was anything to worry about – maybe falling cement at a nearby construction site, or cannons from a White House ceremony. In those days, there was nothing to prepare us for the thought that this could be the sound of nearly two hundred lives being snuffed out in one part of the largest ever terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It was simply not imaginable.

CNN Breaking News on 9/11

I kept working until one of my colleagues came in, visibly shaken. She said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York, and that there was an attack on Washington. Then my phone rang. It was my wife, calling from her office in a building on the other side of the White House. She said that her organization was being evacuated, and that we should all get out. We agreed to find each other on the street outside of her building by Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House. By then, thousands of people were streaming out of the Commerce Department building onto the street. The rumors among those leaving were incredible, but no one knew what to believe. I heard that there was a car bomb at the State Department, then someone said that the New Executive Office Building had been bombed. The last rumor hit me particularly hard, as I knew that my wife was working in the building next door.

I tried to force my way through Lafayette Park, which was being closed off by security officials. By the time I made it to the place my wife and I had agreed to meet, the streets were crowded with so many thousands of people that finding any one person would have been impossible. The look on faces in the crowd showed me that the situation was serious, and that no one was convinced that the attacks were over. I wandered on the street for the next few hours, scanning the anxious faces hoping to catch a glimpse of my wife. With cell phone service down and no working pay phones, I went back to my office and reached my wife, who had made it home with a colleague. I then got on a city bus to get home – a twenty minute trip that took about four hours in the traffic, confusion, and chaos of that day.

When I arrived at home, the elation of seeing my wife turned into a depressed fascination with the news, still unable to process the enormity of what had just happened to our nation. Like so many Americans, we were glued to the television. Now my generation had its own Pearl Harbor, its own day of infamy. And as we went to bed, we knew that we now lived in a more dangerous world than we had woken up in that morning.

 

50 States in 50 Days: Chautauqua – a Hidden Gem of Western New York

By James Wolfe, Press Attaché

A Chautauqua Institution House
Photo by James Wolfe

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On a small point on Chautauqua Lake, in the southwest corner of New York State, Reverend John H. Vincent and businessman Lewis Miller launched a small experiment in adult education for Methodist Sunday school teachers in 1874 that quickly started a nationwide movement and profoundly changed the face of education in the United States. Vincent’s The Chautauqua Movement (1886) has been hailed as “the first modern theory of adult education in the United States.” For 9 weeks every summer, people from all across the United States still gather in the idyllic grounds of the Chautauqua Institution to enjoy the ongoing programs based on the four pillars of Arts, Education, Religion (multi-denominational), and Recreation. In the 1980s, Chautauqua hosted a “Soviet Week” program that featured the exchange of performers, scientists, and lecturers with the Soviet Union until the latter dissolved.

Athenaeum Hotel in Chautauqua Institution
Photo by James Wolfe

In its heyday, the Chautauqua Movement saw hundreds of copycat “Chautauquas” spread throughout the country, either in fixed locations like the original or traveling from town to town with giant tents. The original Chautauqua University was a correspondence program that conducted most classes through the mail and targeted adults. Programs at the original and “daughter” Chautauquas included music, theater, dance, classes in the arts and performance, and lectures. Guest lecturers at the original Chautauqua Institution included Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the latter delivering his famous “I Hate War” speech there.

 

50 States in 50 Days: The Other New York

Posted by: Fran Westbrook, Regional English Language Officer

Vew of New York City from the Empire State Building (Photo by Hubert K)

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Bright lights…big city. That’s the first thing that comes to many people’s minds when they hear the words “New York.” New York City, the most populous city in the United States, is an important metropolis—but New York is more than just the city: it is also an important state.

New York State is the third-most populous state (after California and Texas) in the U.S. The original inhabitants of New York State were Native Americans, mostly from the Algonquian and Iroquois tribes. The first known European settler active in this region was Henry Hudson, who claimed the territory for the Dutch East India Company in1609. New York was then annexed by the British in 1664. The original European settlements in New York State were in the area known as the Hudson Valley. This region was the setting for Washington Irving’s famous stories, including “The Headless Horseman” and “Rip Van Winkle.” Other famous New Yorkers include abolitionist Frederick Douglass, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, inventor George Eastman, and virologist Jonas Salk. New York was and is home to a host of writers, actors, actresses, composers, musicians, and choreographers, due in part to the vibrant art scene in New York City.

Adirondack Park
Photo by Teddy Llovet

New Yorkers played important roles in the American Revolution. The Sons of Liberty were founded in New York, and New York endorsed the Declaration of Independence. Some say up to one-third of the battles of the Revolutionary War were fought in New York State. New York was the eleventh state to ratify the United States Constitution in 1788.