Global Reentry Presents: Jobs with Jodi National Peace Corps Association

Jodi speaks with Baktash Ahadi (RPCV Mozambique), an award-winning documentary filmmaker, motivational speaker, trainer, and human rights activist. Baktash shares how his Peace Corps experience coupled with his cultural life experiences as a refugee has influenced his passion for storytelling. He speaks on how activism and awareness is his foci in his multiple documentaries.

Featured Guest:
Baktash Ahadi is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, speaker, facilitator, and human rights activist.

He specializes in strategic communication, leadership development, narrative storytelling, conflict resolution, and cultural diversity to help leaders make a positive impact in their organization and on society.

The recipient of numerous awards for public service and documentary storytelling, Baktash has worked on race relations in communities across the United States and on the peace process in Afghanistan. Baktash is particularly drawn to stories of forced migration, conflict, refugees, and vulnerable and underrepresented communities.

PODCAST HOST:
Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Services Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.

We're National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) — a mission-driven social impact organization that encourages and celebrates the lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals. NPCA supports a united and vibrant Peace Corps community of nearly a quarter-million individuals — including current and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, current and former staff, community partners around the globe, family, and friends — in our efforts to create a better world. Find out more, get the latest news for the Peace Corps community, sign up for our newsletter, and join. Basic membership is free: http://peacecorpsconnect.org

In this episode, Jodi speaks with Juana Bordas, RPCV Chile and recognized thought leader, award winning author, and activist  in the Latina  and multicultural communities. Juana speaks of her own cultural background and her lifetime commitment to bringing a focus to the interconnectedness between the areas of leadership, inclusion and social change.


FEATURED GUEST:

Juana Bordas is recongized expert in the field of leadership, inclusion, and social change. She served with one of the first groups of Peace Corps volunteers in Chile where she worked in production cooperatives (microenterprise), and is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2001 Franklin Williams Award through Peace Corps given for her lifelong commitment to communities of color.

 She is also a  bestselling author. Her books include “Salsa, Soul and Spirit – Leadership for a Multicultural Age” which won the International Latino Book Award &  “The Power of Latino Leadership”which received the Nautilus Prize for best multicultural book (second edition juste released).

Juana is the founding President of the National Hispana Leadership Institute and a founder of Mi Casa, the largest Hispanic serving organization in Colorado. She was the first Latina faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, and  has been honored as one of most Influential Hispanics in America by the National Diversity Council.

PODCAST HOST:
Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Services Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.

We're National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) — a mission-driven social impact organization that encourages and celebrates the lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals. NPCA supports a united and vibrant Peace Corps community of nearly a quarter-million individuals — including current and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, current and former staff, community partners around the globe, family, and friends — in our efforts to create a better world. Find out more, get the latest news for the Peace Corps community, sign up for our newsletter, and join. Basic membership is free: http://peacecorpsconnect.org

In this episode, Jodi speaks with Mike Tidwell,  a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Zaire (now known as Democratic Republic of Congo) about his life changing journey into the environmental advocacy field.  Mike is  founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), the oldest and largest grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to fighting for bold and just solutions to climate change in the Chesapeake region of Maryland, DC, and Virginia.

 
FEATURED GUEST: 

Mike Tidwell is founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in Maryland, Virginia, DC, and West Virginia.


Under Tidwell’s leadership, CCAN has helped pass landmark clean-energy legislation in Maryland and the District of Columbia; blocked coal and oil development plans in Virginia; and worked with groups nationwide to push for a fair and effective carbon cap policy on Capitol Hill.


Tidwell is also an author and filmmaker whose books include The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Race to Save America’s Coastal Cities. Tidwell’s documentary film – “We Are All Smith Islanders” – vividly depicts the dangers of global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. Tidwell has received numerous awards for his advocacy work, including the Audubon Naturalist Society’s prestigious “Conservation Award.”


A long-time resident of Maryland, he lives in Takoma Park with his wife Beth and son Sasha.



PODCAST HOST:

Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Services Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide. 

We're National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) — a mission-driven social impact organization that encourages and celebrates the lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals. NPCA supports a united and vibrant Peace Corps community of nearly a quarter-million individuals — including current and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, current and former staff, community partners around the globe, family, and friends — in our efforts to create a better world. Find out more, get the latest news for the Peace Corps community, sign up for our newsletter, and join. Basic membership is free: http://peacecorpsconnect.org

In this episode, Career Services Specialist Jodi Hammer interviews  Jennifer Bangoura (Mali, 2008-10), a passionate RPCV, educator, and mother, about her careers abroad in the fields of education, environment, tech, and career services.

FEATURED GUEST: 
Jennifer Bangoura has have nurtured a global community of leaders from Iraq to Morocco and from Mali to Malawi across industries from volunteering to the environment sector, international education, and edtech. I am passionate about lifting up, celebrating, and supporting entrepreneurs and emerging leaders. 

As a certified career coach, she deeply cares about equitable recruiting, hiring, and helping job seekers discover ways to unlock the job search process. 

Previously, she worked in international workforce development with over 60 career centers at public universities throughout Iraq and Morocco and connected with higher education administration and the private sector in Tunisia, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates and throughout the GCC. 

She firmly believe in helping others build their network and the power of social capital to lead to meaningful employment that makes a difference in people's lives and that of their families.


PODCAST HOST: 
Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Support Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.

In this episode, Career Services Specialist Jodi Hammer interviews RPCV Carla Brown (Comoro Islands, 1992–94) about her 25-year international career focused largely on international development, including specialized experience in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion arena (DEI).

FEATURED GUEST: 
Carla Brown  is a RPCV (Comoro Islands, 1992–94) and an accomplished senior manager with over 25 years of experience leading programs that assist poor and vulnerable populations internationally. She is proficient in portfolio management, operations management, program design, fundraising, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), strategy development and representation. Additionally, she has expertise in operationalizing strategic approaches that result in systemic change.  


PODCAST HOST: 
Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Support Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.

In this episode, Career Services Specialist Jodi Hammer chats with RPCV Laura Henderson (RPCV Togo), Director of the Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellowship offered through the Congressional Hunger Center. 

Laura shares more about this paid 2-year program which combines grassroots fieldwork in food security challenged countries with policy work at the headquarters level of an assigned counterpart agency, and why RPCVs are especially competitive. She also shares how to apply for this prestigious program.


FEATURED GUESTS:
Laura Henderson is an RPCV from Togo, and she is a passionate global advocate for social justice for all, poverty eradication, food security and education. She has worked for 20+ years in international development and is currently the Director of the Mickey Leland Fellowship program at the Congressional Hunger Center.


She began her career working for two years as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) with US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. Laura then served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, where she introduced coffee and cocoa marketing techniques to farmers, greatly increasing their capacity, profits and overall food security.


PODCAST HOST:
Jodi Hammer is an RPCV (Ecuador, 1994–97), Job Coach, and host of the Global Reentry's Jobs with Jodi Podcast. In her role as Global Reentry Career Support Specialist with NPCA, she develops and delivers individual and group programming to foster Global Reentry's mission of providing career and transitional support to RPCVs worldwide.