But you are on this page to learn about me, so I should focus on telling you about how my experiences have given me my professional assets. The way I see it, three things happened to me in high school that continue to influence my life today: Bill Clinton, a softball tournament in Australia, and a liberal government teacher with a heart of gold and little tolerance for narrow-mindedness. (RIP, Steve.)
Two of those things led me to choose Political Science as my major; the trip to Australia led me to choose a university with an excellent study abroad program, which, in turn, led to a career in (mostly) international affairs. The chain of events continues: a six-week post-graduate seminar in the European Union, an internship at a peace and reconciliation center in Ireland, an Arabic language program at the Defense Language Institute, the start of a career in international development, living and working in Bulgaria and Lebanon...
Ah, Beirut, what a marvelous city. For a small town Ohio girl, even with my travel experience, living in Beirut was like living inside the news. The city is paradise for an ancient history enthusiast and one who is interested in comparative religion and conflict resolution like myself. Though I had been involved with social media since the early days (I started blogging in 2005 - I hardly remember what life was like before that), Beirut was where I began to realize the impact that social media could have on shaping our world. I had been tasked with surveying the civil society landscape in Lebanon and determining which groups we could work with. But the sectarian nature of all things Lebanese led me to conclude that many of the entrenched organizations were not interested or willing to help build the institutions necessary for a stable country, as they served only the needs of their sectarian constituents.
However, the post-Taif generation, the one that had grown up in the internet age, valued secularism. You could feel their desire for change, their lust to live in a "normal" country. It wasn’t just that the young professionals of Lebanon were more interested in gadgets than guns; it was also being in the Middle East at the time of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt when I realized the power of social media. I spent a year over the course of two years working with digital media practitioners, entrepreneurs, and civil society organizations from Lebanon and across the Middle East. I attended their workshops and conferences. I would describe it as a semester of social media training. Suddenly, I found myself more interested in working in the field of digital media than democratic governance.
Since then, I've honed my craft. I've studied trends, discovered methods for effective analytics, and improved my Photoshop skills. I've worked with Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla. I've created and managed online media editorial boards and content calendars and have written content for organizational blogs and created infographics for social media accounts.
What motivates me? My desire for progress and peace. I've spent my entire adult life trying to figure out why war exists and why people die of hunger and preventable diseases when there are so many billionaires in the world. I remember the first signs of conflict I experienced - General Patton's grave in the American Cemetery in Luxembourg. Growing up in Ohio, the nearest thing I'd ever come to conflict were a few grass fields where civil war battles had been fought. In Europe I visited the war museums, saw the bombed out Kaiser-Wilhelm Kirke in Berlin, saw the last vestiges of Soviet communism in the eastern satellite states. I became fascinated in the experiment we call the European Union, a union born out of the desire to never fight another war again. I devoured books on the Cold War, too. My experiences led me to a peace and reconciliation center in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, where I spent three months learning facilitation skills to mitigate conflict. It was there I saw the most powerful sight I will ever see in this lifetime. I came face to face with the divine. I witnessed a woman forgive a man who had participated in a bombing plot that had killed her son.
Forgiveness is true freedom, to paraphrase the great Archbishop Desmond Tutu. What I witnessed that day was what some would call a miracle. I'd call it possibility. That the Irish have largely resolved an 800 year old conflict is the very definition of hope. From then on, I knew I wanted to help everyone else get there.
You may think it odd that someone who desires peace enlisted in the military. Well, that happened for two reasons. One, the Army's stated mission under Bill Clinton was as a peacemaking force. I had, however naively, envisioned myself with a blue UN helmet helping keep the peace in some conflict-ridden part of the world. Two, I wanted to learn how militaries work. You can read about something all day long and proclaim yourself to be an expert, but unless you've experienced it firsthand, you can't truly know it.
Next came my move to Washington, DC and employment at the Center for International Private Enterprise, an organization who helps build the economic institutions necessary for stable and prosperous democracies. I had the great fortune of meeting some amazing activists in the Middle East who were working to improve their countries and who strove to gain freedoms denied to them. One of the Lebanese grantees I worked with at CIPE eventually got me the position for the Lebanon-oriented Safadi Foundation, which led me to Beirut. Unfortunately, the political and economic situation took a turn for the worst, and the organization shut down.
I won't forget the day I saw young men with posters of Bashar Assad running through the streets of Hamra to the Syrian Embassy around the time the conflict started. I won't forget the fear that my Lebanese friends felt. Many left the country, expecting the worst. I think you can best describe the sentiment as "Here we go again." My heart aches for them, for Syria, for all of the people of the world who suffer because of senseless conflict. Life is too short for war, too precious, too wondrous.
Feel free to email me at paddyglover@gmail.com. I have some great stories to tell you.
To see my academic transcripts and diplomas, click here.
