Riada talks to Elmira Bayrasli on U.S. politics, women's leadership, mental health, entrepreneurship & more!

Dignified Resilience with Riada Akyol

Hello everyone! So, here we are, the first episode of "Dignified Resilience" podcast in 2021 is here and phew, has it not already been so eventful – surely for us who are based here in the USA. I hope you are all well wherever you listen from, and I wish you health, a new year of ease and peace. Elmira Bayrasli - my guest in this episode, is someone whom I admired for quite a while online and we’ve had this idea of getting together for a few months now. I am so grateful that we made it happen finally! In this wonderful conversation, we candidly talked about so many topics that Elmira is just so knowledgeable about - and that I very much also care about too. From talking about the U.S. politics - past, current and future - to global political trends, we also talked about the great initiative which she founded, entitled "Foreign Policy Interrupted," then about women and leadership in the news media and in general, the importance of having different perspectives from people - especially women who should have more power at the table, the bad consequences of lack of the same, on the importance of mental health and of course, on the future of entrepreneurship considering the book that Elmira wrote on the subject. At the end, we also talked about New Year's resolutions, creating new habits and had fun while chatting about those "five sweet questions" that I ask each guest at the end of our conversation. It was truly an honor to have an expert like Elmira as my first guest in 2021, and I hope you also get to learn and enjoy this conversation as much as I did! Elmira Bayrasli is the director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in New York City. She is the co-founder of "Foreign Policy Interrupted" and the host of Project Syndicate's podcast, "Opinion Has It." She is the author of "From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places," a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally. Bayrasli has lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina where she was the Chief Spokesperson for the OSCE Mission. From 1994-2000 she was presidential appointee at the U.S. State Department, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, respectively. Elmira is a regular contributor on global entrepreneurship for Techcrunch. She also provides analysis on foreign policy, particularly on Turkey. Her work has appeared in Reuters, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Quartz, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Bayrasli sits on several boards, including Invest2Innovate, Turkish Women's International Network, and Our Secure Future.