To Serve, You Give Yourself Away: Insight on International Community Engagement from Dr. Jody Olsen, Director of Peace Corps
By Lakshmi Ramachandran
“When you become a Peace Corps volunteer, you give yourself away. You’re not you… And in giving yourself away, something happens. You discover yourself, and you understand who you are.”
Peace Corps is a grassroots-driven organization that sends volunteers across the world to partner with communities in creating local change. Currently, 7,367 volunteers are working on projects in agriculture, economic development, education, environmental protection, health, and youth development. As a former Teach For America (TFA) Corps member, I have found kindred spirits in Peace Corps volunteers. My first day of TFA training began with the reminder that teaching was not about us, but about our students, their families, and the communities we would be joining. This perspective mirrors one voiced by Dr. Josephine (Jody) Olsen, Director of the Peace Corps, as she shared her thoughts on leadership and service through the organization’s lens.
The Voices in Leadership series welcomed Dr. Olsen for the event “Leadership Begins in the Community: Peace Corps and Global Health”, on Wednesday, March 27, 2019. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Richard Frank, professor at the Harvard Medical School and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana from 1975–1976.
Dr. Olsen’s journey began in Tunisia, where she served as a volunteer from 1966 to 1968. Since then, she has held a variety of roles, including country director, regional director, and chief of staff. In March 2018, she was inaugurated as the Director of Peace Corps. Dr. Olsen’s lessons on leadership transcend national borders, cultural differences, and language barriers. Her passion for the Peace Corps percolated over her simple, yet poignant advice on engaging responsibly and authentically in international service. As she shared stories from her Corps experience and beyond, she touched on the fundamental role that vulnerability, communication, and sharing have on navigating cross-continental relationships, managing crises, and servant leadership.
On vulnerability and trust
Dr. Olsen first invited the audience to figuratively travel with her to Tunisia, as she recounted one of her first experiences there. Hoping to buy a stamp for a letter, she was quickly overcome with trepidation and insecurity. Women in burkas, snippets of Arabic, and the bustle of a new place collectively presented an initially insurmountable barrier to a simple errand. Dr. Olsen struggled with the vulnerability of being an outsider frozen by the unfamiliar. Unsure of how to proceed, she stood in place for ten minutes, silently observing her surroundings. After identifying patterns within the chaos, she discovered the steps needed to successfully procure her stamp.
In new settings, tasks like mailing a letter can feel impossible. But how can one transform that feeling of uncertainty into action? Dr. Olsen’s story illustrated that, with patience and perseverance, one can recognize patterns needed to accomplish a goal. Additionally, vulnerability in a different place can mean taking the chance to try something new and can lead to better relationship building with the communities one serves. Dr. Olsen shared that such relationships are founded on trust:
“Trust is key…every one of us has to learn about trust…because you can’t be effective with your community, your counterpart, [or] with your students if you don’t have open trust, if you don’t share your own vulnerabilities.”
Trusting both yourself and the community with which you work can be critical to effective service. Building this trust often begins with opening yourself up to new experiences, however uncomfortable or unfamiliar they may initially seem. For example, Dr. Olsen opined that it is by “eating fufu in Togo with your family” and “chasing the chickens” that allows for true cultural integration. Contextualizing this, she added:
“So part of what we do today is suggest to volunteers, there’s a time to connect with the family, but there is a bigger time to really be present in the day-to-day activity of what you’re doing and being in that community.”
Acknowledging and appreciating the different ways in which people live can provide insight into their cultural values. These everyday experiences can establish the infrastructure on which self-growth, relationship-building, and culturally-affirming service flourish, and integrating the cultural and social priorities of communities can lead to a more sustainable impact. Effective service is, therefore, about much more than an eagerness to help. Without thoughtful, invited, and direct engagement with communities, it can be easy to fall into voluntourism when doing work outside of one’s home country. Dr. Olsen additionally asserted that sharing moments of daily life are also the precursors to lifelong kinships, as many corps members return to placement countries to attend graduations and weddings.
On communication and checklists
Dr. Olsen finds familiarity and confidence with crisis management necessary for directing the Peace Corps. As one might expect, liaising between host countries, corps members, families, local governments, and non-governmental organizations requires the ability to stay calm. Managing emergencies and disasters surprisingly parallels the aforementioned tactics involved in buying a stamp. Dr. Olsen recommended that, rather than succumbing to the desire to act before thinking, one should count to ten and take a breath, as pausing before acting lends to more intentional navigation during times of high alert.
Effective and targeted communication during emergent situations is also imperative in managing multiple global actors simultaneously. Beyond this, however, Dr. Olsen elaborated on the essential role that preparation and checklists can play in managing crises:
“When the crisis occurs — because yes, there will be a coup in a country somewhere — [it is important] that you have ready to go people who have various roles with[in] this crisis…So you take your procedures, [and] your checklist… and everybody knows what their role is. And part of that is identifying how you communicate…I’ve learned in managing crises [that] the most important part is procedures and prevention… now, you can’t prevent everything, but [it is critical] that you have discipline and [that] you’ve practiced…”
Checklists are familiar to the world of public health planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, and, as noted by Atul Gawande, are used anywhere from the cockpit of an airplane to the operating room of a hospital. Dr. Olsen similarly highlighted the versatility and ubiquity of plans during an emergency. Although responding to a coup or safeguarding volunteers during the earthquake in Peru might not be part of your daily routine, her advice can be applied to a number of situations. Checklists and a commitment to practice can be similarly helpful when preparing for a presentation, gearing up for a difficult conversation, or advocating around a controversial issue.
However, Dr. Olsen acknowledged that crisis response might not always go as planned. She encouraged the audience to engage in continuous reflection so that prior mistakes could be incorporated into future lessons: “But always think about, how could I have done that better? How do I think about that in the context of others? That’s the key, to me, to begin the leadership journey.”
Lastly, Dr. Olsen highlighted the role that gratitude can play during crises, during which people typically work tirelessly to assist. The immense intercontinental coordination and communication that must occur when the “Andes are falling down” is dependent on multiple actors working in unison. It is clear that interweaving appreciation into her response strategy fosters relationship-building and recognizes people for their work.
On sharing and mentorship
Mentorship not only paves the way for academic and career growth; it is also essential to leadership development. Dr. Olsen actively shares her knowledge and experience to prepare others to continue her legacy. Peace Corps volunteers spend two years in a country, and the organization has a five-year tenure limit for staff. Accordingly, sustainable growth requires proactive planning for turnover through mentorship.
Whether in the world of international service, policy, medicine, education, or business, only by collaborating with others, and preparing those who will come after you, can you have a lasting impact. Just as she advised one to give themselves away in service, Dr. Olsen also advocated for giving knowledge, lessons, and vision away to others:
“I have to give away this information. If I take this information with me at the end of five years, it doesn’t do anybody any good. So it gives [me] a chance to continue to keep that flow outward of sharing information… And what it has taught me — and I think it’s important for everyone, no matter how long they’re in a position — [to] …share knowledge, share information, share back out. Share it, because it doesn’t do any good just sitting in your head. And being present with others with your ideas, to me, is key to being an effective leader.”
Dr. Olsen emphasized that effective leadership means that your vision and team must outlast you, and that the best way to ensure that longevity is by sharing the lessons you learned with those around you. This sharing then creates a ripple of impact. She also touched on the role that being present has on leadership. Navigating learning from previous mistakes, living in the current time, and having a forward-looking mindset can be challenging. As a political appointee, Dr. Olsen’s time as Director of the Peace Corps is finite, yet cognizance of the ticking clock facilitates her need to make every moment count.
Service should be earnest
As Director of the Peace Corps, Dr. Olsen is tasked with the incredible responsibility of overseeing thousands of volunteer-run projects in countries across the globe. Her prowess as an international leader, liaison, mentor, and problem-solver is founded on an immense passion for socially conscious, servant leadership. It is with humility, an eagerness to immerse oneself in a new culture, sharing, and reflection that one can lead through service.
Whether you have two years or two hours to commit to service, how you serve is sometimes paramount to the service itself. Dr. Olsen leaves us with the lesson that an earnest attempt at cultural immersion and a commitment to humility can result in discovering yourself and being transformed by those you serve.
Story by Lakshmi Ramachandran, a Master of Public Health Candidate studying Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Originally from Troy, Michigan, Lakshmi received her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, after which she joined Teach For America. Teaching in Detroit, Brooklyn, and New Orleans catalyzed her passion for addressing social determinants of health, education, and racial disparities. After receiving a Master’s degree in Neuroscience and Education from Columbia University, she pivoted into medicine. She is currently between her 3rd and 4th year of medical school at Western Michigan University with plans to specialize in Obstetrics and Gynecology. When she’s not in the classroom, she can be found exploring cities by foot, savoring masala chai, dabbling with oil painting, or aspiring to be a foodie.
Story edited by Sherine Andreine Powerful, a first-year Doctor of Public Health student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A Diasporic Jamaican, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Latin American and International Studies from Yale University and holds a Master of Public Health degree in Population and Family Health, with a concentration in Global Health, from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is interested in gender and sexual justice in the English-speaking Caribbean, as well as resilience and anticolonial sustainable development in the context of climate change.
