Important To Me: Episode 2. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim

Welcome to the second episode of Important To Me, a podcast where leaders from around the world share their experience of ethical values-based leadership. I am your host, David Benger, and I'm very grateful to the Nizami-Gunjavi International Center who has made this podcast possible. Our guest today is Amina Garib-Fakim, former president of the Republic of Mauritius. President Garib-Fakim, thank you so much for being here today. And I just wanted to open up by asking if you could say a little bit about your personal story and your life trajectory. You know, I've had a very eclectic career, if I may use the word, in as much as I started as an academician, and I am a chemist by training. I did my PhD in organic chemistry and I came back to Mauritius, my home country, to teach at the university. And then because my passion has been chemistry, I was looking for that chemistry to do it the way I was doing in the UK, where I did my PhD. But of course, it was no longer possible because the infrastructure wasn't there. And this is when I started probing chemistry in the world of plants, which I did. And then I started publishing, then I've got through the academic medium I got promoted. And eventually I became the first woman professor at the university in 2001. Subsequent to this, I became the dean of the faculty, again, the first woman dean of faculty in the Faculty of Science, then Deputy Vice-Chancellor. And then what happened is that when I got the L'Oreal UNESCO Prize for Women in Science in 2007, I started discussing with people in the private sector here, especially one contract research organization where they were doing clinical trials on, in a Finnish cosmetic products, and of course, some pharmacovigilist work on drugs. And so this is when I started thinking that, you know, I think it's high time to translate this research I was doing into, you know, into business. And because this again has been a premier for Mauritius, because unlike the US, where it's a second nature for academic to delve into the world of entrepreneurship, I was going into the unknown. I was living my comfort zone of academia and going into, you know, the Wild West, if I may use the word. So it became very interesting. I took leave of absence and I started my business. And then I was very happy my own business, because by that time I had retired from university, I was a first retiree then. And then I started, you know, doing this one day, somebody called me, a journalist called me. And she said to me, you know, mom, in fact, I just came back from giving a TED talk. And I thought she wanted to talk to me about what I did in a TED global, in Rio de Janeiro. But no, the question was, your name has been cited for presidency and what do you think about that? Well, I think, you must be taken because I have no ambition, you know, I never thought of the world of politics as being my own. And she said, no, just give me a statement. And of course, as any journalist, what does she do the next day? She puts my picture on the front page of one of the days, I mean, I'm going to fucking for president's small interrogation mark. People don't see the interrogation mark, they only see my name, they see my picture and they see presidency. And interestingly, this became a sounding board and people said, why not? So whatever was negative when I was operating my previous lives, I want to put an academic being a woman in science and, you know, being a Muslim woman as well, all of a sudden become positive in the world of politics. So I said to myself, I've retired from academia, I have nothing to lose. So why not? So through my hats, of course, with all, you know, the risk that I took because Mauritius is a very small place. So whenever you are with a wrong party, you know, what can happen to you in the future. So I said, I'll try it because I have nothing to lose, I'm a retiree anyway. And I'm in the private sector. So this give me complete freedom, at least to some extent, to run. So I did. And guess what? We were in the match of David against Goliath because on the other side, there were two big parties in coalition and on my side, there were three, you know, very small parties together. And they had proposed a woman present after what we were doing, but anyway, I'll try. Learn the whole, on the day of election, I was watching in my office. Of course, the outcome. And by six in the evening, I said to myself, oh my God, I'm going to be president. So that's remarkable. So this was my journey into politics. And so I was sworn in as the first woman president of my country in 2015. And then I left office in 2018, so by that time, I had made history by becoming a the first woman president in Mauritius. And I made history on the African continent by becoming the first Muslim woman on the continent. So at one of the five. Wow. That's remarkable. Thank you. Well, it's interesting. It's certainly in the American system with which I'm most familiar. It's common for politicians seeking office to sort of create this rhetorical spin to the tune of, well, you know, I never wanted to do this. But, you know, the people have called me to serve them. And you hear this from people running for Congress all across the country. And it's almost never never the case. But it sounds like it really was the case in your story. Sort of sort of just came out of the blue. So that's, it's fascinating. It's a very interesting day because in my country, you know, people get elected president by parliament. And it's the first time in our history where the name of the president was flagged in the campaign. So I could be a bit arrogant to say that I was elected. Contrary to what people say, you know, because I was, I was the chosen one, even before the one the campaign. So, and of course, by the time the vote came at the parliament, I made unanimity because I was voted by the opposition and the ruling party as well. So that again was, was quite, was quite something. That's remarkable. If we could just take a step back a little bit. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about what your transition was like from Mauritius to the UK when you moved there for university? Did it feel different? Was it very different or did it feel kind of natural and smooth? I'm not at all. It was a different world. It was as even alien there. You know, I reached the UK in the fall of 1979. So you can imagine village girl had absolutely no idea. I've never traveled before. I took the plane with my father. He came with me. And landed in the UK. It was raining. It was pouring. So there was different language, different food, different clothes, different weather, different everything. So I was like an alien out there. And the place felt very, very strange. And also there was no communication. There was no phone in my village. There was hardly any phone at the time. So I was relying all the time on these letters which we used to exchange with my family every two weeks. So it was like a, you know, a ritual going to visit. Of course, there was no internet. So we used to go to the letterbox and see whether the letters arrived. But it was again what prepared me for that world was the fact that I went to a to a common school. I went to a Catholic school. Even though I was Muslim, I went to a Catholic school. And I will say this that, you know, the village I grew up in, you know, was the macrocosm of the world. And my father being a Muslim, something to a Catholic school. And classically, it was the best. And you know, at the time, we used to have what we called moral classes. And these nouns, they were telling me all the time whenever you fell the blues, when you are overseas, because I were talking to them, that was going to study. She says, whatever you are feeding the blues, just write it down, but never post to your parents. And this is what I did. I wrote it down. And I didn't say I was feeling lonely. The studies were hard. And I had new friends, because I couldn't relate to them. I was not English. But this I did. So this is what kept me going. So this was I was building my reserve at the time, reserve of strength, of resilience that would serve me much later in my life as well. And both sort of during your time in office, and previously as well as after, you have really taken your ambassadorial role from Mauritius quite seriously. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about both in your official position, but also outside of it, how what you do to make the voice of a relatively small country, growing loudly on the world stage. And what that means to you. Well, as I've said again, time again in all my interviews, it has been a great privilege to serve my country. And I came in into this world without any political baggage at all. And I came in as a said as an entrepreneur, as a scientist, as a woman. And so increasingly I became a very weird combination of politician, because people don't usually have this background. So I get invited more and more even now. I get invited to speak on many issues, touching on women, touching on the need for deploying science in the world. And also how to engage in, you know, now governments will for the field of entrepreneurship, because we know for the African continent that there are on average 12 million young people reaching the job market every year. These are World Bank figures. So how do you create jobs for this number of people? So how do you leverage in this notion that you are going to be doing? youth have to take risk. So I deploy my own experience of risk take, of course, calculate the risk beat. But nonetheless, this is something that we need to address all the time. So it's a great pleasure to address this for a beat on women in science, science, entrepreneurship, the need for entrepreneurship. Speak about policy issues, climate change, and because I work on biodiversity, so I get called to speak on biodiversity issues. So I can speak on a range of various issues precisely because of my very weird background as a politician. So it gives me great pleasure to do that. So I really enjoy it. - You mentioned a couple of times, both as a young woman, what it was like as a Muslim woman in a Christian school. And then you mentioned what it meant to you to be one of, I think you said the first Muslim woman elected head of state in Africa. - Yes. - Can you talk a little bit more about the role that your faith has played in your life, either the faith specifically or the tradition in which you were raised? - I had, I must say, my father is a practicing Muslim. My late mom was not so much practicing, but what she taught us is to live the values of religion. And so whether you are Muslim, whether you are Christian, the values for all religions stay the same. So when we decided, of course, we had to do at the time entry entrance examination for these schools. So already you are benched, being benched, mark again some of the good ones who could actually pass the entrance exam to be admitted to the schools. So, you know, we went and in fact, when I went to the common school, I used to go to mass, you know, I used to, the only thing I couldn't do was to take the Eucharist because I was not baptized. And I remember coming home one day, it was a very frightened, I said to my father, you know, I have a problem, he said, what is it? He says, I said, you know, we're going to die with the original sin. (laughing) So he explained to me, he sat down and gave me a class, a religious class, you know, what was how the three religions came, of course, were the same main religion, you know, and with emphasis on different people. And the dog, my slightly different, the way of the rituals are different, but the fundamentals remain the same. So I grew up on, and then in fact, now, when you see the narrative across the world, where religion is being used as a divisive force, I said to myself, what a tragedy? Because it's all the same. If you look at spirituality, which of course, transcend to me all religions, and you know, this is when I go back to Einstein, so, you know, where he described religion, when people ask him, you know, what do you believe in? And he says, I believe in the God of Spinoza. And this is the truth. Yeah, this is so true. You know, the God of Spinoza, and you know, people go back when I say this, they go back and say, well, who's Spinoza? You know, it gives people something to think about. But to me, religion is a very powerful medium through which you can address the common good. You can use religion to actually unite people. And I keep saying that religion and whatever we all have, there's so much more to unite than to divide us. So this is the way I've been brought up in my family, in my small village, where, as I keep saying, it's a microcosm of the world, because it's perhaps one of the few places David, where you'll see a mosque, a church, and a temple within one square kilometer. So this has been a highly charged environment, I grew up in, but we all drew from each other's strength, and we never let that divide us. And I think this is the way religious practices should be across the world. That's a remarkable vision. I wish religious practices were more like that across the world. Yes. Perhaps a slightly lighter question. Yes. What is the most memorable meal you have ever had? It always is my mom's cooking, which I miss now, it is because she just passed. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's, but anyway, this is life, as we all know. But I think memorable meals have always built my family meals, when I was sitting with my father, my brother, and my mom, sitting together, especially on the Saturday evening, where we used to have especially communal meals at the time. So these were moments that still cherish, and which, of course, I tried to propagate with my children, but of course, very difficult now. They all grown up and they've left. Sure. What would you say you have learned about yourself from being in the spotlight? What surprised you about yourself, if anything? What surprised me is the way I think I have coped with media attention. And when you are in office, how do you actually manage that? And many people actually get a lot of, you know, some go even depressive when things are written negatively against them. But you can draw from your own strength. And this is what I think, again, when I said to my, the way I was brought up, the education I received from a young child, it tells you to believe in yourself, to believe in, listen to your heart, listen to your heart all the time. And, you know, just keep on, just keep on. If you believe you have certain objectives in life, certain vision, just do it. And this is what I've done over my life. OK. Now, I'd like to transition to the second part of the interview, which has more to do with concrete lessons that you may have to share with future leaders. And I want to start with, you know, you're one of the first African women to have made it as head of state. Is there anything specific you would say to encourage young women to develop their leadership skills without being clouded by the stereotype that exists around the world that politics is really kind of a man's game? You know, when you're a woman, this is, again, what I do now when I speak to younger women. We have precisely to address two main issues to bring more women to the table. You have to address the stereotype and you have to address the structure. And this is something that we don't talk enough about. And this is what I think, if you analyze, you know, in depth, you'll find that these are the two issues that tend to pull women back. So how do we actually bring more women to the table? I think one fundamental thing that we have to address is the issue of women solidarity. Unfortunately, I have to quote Madeline Albright here when she said in her book, "There is a special place in hell for those women who don't help women," right? So this is something that we have to address is not the stereotype. Here is the structure. How women should be helping women. And also how to increase women going through the pipe because when we talk about women issues, we talk about the Leaky Pap Syndrome. Now, Leaky Pap Syndrome, there's so many women being lost in the way before they reach the other side of the pipe. So how do you push more women into the pipe so that even if we lose some, there still be plenty more coming out. And this is where I think we need a lot of mentoring. And we need to actually speak to them, boost the self-confidence so that, you know, they stay true to what they can do and to what they are capable of doing because women get disparaged more and more. And so we need to boost the self-confidence a lot more. And on the subject of mentoring, can you talk a little about how you have chosen mentors in your life and how you would recommend young people approach, people whom they admire and sort of develop a mentor relationship? - You know, my mentors, they were virtual because when I look up to people like Marie Curie, for example, she was a great scientist. I looked up to women like Dorothy Hodgkin, also a very, very powerful voice. So this one didn't exist. I mean, they had passed on by the time I was growing up as a young scientist. But what made me admire these women is, first of all, the resilience because they were operating in a highly male-dominated world. And you think that a person like Marie Curie she was denied an academic post in France because she was a woman until, of course, her husband had told on. So these are women who, and I like reading the biographies of many successful, well, scientists. But if you read about women, I see what they went through because I've been through the same thing. So now what I want to do is, precisely, try to make it a bit smoother for young girls. And this is why I always say to women, you know, let us take one girl by the hand and tell her that it's possible. It's doable. And she must be able to dream. And she has to dream big. And like Salif Johnson said, she must dream very big because this dream must frighten her. Because if the dream's on frighten her, they're not big enough. So this is the self-confidence we have to build in women. And so this is the way I have plowed through the world of academia. Again, why I say academia? Because this is also a very, very brutal world for women. And you see that again in numbers. And you don't have to go very far. You just have to look at the COVID. If you look at the frontliners, 70% of them were women. But only 25% of them are at policy level in terms of decision making. So something is wrong somewhere. Right. And how would you advise someone approach a mentor and sort of develop a relationship that way? As I said, well, I would choose to mentor a girl, right? And I think this is the responsibility of every woman who is there. We have to choose a girl and take her by the hand. But also address some of the structures at school, for example. And we have a huge task in front of us when you look at books. How do you remove the stereotypes? And interestingly, a few years back, I was part of a panel and we're asking a few young girls, "Give us the name of some women innovators. Give us the name of some famous women entrepreneur. Give us the name of some women Nobel Prize winners. Give us the name of the very first Nobel Prize woman for Africa." And you'd be surprised, Dave. Didn't know. Yeah. So, how do you sing about the praises of these women when they don't even know who they are? So, I said, "Have you heard of one garima tie?" The answer is no. "Have you heard of day Manita Rodic?" No. So, this is where we have to address is the stereotypes in the books. Then you have to look at the structures and the narrative we bring to girls because I was, you know, discouraged from going in the science of whatever young age. I was told as science is for boys. So, how do you change this narrative? So, again, this is something that we need to. There's a huge task ahead of us. And also, we mustn't forget, Dave, we had a huge Beijing conference 25 years ago. In fact, this year we should have been celebrating Beijing plus 25. And this is when Hillary Clinton came up with a very famous quote that women's rights are human rights. And if you look at the supposed gains, we were supposed to have post-baging, thought we have gone back. So, this is thing that we have to keep on discussing and we have to keep on discussing more and more. Women's rights, how do you encourage women out of the panel? How do you make sure that these women can go to the bank and open an account without having the father, the brother, the husband there? So, these are things that we have to keep pushing. And it is not easy because society being a very patriarchal society wherever you are, I mean, you know, bikes, if you exception, but in the very, very few and far between. Society is very patriarchal. And I keep saying again in my conversation that Africa will not emerge if we keep on marginalizing 52 percent of its human capital. So, this again, the conversation we should be having all the time. Yeah. And in terms of your own kind of personal leadership development, I just want to ask, how do you identify your weaknesses? And then once identified, how do you decide this is a weakness? Either this is a weakness I must strengthen, or I simply recognize this is something I'm not good at. And that's just, that's just going to be the case moving forward. Weaknesses have always to be translated into strength. And weaknesses have also to be translated, they need to be translated into opportunities. So, whatever weakness you may have, I mean, if you have a weakness in your own personality, that's, that's a bit difficult to change because this is part of you. But I think you have to sit back and rationalize and, and see how you can turn that round. And I've tried to do that in the past. I mean, I'll just, just mention again, my academic career where I started working in a field, which was not perceived to be credible. I mean, I was not done all the time. They told me, no, this is not good enough. This is too low level research. We'll not get to anywhere there. But again, you have to just sit back, rationalize and try to project that in the future and see where you, you see this particular area that you're trying to develop. How, how do you see that projecting? And once you do that, and once you, you find yourself projecting yourself in the future, based on what you have, what is being perceived to be negative, I think you just have to keep on believing yourself in what you can do. That's fantastic. And in terms of your personal kind of self-care for lack of a better term, what, what do you do when things are feeling tough, when things just aren't going quite right? Where do you turn for counsel or for advice or to call me yourself? Kind of, what is that process like for you? I have always opened a line of dialogue of conversation with my family and very close ones. And of course, by the time you reach office at the level of the presidency, it's very lonely there. That's for sure. But I think you're close family and you close very close friends and my children as well. You know, I speak, I very close to them. And so I always use to discuss things with my husband to have one perspective. My father was still around and I still discuss with him. And so you have to to open up to some people get the conversation also within yourself and see wealth you reserve from your resilience, you know, how you can take this further. But at the end of the day, when it comes to institutional issues, I was always looking for the common good. What's good for the institution? Because if you take a decision, based on what's good for individuals, it's bound to be wrong. So it has to be how the institution benefits from that. And then of course, it's going to apply to the wider population and of course, the wider crowd. And this has this again, has been given to me by my parents. My father always told me that whenever you actually take a decision, make sure it's not for yourself, but for the common good. Okay. And when you receive criticism, which I'm sure when you're in public office, people are all too enthusiastic to offer. How do you decide which criticism to take to heart, which to sort of just ignore? And how do you internalize it and move through criticism or negative feedback? If it's personal, which it tends to be when you're a woman, especially, I just just brush it aside because you can put it down to all sorts of, you know, it can be jealousy if it's for another woman or it could be derogatory. And if you're a woman, one thing you must also bear in mind, Dave, is that you will be slandered, you'll be slurred, you know, all sorts of things will be said about you. So again, if you're true to yourself, I mean, this don't count. If it comes for the profession, if it comes for the office, then you have to really look at it because then you can draw what a positive you can from there and try to address that because this is all that matters, but you know, personal criticism to me has never bothered me equally did. It does because at the end of the year, you're human. But when you're in office, so you just, you know, just brush it aside. And again, if you know who you are, I've been saying this to my family, to my children as well, if you know who you are, you don't have to read the newspapers to know who you are. That's it. What if any, would you say is the value of routine in your life? Do you sort of do the same thing every morning? Do you start day the same way or is that, is that not a big part of the way you lead your life? I've tried to do a routine as I get older to do some exercise. Because increasingly, I listen to all these TED talk and they keep telling all the virtues of exercise. So I said, as I get older, my brain has to be active and irrigated. So this is something that I try to hold in and try to exercise as much as I can. Okay. And where do you get your news? Are there any particular publications, podcasts, films, books that you turn to for, you know, authors that you turn to specifically for news on issues that are important to you? Well, I subscribe to a few international papers. I read the New York Times. I, well, I get the economist. I read the Straits time in the, in the Pacific, in Asia. A lot of British newspaper, which are still read because of virtue of my past. And very much social media. And how did they think in print? So, and of course, watch the news. But I also would like to watch a range of news channels, so as to get a much more balanced view of things. Okay. You mentioned earlier when we were talking about mentors that the, a lot of the mentors that you had to look up to when you were coming up, we're not people that you knew personally. In fact, many of them had passed away previously. And I wonder when we create heroes to look up to, many of them are often flawed. Many of them are, you know, we, we sort of take the positive elements of it, the things that, the components that we find important. But when we create heroes, either for ourselves personally, or for a larger narrative of some kind, a lot of the time those people are flawed. And I just wonder how you reconcile those heroes, especially in the context of a broader narrative when you're talking about, you know, moving, either something like moving African into the 21st century, in, in leadership in Africa, or when you're talking about women's scientists, and how do you decide, kind of which of the people you look up to sort of to look past their flaws, or how do you, how do you shape the history that way? You know, the day, at the end of the day, we all humans, and we can do things up to a certain point well. And of course, we all have weaknesses. So that, that's the bottom line. But having said this, if we go beyond the narrative of, you know, what, what you look at, who do you look up to? Now, let's look at closer home to me as a Africa, right? You look at somebody like Nelson Mandela, right? And some people will argue that you know, Nelson Mandela did some terrible things in his life because he was part, in fact, until recently ANC was still perceived by the US as a terrorist organization, right? Now, how do you, how do you move forward? How do you, how do you move the dial in terms of recognition what the ANC has done? And if you look at the job, which was perceived to be unsamountable when Nelson Mandela was still in prison, and what this man has been able to achieve in his lifetime, I mean, this is amazing. And if you look at people like Desmond Tutu as well and if you look at his, his conversation, if you look at Gandhi, I mean, if you look at somebody like Lee Kuan Yew, I mean, he was, he's much more, he's passed away recently. What he's done to turn around a swap of Singapore nearly 60 years ago into an economy which is one of the, one of the strongest in the world. I mean, these are to me some role models. Now, okay, some people say, you know, Singapore is not the right model because, you know, he has been authoritarian. Some people will say me now, Kagame is not correct because he's also, you know, he has been, but, you know, you have to move beyond that. Now, I, at this reminds me to conversation I had and I overheard recently, somebody was asking a big philanthropist in Africa, you know, you tend to reward a lot of the dictators. And he said, yes, okay, you tell me dictators. And then, then he came to that to the conversation, you rewarded somebody. And yet, that country has poor record this up in the other. And you know, what the answer was, the answer was, man, if you have a family of six kids, and the mother is only a widow, and she has to feed the kids. And if that government has managed to give her one cow, and that one cow with the one cow, she's selling the milk. And she has some form of social safety net, which that government has given whatever the means are, democracy can come after. And what do you say to this? So this is the kind of thing that, you know, you have to measure up to balance and go beyond and look at the good things. Of course, you can always rectify the negatives. You know, there are many fora for that nowadays. And now with social media, people are much more, they have, they have been revealed more and more by social media. But I think you also have to look at the wider good, what these people are trying to do. And also look at the underlying conditions, because this is where the problem lies. And see what they've done. And also, as I said, if you look at a country like a Ronda, which has come out of the genocide, 25 years on, I'm looking to progress this country has done. So, you know, we have to really go look at what has moved the needle. Yeah. If you could have any three people living or dead, but not fictional at your dinner table, who would you invite? And what would you ask them? Well, one person that would invite would be dank shopping. Right. The other person that we invite, of course, would be Gandhi. The other person that would have invited would Mandela. That would have been a great conversation. Yeah. Three visionary reformers. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Okay. So now the sort of final portion of this interview is a questionnaire that we can kind of move through. First, what is your favorite book? I have, I tend to read biographies. I like reading a lot of biography. One book that I have just finished is the one from Hariri, the 21st century. The one I have just finished. I tend to read quite a few. In fact, I've got a few books from Naomi. Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi, Naomi Klein. I was thinking Naomi, Naomi, Naomi Klein. And the one that chasers written, of course, Naomi is not the answer. No, it's not enough. And so these are, and I've had, I do in fact, I'm reading now the book from Raghuram Rajan, as well as the third pillar. So they give you a different perspective on, you know, the way things things are seen by through the eyes of other people. Okay. What is your favorite film? The work with a few. And the one I really enjoyed is, of course, the life of EDPF. And I mean, the way that that actress actually went to the skin of that singer was just amazing. It was, in fact, it was one of the rare films I watched back to back on the same flight. It was so good. Yeah, it was very, very good. Yeah. Do you have a favorite work of art or piece of music? Um, piece of music. I tend to listen to a wide range of music. And because of my, the fact that I can understand Hindi, I listened to a very famous Sufi singer who is Nushar Fatih Alihan. Then I used to, I like a lot, a lot of the blues. And I also like people at Tracy Chapman and, you know, all these. So there's so many talents out there. And you can really enjoy the talent. What quality do you appreciate most in your friends? Honestly, sincerity. Who are your favorite fictional heroes? A fictional hero. Can I be modern and say Wakanda? Okay. So the Black Panther, your favorite fictional hero. Okay. What profession other than the ones you have attempted? Would you like to attempt or would you like to have attempted? Maybe I would have tried a lawyer. Yeah. But try and change the narrative because unfortunately, I have to say this. People say, why do you want to become a lawyer? Because lawyers are equivalent to being liars. And I don't think so. I have some good lawyers. And again, Mandela was a lawyer. And he, you know, the way he did the Revenue trial is quite exemplary. What is the most valuable thing sentimentally that you own? The stuff that my kids were doing at school. And I still have a few of them at desk, yes. I still hold on to that. And the final question. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? Finally, you made it. Okay. Well, that's all for the interview. Thank you so much for that, president. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. I really appreciated that. Thank you for listening to episode two of Important To Me, a leadership podcast. We are very grateful to the Nizami Ganjavi International Center for making this podcast possible. This interview was recorded on June 19th, 2020, and released on July 16th, 2020.