I'm Adam, that's Sauna, that's where anybody was. Thanks for the help. Thank you all for coming. It's great to see so many people out here, not only just for the Star Series, but also to hear Sauna as well. Meeting Sauna, when I met Sauna for the first time, it reminded me how small the world is, because I came to Sauna through the process of working on a book that is telling the story of three different Syrian refugees from three different generations and was missing one generation. To put this together, I contacted some of the people, scholars at risk, asking me to help put me in touch with people, a woman named, who worked her name, Serena, who was about 24 years old, was at a party in New York with other 24-year-olds, and she called me and said, I met somebody whose boyfriend is the cousin of somebody else, who, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, here's Sauna's, this woman, Sauna's email, she's in Europe, but maybe you can get in touch with her. So I wrote to Sauna, and Sauna wrote me back and said, it is so great to reconnect with Roger Williams, and it's such a home, and I had no idea what Sauna was talking about. And then Kate Green wrote me and said, I hear that you are talking to Sauna, and I really had no clue as to how this was all connecting up. Well, it turns out that, I don't want to say Sauna's story, but this chapter in Sauna's story, of which she's sort of in the middle of or sort of coming out of, started here at Roger Williams University when she was in the MEPI program, which is the Middle East Partner Initiative, which is a six-week leadership program that the university works with in conjunction with the State Department. So the objective for today is I'm going to kick off asking Sauna a few questions, get the conversation going much like we did six months ago or something, except we did it over three and a half, four hours, so we're going to do it in about a half an hour this time. And then we'll open the floor up for questions that any of you might have as well. So from what I said, let's start with first when this part of your story started. This year, you were, this was what, 2013 in July, is that right? Is that where, no, it's working. First of all, I really would like to thank you all for having me here for Roger Williams University, the library, Adam, Kate, and everyone who worked on bringing me here, because I really deeply appreciate anyone who gives me the platform to speak up about something that not only changed my life, but the lives of millions, and it's still doing this. So really thank you for having me here. And as Adam said, it all started here, actually, in Roger Williams University, and that was on actually July 2nd, 2013. I was here, I just came from Syria like a week before, towards the end of June, to be part of a program at Roger Williams University called Middle East Partnership Initiative Program, and it's basically a program that trains students from Middle East and North Africa about leadership skills and civic engagement. So, you know, for us coming from that region, it's an amazing opportunity to be able to come here on like two months' training. The U.S. was like a very far dream, I would never even think about it. So it happened, and that was during the Syrian Revolution, so the war was happening and still. And my dad said, yeah, you know, it's very needed skills that you're going to learn. It's about, you know, the leadership and civic engagement with so much need in Syria, considering the time that we're going through. So he was very encouraging of me coming here for these two months and hopefully going back home and finishing my school and, you know, just continuing our activism against the government. However, what I came for two months has turned for three years now. And what happened basically that on July 2nd, just a week after my arrival and after I started the program, I just go to class. And remember that day we were meant to meet with the mayor or something from the governor? As a student, we were meant to meet with him and her. Sorry, gender doesn't matter, does it?  And then I, you know, wake up in the morning, go to class here in the building history building. Yes, in that building. And then in the class, we're having the session and I have, you know, I'll have our phones next to us. Sorry for that. But I had my phone next to me and then I received a Facebook message from my sister and Arabic literally saying, our dad's got detained and that was the message. I was in the class and I just opened my phone and I read this message and I kind of like, don't really remember what happened next. I was, I mean, it was very, I don't know even how to word this, but it was very big. I just could not believe it. And I know it's going to happen. Like it was not something like, oh, happened out of nowhere. I think my dad has always been activist or it's something expected, but still it was so shocking. And it's just, I collapsed. Like I think anyone else would do. And I was in the class and they took me out of the class, Dr. Barbara and Kate. And I just, you know, I had my own moments here in that building just trying to, I was just crying all the time and I did not understand what happened, but I couldn't even process this because I had to act up in what I just heard. So for example, I had immediately to contact a friend in the U.S. saying, please, he's a cybersecurity expert. So I was like, please, can you deactivate all my dad's social media and emails and stuff so the government doesn't have access to his activism? I had to think immediately about my dad's, what he asked us to do when he gets the tent. So I mean, you know, I went, I started doing this with support like of Kate and Barbara and started doing the calls and crying and talking with the person and saying what to do, what not to do, and remembering all the passwords and usernames and not being able to be in touch with my family then when my dad got the tent. And you know, I had very tough time here continuing in the program I think for a few days after what happened. And due to his detention, so my mom and my other two sisters who were in Turkey, who were in Syria, sorry, when that happened, they had immediately to smuggle also to Turkey fearing for their lives because the way it works in Syria when someone in the family gets the tent, the other family members get the tent to put pressure on the men, and especially women, you know, they get used as political weapon. So we had no options. My mom and my other two sisters, 13 years old and 23 years old at that time, had literally to leave everything. Everything, when I say everything, I mean everything and just walk and take all kind of, you know, different transportation going through different checkpoints, bribing people smugglers to each Turkey safely. That's all they did. And I lost connection with them doing this because it was an over 17 hours trip, our trip, and I couldn't be in touch with them. So I'm here in the U.S. And they are, I don't know where, like just lost connection. My dad also lost connection, got the tent, and I was here. You know, I just left so many moments of frustration, of anger. I mean, it was beyond sadness, I think. That's why I was here. I had a very tough time.  I was able to continue and I think, like, I did kind of well, did I? And I mean, and now I look at pictures, we took the program after the event of my dad's detention and I still see the pictures and I was like smiling and I say, like, oh my God, how did I do it? And I know, but it just happens, you know, I had, you know, still like another, I think that's when the chapter started, I would say, in Roger William University here and I walked so much on this campus crying and trying to, you know, using the Wi-Fi, trying to connect to my family in Sierra Leone, but I should say I received so much social support when I was here. Well, let's go back before that, and before I forget, Bob McKenna's right in my line of view, for the students who are justice studies students, you can sign in with various faculty. Okay, there's a presentation, sir.  What was your life before? I remember, so I know, for example, you were very active in the politics, you know, as a student activist in Syria.  Can you talk about what life was like for you then, especially for people who may not even be as familiar with what you would have been an activist for and so on? I mean, I come from a very political family even before the revolution broke out in Syria in 2011. So my family has always, especially my dad and uncles, had always been activists speaking up against the government, human rights activists. And this is something so abnormal in our region because we have such dictators regimes and this is like, we don't have freedom of, or political freedom of speech, for example. So I grew up in a very political and globally aware home where I was, you know, I had the chance, gladly, through my dad's attention to learn about so many things and conflicts and topics happening all around the world. I come from a very small village in Syria. I could like be brought up differently, but gradually because of my parents, I was more of a global citizen even when I was in Syria. So when the revolution started in 2011, it's so easy. My family, my dad, my other sister and myself were literally from the first people to be in the streets not only demonstrating but organizing demonstrations and protests against the government. That was in Damascus. I mean, my sister and I, our activism was based in Damascus because we left our town to study in university and the university is in the capital. So we moved from the village to university to study. So our activism was measured there. However, my dad's activism was measured in our village and our town. I mean, definitely he had things to do in Damascus as well. It's the capital. Everyone tried to do those things in the capital, but he was very active in our community back there. So, you know, we protested. We demonstrated. We did any type of nonviolent activism you would imagine. You know, distributing flyers, trying to raise awareness about what freedom means, how the regime is trying to manipulate us. And it's very, very risky to do this in Syria. As a result of all of this, my sister and I got detained by the Assad regime, intelligence in 2011, September. So after six months of the revolution had started then. And I mean, gladly, I was released a few days later. My sister, the same. We were detained with another group of friends who stayed for three, six months and some did not make it out until now. And at that time, I had detention experience that's, you know, like it's very hard. You know, I know how to, and I think this is a very, I know how you can talk about detention experience with such regimes. It's not legal even. It was not like they come and take you to prison. It's not prison. It's a detention facility. It's an integrating facility. It's an investigation facility where basically you get integrated and beaten up and tortured and raped and harassed and everything bad, you know, you could imagine.  And we had our own struggle and our detention, but definitely we were from the blessed one that we were released, right? So many people. You were held in a men's prison, too, weren't you? Yes, yes. There's no, and it's because it's not prison. It's like facility, detention facility. So it's not like there's man and woman. Everyone goes together. But my sister and I were the only girls in the whole thing because it was just so early in the revolution. And, you know, depends on the culture, like sometimes women would not be active immediately. So, yeah, we were from the first people. And at the same time, just actually, no, 10 days before our detention, our dad was detained from our village. So we got detained from Damascus and before he got detained from the village for activism about different things. And so my mom had three of us detained at one time. It was also a very challenging moment, I think, for my mom at that time because the community was putting a lot of guilt and pressure on her. Like, we told you you should not let your girls go out.   And those we already have less in Syria from the first day in demonstration. So, I mean, after a few days, I said that we were released gladly and my father got released also like two months later. And you would think, I told you once before, you would think they thought, this really deterred us or, you know, put us in limits. It actually did exactly the opposite. It's just a huge motivation to continue what you really believe in because before we lived it, we heard about it, we read about it. We met political activists who were detained for 20, 30 years during the father regime. And then you leave, literally we lived it, you know, with all its aspects we lived it. So, of course, we were like, are you kidding? Of course, we're going to continue. Now we know for real what we were fighting against. And we continued our activism throughout the next two years, regardless of people calling her civil war. You know, there was so much nonviolent activism, at least from the people side. And as I said, you know, I came here just to do the two months then my dad got detained in 2013. Can you give us a sense how many students were involved in the activism? Was this a huge percentage of the university or a small vocal? Was it a vocal minority? No, it was a huge percentage. If you would see, like, if you go on YouTube and you would look up videos for demonstrations here, you would see a lot of people protested and demonstrated. And this is something the media did not cover very well. Of course, when actually, when the revolution turned to be armed, the media then focused on what happened. But they did not focus on a year and a half of nonviolent protesting in Syria. And I mean, we were student activists, and we, the students actually, in universities on campuses, organized the demonstrations and protests in Damascus that drove the regime crazy. So you were bringing that hope with you here. And the idea was you were going to bring that back. Yes, of course. As I said, that was, I mean, one of the purposes and the reasons my dad encouraged me to participate, you know, we needed the skills. And in Syria, we live in a very, in such a closed community. So we are not exposed to so many skills. When I came here, I discovered so many skills in me, I never thought I have them even. And they feel like so far away. But because of such training and just, you know, someone asked you what do you think? Even in our schools, universities, I went to universities there. We never, we never get asked what do we think. So I mean, definitely exposed me to so many new aspects and point of views. And I was hoping to bring that with me back home. So when you were here, you were a junior? In my school. At your school? I was senior. Senior studying business. And you were what? 20. 22. 22. Okay. I'm 25 now. Okay. I was keeping school. So, so then you're here. You're packed for, you have enough clothes for six weeks. Right. One suitcase or so. Yeah. You have your living just off whatever the money had with you or the scholarship money. And you can't go back. So, so what did you do? What was your, what was your first step? What was your first? Well, first of all, I should ask, did you, did you know anybody else here besides the people you'd met? One person. One friend who I knew from Syria and we were together in protest and he fled managed to flee early because he was highly wanted, wanted. He's the guy I said, it's like a cybersecurity guy. So he was highly wanted by the government. So he fled earlier. So he was in the US and was the only person I knew besides Dr. Barbara and Kate at that time. So, I mean, yeah, when, when my dad got detained and after, you know, my family reached Turkey. So the question started like then what's next? What, what, what are my options? And I don't have options to, to go back and the option to go back to Syria. And I think, you know, staying here was a very, was a very tough decision to make because I literally was with nothing, you know, I was, I was in suitcase for summer six weeks and I had no money because, and even when they took my dad, they took everything and my family fled with nothing and I had nothing on me also. So it was a very, the two months I was during the program, it was this question like what's next, you know, the program is going to end on this date where I'm going to go next. And then, you know, this only, you know, Kate and Barbara helped a lot. Kate gave me winter clothes, you know, which was good. And it was a lot of support and they, you know, linked me to people in the communities and I was in D.C. I was in D.C. then and that friend lived in D.C. So I just contacted him. I was like, you know, the students living to the airport to go back home like at that time and I'm like, have no home to go back any options, you know, and it was literally like this. He came, you know, to the lobby and he was like, with my suitcase standing, saying to everyone goodbye, going back home. I think like this moment I would never forget and then like having to stay here. He took me to one of his friends' couches and I managed to be there for two weeks. But then every two weeks, the question was what's next, you know, and how I'm going to stay here.  So I started, you know, with the help of Kate and other people trying to know what political asylum is and how this could be done. And it came out to be a process of worth $4,000 that you need to pay $4,000 to ask for protection and safety in the US. So, and then it literally started for a year and a half in DC. I started moving from a couch to another. So I moved over 13 couches. Among people I don't know. They never met me. I've never known them at that time. And these were mostly Americans. Americans, yeah. It wasn't through the Syrian. Yeah, one Syrian family. And then I got, you know, I lived with a girl, a Syrian American girl for a little bit. But they were mostly like the other couches who were mostly American. And Americans with different backgrounds, you know, they were Jewish Christians and stuff. And how to survive, you know, I literally had nothing. And I did not have anything to offer the people, also money or a rent or something. So I did au pair, like for families who offered, who said like, okay, you can't stay on our couch. I was like, you know, I want to give something in return. Can I help in anything? So, you know, there's a family helped, like in au pair, housekeeping, babysitting. Then through that friend, a Syrian friend, I was linked to an organization called Human Rights First that helps asylum and getting proponent lawyers to apply for asylum because I needed to be legal in this country. So this asylum lawyer helped me in seeking asylum. And through that, I got a work permit. So when I got the work permit, I started working in restaurants for all my time in DC. And, you know, I always say I was so busy surviving all the time, like my worry, my first worry was shelter and food, like where I'm going to sleep every two weeks, every month, I have this question, where I'm going to sleep next. But, you know, through all this process, I met amazing people who have become family for me right now, who are like huge supporters. And, I mean, what was a very, I think this definitely, the whole thing since 2011, but definitely after my death's detention and staying in the US, it definitely shaped who I am. So, I have two questions to follow up. One is you said that you had to learn a lot of new skills, so what were the things to be resourceful that you learned on the fly to maybe realize that you knew but didn't know that you knew? Yeah, I mean, I was saying anything. I did not know, you know, the bank system. Like, we only use cash in Syria, kind of. So, I was like, what credit and debit card?  So, I needed help. I needed, not like literally help, but I needed someone to guide me a little bit towards all of this stuff. And I had a great friend who every time I would ask her something, she would say, go look it up. Like, it's all online, you know? You don't need to depend on anyone. And I literally, I mean, Google has become my best friend, translation and everything. So, even that style of process, I started learning about it online. You know, it's everything, actually, it's out there online. And I started reading about it. And meanwhile, your mother and your two sisters, your older sister, right? One younger, one older. Right, one, and your older sister's not that much older than you. Yeah, a year. A year and your younger sister was, what, about 12 or 13 at that time? Nine years younger. Yeah. What did you know of what was going on with them? You're here trying to survive day-to-day. They're in order in Turkey day-to-day. Also. And what did you understand of their life and how much of their communication was? I mean, it was also very, they had their own struggle. They were going through their own struggle and the three of them also. In Turkey, the U.S. being here actually was much better than, you know, being there, regardless, like, of the hardship.  Maybe there they have more community. There are so many other Siyan refugees. I was the only one at that time. And so definitely they had their own struggle. They did not have a place to stay. So they stayed. They found, they managed to find old friends of the family. They stayed with for a little bit. Then my older sister started working over 16 hours a day to be able to, like, support financially my mom and my younger sister.  And my 16 years old sister now was 13 when she fled. She has not gone to school in two years. There is no education. And my mom just trying to survive. Also she works in an orphanage for Syrian kids. So I think, and that's, I mean, that's amazing, but that's a lot of mental and emotional work for her. That she doesn't really need to go through. And she, in addition to health problems and, you know, dealing with my dad's absence and not knowing anything about him and her family and fleeing. Like my mom, just an average Syrian woman never really left Syria before. So definitely, like, they had very, very huge struggle. They still go through. And my older sister, she's a journalist. So she was working as a journalist during that time. And she works in Syria.  But, I mean, finally, five months ago she managed to flee to Germany. So, but alone. So, gladly she managed to flee to Germany. And she's now in Germany refugee about my mom and my other sister in Turkey. And I really would like here to talk about, like, a little bit about the situation of refugees in Turkey. It's not what you see on the news, you know. Turkey makes headlines about, like, very supportive and great with refugees. They are not. And there's a lot of discrimination against refugees. And being a Syrian refugee in Turkey is the worst that could happen to you. You know, like, if you want to travel, for example, between Rhode Island and Boston, as a Syrian refugee, you need to travel permit from the government to travel in a bus, take a bus to travel internally within Turkey. And now, actually, my family was trying to come to the United States and you can come to a settlement program with the United Nations. And my family, it's a very long bureaucratic process. It's like, they have been registered for three years now.  And then they were supposed to be settled here to the U.S. to be reunited with me. And then the interview two days before it gets canceled. And this doesn't happen because it takes them a year to schedule the interview. And so, you know, I was talked with Fox in the State Department. I was like, you know, what's happening? Can you give us any explanation? They did not tell my mom anything. And he literally sent me what's written on our file, like my family case files coming here. And it literally says that the Turkish government would not issue exit permits to Syrian refugees who have secondary education, like my 50 years old mom.  They want to keep the educated one, I think. And so, like, after years of working on it from the U.S. side, then we got Turkey banning them from traveling because my mom has secondary education. So your sister really did have to escape? Yes. Yes. And I cannot go there also. So they can't leave. And they imposed visa on Syrians to come to Turkey. And they, like, I applied, of course, and they would not give it to us. So, you know, we can't go. They can't leave. So speaking of education, you realized that you needed to continue your education to get out of this pattern. And so you ended up at Bard, but how did you want to talk about how you ended up, again, still in the process of seeking the political asylum? Not really much money to your pocket. And you ended up... Yeah, after a year and a half being in D.C., I was granted political asylum. It's a very long process. I'm not going to go through it. But, gladly, finally, I was granted one. And then the question was, what's next? Do I want to spend my life working in a restaurant or babysitting? I knew I had more skills than this. And I, like, my family, like any other family, value so much education. So I knew that my only way to make it out of that bubble is to pursue education. So I started looking for scholarships online, everything I did online. And I came across an institution called the Institute for International Education, IIE. And, basically, they had, like, a survey for, they say, students, rescued students to apply. And then they would match you if you have a good application with one of the universities in the U.S. And I got matched with Bard and they gave me full scholarship to come and continue my education. So I'm finishing in two months, actually, in political science. But, I mean, of course, that education importance sounds a little bit cliche sometimes, how important education is, but it is so important. I mean, I cannot emphasize enough that you would have not seen me here if it was not for the school and being able to continue my education. My English would have not been... I mean, it's not perfect yet, I know. But, you know, it would have not been good enough to tell you what happened. I would have not been able to speak up, to meet so many amazing people, to leave that bubble, to help my sister get his education in Germany, to help my family financially now or anything. It would have not been possible without education. There are institutions in the U.S. providing education for Syrian refugees here. That's something I know that you're dedicated to trying to help. Of course, it's my mission. I have two more questions and I'll open up the floor. The first question is, at that point, things are looking positive for you.  Well, even now you don't, but certainly at that point. You talked a little bit about some guilt that you felt about actually making this life for yourself while the rest of it. I'm definitely privileged to be here. I was stuck in the U.S. and I think I'm not stuck. I was really lucky. I was blessed to be here when that happened because being here empowered me to do something for my family to other Syrian refugees to the country and to myself. But that made me definitely every night I just feel sometimes guilty because we are in the one family not receiving the same thing. We worked two jobs full-time for two years. Also she did not go to school and now she moved to Germany. My mom going through her own struggle and the other, not talking about the extended family and the serious situation. It comes with a lot of guilt sometimes and feeling paralyzed. Sometimes I just say, how can I help? What can I do from here? My voice actually just speaking up against what's happening against the xenophobic rhetoric in the U.S. speaking up to the importance of bringing more Syrian refugees of how early education just transforms your life after going through such a traumatic event. On that note which sort of leads into the last question I had in my mind was you're often described as the face of the Syrian refugee or the young student Syrian refugee but you did express to me that you didn't want to be the face of the refugee. What do you want? I don't want to be the face of refugees because we are different. Everyone, they have their own face and I think everyone deserves the chance to have the platform to speak about their life and their experience. This also puts on me a lot of responsibility because at the end I'm just a human being and I go through down times and depression and I still deal with a lot of what happened because it did not end. It's still happening. My dad is still detained and we don't know about anything about him. My family is still there and I'm still here. What witnessed in Syria and lived definitely has a lot of psychological effects on me. It's a huge responsibility. If I'm able to do anything I will do it regardless of being called the face or the what they say, my family is an ambassador refugee ambassador or something. I don't want to be called any of these because I feel I'm here. What right I have to speak for people who are still under bombing. I just don't want to undermine their pain. I'm just trying always to be aware of this. Let me open up for questions and if you don't I've got a million more in my head but I don't want to monopolize this thing. If anybody has questions I pass the mic around. Of course this is a well it's funny that it's not funny but last time Sana and I spoke there was a ceasefire and now there's a ceasefire so there's a lot of there are a lot of issues going on within the country right now but questions. Sana thank you very much. I just wanted to tell you that there are people here in Rhode Island who feel a lot of solidarity with you. I'm on the board of Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island which helps resettle immigrants and refugees in Rhode Island and there are a lot of people who believe in the mission of that organization to help your countrymen and women who are here try to integrate into the community and find places to live and get education in English we believe in the importance of education as you do so I just wanted to thank you for telling your story and to let you know that there are people here who believe that anything that we can do to be of help is important. Thank you so much and I think all of you being here just gives me so much hope and support I mean obviously all of you care for being here and trying to listen so thank you so much.   Actually I did not have any pressure from the family it was the opposite I was under the pressure that they are so worried about me being here I was like I'm doing so good I was like I can't believe you know for a mom especially in that region and then I'm a girl and moving among all these couches and you know in the US you know my mom for in my mom's mind the US is bigger than actually it is. So definitely it was the pressure that she was always there always and still always worried about me living and surviving and stuff and actually it's the opposite and they were they always she always told me and she still told us and that's you know we made the plan of course we were like okay I would go to school I finish a school then my older sister would go back to school so I take the family responsibility and stuff and we were able to do this plan because I am here my sister went to Germany and now she started school in American University Bard has a campus in Berlin and I talked with the school they offered her scholarship there and she now continuing her studies and I'm finishing in two months and she'll be taking care of the family so I think being here empowered us all Thank you You mentioned xenophobia which is a major issue happening as the campaign for president comes and I wonder I try to find the language to tell people how fortunate we are to have immigrants coming to this country that we've always had a diverse population and the more diverse we are the better but I wonder what your voice what you would say from your perspective I say it as someone who was born in this country and who is also very privileged to be here what would you say is a more recent arrival to this country I mean the xenophobic rhetoric it's something I'm living with every day so of course I go through incidents where people are not very happy of me being here or other Syrians and I think I said I can't realize the importance of my voice because of that rhetoric actually I've been trying to share my life with people just sharing my life you know what I just did with you with so many other people and it has become a very actually effective tool I just figured that the only way to really change people's minds is to have a human face on the thing and to say like you know the six millions you read on the news like I'm one of them just seeing me and then when I share with these people what I go through or what I went through and what my family goes through it's like a family like a friend sharing with you so you would empathize with your friend so they come to forget the fact that the label above my head and I so I really come to discover that telling the story and putting face on the coast is the best tool to educate people on the coast thank you I'm curious do you think is there something that you feel should have been done or could still be done by the international community I'd really like to hear that yes I mean since the early 2011 if the US government administration has taken a different approach towards Syria we would have not had a refugee crisis and I would I'm saying the US because the leader of the world right the US government decided to take this role after the Cold War and obviously all the international community agreed on this and so if you want to be the leader do it correctly and they were not the Obama administration I believe failed on Syria the policy in Syria is so bad if they had put like more limits to Assad and early when it just happened it would have been different if they truly supported the people it would have been different but there are so many political reasons for not supporting the people for example if the Syrian revolution succeeded do you know what does that mean that means it's going to go to other countries in the region people are going to revolt against their own dictators and US and other yeah but look at Egypt and Tunisia it's so different than Syria Syria it's very important because it's geographic location next to Israel we share borders with Israel and we share not only borders we have history and we have a land taken from us to Israel if we succeeded we want to draw land back right and that would initiate a war with Israel and maybe the Palestinians would feel empowered to revolt against their own government is that the thought among the Syrian people of why the I think explaining why Syria has become what it is today it has so many reasons I think this is one of the reasons I mean of course as I said having the Assad regime receiving support from Russia and Iran it's a key reason and here it has to go back to the history between Russia and US I think the cold war did not end and it's just happening right now on Syrian soil and then you know Obama definitely wanted to make that nuclear deal with Iran and to do this he had to compromise Syria you know and they have their other interests in the region so there are so many political reasons that goes into explaining what's happening in Syria today how do they come out of this now what can the international community do at this point oh like a solution for Syria it's a very I mean you know there's just happened a ceasefire we were talking about the American generation decided the ceasefire it's not of course it's not the solution they say they want to come up with a political solution and we also Adam and I were talking about it there is no political solution at this phase without military action like any political solution would take a military action to be implemented because now we have so many different groups in Syria and it's not a civil war because since when the Russians are Syrians or the Iranians or Hezbollah fighters all different backgrounds are Syrians civil war is people from the same country killing each other well now Syria is beyond this if you don't want to call it a world war or like proxy war just call it a war but it's not a civil war I am this might be a challenging question but what do you say to your American peers who are not registered to vote well well I mean I can't believe that I've never voted in my life we don't have this right in Syria we never had even options the notion of citizenship did not really exist in Syria and it existed it was systematically absent by Assad regime and just the fact regardless of what's happening now just the fact that you can't vote and be an active citizen in your community is a privilege and I can't believe people do not realize how important their voice is and then when you if you don't want to vote because you don't know who you're going to vote for okay you don't like both Hillary and Trump that's fair enough but you know there's like the best of the worst if you don't vote someone's going to vote for Trump and he's going to win I would tell them everyone here is listening yes students it's very important if you want to be it's part of being existing in this world is to take action don't say oh I don't like politics well we live in a very political world and you cannot detach politics from your life you cannot be oh I can't worry about the world if you don't follow politics politics will follow you thank you very much thank you for having me here we have a question back here while I walk it back I'm going to ask you we just heard here somebody asking people are here to help support when people say to you what can we do what can we do I mean the fact that you ask yourself and ask me what can we do it's great because you reach the point that you're thinking about taking actions so thank you for reaching that point and there's so much you can do and believing if you don't have anything I tell you you have something you can give and you can do I found what I can do I found that my voice matters and I found that through building you know through education and building my future I'm not only helping myself I'm so much helping others and you know I literally went it goes from a cup of coffee with someone who got just newly restarted just asking for coffee a regular person regardless of them being a refugee don't always entitle them to their refugee status because it's our legal status we did not choose it you know it just lives with us and you know there's at the school you know there's so much you can do you can give scholarships for Syrian students for refugees as a person you know there are families got resettled in the area recently after the administration meeting their 10,000 goal 10,000 Syrian refugee goal if you don't know about it there was a 10,000 Syrian refugee goal to be resettled to the US and the administration just two weeks ago met the goal so now we have 10,000 Syrian refugees around the US and actually they are mainly in this cost I think that's good and so you know reach out to your organizations in your community and ask them how you can help these people and as I said it goes from anything from chatting from a cup of coffee you know take them teach them how the bank work you know help them like open bank account English it's very important and I was telling them I'm able to share my life with you here because I learned English someone empowered me and gave me for free English courses you if you can give any in any way if you can tutor someone who needs English please do because they would not be able to be productive in the community they would not be able to pay their taxes and work and speak up for others if they did not have the language Hi I had two questions actually earlier when you were talking you talked about being a global citizen and I feel like that message was just so powerful only because so many sometimes just forget what's happening on the outside world can you just talk more about what the importance is to being aware of what's going on globally and also my second question was what is the ultimate future for you like what's your goal I have not become so American yet to blend that further I literally like still giving my Syrian things in me some but to answer your last question like my I know what I don't have an ultimate goal I keep of course I spoke for a second of course I'm aiming to continue doing anything that I could do I could give to help other people in the world to give back to everyone that really helped me and helped others this is my ultimate goal so I will find ways based on my skills to do this thing what it is exactly I don't know yet but to answer your question about the global citizenship and the importance of being globally engaged well I would have not been here if I did not learn about this program which brought me here and how did I learn about this program because I was engaged in other global stuff happening so I got to know through some groups that were focusing on things in the US and Europe that oh there is this program that brings students somewhere in the US and the same for you it's important for you to be globally engaged because it opens your mind it changes your life and because we live in the world that's very globalized you know you thought in the US that you are detached from what's happening in the planet because it's US planet right we're very privileged to be actually I don't know if it's privileged to be in such a distant geographic location that really helps the US to be detached a little bit from what's going on in the other part of the world but as we know if you don't want to go for terrorism terrorism came here we live in a very globalized world so you need to be as globalized as the world is to protect yourself to protect your country to educate yourself basically to to be part of this world do you want to be on the side I don't think anyone wants to be like that I don't want to be like that thank you sure that's probably a good place to end it sort of a good word so Sauna thank you for being here I know you're going to stick around for a little bit so if people have questions that oh Kate's going to put on some pitches some pitches hello so I'm Kate Green I'm the director of international program development here at Roger Williams it's great to see so many new faces as well as so many great old faces faculty and staff welcome so this is actually the first official program in a year long set of programings around the quest for refuge exploring not only the current remarkably challenging crisis of Syria but also the long term crises of central east and west Africa the historical and geographically diverse crises of Southeast Asia and also what's happening in Latin America so we have a number of programs that are going to be happening here on campus and this Bristol campus as well as the Providence campus over the course of the coming year and so I urge you all to keep an eye out for the word that gets gets out and about in various ways from the university around these issues and immediately following this I know some of the students are going to be sticking around but as well as anyone else who may be interested we're going to be talking more about that question of what do we do what do we do as a Roger Williams University campus community how can students organize and anyone who would like to say is most welcome but do please keep an eye out for coming attractions around these really really important issues and Sana oh my gosh I love you thank you so much for coming back thank you for having me


Which brings us to number six. How am I doing good? Good. Thanks. Number six use index funds when? possible why when possible Because it's not always possible. I mean there are people I'm sure in this room who? Belong to a 403 B plan of some sort and it's a horrendous plan And all they have is actively managed funds and you can't get an index fund or maybe there's just one index fund available And it's an S&P 500 fund perhaps so when possible though use index funds And I'm going to explain why first before I do that. I have to explain what an index fund is so This is how I like to explain again. I'm using pictures Okay on the left side you have companies Exxon Apple Home Depot Google whatever hundreds of them in fact there are 4200 companies in the United States But These companies are publicly traded. They're publicly traded on a stock market daily Google trades Apple trades You know all these stocks are trading on a daily basis Well, there are companies such as Standard and Poor's who keep track of all this trading keep track of all these prices and The big companies will weigh more in their index than the smaller companies or the tiny companies So indexes are what's called? Capitalization weighted the big companies have a much more weight bigger weighting and then the smaller companies have a much smaller weighting So you get this tier down here. So obviously Apple Home Depot Google and so there are these are big weightings in the S&P 500 But they keep track of that because this is the capitalization weight of the stock market So it is the investable universe. These are the this if you had money to invest in the market And you were looking for stocks to invest in you'd go to the S&P 500 to go to the total stock market Which has 4200 and it's the investable universe by market capitalization now What companies like Vanguard did and Vanguard did this Jack Bogle did this back in 1976 he they went to Standard and Poor's and they said we want to license your index and Standard and Poor's David Blitzer who has happened to be the head of the In index committee at the time remembered the conversation in fact I did a podcast with David and he remembered this conversation He said why would you want to do that?  And S&P didn't know what the answer was so they agreed on $25,000 was the fit Well little did they know What would happen next right Vanguard creates the Vanguard 500 at the time It wasn't called the Vanguard 500 But they created that index fund and that would they launched it out now It took 10 years before that fund got a billion dollars in it but as it grew and as S&P realized that they That this is really something indexing that they went back to Vanguard and they renegotiated the contract and a few years later Vanguard actually left S&P and went to MSCI and now they're at crisp because S&P was charging too much money There's nobody here from S&P, but I can say that so I know the inside story Anyway, so the big competitive market out there for these indexes, but this is an index So you ended up with an S&P 500 which tracks those 500 stocks Which are tracking the big stocks on the stock exchange which those companies actually exist and that's how they capitalized themselves So that's an index S&P 500 is just an example Total market would be all 4,200 then there were international stocks same thing 6,500 or so stocks traded outside the US index is created the same way and there are bonds Bondisee indices treasury bonds corporate bonds mortgages all put together into the Bloomberg aggregate corporate bond index and I did a podcast with the people who Run the index and also the people at Vanguard who run that fund and it's really interesting to talk to the two So there's all the indexes out there all over the place covering all kinds of asset classes and you have a choice now You didn't have it 45 years ago, but you have it now you can either Buy an index fund that tracks those indices and it's at a very low fee or You can do the kind of the traditional thing 50 years ago 40 years ago, which is to try to pick a Money manager or a mutual fund that is actively managed that's going to beat that index So large cap US stock manager who's going to go out and try to beat the S&P 500, right? So you can either that's active management and You can do this on the international stocks and bonds and so forth Now here's the kicker. What has happened since Jack Bogle and Vanguard created the first index fund and Index funds have proliferated into all these other asset classes I did my very first podcast was with Jack Bogle and we talked about this by 1996 Vanguard had a total stock market index fund a total international stock index fund a total bond minute bond market Index fund and I had a REIT index fund real estate investment trust have pretty much had the four core four type portfolio of index funds all available at Vanguard all low cost and How have those funds performed? Relative to the actively managed funds that we're trying to beat those indices. Well, let's take a look This is what's called the speeder now my last podcast I just did was with Craig Craig Lazara from standard imports indices standard imports Dow Jones indices because they merged and what it what this shows this is just looking at one segment is this is the S&P 500 index Versus the managers who are trying to outperform the index those numbers large cap fund up on top And then mid cap fund which is a mid cap Indicacy and the bottom which is an S&P small capital after one year 55% At the let's read in the top line and skip your data and just go to one year 55% of the active managers underperformed the S&P 500 if we go out further and we look at five years and these are the managers who Survived because so many actively managed funds just go under they they go out of business The mutual fund companies won't tell you this when you look at the mutual fund advertising They're going to advertise all the funds that survived and actually did well They're not going to show you the other half that all went out of business They're not going to show you those so over a five-year period of time of the funds that actually made it five years 84% underperformed the S&P 500 if you go out 20 years 95% of all actively managed large cap mutual funds that we're trying to beat the market Underperformed the S&P 500 and if we go to the mid cap which are smaller companies, but not Small cap tiny companies. We go to the right and look at that 94% over a 20-year period of time of the active managers in the mid cap sector of the market Underperformed the mid cap index and let's go a little further to the small cap funds Which are the small companies and we'll use the S&P 600 small cap index 94% of the active managers who attempted to outperform the small cap index underperformed it all right not I What am I going to spend my money trying to pick the 5%? now I Can be in the top 95% tile over a 20-year period of time just by buying an index fund And I know that there are going to be a few active managers out there and all these asset classes Across the globe There's going to be a few that do outperform, but we don't know who they are today And is it worth going after these managers and the answer is no it isn't if we look at why this occurs The answer is very simple and Alan Roth is going to get to this in more detail in the next session It has to do with fees almost Almost a hundred percent having to do with fees And then it has to do with managers turn over and have to do it funds get too much money And they can't invest the way they used to invest or a few other things But I think Alan when you see his presentation. He's going to talk talk a lot more about fees. So, you know Index funds have very low fees active managers cost money. They have all these research analysts and everybody else They have to hire it's more money. So Generally the low cost of the index funds is the reason over the very long term that the index funds float to the top and get Into the top 95 percentile and this not only happens in the United States It happens internationally it happens in bonds it pretty much happens everywhere And I want to get into the details too much But if you look at the speed of scorecard or the vanguard studies that they do every year Morningstar does studies on this every single year the proliferation of the studies There's a lot of them out there right now 20 years ago They weren't out there you had to dig it up when Jack Bogle first created the index fund in 1996 He had to by hand by hand go back and pull out all the performance of each of the individual index Actively manage funds and put together his own database because there was no Morningstar out there at that time Nobody was collecting this data. This data really wasn't prevalent until around 1997 When Mark Carhart from the University of Chicago actually put together the first comprehensive survivorship bias-free database and then now we see that hey Most active managers don't outperform the market Okay, most will underperform so What do you do? What do I do? What do I believe? Okay? I did a study Ten years ago now that was published. I said if all you did Was buy index funds in every asset class. However, in many asset classes you want This is the three fund portfolio, which is the total stock market US the total international stock market and just a total bond fund If this is all you did just bought a few good low-cost index funds in the asset classes that you want You will be in the 90th percentile of all investors You're gonna be at the top ten percent. Will you be number one? No, I Don't have to be number one. I mean I'm a good pickleball player really I think I am but am I on number one now that's okay. I could be in the 95 percentile I'll be happy with that and and I think the same way with our portfolios. We try to outperform odds are Well, high value high chance you're gonna underperform It's gonna cost you more money and we're not even getting into the taxes of the turnover of going from this fund to that Fund to this one. So this is why we say at the Bogleheads use index funds when they're available Use them in every single asset class. Don't worry about anything else just Invest in a few good index funds and that's it for me


As we wind up the conclave, our next speaker of the day is Karti Marshan, the President and Chief Marketing Officer, Kotak Mahindra Group. Well, the demonetization followed by the pandemic has transformed how consumers interact with the BFSI space in India and how Kotak Mahindra Group has successfully led this change and made money journey easy for consumers. Well, today he's going to be talking on the topic, how an agile and adaptable mindset aided Kotak Mahindra to remain on top of consumers minds. Well, with this, I'd now like to humbly welcome on the stage on screen Karti Marshan. Thank you so much, Karti, for your valuable time. How are you doing today? I'm well. Thank you so much, Pavna. I'm just going to struggle a little bit to find my screen to share and then hopefully we'll get started. Sure. I don't know why I don't see it. Would you like me to guide you slightly, Mr. Marshan? No, no, I, I know the drill. It's only today I have a while, but I'm a Q where with me just like and you've given screen sharing rights, right? Yes. Yes, all the team has provided. Yes. All right. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Thank you very much. Like you rightly said, Bhavna, we've all been waiting for this session and I'm guessing we're waiting so that we can wrap up and go home and run up with our books and drinks. But it's been an enjoyable day for me as well. I attended quite a few of the sessions, including Avnish's very insightful talk on jewelry. I've learned a lot both to apply personally on the back of that, as well as from a market year's lens. So it's, I hope that some of what I have to share will add some value to what people have been listening to today. A couple of disclaimers, the Kotak story is a very vast story. So what I have chosen to do is to just cherry pick a few examples in the context of agility and adaptability, which is what you've given me. The other disclaimer is that while there is no doubt that COVID has impelled all of us to be agile and very likely quite a few of us have started to be agile because of COVID. So the meme that went around a lot about COVID being the chief digital transformation officer in many firms, there's a lot of truth in that. But I do think that both adaptability and agility are entrepreneurial mindsets, which if they are not deeply embedded in the firm in the first in companies and founders and people who work in challenger categories or as challengers in categories, if they don't have it, Avnish's show, it's probably a little difficult to hit the road running when adversity or opportunity of the kind that we've seen over the last two years hits us. So what I did was also pulled back a little bit from just the COVID months to look for examples of how Kotak has demonstrated that agility and adaptability actually since the inception of Kotak. And the relevance of that really is to say that we don't need to stare in the face of something as drastic as COVID to beat ourselves to adapt and innovate and so on and so forth. So with that disclaimer, I'll get started. I trust you guys can see my slides going ahead. So I guess you guys recognize the picture on the right. It was the launch of India's first indigenously designed and built car. And the reason for that picture being there is soon after that car was launched within a couple of years, Kotak was present in the car finance space. And as the other image here tells us the marketing may even deadlift and Avnish referred to this in Clayton's words as well, that people really want outcomes, benefits and emotional paybacks. They don't really necessarily want the physical product that we have to sell. From the same lens we knew, and when I say we, I say fly on the wheels in because I wasn't even here when this happened, in those times in the early 90s, if you wanted a car, there was a premium you had to pay just to book it because demand far outstripped supply. And Uday I think was insightful enough and an amazing market here, Uday and his colleagues at the time to come up with the idea that people want cars, they don't want loans, but we have to sell our loans. So here's what we'll do, we will book thousands of cars and tell people that if they take loans from us, they can get their cars immediately, which I think was quite a kickass adaptability idea for its time. Around the same time or a few years later, we found this opportunity in the, we used to, and we continue to serve as the commercial vehicle sector, it's a big part of our portfolio. And in those times, at least we found that during the rainy seasons, the truck fleets found it challenging to run their businesses because in those times, at least the trucks were like this image is showing, they weren't the kind of container trucks that we see today. So business would be lean in those three months and EMI's would be difficult to pay because there was no cash flow coming in. So Kotak actually, at that time, innovated arguably India's first moratorium product where the EMI payments would be nine month payments. So the truck fleet owners who are borrowing money to buy those trucks from us would get a three month holiday on paying for those trucks. And obviously because we were sensitive to their cash flow situation and their income flow equations, they obviously loved us more for it and we ended up being and continue to be a very large player in spaces like this. Another example is when we, and this is something I think very typical of Kotak, we respond to reforms in our sectors in a very agile manner. So on the 25th of October in 2011, if I remember right, RBI deregulated the interest rate that we are allowed to pay on savings account, savings accounts. At that time it was a regulated number and that number was, if I remember correctly, 4% or 3.5, 4% for all banks with deregulation. What that meant was that we could decide what interest if we wanted to pay. It could have been zero. It could have been X. In our case, we chose to pay 6% and we did this literally within a week of that regulation changing and this is an example of the ad that we ran. So again, to be agile, we couldn't have waited for a television commercial. So we started with print and outdoor and we ran this to start with. And we continued to be agile. For example, in the 2012 budget, the tax on interest from savings accounts, there was an opportunity to save some money on the taxes and we used that opportunity to remind people again that they can earn even more money from their savings accounts. So in that sense, we did our best to stay agile in response to every change in the environment and to leverage it for the customer's benefit into really obviously our interest as well. This is an example from a few years later, 2014, if I remember correctly, when we merged the ING Vaishya Bank. The merger obviously to start with is an M&A story. It's something that's interesting to the investment bankers and to the shareholders. But mergers of banks are hugely painful projects which take it on inordinate amounts of time. In our case, we managed to pull it off and make it one bank within, I think, 18 months. But during those 18 months, it was not necessarily a great story to tell customers because ING's customers, if they walked into a Kotak branch, it was difficult for us to recognize and acknowledge them because the systems were different and vice versa, obviously. And yet there was the need and the hunger and the aspiration to tell a story. So what we did, because our network had obviously doubled at the time and one of the actual ease that Kotak had at the time in perception terms was that we had a very small network. And because now this enhanced network was now visible in very exotic corners of the country and at that time, the mood in the country, if you'll remember to circa 2014, 2015, the mood in the country was such that if we found an opportunity to tell a story where we were embracing the very rich diversity that this country has almost as if we were singing the national anthem in some ways, but being able to tell that story, finding meaning of that kind in what is a prosaic mergers and acquisitions story actually brought alive this brand for the consumer in a very refreshing and interesting way. And even today, that campaign ran less than three months, honestly. But even today, every now and then, it gets talked about in both the cocktail circuits as well as with people like yourselves in the marketing and media spaces, obviously, the phrase, we got lucky. It's had that power of alliteration. Therefore, it's very memorable and sticks in the head. And that's something that I thought I'd share. Some examples of, so to speak, shitheading the fan and making the most of that as well. So demonetization happened as we all know, 2016 within again, within a few days, we started ideating it the same day that demonetization happened. And within a few days, we found this very interesting documentary filmmaker, Pankaj Trivedi. We put him on a motorcycle and we said, here's the challenge you have. You will travel across the country for 30 days and you will do a full circle as big a circle as you can make. And from that, the conditions are that you will carry no cash and you will use no cash on your journey for anything whatsoever. Remember, this is 2016. There was no Google Pay. There was no phone pay. There was no Paytm and there was, well, there was Paytm to be fair. I'm talking about that. But we said you will use only Kotak payment instruments, which is a debit card, a prepaid card and Kotak's app. And he did 8000 kilometers in those 30 days, covering a lot of ground, a lot of states. Putting up every night, he was blogging, blogging, putting up videos online. You can see this is just a small example of him at the Taj Mahal. Some amazing eye opening and interesting stories to buy tea. He had to recharge the tea seller's phone account. And that's how he got his cup of tea on the Banaras Ghat, for example. That's one that stuck in my head always. But there are hundreds of such stories. What we did actually was we started it as a social experiment. I really was trying to see whether it's like absolutely possible for someone to be able to travel in this country without cash. Today, it is much more possible, obviously. But in 2016 also, it turned out to be very, very possible, not very easy, but very possible. And it was heartening that we were able to deliver that. And on the back of an event like the monetization to be able to bring alive the power of digital tools and instruments for banking, including in remote parts of the country, is something that we thought was a very refreshing way to reinforce our brand's presence in people's minds in the context of something that was related to money and was top of mind for everybody at that point in time. So that's something we did. Following up with that. So we did that in December, 2016, right after demon happened in November. And within three months after that, we had innovated to be able to open bank accounts without having to meet our customers. So our customers could just download an app, enter their adhar and pan details and Bob's your uncle. Your account was fully up and functional. At that time, we still needed to do a round of physical KYC, but they had allowed all banks a full year within which we needed to do that. So effectively, what that meant was that customers could get up and running instantly, literally instantly using their bank account on their app as if it was a full-fledged bank account with only some restrictions on the amount of money that could come in and go out until the KYC had been done, which we also followed up and started to do. And the story doesn't end there. I'll get to another spin on that in a minute. But what this again did was it opened the doors for people who thought that private sector banks were not for them, that we would spun them, we would reject them, that we would not entertain them because they didn't have enough money. It broke down all those barriers and literally millions of Indians who probably had no bank account but had got very savvy with using mobile phones and smartphones and so on, got on board and the journey actually continues to this day. I'm segueing to a lighter moment. We took Ranveer Singh on as a random measure at a point in time, including for the same product, 811. And along the journey, as we know, Ranveer and Deepika got married and in the run-up to the wedding, we saw an opportunity. And what is now being called moment marketing is what we did with this. So we again, very agilely, what we did was we launched debit cards with Ranveer's face on it. So Ranveer's fans, which obviously are legend, they're incredibly large number of people in this country. To them, this direct message, which was done on outdoor as well as on social, was obviously a spin on the fact that he was going around. So the day he started, they started handing out their wedding invitation cards to their brethren, celebrities, people like Farrakhan, who then tweeted about it and posted it on Instagram or whatever. We followed that up literally overnight again with a message that said, just this card milakya. We didn't even put the Kotak logo on it, but we followed it up with the story about the Kotak debit card with Ranveer's face on it. And we shared that moment with them in some sense of the word. And obviously we got a lot of chuckles and we got a fair amount of appreciation for it. And it helped reinforce again, the fact that the brand was being agile, being in the moment and being sensitive to both what customers care about, what customers are interested in and the context, which is ours, which is money and cards and so on. This is the other loop on 811. When COVID happened, we responded by doing a number of things to start with we put into the hands of our salespeople who are now simply unable to meet our customers at all, URLs. So the salespeople would share URLs over WhatsApps and SMSs with their customers and the customers would use those URLs to enter their details, etc. And then we followed that up with this, which is again, we were driving regulation and in partnership with the RBI with their support. They approved this process where now we could do remote KYC as well. And it became very important in the context of COVID, obviously. But what I'd like to say in this context is that this kind of innovation can't be done when an event happens. You can't start after an event. So you have to be innovating and ideating and being agile and adaptable. In some sense, ahead of the curve. And so a lot of the idea and groundwork was already in place. Not preparing for a COVID like event, obviously. It was just preparing for the possibilities in the space of doing KYC remotely. It's just that in some senses, COVID happened and this was like a full toss because then we absolutely could not meet the customers physically. But we had this product and the service in place and therefore we leveraged it. There's a very sweet story about how we put this ad together as well. This is probably among the first few ads, which was everything about it was zero contact. We send the script to Ranveer over email. The director conversed with Ranveer over the phone. Ranveer was in his home and the director was in his home. Ranveer was shooting this by himself on his iPhone and uploading clip after clip after clip, which put together the whole film. And then we shot a couple of clips on our side. And then all this was done with nobody from either the brand or the agency or Ranveer's team ever meeting physically because the restrictions on lockdown were incredibly severe at that time. But in spite of that, we pulled off what turned out to be an incredibly successful film telling a really simple but an energizing story about how you can open an account with Kotak without leaving your home, without even leaving your sofa, et cetera, and completely all the way up to the KYC process, which is when the account becomes full-fledged. And I'd like to end with this. So we all know that day in October earlier this year when a bunch of social media platforms went down briefly. And we saw in that an opportunity to in some sense express camaraderie in a lighter tone because we leveraged it for the story of our home loan product, which was the lowest rate product on the market. And we told the story on Twitter only at the time. And like again, people like to talk about these things. It comes in the context of moment marketing. So in the middle of the night, we saw this opportunity happen. We saw this event happen and we wrote it and it did fairly well. We received a fair amount of conversation about it and so on and so forth. Very much like the inspiration, which is the original moment marketing example of Odeo Duncan the Dark. Having said that, I also want to place a bit of a disclaimer at this slide, which is that I think sometimes moment marketing can feel a bit like ambulance chasing and just riding on every single moment that feels like, Hey, everyone's talking about it's busy. Let's also get on this bandwagon may not be a good idea. I think it's incredibly important to make sure that you know what your brand boundaries are, what your brand's relevance, what your brand's context is and when the moment happens to see if you fit that context in a seamless, in a gracious, in an elegant way.  So this thing is the trickiest thing in the world, obviously, because the problem is you don't get a lot of time. When something happens, you have to react quickly and you have to be agile and especially if you're a regulated entity like ours, you have lots of compliance and approvals and so on and so forth and all of that can take time. So you have to train not just the marketing department, but you have to train the whole firm as well as your partners to be agile. And in spite of that, you also have to be mindful, careful, respectful at all points in time. So in hindsight, should we have done this? Should we not? Jury will always be out. You'll get it right. Some of the time, very, very few of the times, much more likely you'll get it wrong. So it's therefore it's incredibly important to be very careful and mindful. Yeah, I think that's what I will wrap up with. I hope that's been somewhat useful and entertaining to end the day with. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Martian, wonderful. You know, it's so great to know the journey. And of course, a lot of expertise and experience which you brought about in the entire presentation just took it one notch higher. So we'd love to continue the conversation, Mr. Martian, I know that we've already extended your session, but we do have Nazia and we right now joining us as an editor at Exchange for Media Group. We'd love to converse and have a couple of questions coming in from the audience and her side. So we'd love to have a conversation if that's OK, Mr. Martian. I'm happy to do that. Hi, Nazia. Pleasure to meet you. How are you, Karthik? I'm well. Thank you, Nazia. Good to see you. Same here. I know we are completely out of time. So I'll keep it short. Maybe we can have just one or two questions. So, you know, first is the most obvious questions that, you know, your BFSI space has always been at the forefront when it comes to digital. So when the pandemic hit you, do you believe you were prepared for the challenge when compared to other sectors? So what impetus did the situation provide the sector and the ban? So like I said a little earlier, Nazia, I think our first imperative was to focus on lives, our colleagues' lives, because the people in the branches particularly and a lot of other people who are providing essential services in our space, people who are running the data centers, the call center, all of those, they had to continue working and we had to be very mindful about their safety. Similarly, we had to be very mindful about the safety of customers who still needed to come into the branches for some things. So our first drive was to see what all we could educate the customer that they don't need to come to the branch for. We stripped down the branches to being as lean as possible so that again, we were able to enhance the social distancing, etc. And in the first slush of COVID, all of 2020, it actually served us very well because we, people fell ill, but we were by and large very lucky that we had no casualties at all during that year. On the back of that, actually the next thing we did was to see how we can help solve in the context of livelihoods. And there we did outreach. We went beyond the play of our organization in the sense of whether it was customers or branches. We actually used the might of our CSR money to support communities where large numbers of people had lost their livelihoods by literally organizing grants, going into people's bank accounts or whatever form they were able to receive the money. So we ran a multi-month effort where we were funding people until they regained their jobs or the companies rehired them or whatever it was. So those were things we were focused on first. Once we take those things off is when we started looking at what we could do in the context of business as well. And some of the examples I shared were in those contexts. So maybe I'll wrap up with this one question that I would want to ask you is that, you know, marketing playbook has probably been rewritten multiple times in the recent past, particularly after pandemic. As a marketer, what would you say to your team or to an upcoming marketer? OK, so this is something that I would have said even before the pandemic, but I will say it with much more emphasis now. I would say bring empathy first. Put yourself in your customers' shoes and pain points at all points in time first and try to solve their problems. And in solving their problems, you will invent products and services and you will create value not only for the customer, but also for your firm. The other thing I would say, especially to upcoming marketers is that I know that the skill set journey has moved from the arts, which is the space of being creative and so on and so forth to a lot of math and science with data, statistics and analytics and so on. But I think the next forefront, the next frontier will be in the space of the brain. So it's psychology and neuroscience. And I would urge upcoming marketers to skill themselves in those areas to study, in fact, to qualify themselves in neuroscience and psychology because I think that will be the next frontier. Thank you, Karthi. I would have loved to take more questions from audiences and even ask some of the questions that we had. But I also feel bad for the entire team and you that you've been on here for a very, very long time. It's almost eight o'clock. So over to you, Bhavna, Karthi. Thank you so much for doing this session for us. Lovely, Nazia. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I understand. So yes, we'll call it a wrap. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Martian. Thank you, Nazia, for joining us. Mr. Martian, incredibly thankful and grateful experience here in your today life. Thank you once again. Thank you, Bhavna. Thank you for having me, guys. Real pleasure. Have a good evening. Thank you.


The Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs is aware of a circulating statement on the XBB variant of COVID-19. We wish to inform the public that this statement did not emanate from the Ministry of Health in St. Lucia and that it contains some misinformation which requires clarification. The XBB variant, which has been in circulation since mid- to late 2022, is a recombinant subvariant. This means that it originated from the joining of two different Omicron variants. As is expected, this new manner of evolution of a subvariant has raised several concerns about potential changes in characteristics, including severity, immune evasion, and transmissibility. As of December 21, 2022, the World Health Organization indicated that current evidence does not suggest increased severity associated with the XBB subvariant compared to previous Omicron lineages. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite the increased COVID-19 hospitalizations, the areas with highest rates of this new variant have not experienced a disproportionate increase in cases or hospitalizations. In late 2022, the World Health Organization had warned that given the waning immune response from previous waves of Omicron infection, combined with evolution of Omicron variants, there was a high probability of increased reinfections. Currently, the XBB 1.5 is considered the dominant subvariant in the United States, accounting for almost 40 percent of confirmed cases in that country. The XBB has also been documented in over 70 countries worldwide, resulting in COVID-19 spikes in these countries. Early evidence suggests that the XBB subvariant may possess an increased risk of reinfection compared to other Omicron subvariants. Fortunately, vaccination is still considered the most effective measure in preventing the severe form of COVID-19, even against this new subvariant. COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are available at wellness centers around the island. Mask wearing, hand hygiene, and avoiding others when you are ill will also reduce transmission to others. The Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs will continue to provide updates on the new COVID-19 subvariant.