NAFSA selects international-education veteran as new leader
NAFSA: Association of International Educators has selected Fanta Aw, a longtime college administrator, a past chair of the group’s board of directors, and a former international student as its next executive director and chief executive.
Aw will be the second woman of color and the first person from the Global South to serve in NAFSA’s top job. Born in Mali, in West Africa, Aw came to the United States to attend American University, in Washington, D.C., where she earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees and spent her academic career. She currently is the university’s vice president for undergraduate enrollment, campus life, and inclusive excellence.
Aw, whose start date is in March, succeeds Esther D. Brimmer, who stepped down at the end of December after six years. (You can read Brimmer’s exit interview with Latitudes.)
LaNitra Berger, NAFSA’s current board chair and director of African and African American studies at George Mason University, said Aw brings a wealth of personal and professional experience to the role, including her scholarship on international students, her years of volunteer service throughout NAFSA, and her work as American’s point person in responding to the Covid-19 crisis.
Her appointment also sends an important signal that NAFSA is an inclusive organization, welcoming people from diverse backgrounds who may not have thought international education was for them, said Berger, an associate professor of history and art history. “For Fanta to be taking the helm at this time really helps us to make connections and be able to reach out to bigger and broader audiences.”
Latitudes caught up with Berger to talk about Aw’s pick and how the six-month search process renewed her optimism in international education. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What were the principles that guided the search?
The board has been deeply engaged in conversations internally about how we want the next 75 years of NAFSA to look and how our next leader can put us on that path. We’re looking for somebody who had a clear passion for the field of international education, someone who had a proven track record of effective leadership, as well as experience with results and strategic innovation and thoughtful change. How do you guide a field through some very significant and profound changes, through public policy, through Covid-19, through racial justice? We wanted someone who had been tested in all of those areas.
You had to have that big-picture conversation before you could begin to have the conversation about who you were looking for.
Absolutely. Emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic really helped us to see how dramatically the field had evolved. We’re looking for somebody who can help us think through who has been participating in international education up to this point and who’s left out of the conversation and how can we bring those people in during our next iteration of the association’s life.
You started out with a road map of how you were going to approach the search. But as you got further into the process, were there things that surprised or challenged you?
One thing that surprised me was the number of people who answered the call to leadership. We have just gotten through a very challenging time in the field. There’s article after article about burnout and turnover and people leaving the field. So I was really heartened to see that so many people would step forward and put themselves forward as a candidate for this very public-facing role in guiding the field of international education. That really gave me a sense of hope and positivity for the future.
As you began to whittle down that field, what made Fanta stand out? What made you think that she was the right person to meet these demands and challenges?
Her commitment to international education is so deep and and so storied. What we found interesting as well is that she has several vice president roles at AU and those are cross-cutting. Not only is she responsible for campus life and leadership, but she also does a lot with inclusive excellence. She takes an entrepreneurial approach to leveraging the resources that she’s had. And she’s done all of this through a data-driven decision-making process. Fanta is somebody who understands the big picture, but she is also somebody who can drill down. And she’s such an effective communicator who has the ability to build trust and trusting relationships with other people.
Let’s talk about the issue of diversity and how it intersects with international education. How critical is her experience as an international student and as a woman of color to where NAFSA wants to go in the future?
This is central to who we are and to our survival as an association. We’ve come a long way since NAFSA’s founding, and we have a lot to celebrate in how we have taken on the issue of diversifying the field. But we have a long way to go. The issues of international education were seen as very separate than some of the issues domestically in terms of racism and segregation, when in fact, they’ve always been intertwined. We’ve got to untangle a lot of that in order to be able to reach out to communities that have felt that international education wasn’t for them. You can see a hunger for that kind of outreach. People don’t want to be exclusive; they want to broaden the reach of international education.
This is such a fantastic opportunity to learn and take lessons from those periods and think about how we can do things differently in the future to broaden our tent and to make sure that everyone who wants this opportunity can have it. And even those who don’t think they need it, we need to convince them that they should.
It’s been a challenging time for international education in the last few years. How will you look to Fanta’s leadership in dealing with these headwinds?
One of the strengths of Fanta is that she understands how leadership is not just about being the person out front, the person who’s there when everything looks good. It’s about making hard decisions and making sure that you have your constituents front and center.
On a personal level, as board chair, how do you look forward to working together?
I am so excited to work with Fanta because I’ve known her for a very long time. She’s been a colleague, she’s been a friend, she’s been a mentor. I’ve gotten to know her as somebody who will tell you the truth at all times. I know that her decision making will always be guided by what is the best thing for the members. And we share that vision. We share a vision of racial justice. We share the vision of inclusion. We share the vision of supporting the Global South. And I’m so confident and so excited that Fanta is going to show people what NAFSA for the next 75 years will look like.
