This year, Bixal is proud to promote Peace Corps Week — an annual commemoration of President John F. Kennedy’s establishment of the agency on March 1, 1961 — and this year’s theme, 60 Years of Service, acknowledging the many ways the Peace Corps has made a difference, both at home and abroad.
We join the Peace Corps to celebrate diversity worldwide and its volunteers’ experiences building relationships and creating opportunities that foster equity, equality, and inclusion, just a few of the agency’s values that we aim to exemplify here at Bixal!
Foreword from Bixal co-founder and CEO, Carla Briceno:
“Back in 2013, we had the opportunity to hire our first returned peace corps volunteer (RPCV), Maricarmen Smith-Martinez, to lead our efforts to develop a digital training and certification program for housing counselors across the nation.
In subsequent years, Maricarmen and I organized a few local events in the Washington, D.C. area to get to know more RPCVs to join our ranks given that they tend to fit very well in Bixal’s culture and usually share our passion for wanting to use their skills to make a difference.
RPCVs’ experience in the new and challenging environments that they served allows them to develop their abilities to quickly adapt and creatively problem solve as empathetic consultants, look for ways to get around large obstacles, and keep their heads up when times get tough. These qualities are extremely valuable when working in the federal sector where there are many challenging and important issues to solve.
I am proud and grateful to have several RPCVs on our team and look forward to collaborating with many more in the future.”
To help celebrate #PeaceCorpsWeek, we’re spotlighting some amazing and talented Bixalers who are RPCVs!
Adam Ahmed, Knowledge Management / Events Specialist
Adam supports online learning events such as webinars and facilitated events for the USAID Feed the Future Knowledge, Data, Learning, and Training (KDLT) project. Adam served in Mali, West Africa, from 2011–2012 as a small business development volunteer. He describes his experience by saying:
“It definitely brought me out of my comfort zone. I experienced things that I had never experienced before, and it was a period of reflection. My village had no running water, no electricity, it was hot, the food was bad, but the people were great! The people were cool and willing to show me what life was like and get me acclimated to their way of life.”
Adam says he had to unlearn a lot of habits because the way of living and conducting business in Mali versus the United States was very different.
“It’s quite refreshing to not always be plugged into the world. We didn’t have Internet in my village, so there would be long periods where I wouldn’t know what’s going on and I was perfectly okay with that … life is short, and you shouldn’t always stress the small stuff … life is meant to be lived.”
Andrew Parrucci, UX Researcher
Andrew is a UX Researcher currently working with USAID. He served in Panama from 2004–2006 by working on Water and Sanitation projects for a village of roughly 150 people. He recalls his experience as the following:
“Essentially, what I was doing was engineering and grant-writing for an aqueduct in my community. It was very rural and remote. We didn’t have access to running water. The people we were aiding got their drinking water, did all their bathing in a stream. We put together a funding proposal and a basic engineering design that would bring water down from the mountain for the village.”
Andrew explains how he learned humility and patience through Peace Corps.
“You just have to go in recognizing that you have a lot to learn and you have to keep yourself as open as you can to that. Try not to have too many preconceived ideas of what you can do in that context.”
Understanding that one does not have control over every situation is a lesson Andrew has carried with him throughout his time at Bixal.
“The idea of being adaptive, being open to whatever happens, and not trying to control things too much. Try to stick it out and always try to learn something from whatever you are doing.”
Maricarmen Smith-Martinez, Director of International Development Sector
Maricarmen is the International Development lead at Bixal, and she served in Costa Rica from 2006–2008 as a development volunteer. She worked primarily with a rural development association to enhance organizational development and build local capacity, particularly in fundraising and leadership:
“We were primarily working to secure funding for a local community center. In small Costa Rican towns, you will often find a soccer field, a church, a school, a pulperia (like a general store); our association was working to expand its infrastructure by building a central space for community events and local fundraising opportunities.”
In conjunction with learning the technical aspects, including grassroots development in rural communities, she also identified key components necessary to be successful as a Peace Corps volunteer:
“Initiative! Without a self-starting attitude, it is challenging to accomplish anything at all. And problem-solving. Often, you don’t have ready access to the right resources or funding, so how do you move forward? You have to figure that out and work with your community ensure a realistic and sustainable approach.”
Maricarmen has been with Bixal for over seven years and has watched the company grow significantly during this time. She recalls the challenges of working at Bixal as a young company with a startup atmosphere:
“Everything was problem-solving. Today that continues, but in different ways, now that we have grown so much, and adaptability is a key component. Learning to be flexible when you do not have the right tools on hand and figuring how to find the right tool or locate a new resource is important to developing a solution.”
Additionally, she brought attention to how Bixal emphasizes community and interpersonal relationships, much like they do in the Peace Corps:
“I gave as much as I could to my community through my work. But at its core, Peace Corps is about people, and the memories I cherish come from my relationships with the people I was privileged to serve. Bixal embodies that emphasis on people, a priority reflected directly in our core values.”
Gurnimrat (Nimu) Sidhu, Data Scientist
Nimu is the Data Scientist working on the U.S. Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Online Transaction Initiative, modeling customer intent, clustering user behavior and developing success metrics.
Having only served 15 months from June 2013–August 2014, her experience differs from the rest, as Nimu was evacuated from her village in Liberia along with other Peace Corps volunteers due to an Ebola outbreak. However, she was still able to deliver valuable work as a secondary school teacher:
“I taught math and chemistry. My favorite things were chess club, a quiz team that we started, a science fair, and there was a girls’ empowerment camp that we put on.”
She describes having learned both professional and personal lessons during her time in the Peace Corps and understanding how difficult it can be to want to help those in her care while being aware of diplomatic sensitivities.
“To deal with situations that are beyond what I would ever deal with in the United States. There were administrative mishandlings and mass corruption, and all of this stuff that’s happening right before your eyes and you can’t do anything about it … I learned I can operate on a totally different set of values [based on the context]. So, some of the things that I was okay doing in Liberia, are things that I would judge if anyone were to do them here. But sometimes you just learn your operating contacts.”
Nimu appreciates her connection to the community and said the people were the best part. She also connects her experiences at Bixal and in the Peace Corps by saying:
“The Peace Corps’ service mindset — the idea of immersing yourself in a new context, listening to diverse stakeholders and engaging partners to develop creative and sustainable solutions — takes courage and humility. At Bixal, we exercise this journey-like mindset on every project, helping maximize positive impact for the people and communities we serve.”
Sandra Bunch, Director of Content
Sandra joined Bixal in September 2020 as Director of Content to lead marketing and communications strategy across Bixal’s client portfolio and corporate initiatives. She served in Mali, West Africa, 1991–1993, as an Agricultural Extension agent working to interject soy into the diet of the community due to protein deficiencies that were dangerously high for children, especially children younger than five years old. During her service, Sandra’s team had clear goals in mind; however — as most plans go — it did not go quite according to plan.
“When I got to the village — partly because of gender issues and because of the way men saw me — and being a woman in their community in this sector of agriculture, was already pushing boundaries around their belief of what a woman could do. Because of this, and the fact that the focus was on children’s health, I ended up working more and more with the women in the village. I realized that once we got our first year’s experimental crop, the bean itself was too hard for the women to process manually. So, they were abandoning it … and the second half of my experience focused on working with the women to help them with small market projects, small garden nutrition efforts with other kinds of vegetables, after listening to what they said they needed.”
Sandra’s experience with gender challenges in agriculture highlighted the importance of bringing women to the table when it comes to making important decisions. Living in a culture with differing views, namely early (child) marriage and polygamy, and understanding the need to understand different perspectives, also influenced how Sandra approaches communications and her work at Bixal.
“We do better when we work together. Outcomes are usually stronger if they are built on the collective strength of our diversity and our differences in knowledge as people. That is something that has impacted me, and I try to bring it into all of my work, and realizing that every voice has something important to say, that there is value in listening and being a good listener. I feel like we can all do better with that.”
Thanks to all of our wonderful RPCVs for telling their story and for being such an incredible part of the Bixal family. Look out each day this week, March 1–5, 2021 as we highlight each individual on our social channels.
