MIP Feature Friday: Lisa Einstein
Lisa is a student in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) program. She joined the Peace Corps in 2016 after graduating from Princeton University.
“There’s this sense of possibility — this sense of ‘if this is your idea, just do it.’”
This is the approach Lisa Einstein is taking with her work and her studies, designing ways in which she can evolve the projects she’s working on to create even more opportunities especially for young girls in developing regions.
She saw this need firsthand after joining the Peace Corps in 2016. She spent two years in West Africa as a part of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative, helping adolescent girls with a range of issues tied to global education and developmental challenges. She also authored many pieces for Scientific American, drawing on her time and experiences there.
“Guinea can be a particularly difficult place for girls,” she said. “A lot of young girls in Guinea grapple with malnutrition, forced early marriage and female genital cutting, and many are denied access to education.”
Lisa’s main job was teaching physics, using the education she’d gotten from her undergraduate studies and her experiences tutoring to support herself as a dancer after graduating from college. She also ran training programs for Let Girls Learn across different villages.
“My students are all very dear to me, and I’m doing all I can to support them,” Lisa said. “They face very challenging situations and are incredibly resourceful. They are determined to stay in school, and seeing the impact that has on their lives and the community inspires me to find creative and effective ways to support initiatives for girls’ education.
‘On the edge of academia and practice’
Before the Peace Corps, Einstein studied Physics and Dance at Princeton University as an undergrad, during which time she earned several awards for her studies in the arts and presented her research at the American Psychological Science Convention. Lisa also danced professionally in New York with Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD) dance company.
Now a student in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) program, Lisa is coming back to university after being out of school for five years, looking to ground some of her grassroots experiences with a large-scale view of geopolitics and economics and global development that feed into the complexities at the smaller scale.
“I knew nothing!” Lisa said, modestly, when asked how much she understood about geopolitics before MIP. She did, however, read over a hundred books during her Peace Corps service, many of which were about international affairs, development, entrepreneurship, politics, and leadership that piqued her interest and gave her the idea that she would enjoy a school like MIP.
But the Ford Dorsey program wasn’t always the only choice — Lisa was also considering places like the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, where she got her undergraduate education, and the Harvard Kennedy School. Ultimately, though, she found MIP to be the right choice for her.
“I wanted to have access to cutting edge resources in the fields of computer science and entrepreneurship, and the creative, entrepreneurial spirit in this community,” she recalled. Building these skill sets is really important for her, especially as the co-founder of an NGO that she built with the girls in Guinea that is still running today. The NGO promotes education rights through training in tech, advocacy campaigns, mentoring and providing scholarships.
A large part of her education efforts in West Africa ended up pivoting towards computer learning and helping students build up basic skills in computer literacy.
“We built a technology learning lab with solar-powered computers — there is no electricity — and the students are running it. It dramatically shifted the attitudes and beliefs around what kinds of opportunities some parents thought were possible for girls.”
As a scientist, a teacher, and an entrepreneur, Lisa found that Stanford was the “best place in the world to be at the intersection of entrepreneurship and science and trying to make the world a better place.” She even received a grant from Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society to travel to Guinea over winter break to work with her organization.
Specifically, Lisa mentioned Professor Chonira Aturupane, who taught The Global Economy class in the fall and worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., before coming to Stanford in 2004.
“She’s strict and has high expectations, but also incredibly loving and supportive,” Lisa said. “I was worried because I had never taken economics before, but her excellent teaching and commitment to supporting students outside of the classroom makes the work less daunting. She’s amazing.”
“Students and professors are not only in academia, but also out in the world doing things, serving in government or building companies,” she added. “I could see myself being like them — on the edge of academia and practice.”
Studying at Stanford
Lisa studies cyber policy at MIP, a discipline she believes will be “one of the most challenging issues that we’re going to have to deal with in the next century.”
She not only wanted to equip herself with skills, though. Lisa was also concerned with the impact of cyber policy and security on governance and development, and the problem of education — not just of the general population, but of decision-makers. She pointed to Stanford’s cyber boot camp that is put on for Congressman and their staffers, which she will be helping with this summer.
She’s also been able to connect cyber education with her interest in science education and educational freedom at large, especially with the onslaught of new technologies creating a society that necessarily has winners and losers.
“I think it is really necessary to have people who are thoughtful about how new technologies affect different populations and the impact of technology on society. That has certainly been a theme at MIP.”
When she was applying to MIP, the program was undergoing a process of improving and rebranding. Lisa said she was attracted to the challenges of a newly-built curriculum, and excited about “being on the edge of something new.”
This was a pressure she had experienced while in the Peace Corps. Her group of volunteers was the first to return to Guinea after the ebola crisis, so a lot of the infrastructure that is available at long-running Peace Corps locations just was not there.
“We had the opportunity to re-think the infrastructure, as we rebuilt the program,” she recalled. “That was exciting to me.”
Looking forward, Lisa recalled a piece of advice she’d gotten when she was attending a talk at Stanford given by then president of the World Bank, Dr. Jim Kim, where he reminded all of the young people trying to make a difference in the world to focus not on their particular solution, but on the problem.
“I reflect often on his comments, because I have so many ideas of projects I want to implement — like building a global company that does computer science education, and helps students living in poverty get jobs,” Lisa said. “But his words remind me to test my ideas and make sure they truly address the underlying issues that I want to impact…so I’m really trying to stay addicted to the problem and not to my solution.”
