What Stories Can Do: From NYC Actor to USAID Strategic Communications Advisor by Way of Iraq

Alex Poppe traces how the power of stories, chance encounters, and embracing risk have transformed her life. She spent nearly a decade in northern Iraq, teaching and volunteering in humanitarian response. The heart of Alex's talk depicts the specific, complicated, funny, heartbreaking, and deeply human stories of the people with whom she worked; stories that rarely make it into mainstream media, our television shows, or our films. American audiences understand Iraq primarily through the lens of war and geopolitical abstraction. Our mainstream media, television shows, and films do not often sho.