I am.
And this is choosing leadership.
A podcast for high performers, with big dreams at work and life.
This is a podcast for people who know deep inside that there is more.
Have you achieved a great deal of success?
But on the inside, you still feel empty and like an imposter.
Do other people see you as a strong leader?
And you wonder why it still feels so lonely and suffocating.
The aim of this podcast is not to provide you more content, but instead shift
the context under which you operate.
I dare to speak to the tremendous power, which you already have
rather than what you believe.
Are your strengths and limitations.
This podcast is called choosing leadership because that is
what leadership is a choice.
And this is the leadership journey, CDs.
I am interviewing leaders with an interesting story to learn how
they got where they are today.
We all have a lot to learn from each other's stories.
Of Viet.
We started very veer now.
And over successes and struggles on the V.
With this series of interviews, my attempt.
Is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us
to learn from their genders sharing
Dr.
Catherine is an associate research professor at the university
of Maryland and the NASA, how west Africa program director.
He was recently honored with the highest civilian award of Uganda by president
your very Mussolini for her dedication to improving food security in Africa,
she works with the governments of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Molly among.
Uh, work is funded by institutions like NASA USTA listener fund Swiss re
foundation, the bill and Melinda gates foundation, and also USAID Katherine
shares how she had very humble beginnings growing up, just outside Kampala and
Uganda, and how she learned so much from her parents were very resourceful.
Despite having very little resources.
She talks about her openness to learn and build new things.
And also shares the value of speaking in a language.
Your audience understands.
We also discussed how acknowledging that I do not know is often
what allows growth to happen.
Hello, Catherine.
Welcome to the show.
And it's my pleasure to have you here.
To begin with for our listeners.
Can you start by sharing a little bit about how you got where you are today?
And if there are any key events from your life that you would like to highlight
that I shaped you as a person and as.
My journey is not a one that is very straightforward.
I did not stop with some and goal or objective.
I had a very simple childhood, actually had a photograph with my
sisters when we were younger and with the photograph, we were so happy
and So I grew up in, in Uganda and in Kampala, in a physical mechanism
slightly right outside the capital.
And it's in Kampala, but it's off the main city and I was growing up, I
guess one of the most defining things is that we played badminton a lot.
When I was in high school most of my, most of the students at school would think of
badminton when they would think of me.
So it should be called Kathy badminton in the timeframe we did really well.
And you had a lot of trophies.
It's one of those defining things, because it kept me busy having that,
had a lot of opportunities growing up.
And so at a very simple childhood, and.
When I finished my high school, I had hoped to do something along those
lines sports and hope to do this.
There's a program called sports science that had started.
And I wanted to do that because I really enjoyed badminton.
I'd done a lot of things along sports I taught myself how to teach aerobics.
I was a a games prefect when I was in high school.
And for some reason that I can't really pinpoint, , it kept me together and I
liked doing it also kept me and my sisters really close because we all played it.
And there is looked up to my oldest sister.
Her name is Annette, and she was Uganda's number one at the time.
And that was playing juniors and it did very well as well.
And however in Uganda, when you finish high school you need to have
a certain grade, a certain number of points, there's that kind of a
grading system to qualify, to get a.
Sponsorship, which is the only way I would have been able to
do to go to, to, to university.
And so I didn't do my first choice was that support science program.
But it was so competitive.
I didn't get the right number of points to do it, through the
government scholarship program.
And so I found out later that there was this environmental science program that
just hope bend and I started into the.
I applied to it and I got in, so I was one of the first people to study that program.
And I guess the other thing is defining is that I always loved math.
I did did pretty well at math and I loved geography.
And so those two things coming together allow me to be able to do
this environment science program.
And that's how I took the path into.
Environmental science.
I really enjoyed field work.
I started my first opportunity to go out in the field.
I took it.
I actually created it for myself.
I wanted to do something with mapping.
I've just been a.
Introduced to geographic information systems.
And of course that I took in my undergrad and I wanted to actually make my own maps.
So I went out of my way to do an internship with a Uganda
wildlife authority to get field experience, collecting data,
putting it together, visualizing it.
It seems like something tangible.
So I like I'm a person like that.
Like I like being.
Because I get a product and yen, for example and sewing needing because
in the year and a half something.
And so I think that process is the same thing that I liked and I liked computers.
I liked computers so much that I bought my first computer with what
would have been my housing stipend.
I made a deal with my mom that I'd like to use that money to buy a computer.
If she gives me money to go to school.
Cause I was commuting.
And those things, kind of those things coming together made me, I didn't play so
much badminton when I started university.
I actually completely, almost stopped playing it competitively
because I realized that in my own perception that I would, there
not so many opportunities for me.
And I wouldn't be able to overcome some of.
The challenges that I think my family was facing.
Cause I wouldn't be able to get a scholarship to pay for me to continue
school or to be able to support or help out at home because I used
to work at my mom's restaurant.
So S I decided to just focus on my environment and science.
And then my sister moved to New York when I was finishing my undergrad.
I'm so excited about this course that I wanted to do more, like it's like almost
like opening up, you think when you're in, I guess when you're in high street
for the learning a lot, but then once you go to university and start to see how.
Broader the world is, cause I didn't have access to books
and stuff like that growing up.
So like my view or perception of the world was, it was very limited.
And so going to university and finding out all these other things you can
study made me think that I need you to do more of it, but I also wanted you
to do it somewhere else where I thought maybe there'd be better opportunity in.
I applied and went to ended up going to the Johns Hopkins university
for my masters in Baltimore.
This was really exciting.
My sister is excited because, getting into the program
university, it was just fantastic.
But when I got there I guess another defining moment is just the amount.
If you think about it, resources that I had access to by just
being at the university was so defining in a sense that.
I couldn't read all the books that were available if it, if I was so
interested, because there were so many having access to computers and
internet and it just, it's like the ever expanding universe in that sense.
Just like with discovering more and more stars and stuff like that, it's there's
more after this is more, there's more.
Yeah.
That's how I guess I am.
And that sounds, yeah.
Yeah.
So tell me a little bit more about growing up in Uganda, you, you shared very briefly
that it was limited or it was restricted.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
So my dad is a mechanic a car mechanic and my mom had a small shop, a small business.
And so we had very little, like less pictures of us growing up, no shoes,
like sometimes how When people take pictures of, or when people try to
portray people in Africa from a long time ago as if it's, same as now.
So it's, was it that much difference?
It was in the city, but we lived in a.
Mud house and I wanted to, my primary school does not exist anymore.
It was in a very small, it's a place called Katwe.
There's a market there and it's a slum.
And yeah, it was very simple.
I, to watch television I'd have to go to the neighbors.
I walked to school from when I was three, at least six or seven kilometers from
home where I went to like kindergarten.
And yeah, so it was like that.
So I think sometimes people think that maybe I had a very privileged upbringing,
but I didn't, I, right now I feel like I'm in a very privileged position.
But growing up, I wasn't at all.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing that.
So I want to connect the dots here, right?
How do you come from.
And growing up like that, like the way you described to being very ambitious.
And also you mentioned that when you started working, you created where
you like the program and everything.
So where did that sense of courage or groundedness or leadership came from?
What was driving that passion from where you started to where you are now?
It is in my nature maybe want to build on things.
When I was five.
I didn't think I was going to be a rocket scientist.
I didn't even know what a rocket scientist or I didn't say I wanted to
be a doctor or I didn't have that kind of mind frame, but what I had was what
I had with me, I would make something.
So like with what I have, I tried to do something with and and that, because of
that, I discovered more and more which I think opened up more and more doors.
So with my environment of.
And I discovered geographic information systems and so brought,
like I liked fixing things.
would want to have I bought a computer, which was dead, had
making that computer work, buying additional drives and stuff like that.
So that taught me about IT when I was doing my undergrad, I took an,
it course in the evening, which opened up, it's there's this whole
other world of it, and then there's geographic information systems like
I want to understand more about that.
I got into a master's program.
When I got into master's program, I also wanted to really do something
that would allow me to work like working in an environment of field.
And I want to do it back in.
Going back home.
And so once I discovered this whole other realm of remote sensing and
satellite data and having access to it, I wanted to know more, then you
could apply it to forest monitoring.
Now I work more with crop monitoring, but I actually started
by doing some for GPS mapping of encroachment into a forest reserve.
So It's like when you're tipping away at something you discover more and
more under, it is like my operating frame, like right now I work and
interact with like incredibly smart people who have opened up my world
to deep learning and stuff like that.
So it's, I think just being open to learn and not being afraid of.
Yes.
. I think what I'm listening to is resourcefulness.
So even with less resources, you have found a way to continuously
build on things or fix the problems or the challenges that
you have found yourselves in.
Yeah.
It's like working a, see if you've seen these amazing videos of little
kids making something out of nothing.
So I've liked that.
And that sense, like you can, I don't know, I've gotten,
I've done so many things.
I've worked at a gym as an instructor.
When I was 17, I applied for the job through a radio commercial.
Yeah, I've worked for an NGO, a women's organization help
organizing like the workshops.
So all of those things, when you pulled them together, it explains you know
why so many things come together.
Now I worked at a movie studio.
I've taught myself how to edit images and video and, it's just
being open and being, having that, mindset of if a windows opened right.
You can look in and then see how far you can look at.
And if it's not, if it doesn't fit or if it's not so good, but others that
are good at it, just being also open to.
To working with, with people actually, because you can
never, you can't do everything.
And in the world we live in, that's even more and more connected.
You find that there's some people who can do something so quickly
and it's better that they do it.
And that makes it makes it a better fit and a better outcome.
Because of , creating that opportunity for others.
Yeah.
And all of these diverse backgrounds and experiences, how do they
play out today in your role?
When you're talking to people of very different backgrounds, you're
talking to governments, but I'm sure you're talking to scientists.
You're talking to people from from a very privileged background as well.
So how do you.
How does all of this tie up together to allow you to do the
kind of work that you do today?
I think it helps to be grounded.
I think I like to communicate . As effectively as possible where I'm
trying to sound like a very good scientist when I'm talking to a
farmer is completely pointless.
And trying to communicate in the simplest possible terms, depending
on the situation that you're in, but then also when you, when I ran
into situations where obviously.
I'm not an expert, there they're whole other levels of understanding
and descriptions of things, remaining grounded and communicating within my
realm of understanding, I think is important where I don't say things
that I don't know what they mean.
One of the things that I think I learned during my PhD, and I
remember this very well, it was a meeting with my PhD advisor.
He said, it's okay to say you don't know.
And.
I always feel empowered by that.
Because it also allows you to know that you do not know something, you can
learn about it, but accepting that you don't and somebody else does, I think is
incredibly important because it allows you to create space for you to Grow
emotionally, physically, mentally as well.
So I that's like the thing I always go back to.
But then things that I know and I know in a very complex way it helps to.
Tone it down and communicate in what it is you're looking at, rather
than sometimes talking about the complex and the CS or the different
things that go into data analysis.
It could be as simple as saying in this particular area, a flood happens.
So the crops of poor, rather than me talking about, or the different indices
that brought us to that end point, which, people lose interest when they
can't follow 90% of what you're saying.
So I tried to do that.
Yeah.
So what you're shared is very powerful on two levels.
One is acknowledgement that you cannot know everything and we
talked about learning, but I think this is a crucial connection.
From acknowledging that you do not know because that creates a space for learning.
And also the second thing that you mentioned about the letting
your communication in the simplest way possible, depending
on whom you're talking to.
I think that's very practical, but that's something which
I see people struggle with.
Unless they are faced with a few challenges, a few
difficulties in doing that.
So thank you for sharing that.
I think you mentioned it as a matter of fact, but these
are not very trivial things.
These are very important skills.
So I wanted to acknowledge you on that.
So given the kind of work that you do today, and given that you have to wear
via multiple hats, depending on whom you are talking to, what is it that
people misunderstand about you then.
The term imposter syndrome, my own personal reflection of myself where
I think that maybe people don't.
Because I over simplify things.
So maybe I don't sound technical enough or I don't sound scientific enough?
Like balancing these.
Because of my desire to try and communicate as much as possible.
Sometimes I think that maybe from a more technical or scientific or academic realm,
I am not academic enough, but then I'm not a politician or a policy person.
So I'm not a policy person.
So I'm like I learned this word recent of the boundary person.
Who can go either way, but I'm not, depending on who is
perceiving me I am not, like I don't fall in that one, category.
But I think the reason why, might be a misunderstanding or my own.
Poor reflection of myself is that maybe this is my superpower, that the power
to be within that space and not feel completely uncomfortable because I
understand if you found me when I'm in the field, you would not even suspect because
I'm just, unless you knew me from before.
So it's.
Yeah, I would say that maybe being a boundary person can be problematic, yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm glad that you said that this could be a superpower because the
more I've worked with leaders who are playing big and the more I realized
that imposter syndrome basically stays there, like it gets stronger.
And in fact, from a leadership point of view, it's a good sign because then
that means that you're challenging your growth and you're going further.
You're going into new areas and you're not getting comfortable.
And at the same time not making it.
Make it a weakness as cause as you yourself said.
Not being a boundary person also allows you to see into different
windows if avid used that analogy.
And that allows you to take whatever that you're trying to do forward rather
than getting stuck in this is who I am.
This is why I'm not.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it requires also being.
Open to communicate.
In the past, for me, in my case, in the past couple of months or
years, I've been invited to talk at so many different Events.
And the challenge with this is because of my desire and need to communicate.
I can't recycle anything.
I could recycle, description of who I am and the program and what we do.
I can do that.
But in order to bring that message to the context of that particular event,
it has to be molded differently.
And so it creates a lot of work.
But, it's like almost being like a chameleon, to be able to speak
the language of that particular event, what's the most interesting
thing for this community?
So if it's like a And machine learning summer school for students.
What do you, what do I say?
These are the best minds?
The young, fresh exciting, excited who are following this particular
field way better than I am.
Way better than I can ever do.
No matter how long I took, you took trying to prepare for it.
So how do I prepare myself for that event?
And deliver, my best talk in that sense about my work.
So it's very defendant when I get the opportunity to talk to extension needs.
For example, in Tanzania, like it's very different.
And how you get from those two places and talk about the same
thing can be incredibly challenging.
But for me, I think it's incredibly important that I do my, the best possible
and remain approachable that then we can discuss it in that very basic way.
So yeah it's not so simple, but it's definitely worth doing the extra for.
Yeah.
And just to build up on that, what else do you do to manage that pressure and as
expectations from a lot of different kinds of people to be very different kinds of
person when you are, when you're talking to a very different kinds of audiences,
how do you manage that pressure?
I do not find, manage it very well.
I think it takes more away from my, my personal time and
self to be able to do that.
And I'm definitely learning, one of the things is trying to learn to say
no so that you can do fewer things.
But then also there's the burden of.
Being who I am.
And.
It feels like it's my responsibility.
Sometimes I feel like sometimes I'm guilted into things and that's
saying no is at the service to others who might have had the same
situations of circumstances as me.
And so I'm still working.
I'm still working out some of that, but hopefully one of the things is also
trying to talk to Who are like me or who are in my situation and, or others,
who've had a lot more experience in this line that then I can learn from.
To sacrifice my family for others would be a mistake.
So I need to to learn how to balance.
That is something I am definitely still struggling with.
. Thank you for sharing that.
So friendly.
And I think for anybody who is listening, it is very important.
What you just said, because what you are highlighting is the importance of self.
Before going out in the world and trying to solve problems as a leader
because it's the same matter for put your oxygen mask first and if you're
not taking care of yourself and then everything you do elsewhere is going to
be impacted in some way or the other.
And that starts with seeing no, because every time you say no to something,
you actually saying yes to something more important, I then I, and I think
that's a key element of leadership and and that's what you just said.
To move forward, what is it that you feel most grateful?
My family my mom, my dad, my sisters.
I'm absolutely grateful for them.
I.
I remain myself, because of them.
But I'm also really grateful for my husband, and my kids that give
me I'm blown away by my kids.
I'm learning so much through them, which is so exciting.
I know more about space travel because of that.
So I know a lot about, satellite data and the data and analyzing it and
everything, but learning about, Space travel and and going into all the details
about, planets and stuff like that.
And trying to come up with something more exciting every day
to keep them engaged as quiet.
The incredible actually.
I'm absolutely grateful for my wonderful colleagues, I would
say that I would not have had this opportunity to be on the world stage
and talk about all of these things.
If, for example, my PhD advisor didn't let me explore didn't let
me figure things out on my own.
And that has made me incredibly brave because I know that.
I'm equipped to begin from nothing and learn new things
and connect different things.
And that I, if I have the will, I can make sense of it.
And then having incredible people to work with.
Allows you to do that.
And I'm very fortunate in the sense that within the institution that I'm in, not
only do I have access to the libraries that I've mentioned, which, You wouldn't
otherwise, it's just incredible to be able to expose so many things, just being
able to download as many articles as you can read them is incredible because
other people don't have access to that.
And I was just saying I think a web of science articles.
OSI hub, just showing where research articles are being downloaded from.
And you can see where the majority of being downloaded from.
And it's, that just speaks to how so out of reach and an accessible
knowledge is and information.
And we can't overcome a lot of our differences, our limitations
if people don't actually know.
How the world works.
You have a completely different perspective of it.
Once you learn the more things you learn, keep calling it the burden of knowledge.
Sometimes it feels paralyzing to understand the powerlessness of that.
You, I feel like you become more powerless for the more knowledge
you get, but then also you become more powerful at the same time.
But being able to work with that.
It's quite it's important.
And that's the privilege that I feel like I've met.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
And I can't stop myself from asking this, but you USP, you're talking
about being on the world stage.
You're talking about pressure.
You're talking about burden and responsibility, and I see an a and
I still see a childlike wonder and the smart laughter on your face.
I see.
I do not see heaviness.
I see a lot of light.
As we are talking about it, and I want to understand what's the secret behind that?
I think there's so much hope.
There's so much hope.
There's so much more that we can do.
And the the privileged position that I find myself and I think,
I allows me to be hopeful and.
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
I also see a lot of humility in
the video.
I think that comes from my, that comes from my parents.
It comes from my upbringing, my life.
If you met me while I was at my parents' house, a person that I know very closely
describe my life as if I'm standing on two stools and balancing two stools.
Like my family and my education.
There is a very big disconnect between my upbringing and my job, but now
there's an additional stool, which is.
Being a mother.
So balancing those three things, it's quite actually incredibly
challenging and working so hard and staying loving and kind to them.
Two of my sons, it takes self discipline and
. I think the thing about me is that I try to be present when I'm doing a task.
I can tell when I'm not like when I'm supposed to be watching
my sons, but I get distracted.
I can tell that I get angry really quickly when they ask me something,
which as kids they should.
Recognizing that helps me like switch off immediately.
Like it has to be one or the other sometimes, and not both at the
same time, but it's been very hard
. Yes.
And I think that self-awareness is the key, because otherwise
you can go down a path without realizing that you're slipping or
that you're not being disciplined.
But what you just shared is that the moment you realized that you can actually
pull yourself back to a place of balance
. Yeah.
And the other is having a sounding box.
When I struggle through things, being able to have somebody that I can talk to.
When I feel like I'm going down a rabbit hole just to check is everything okay.
My reading is wrong and then the other is when faced with an incredibly
challenging thing, stepping back.
I say that I think I get very good ideas when I'm sleeping, but it's just that
in the morning, right after I wake up.
When I'm semi awake.
But I went to bed thinking about this.
I come up with another route of, another option because all the ones
that I've thought about before then . So being able to recognize when.
The brain's not functioning anymore.
When you run dry of ideas, like finding that thing that brings back
that that energy to get you thinking.
I think I think it was important.
Thank you.
So what advice would you give somebody who is either going through a tough
period or growing up in with limited.
But still has big dreams late.
Like you had maybe as a child.
What advice would you give someone like that?
The advice that I would give, have given to myself was to keep exploring, even
with the limited things that that I had, I liked creating and creating with nothing.
And I think that is important.
Kids learn things.
From touching and molding from putting blocks together, it gives
them they learn a lot of things and it doesn't have to be anything special.
It doesn't have to be Legos.
You could just be like regular blocks that they made with boxes and things like that.
So the advice I think I would give us two.
Look out for things that grow you in a certain way.
So me and my sisters, we worked in my mom's shop and in many
instances, people would say that was maybe child labor, but it wasn't.
I was learning about how my mom managed to.
Take care of all of us with very little that she was making and
how she was evolving it, that you can start with one thing that will
become two and three and four.
Not that it will all arrive at the same time, I think is the
lesson is a lesson there that with very little, you can do so much.
My mom is one of those people who benefited.
From insurance programs and the loans that she received there was so little.
But she, she continued to do this and if she'd wanted big loans,
you'd never have gotten them.
And that would have been.
That would have removed all our hope, if she was a different person, but she still
went from those little ones, grew them slowly, continuously until, she wanted
to take out one to pay for my tuition.
And, the bank was like you don't qualify.
That's too much money for you.
But because of that process, you formed a network of friends that
trusted her . That her friends.
Pull together the money to pay for me because they trusted her.
She wouldn't have been able to do that.
Because the amount of money we were talking about was so far out of
reach, fundraise to get a flight ticket, but then you're talking about
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To pay tuition.
And so she built that network.
She wouldn't have built that network have been able to get us where we are.
So building slowly and I think the other thing is.
I was thinking about this that no work is beneath, you as
long as you learn something from it, nothing is beneath anybody.
There's so much, you learn about how to work, how hard it is.
Some of those stuff that I learned when I go to the field work, just
how hard it is to have a hard haul.
To work with a hand hole, it is so hot that if you try that, you would want
to figure out how to do it differently.
And so all of those things I think there's a lesson to learn in all of those things.
And as you learn these things, it can all come together.
So my mom learned to be an entrepreneur, by, from small things, to doing
multiple things and trying to continue going forward rather than be stuck.
And But stuck in a situation where.
The dream was so big that it made it impossible to make small steps.
So I'm that way maybe one day I'll be, I dunno, I have no idea what I could be,
but it's because I didn't set a boundary or limit or much, much bigger goal.
I have small goals that I can continue to build on.
It's just my approach.
Yes.
Thank you for sharing that.
And I think it ties all back down to that period of of childhood and.
Similar story of my being and my mom being an entrepreneur and learning a
lot from her because there was nothing else because there was no other way that
she had to put herself into multiple positions, try out multiple things,
because there was no privilege to choose.
There was.
Do whatever you can with whatever you have.
And we might not realize it, but it helps us.
And it certainly is true for me that it gives me so much, strength.
It gives me so much resourcefulness and it keeps me grounded.
Even when things look difficult to others.
Yeah, I have a very modern example of this.
For my work, I travel a lot.
And I go to all sorts of places and it's a heavy data, heavy.
We need internet without massive satellite data.
We were trying to run complex programs.
When I'm in the U S I can do something really quickly, and it doesn't cost
me any extra money to download.
I don't know.
So many gigabytes of data, however, transport me.
To east Africa out west Africa, even sometimes, some place like in Europe
and me trying to do the same thing can become incredibly impossible.
It can become challenging.
And so like, when you are in that situation, you don't say
this is completely impossible.
You try to work out the next time you go, or when you're in.
Space.
Like I spent all of 20, 20, 20, 20 half of 2021 in Uganda with when
the PA when airports shut down and everything we did within travel back.
But.
I continue to do my work and I try to continuously figure out how to do it
better or how to communicate, how to stay in touch with people, working late
hours, adjusting my, it was just, it's just that I, I didn't feel defeated
and, figuring out what kind of data.
And I learned how so much more expensive internet is.
And I learned how to find all these other resources to explain in context that it
might seem like a very smart app that is just fantastic from your perspective.
But that application is completely out of reach to hundreds of thousands,
millions of people, because simply by going to the link and trying to download.
It just doesn't work.
And so learning and working within that environment actually is incredible
because you learn so much about how.
How so many things that are very obvious, simple, accessible, and some
contexts I actually completely, when they're completely removed, then you
figure out what parts are the most important parts, but not, not a very
fancy looking browser is the best.
It's actually the simplest one, which downloads and gives you what you need.
That's the most important part.
So understanding that is really important.
Yes.
And how often that creates, or that leads to resilience, but also innovation,
because then you have no other, if head down to sometimes cut corners to figure
out a way that works other than figuring out the best of, or the ideal solution.
Yeah.
So before, yeah, before we ended our conversation and I think I can
go on forever with the way this is going, what is the one message that
you would like for our listeners?
And if somebody wants to reach out to, more about you, how can they
know more about what you do and what you're up to in the future?
I guess I didn't really introduce what I have, what I do, but I worked for.
The university of Maryland and the department of geographic sciences and
the university, our department runs a program called NASA Hava, sits NASA.
I've got some food security program and under that project I, the
Africa activities and just searched for NASA Havas and my name and.
You can find a lot of information about what we're doing and I'm
on Twitter and I'm on LinkedIn.
And I get the most interesting messages with so many people were really interested
in and in my work and our program and.
I'm really interested in finding ways I think to connect not only to connect,
but come up with tangible ways of supporting researchers who come for in
underprivileged, low resource, low access.
To, to the things that actually make me who I am.
And so I always try to work out so many ways to solve this problem and I cannot,
and I would like to connect with others who were trying to do some of the things
and in a way that, And support more people tap into the tools and resources, learning
materials, books all those sorts of things that can open up the whole world to them.
Yeah.
So I'm happy to connect and brainstorm and learn from others about what
they're doing in their field.
And I listened to some of your podcasts.
I've listened to, three or four episodes.
And it's just incredible how.
People reflect on this place and what they do.
And it's, there's just so much to learn and I learn a lot by listening.
And so I found it really interesting and I'm hoping to keep listening and
connecting with other people as well.
Thank you Catherine for your time.
And I wish you all the best for the future for everything that
you're going to do in the future.
And I hope you can continue doing that with the same wide grin that
you have shown on this podcast today.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
And thank you for having me.
That's it for this episode of choosing leadership with summit.
I choose leadership every time I record this podcast and I
invite you to do the same.
I invite you to design a life of joy, meaning pride and satisfaction.
Not just for yourself, but also for those around you.
This is what I do most naturally to lovingly and gently provoke you.
To help you see your own light to help you see what you are already capable of.
I say what might be uncomfortable for me to say, or for you to hear.
To show you that all of our dreams which have been on hold are within our grasp.
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At reality.
And thank you for listening.
Always remember that you are enough, you are loved and you matter, this is summit.
Until next time, keep choosing leadership.