Your Impetus for Change

GLOBAL STORYTELLING FOR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT By Claudia Körbler

How you can be behind the cultural wheel of change.

Danielle Tate, left, and Claudia Körbler preparing for an interview.

2018 was a year of change for many of us. I am sure you know how it feels when you get that itch on January one when a New Year begins and how it feels when you know there is something you want to do to change the world, something you feel compelled to do.

Living across and in-between cultures makes us often contemplate on how we can use our diverse skill sets and talents to implement social impact and change. In this column, I want to share a story with you on how to people from different cultural backgrounds started a show called Vehicles of Change (VOC). VOC is a show hosted by two self-described change makers from vastly different industries, interviewing other vehicles of change to understand the mindsets, situations, and motivations that help them change the world. Danielle Tate (the American) and, I — Claudia Koerbler (the Austrian) — were worried about the state of the world and realized that exactly this state of unconsciousness contemplation about international development, entrepreneurship and international affairs is a pivotal time to join forces and host a show that focuses on positivity and change. By listening to the journey of other game-changers you can find ways to negate anger and hopelessness around and find your unique cultural power to affect positive change.

It all started with fondue...

well first an introduction, which led to a friendship and then the fondue. Danielle and I sat and chatted about what we considered the sad state of the world and we each applied the lenses of our professions and backgrounds. As an Austrian TCK who grew up on the border of two countries, in my professional career, I now have been active in global policy development for the United Nations and The World Bank Group. These experiences have led me to have a global perspective on the best ways to affect positive change. Tate is an American tech entrepreneur and author. Her experiences bootstrapping a startup and navigating entrepreneurship give me a micro-perspective on how individuals can build solutions to problems and create the changes they need.

Our backgrounds are quite diverse, like for many of you Culturs readers, but we both agreed that too many people are tuning up for a fight or tuning out completely when it comes to the problems of the world.

That’s when the “ah-ha moment” happened. What if we filtered through our networks and interviewed people we considered vehicles of change across sectors, cultures, and countries? We could use our diverse lenses to ask questions that helped us really understand how change makers are created, how they operate and what others could learn from them. Then the second “ah-ha moment” happened. What if we did more than interview the vehicles of change in our networks? What if we created a show? We were both tired of the endless sadness and anger on regular television... so what if we made a show we would want to watch? A show that inspired, educated, and empowered viewers to become agents of change. Our two tandem “ah ha moments” were the impetus for Vehicles of Change.

“im·pe·tus - the force that makes something happen or happen more quickly. In our case, the need to inspire, educate and empower vehicles of change to take action.”

It’s a good thing we had such a strong impetus for Vehicles of Change, because neither one of us had ever hosted a podcast, much less a show! There was so much force behind our idea, we didn’t stay mired in what we couldn’t do, we dove directly into what we could do. Within two weeks of our initial “ah has” we were shooting our New York City interviews, and a three weeks later we were doing the same thing in Washington, D.C. Talk about scrappy startup mentality. We sweet-talked Claudia’s friend’s cousin to become our videographer, rented an AirBnB in Manhattan, and started emailing the vehicles of change that we knew in New York and D.C. Somehow truly amazing humans not only agreed to be interviewed by virtual strangers, but opened up to share the vulnerabilities and truths of their journeys. We credit the importance of our mission. Eighteen episodes later, we looked back and were completely blown away by the people we met, the stories we heard, the immense positive change that is currently happening and how much fun we had!

So there it is. The insane, yet true story of how an Austrian and an American walked into a bar, ordered fondue and then teamed up to change the world for the better. In this New Year with endless possibility we want to encourage you to take a leap of faith, be behind the wheel of change and think about what would happen if you and another person from a different culture would walk in to a bar and start a conversation around change.

www.CultursMag.com | Spring 2019 17