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Hello. I'm Priya Doshi. I am a faculty and administrator at American University. I'm faculty in the School of

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Communication, and I am associate dean of faculty and Inclusive Excellence in the office of the Provost. I wanted to come and share my story specifically because it's been such a long journey and an interesting one, and one that has

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involved my family. And so I thought it would be a really interesting story to tell. So I'm going to I'm going to talk

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about the question related to my career path and American University. So I am not an American University alum, but I do consider you to be the place where my career began.

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And I say that because when I was an undergraduate, I came here for the summer program to study foreign policy. And as part of that program, American University introduced me to a few internship opportunities.

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I was selected for one of those internship opportunities. And that internship opportunity led to the start of my career.

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It was the first professional experience that I'd had. I fell in love with Washington. I loved being on AU's campus.

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It was a great place to meet people who I still consider to be some of my closest friends, just over the course of an eight week summer that I was here. But most importantly, I think the connection to the launch of my

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professional life. It was at that point that I decided I really wanted to live and work in Washington. When I was finished with my undergraduate studies and

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eventually with my graduate studies, and that was my first encounter with American. As my life progressed, my encounters with American continued.

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So when I was doing graduate school, also not at American, I ended up taking a few classes here because there were no other universities that offered classes in that particular topic, which was SIS class and cross-cultural communication, something I care

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deeply about. And I knew that AU had an excellent reputation in it. So I wanted to take that class

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specifically here, which I did, and was able to transfer into my graduate degree at another institution. And then my husband ended up doing his MS in Finance at American University between 1999 and 2000, and at that time our first child

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was born, who then later, 18 years later started at American as a freshman, and she majored in public communication and strategic communications, which is actually the department in which I teach. She didn't take any classes with me, as that's not permitted, but

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it was really lovely to have somebody, um, to have her get to know my, my, my colleagues to see how, um, how much she enjoyed the program here, how much she got out of the program here, and to watch her grow her own professional interest in an area that I was

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passionate about. Um, fast forward again to a few years later. So the fall of 2022, my son

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started as a first year student at American University, and he is currently a, um, a second year student here. So he is, um, very excited to be to join our AU legacy, which has been long and illustrious.

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Um, so when we come to AU events, the four of us, and it's rare, really, that the four of us are here at the same time, I feel like we have so many different identities that we, um, that we share as part of our AU

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experience. My husband being an alum, my daughter now being an alum. Oh, and I forgot to add, she's

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actually a staff member now, so she works at the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and she's really loving her work there as communications manager and special events manager. Um, so she's staff now as well as being an alum.

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And my son is a student. And then, of course, I'm faculty and now an administrator here at American University. Um, I really think American has been a place where, um, it's been

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somewhat of a blessing, I would say, in our lives, a place where I've personally felt like I really could come into my own and my career, not just at the point at which I started my career as an intern back when I was an undergrad.

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But since joining AU's faculty, I've seen myself more and more seen and heard, um, I've been able to grow, I've been able to get promoted and expand my footprint here at the university. And for that, I'm really, really grateful to American University

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for being this really awesome presence in the life of myself and my family.