Animated by the sense of justice, the guest of this episode, Francesco Bruscoli, started his career working for international organisations such as OSCE, ICRC and the UN in the protection domain.

He then took two surprising segways in his career and found ways to apply his human right knowledge in places where human rights is not always given a predominant place. First, he worked for a few years for FIFA as Senior Development Manager in Africa. In that position, he took a more social approach to football than his colleagues by trying to have an impact on communities through football.

​His second segway made him switch from a role where he was the one inspecting prisons to the one managing a prison. He is currently working as the manager of an administrative detention center in Geneva. As a human rights professional, you spend a lot of time interviewing people for different reasons; those listening skills are useful to create a respectful atmosphere and develop the most appropriate rules by listening to detainees and staff. “Within the boundaries of the rules, there are many ways to engage with people.”

​“My main advice is to understand what you are talking about. And this applies not only to prisons, but also military operations. If you go and speak just from a purely principles’ perspective, disregarding the practical elements and their needs, the message will not pass through. Do that while sticking to principles, which will guide your recommendations.”

Our guest for this episode is Vladimira Briestenska, the co-founder of Neem, a financial wellness business out of Pakistan, enabling underserved communities across emerging markets. With a global perspective and a strong commitment to social impact, she conceives entrepreneurship as a force for good, committed to create positive impact in the society.​

She went on this journey when realised that once people are actually empowered financially, it can have a massive impact on other areas of their lives. For instance, when women become financially independent, they become ability to take care of their education, or the education of their children, or able to start their own businesses or leave abusive relationships because they are financially independent.​

What lead her to the tech sector was intuition and curiosity. The relationship to risk of entrepreneurs to risk of entrepreneurs was refreshing. She saw entrepreneurs, and the people in the tech sector, driving and creating change. It was very exciting and liberating, compared to what she had seen before in the policy world, or in the world of NGOs, where she felt there was so much of dependency on grant funding.

​She hopes that she can impact a few individuals in her life on their own journeys as change agents and help them to break, maybe the stereotypes or the boxes that have been created for them by the environment, by their upbringing, or by themselves, and that are limiting them to show up in their lives fully alive and do things that they feel are unrealistic.

Therlt | Episode 26

Our guest for this episode believes that businesses can contribute to human rights and that human rights can be conducive to business. Barbara Linder focused most of her career on human rights and business. She currently works as a Senior Environmental and Social Manager for the Austrian Development Bank (OeEB), which is a private stock company with a public mandate.

Through her work, she strengthens human rights aspects in environmental and social management processes, policy development, risk assessments and capacity building regarding human rights. When you work on human rights in the private sector, you have to change your perspective, meet people where they are and present the information related to human rights in a more digestible way.

Her advice if you want to work on human rights in the private sector:

• Study the corporate culture. What is a no-go, for what do you get points? What is the currency (e.g. knowledge)?
• Look at your own conditioning (e.g. beliefs, expectations) that you have acquired through your educational and social background. Try to take an observer position and to understand the system and its actors without judging. You are also playing a role in the system.
• Build fruitful networks with likeminded people that share your values.
• Train patience and resilience and take breaks. You can only plant seeds. They will grow when the timing is right, you cannot determine that- but every seed is valuable.

Mfon Udechukwu is a dedicated community coordinator at WeRobotics, blending her passion for human rights advocacy with her commitment to promoting responsible data and technology use. With a human rights and international relations background, Mfon has always been driven by a desire to create positive societal change. Her career journey took an exciting turn when she recognized the transformative potential of emerging technologies in advancing community development. Mfon firmly believes that responsible and ethical deployment of these resources can empower marginalized communities to address pressing challenges, from disaster response and environmental monitoring to healthcare delivery and infrastructure development.
Therlt | Episode 24

The guest of this episode, Una Bejtovic has three decades of experience in media and public relations, with human rights as a red thread for more than two decades. She decided to use the tools she masters to give back to society. She believes that “public relations can contribute to a better understanding among the people and make us better individuals.”

She studied human rights 10 years after starting her media career and only 6 years after the Dayton peace agreement. The European Regional Master's Programme in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe marked a turning point in her life. This program helped me to realize how privileged I was, so I felt the need to help those who are not as privileged as I was. We need more civic courage. Values like solidarity, empathy, honesty are the ones that need to be implemented throughout society in all possible ways.

Her advice to graduates: Give your best every day to be a better professional and to be the one who can help others. She warns against the current push for entrepreneurship: having your own company is not for everybody.

Finding clarity through media literacy

The guest of this episode, Mihajlo Lahtov, has 25 years of experience as a media literacy trainer, project manager, and communications specialist. He is currently the project director for the USAID Media Literacy Project YouThink, implemented in North Macedonia by IREX a global development and education organization. and three local partners. What lead him to working on media literacy is his combined love for reading and his activism for democracy and human rights. He is passionate about media literacy because he thinks that it turns people into active citizens.

I love human rights because human rights are teaching us how to be human and how to be better people. And I think that the role media can play is very important to human rights. For example, I was always interested in how media represent different communities, diverse people and communities. His master thesis was about how media are portraying different national minorities with a case study in Bulgaria.

Italian, migrant, human rights practitioner. This is how Sabrina Galella describes herself. She has been guided since her childhood by a sense of empathy and compassion.

Before her master in human rights, she studied politics and international relations. She thinks that combining the world of politics and the world of law make for a more enriching journey to understand just all of the issues that surround us. “I joined the dots of everything that is happening around the world. And I'm able to develop solutions that are based on politics, but also based on legal aspects of legal frameworks. And that made a difference.”

Small victories give her joy in her work. She knows that fighting for human rights can feel like a furstrating uphill battle and makes sure to celebrate the smal victories. Making the difference for one person is an opportunity to bring more people onboard and show them the importance of knowing their rights.

The guest of this episode, Federico Batista Poitier, studied first forensic anthropology and then human rights. After graduating from the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, he specialised in issues related to accessibility and the implementation of the UN Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Federico started working on issues related to disability when he was an English teacher in South Korea and worked in an inclusive school.

He currently works as accessibility policy officer for United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), that he describes as a kind of UN of local and regional governments. 65 % of the Sustainable Development Goals need implementation at the local level to be realised by 2030. He particularly focuses on accessibility as mandated through the international human rights framework of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability and its article 9, a lot of the competency to implement this article being with local governments. This implementation is sometimes made difficult with coordination and centralisation.

Mary Izobo, the guest of Episode 19 of the podcast The Road Less Traveled, wears many hats. She is an international human rights lawyer, governance specialist, and is currently studying for her PhD in International Law and Governance at the University of Pretoria.

In this episode, we ask her more about her gender advocate hat as the Founder and Executive Director of The Amazon Leadership Initiative (TheALI). It is a non-profit organization that empowers women and girls, fosters inclusivity in leadership roles, and provides mentorship, education, and capacity development to alleviate gender inequality.

She had not realised before the master that the work she was doing was human rights. Since she graduated, her understanding of human rights became clearer, more lucid and applying the knowledge to the practice. She insists as well that: “You don't need a human rights degree to stand against injustice. I believe that injustice transcends the career interests. There are so many individuals who did not have a human rights degree and are renowned activists.”

Mary has 3 pieces of advice for anybody who wants to start their own initiative: ​

• Passion: your passion will take you anywhere you want to go.
• Determination: be hard-working and not give up.
• Commitment: you should always remember your why: why you started with the organization in the first place.

​​She also mentioned that what makes her go through bad days is the fact that she created a tribe for herself (family, friends and supportive people).

There is one song that stood out for her when she is having a bad day: Marvick City, God will work it out.

The guest of Episode 18 of the podcast The Road Less Traveled is a perfect example of the beauty and depth of non-linear paths. She worked as a civil servant, for the United Nations and as a freelancer. She finds her joy when taking the hat of an activist: Maite Arrondo is an expert on the right to adequate housing and has been working for the past 8 years as a consultant on innovation in housing policies.

When she had to choose her theme for her master thesis, Maite noticed by reading the newspaper that housing was an emerging issue and decided to focus on it. Since then, her passion for the issues of housing and homelessness has never diminished; she continues to work on the connection between the international human rights based approach towards the right to adequate housing and its realisation at the local level.

Her passion for innovations in housing is obvious when she recalls the moment six or seven years ago when she learned for the first time about the model of Community Land Trust (a model of affordable housing and community development) in Puerto Rico, in Caño Martín Peña. She works for the Barcelona municipality, which is like a policy laboratory with their focus on housing and their creation of networks. One of the things I like best about my work is that I am always feeding my curiosity with peer learning exchanges. I get a chance to learn about other contexts, solutions and innovations.

The guest of Episode 17 of the podcast The Road Less Traveled is Jean Linis-Dinco, a human rights activist, academic and data scientist from the Philippines. She is currently doing her PhD in cybersecurity at the University of South Wales Canberra, focusing on the analysis of government propaganda, and disinformation in the context of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.

Already a good communicator by training, Jean also did the Master’s Programme in Human Rights and democratisation in Asia Pacific (APMA), which made her start working towards a more progressive approach to human rights, one that also ecompasses social political economy.

She works towards a future where people matter over profit. “To ensure that AI does not become a tool of oppression, we must strive to democratize its ownership. By promoting open source AI technologies, cooperatives, worker-owned enterprises, we can encourage widespread access to AI resources and prevent monopolistic control by rich people. And this collective ownership empowers the working class to participate in AI decision-making and benefit from its advancement.”

She also sees the potential in AI becoming a force for good and having the power to revolutionize the global workforce. “The present is our battleground and the place where we construct the very foundation of the future that we desire.”

Her advice for someone who is keen to work in the field of machine learning, or data governance, or just machine learning in general and doing programming: “As a human rights graduate, you actually already have every soft skill that the market needs.”

Regarding human rights education, she stresses that the best tool to use is the one that is working and that we should avoid treating technology as the be all and end all solution to every challenge. What we need is culturally relevant pedagogy: developing educational materials and curriculum that resonate with the students cultural backgrounds and experiences.

She concludes by reminding everybody to keep the poor in mind especially when making decisions related to AI.

Our guest, Inge Jacobs, is currently leading sustainability for Mars Food, focusing both on human rights and livelihoods as well as climate and water use in Mars Food supply chains. In her job, she uses not only the lenses of human rights but also the ones from sustainability, gender and ecology.

Curiosity is the red thread throughout her career. She keeps looking at new opportunities and networks, and kept on learning, adding a master in public health to her Master in Human Rights. The master gave her the theoretical framework and knowledge, and the opportunity to study with people from different countries and different backgrounds.

What she wishes she had known when she graduated: there are so many different possibilities to work on human rights. “I would like to do the Master again, now with all the experience that I have from my professional life, because I would look at it in a very different way.”

Inge has 3 main pieces of advice for graduates interested in working for the private sector:

• Be curious! Being curious is what helps Inge stay energized and learn new things.
• Connect with people and build your network! Building your network is critical not only for accessing different roles, but also for learning new things and learning about innovations. “If you build your network and you connect with people, I think it will really help you broaden your scope and your view on what is possible and what could be done.”
• Be flexible and adaptable! Do not be afraid to change! Do not be afraid to try different things. If it doesn't work, you just do something else.

The guest of this episode is a Bulgarian-Armenian director, choreographer, producer, and writer exploring empathy through movement and storytelling. His dancing career started with ballroom dancing when he was 5. After a childhood full of dance competitions during weekends, Kosta started working as a professional dancer at 18 with Dancing with the stars Vietnam.

While he was studying dance in New-York, he made a 6-minute dance short film, Waiting for Color, about the violations of human rights of LGBT people in Chechnya. “It was really a very personal work. I think every artist is lucky if they have two or three of these works in their life, when you feel so moved to create something that it doesn't matter if it is with a budget or without, but you feel like you are really drawing the inspiration out of thin air and you feel so sure that this is the project that you were made to create.”

“There is something about art, in general, when it is done in a truthful way, that just makes you stop in your tracks.” Organisations working with human rights can learn a lot from dance as dance is about growing together. Dance is a conversation where you invite the other person, you take risks together and then you finally “become fabulous” and go further together than you would have gone alone. “Sometimes you need to find that flexibility and freedom to feel that we are moving forward.”

Moana Genevey, the guest of this episode, is a Senior Policy Officer at Equinet at day, and a stand-up comedian at night.

By doing the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, she had for the first time a sense of belonging and a sense of legitimacy. The master created career opportunities working for human rights (e.g., paid traineeships, work as co-Secretary General of the EMAlumni Association, network of people and opportunities…). Her hope regarding organisations working on human rights is that we will bridge the gap between theory and practice as this would have more impact. She also thinks that human rights education would be more efficient if the students were in touch early on with groups that are affected by human rights violations.

She entered the world of stand-up comedy through improv theatre that she started in 2021. Having some knowledge on feminism, anti-racism, intersectionality and equality, really helps her to filter what she is saying on stage. She uses her knowledge to write things that are the safest possible. She started applying her gender lens to her comedy work, because “it was the first time ever that I entered a professional world where sexism was so prevalent.”

She finds strength in the collective and created a feminist collective to create a support system for stand-up comedians who are not the standard stand-up comedian and support shows made by women. She noticed that when women and gender minorities feel in a safe environment, where they are supported and encouraged, they are funnier.

The guest of this episode has let his curiosity and constant questioning about the best way to have an impact on human rights guide his career. This less usual path led him to focus those last years on Hope-based communications because he strongly believes in our shared humanity and the need to stand in solidarity. “Hope is the idea that we can make change happen, and that human rights are too important to not be pursuing those goals. I suspect a lot of other people in our field, have this sort of this negative mindset (…) But actually, because if we never actually talk about what we're trying to achieve, it's less likely to happen. And so it's actually really important that we start to think about it.”

​His compass in his work is made of his family history and the values he inherited from his families. “It was very clear to me actually, from a very young age, before I even knew what human rights were that I would work in human rights, quite simply because my family are Holocaust survivors. And I just always knew that I wanted to work to honour their legacy. Basically, if there was to be any meaning and what happened to my family, it was that it wouldn't happen again. And not just to Jewish people, but to any human beings.”

​His entry point into the human rights world was through communication. This is the skill he thought he could contribute to the work of other actors. He insists that “communication is part of social change, work and human rights work. Just the work of raising awareness, letting people know that a violation is happening is traditional or basic communication. But strategic communication seeks to change people's minds, to change how they think, change their attitudes, and their behaviour.”​

Thomas challenges everybody to think about “what it does look like to do human rights?”. He wants to bring across the idea that everybody can do contribute to human rights.

Therlt | Episode 13

The guest of our 12th episode is Lydia Malmedie, a graduate of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, who currently works as Deputy head of the LGBTI Unit at the Berlin State Ministry for Justice, Diversity and Anti-discrimination.

Sub-national level is getting more and more important with several networks of cities and public authorities working on different human rights issues. Lydia talks about the leverage that one can have at the local level. “I can see the change I am part of when I walk the streets of Berlin.” Public administration needs to reflect its constituents and therefore need diverse expertise that people coming from all walks of life can bring.​

It feels quite empowering for people to know that they can change the place where they live. “I would like to see people engage more where they live and connect with their neighbours.”

For this episode, we have invited the creative alumna of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation who conceived the jingle for the podcasts The Road Less Traveled: Laura María Calderón Cuevas.

Laura grew up in a family who enjoyed the arts and encouraged her passion for music and dance. She started being aware very young of the inequalities in Colombia. She understood the power of singing and bringing people together, while working in New York at the UN during the day and playing in a band at night. She realised that music could be a catalyst for change and that she could link her art to her activism.

For her master thesis, she based herself on the multicultural system of human rights and the concept of the right to knowledge as conceived by Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Music transforms our reality. How do we put into practice our human rights knowledge? How do we transform that knowledge and integrate the arts?

Since she graduated, she has been doing music workshops in the refugee camp near Thessaloniki. She also started a new project: composing lullabies with migrant mothers on an individual basis. In most of those songs, the mothers talk about their wishes for their children and their wishes for a better life. What brings her joy in her work: the smiles of people at the end of the workshops. During the workshops, everyone feels equal and is at the same level of vulnerability.

The guest of this episode is wearing many hats: Barbora Vágnerová, a graduate of the European Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation, created her own company, works for a foundation and is a jazz singer.

Because of her own experience of caring for a sick relative, Barbora got involved in issues related to health and health care workers. She started her own company, which offers hospital placements in the Czech Republic for individuals interested in such a career in their own country and wanting to experience another health system. I always look for new challenges and like to think of problems and the solutions to that problem in a systemic way.

Since April 2022, additionally to her own company, she started working for the Vlček Family Foundation, a newly-established foundation focusing on palliative care for children. Barbora explains that palliative care for children should be encompassing, from the moment of diagnosis to the bereavement process. Palliative care might be an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people so we are trying to find other ways to communicate about it. The objective of palliative care is to improve the quality of life of the children and their families. Children and families should be asked in every single meeting what they need.

Barbora explains that what brings her joy in her work is the fact that my work makes sense and seeing that you can see the impact of your work (as part of a collective work) on the quality of life of families.

The guest of episode 9 of our podcast is Godfrey Odongo, a human rights graduate from GC Africa, currently working as Senior Program Officer with the Human Rights Program at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund in New York. Godfrey got motivated to work in human rights because of his desire to use the law as one of the tools to help others. What keeps me hopeful is giving hope and building the resilience of human rights activists. What makes me especially hopeful at the moment is seeing in action a multi-disciplinary approach: people from all walks of life working together. It is important that we do not hang on the terminology of human rights. In his opinion, the role of foundations is not only to distribute grants to human rights organisations but as well to act as a connector and a convenor. Foundations can play this role because they have a bird-eye view, which enables them to bring very different organisations at the table and propose different strategies.

Our guest in this episode is Sinead Duffy, a graduate of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation, who founded Yogandha, a range of multi-awarded meditative oils.

For her primary degree, she chose to study philosophy out of interest for ethics and morality, modalities of thoughts, concepts of existence and all aspects of the human condition. She then took a meandering route from philosophy to human rights. After having been taught western philosophy, which is ‘rationalistic’, she discovered Daoism and Eastern philosophy, which in turn led me to study meditation. Through mediation, she experienced interconnectedness and universality and that in turn led her to human rights.

She wished that we learned that human rights the way it is taught comes from a particular philosophical perspective and wished that the students would learn as well about the existence of other philosophical perspectives. In her opinion, this radical shift is necessary as the human rights tradition seems to be currently failing, especially regarding environmental issues. We need to move away from this anthropocentric vision of human rights.

Her decision to start her business was mission-and passion-driven. The biggest reward of owning her company is the creative side of it as well as the feedback from the users of her oils. She feels that she helps people out of their thinking minds.