Monday, September 6, 2010

“New director sees the world, settles in Iowa City”

“New director sees the world, settles in Iowa City”

New director sees the world, settles in Iowa City

Posted: 06 Sep 2010 02:29 AM PDT

Danielle Dahl had never left the United States until talking with her chiropractor, who hailed from Cyprus.

"He convinced me I needed to see the world," she said. "If it weren't for his intervention, I'd probably be conducting life as normal in Iowa."

That led to spending 1½ years in London and Austria following high school. She has since spent the last 12 years traveling and attending school at the University of Iowa, and she began her new job last month as executive director of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council and the Council for International Visitors to Iowa Cities.

It was a position Dahl, 30, said combined her passion for working with international visitors and being near home.

"Half of it is what they do," she said of ICFRC and CIVIC. "I like interacting with international visitors. I like showing them Iowa."

Dahl said she had a regular childhood growing up in Davenport. Her chiropractor, who spoke seven languages and had traveled extensively, encouraged her to travel.

"He said I had the personality of a traveler ... and that I would find out more about myself," Dahl said.

So after graduation from Davenport Assumption High in 1998, she moved to London, where she stayed for a few months before getting a job in Austria as an au pair for a family with three children. She stayed for a year, learning German before returning to London. She said she spent her time playing guitar on the street, earning tips from passers-by.

"I used to pay rent by playing my guitar and singing," Dahl said. "It was pretty good money."

In the summer of 2000, she returned and began attending UI. It would be an eight-year journey and she earned her bachelor's degree in international studies in 2008. She continued to travel, working during the school year and then backpacking in Europe during the summer.

Her travels included spending the 2006-07 school year in Thessaloniki, Greece. She learned Greek while teaching English to 6-year-olds and helping American students studying in Thessaloniki to adapt to the new culture.

(2 of 2)

Dahl said that while traveling, she likes to move away from the tourist areas and live and work where the locals live and play.

"Whenever I live in a country, I tend to fully immerse myself," Dahl said. "It's more of the individual places. I love hanging out with the locals. You really get to see how life is."

After graduating from UI and following an internship with the American embassy in Bucharest, Romania, she took a job at the Center for International Rural and Environmental Health at UI, working with visiting international scholars.

This summer, Dahl applied for the executive director job with ICFRC and CIVIC. Newman Abuissa, a member of the search committee that hired her and president of CIVIC, said her experience and language ability made her ready to meet international visitors to the area.

"She was an outstanding candidate," he said. "She spoke many languages. She visited many countries and lived in some of them."More travel is on the horizon for Dahl, with plans to go to Turkey in November as part of the International Visitor and Leader Program through the U.S. State Department. Working with CIVIC, there also are plans to bring 15 Americans, 15 Armenians and 15 Turks to Iowa to work on entrepreneurship and women's empowerment.

"It's kind of a wide variety," she said. "The organizations are really good for local businesses. We're hoping to grow them."

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)