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.