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Introduction
This week, we Civic Tech Scholars had the opportunity to talk to two local experts and community leaders with unique and diverse careers. As students, we are actively looking for jobs, planning our futures, wondering what comes next, and where our careers will take us. What we learned from Jordan Ghawi and Nadia Botello’s stories was that we can make a career based on our passions, even if it seems unconventional.
Background on the Experts
Nadia Botello has had a unique and innovative career. Nadia is from San Antonio, and her family has been in South Texas for generations. Along with that family legacy, she is also a fourth generation trained musician. She has spent time in places all over the country, and spent time in academia lecturing about music, art, and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. She came back to San Antonio because her father fell ill despite thinking she wouldn’t return, but she’s so glad she did.
In her career, she has focused on combining sound and data. She collects data from rivers around the country and makes orchestra music based on it. Another interesting example of her work was that she created the sound for a virtual reality experience in the deep ocean to demonstrate environmental issues that are inaccessible for humans. But most recently, she started a company that helps small startups in Texas by providing guidance and insight: Texans Mean Business.
Jordan Ghawi has also had a unique career, combining tech, healthcare, emergency services and public safety. Early in his career, he worked at Rackspace, having met Graham Weston. After that, he worked as a firefighter paramedic for years in Bexar County. Having served in emergency healthcare in many ways, also having worked for the Texas Emergency Medical Task Force, he is experienced in community involvement and being able to handle difficult situations. Most recently, he is the Chief Strategy Officer at The Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, which is an organization that covers 22 counties, overseeing their emergency services. They provide guidance to projects and research, keeping the region up to date and advanced in their emergency services.
Key Insights and Takeaways
We walked away from the conversation having received a message of the importance of collaboration. Both of their careers are about connecting with people, whether that be through art or through working in the public safety industry. From our guests, we received useful advice on maintaining relationships with people. Here are the key takeaways:
Ghawi emphasized the importance of gaining trust. This is especially applicable to helping people with urban planning initiatives. Oftentimes, it is difficult to ask people to civically engage and reach people where they are; sometimes people don’t want help. This is an issue of trust. Nothing can progress until you have gained trust, so rushing the process of getting to know someone is never worth it. Furthermore, the ability to listen without argument or enforcing your perspective is essential to that process.
Understanding people, and having them feel understood, is so essential, not only to gain their trust, but to also understand the history and context of a situation. Understanding a town, city, or neighborhood is crucial to implementing useful solutions to their issues.
In our society that thrives off of competition, it is important to compete in an innovative way, which usually involves a level of collaboration. That’s why, in the medical field, for example, you need to focus goals around patients because that is the common ground that can unify competitors towards common community goals. Reframing goals around the common grounds is essential.
From the perspectives of Ghawi and Botello, San Antonio is proactive, not reactive, which we Civic Tech Scholars can attest to as one of our most important goals is to prepare San Antonio for the coming regional growth. However, they felt as though a lot of initiatives are planned, but never fully implemented, so San Antonio still has work to do despite its forward-thinking nature.
Conclusion
Hearing the stories of people who followed their passions and had successful, community and people driven careers is so inspiring. It is inspiring to see all the types of skills that are valuable in the workforce and community. Moreover, they insight our guests gave us on being able to connect with the San Antonio community that we are trying to uplift is a greatly useful skill. We thank Nadia Botello and Jordan Ghawi for sharing their stories and insights. If you are interested in collaborating or participating in further developing this research with us, sign up below to learn more about how you can contribute and benefit from this ongoing research.
Ellerbe is a Civic Tech Scholars Intern with Better Futures Institute with the 2024 Students + Startups Cohort. She is an undergraduate student-athlete at Swarthmore College double-majoring in Computer Science and Political Science.
