On April 16, Stevens hosted its first ever Global Lecture, called “Unlocking Your Potential as a Global Citizen: We as One, Stepping into the World,” an event designed to spark conversation around international identity and global interconnectedness. The central theme was simple: What does it mean to be a global citizen?
The event featured three speakers, all of whom are New York residents with diverse international backgrounds. They were invited to share their stories of growing up abroad and navigating life in the U.S. as international students or advocates for international communities, offering distinct perspectives on what it means to be a global citizen.
Deepesh Dhingra, the first speaker and founder of One to World, embodies pursuing global citizenship through multiculturalism. Raised in Nairobi, Kenya, Dhingra speaks Hindi, Punjabi, English, and Swahili. He came to the US in 2004 to pursue engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he stumbled across a program called the “Global Classroom.” It was there that he found a community that made him feel at home, as he met people who could pronounce his name correctly and who wanted to learn more about his background.
That feeling of being truly seen and heard became the inspiration for One to World, the nonprofit Dhingra later founded. The program connects international students with young American children, encouraging cultural exchange via student-led lesson plans about their home countries. The outcome has been young students who learn about the world and bring that knowledge home, sharing it with family and igniting curiosity in their own communities.
The second panelist, Alexis M. Akagawa, is a Senior International Student Advisor at Columbia University’s International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO). With degrees from Columbia, Pitzer College, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, her professional journey is rooted in international education. Akagawa’s role involves supporting Columbia’s F and J-1 visa students with documentation, advising, and navigating the challenges of enrollment and employment.
The final panelist, Aman Chopra, graduated from New York University and is currently working as a stand up comedian, bringing his humor and wit to the conversation. He had grown up living in five different countries and takes a lot of pride in all of the different places he has lived in and how they have shaped them.
Chopra said that his definition of a global citizen is somebody who is curious. He described curiosity as the starting point of connection — someone who asks questions, who tries new food, who researches unfamiliar topics simply because they were wondering. It doesn’t matter where your curiosities lie, but it matters that you are curious, and that you act on it. In his view, you don’t have to travel the world to be a global citizen, but you have to care enough to learn about it.
Collectively, the speakers explained why it is important for people to pursue global citizenship. They noted that being a global citizen and being curious teaches people about themselves. Engaging with different cultures, traditions, languages, and worldviews helps build a broader, more grounded identity — one that isn’t confined by national borders or family expectations, but shaped by a mosaic of experiences. People begin to carry stories, ideas, and perspectives that they can share with others, and find the capacity to build empathy, compassion, and understanding..
Dr. Zhang, from Stevens’s Office of International Students and Scholars, opened the lecture with a question that lingered throughout: How can we build a more unified world? Part of his goal at Stevens was to find a way of achieving this – even though it is a massive question with no easy answers. Whether it be through promoting students to study abroad and participating in cross-cultural opportunities, or by hiring people across the globe to teach here, these all contribute to making the student body more intune with the rest of the world. The lecture stressed that one thing is clear: Unity doesn’t start with government or foreign policy, it starts with conversations, classrooms, and curiosity.
Lectures like this one provide that first step for the people who are curious in this way. For students thinking about studying abroad, it was a place to ask people who have done it what their experience was like. For others, it might be the first time they hear a story radically different from their own. One meeting with someone from a different set of circumstances can inspire a lifetime of learning and curiosity, and it just takes that one step.
