Grace Boker Mungkaje - Deciding when to climb the tree.

Trisha: 00:00:00

I would like to acknowledge the Tharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

Trisha: 00:00:40

Hi there, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organisational psychologist, and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the Shifts in thinking as those of you who've listened to some of the earlier episodes will be aware.

Trisha: 00:01:07

Cultural intelligence. Sometimes called CQ, is the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, and it's made up of four areas motivational, knowledge, metacognitive and behavioural. And it's a capability that helps us as we move across cultures. Today I'm speaking with someone who has made many cultural moves and who is high on all of those aspects of cultural intelligence, and she's brought them to support her not only on those cultural moves, but also in her day to day work as a forensic auditor.

Trisha: 00:01:43

Welcome, Grace. Grace Boker Mungkaje.

Grace: 00:01:47

Hi, Trisha. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Trisha: 00:01:50

It's wonderful to be here with you and really looking forward to talking with you and unpacking some of the adventures you've had in your life so far. So, Grace, what is a culture other than the culture you grew up in that you have learned to love and appreciate?

Grace: 00:02:07

Oh, that's a tough one. I think for me, I don't have any specific culture that's like a favourite for me. I take all the cultures that I've been lucky to sort of experience and immerse myself in. They are they all are part of me or part of what I’m becoming. So for me, I don't have any specific culture that's my favorite.

Grace: 00:02:32

But I do have sort of aspects of all those different cultures that I that I find are things that I favour and I use every day, depending on like where my personal interactions or professional interactions. So yeah. But like, pretty much there's a good thing about every culture. That's the thing that I really appreciate about being exposed to different cultures.

Grace: 00:03:03

You appreciate how different we are as human beings and how we see different things from different cultures. And then at the same time, how different we are and how that's that's perfectly okay. So different because the current cultural setting I'm in in Papua New Guinea to be different is often it's often a challenge, especially if you're a female.

Grace: 00:03:27

It’s, we're brought up to be sort of conformist and we we listen to the head of the family, be that our father, our husband, you know, a partner or your boss at work. And so that that aspect is there. Given my exposure to other cultures, I've been able to see myself as an individual as well as part of the group.

Grace: 00:03:47

So I can go between. Yeah. So, I think my favourite part about the early interactions in other cultures that don't sort of live in collective societies is the ability to switch between individualist and then group. And that's the biggest blessing that I've gotten from being from my early exposure to different cultures.

Trisha: 00:04:08

And being able to appreciate both of those ways of operating.

Grace: 00:04:12

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Because there's there's there's pros and cons to every approach.

Trisha: 00:04:19

Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting. So I'm interested then to think about a time when you have experienced a real shift, you know, when you might have suddenly become aware of a new perspective. Can you tell me about a time like that?

Grace: 00:04:33

Oh, I think I experienced a major shift when I moved from the U.S. back to Papua New Guinea because I had spent my formative years in the U.S. and I wasn't old enough in in Papua New Guinea to really figure out who I am as a person before I moved to the U.S. So sort of the cultural setting that I was over there and this was this was on the East Coast.

Grace: 00:05:00

And and so when I was in that setting, when I moved to PNG, I think the hardest thing to for me to grapple with, I think I remember two major incidences or not, incidents sounds bad. Situations. Moments. Moments I became aware. It was when we returned and it was sort of our first holiday to go to a village.

Grace: 00:05:22

So every Papua New Guinea has a village that they go home to for holidays. And so I come from a little island and so I went with my family and then I saw my male cousins climbing the trees. And and so I instinctively I ran to climb as well because that's, that's what I do in the U.S. I thought it would be okay.

Grace: 00:05:42

And so I started climbing, but then my grandmother came down and she scolded me and she was like, you're not you're not supposed to be climbing the trees. That's something for your cousin brothers to do. And even the term cousin brothers, that's not something I had been exposed to in the U.S. because in the U.S., it's very it's your nuclear family and it's brother is only by biological link.

Grace: 00:06:07

But in the Pacific, your family, your cousins brothers can be your first cousins. Second cousins. They're all cousins. Brothers. You've got quite, quite a big family. I was shocked immediately because I was like, Oh, this is my grandmother who who's who is very loving. And she welcomed me onto the island and I've already gotten to know her, bonded over a few days.

Grace: 00:06:29

So when she scolded at me, I was I was surprised. And so I didn't know whether I should continue climbing the tree or come back down. But then it was the way everyone looked at me, even my cousin brothers, the children I was playing with that looked at me and then I felt I think that was the first time I sort of felt confronted that what I was doing wasn't acceptable and so I came down.

Grace: 00:06:51

And I remember it was quite sad. I remember like I came down and then I just sort of went and sat on the side and watched them sort of climb the trees. And I think she never, She didn't she didn't come over and explain to me why I couldn't do it, but she expected that maybe my parents would have taught me that.

Grace: 00:07:10

And they did do a lot of that cultural fomenting when we were in the U.S. it was still very both cultures. So they would we would be going to school, being exposed to the American culture, coming back home. They would still speak our mother tongue, all of that. And I knew some some of the cultural rules. I wasn't totally, you know, not aware of it.

Grace: 00:07:30

But I think seeing it applied in that setting and being that young, I think it caught me off guard. And so I never really knew, you know, why I couldn't do that. And later on, as I went through life, as I went on to further my education and then when like began working life in Papua New Guinea, I realized that there will be many moments where I'm I'm asked to get off that tree.

Grace: 00:07:59

And I have to decide when is a time when I will apply what I learned in my American cultural upbringing, which is to speak up. And as long as you justify yourself and to stand up for what you believe in, then that's perfectly fine. And as long as you do it in a respectful manner, you're not harming other people, then it's perfectly okay.

Grace: 00:08:19

So when to apply that and then when I apply my Melanesian cultural values, which is there's sometimes that I cannot do certain things, it's not acceptable for me as a woman. So that one incident is something that I make reference to a lot when I talk to people about moving between worlds. So, it's a very simple thing, but it's been very it's guided me through different settings that I've later learned how to apply myself in university life and all of that because when when we're educated as Papua New Guineans were educated to the extent of, you know, the knowledge for that specific subject.

Grace: 00:08:58

But our culture is still something we bring in even to the workplace. And so and so I'm always very aware of that when I go into the workplace or at university that I'm surrounded by people that have cultural values that me that that, that that sort of place me in a situation where I have to be quiet at times or I can’t do certain things, but I just have to know which moments.

Grace: 00:09:22

To climb the tree or to get off the tree.

Trisha: 00:09:25

Exactly. So am I the little girl who gets off the tree right now? Yeah, well, I mean, you have had a lot of global moves in your life from that childhood experience where you were born in Canada, raised in the USA with your dad's postgrad work and study, and then as an adult working in your profession, you were selected to represent your Papua New Guinean organisation and moved to Australia for a year of learning and growth, which was when we met.

Trisha: 00:09:56

And and after that you moved back to PNG. Then a few years later you were awarded a Chevening scholarship, which is, you know, a real privilege and honour and you went to study in Wales completing a master's degree in forensic audit and accounting. And then again after that you moved back to Papua New Guinea and since then you've been selected to be part of the Young Pacific Leaders Group, which was an Australian Award and more recently selected to be part of the US Professional Fellows program where you went and worked in the US as an adult.

Trisha: 00:10:30

So maybe in some ways coming full circle from that childhood experience. It sounds like you've made a number of significant shifts mentally and behaviourally, so to tell us about them.

Grace: 00:10:42

Yeah, yeah. I think I'm really grateful for the first sort of move after I moved back to PNG, was moving to Canberra and that's where I had the great serendipity to meet you, and I think that was all that was an interesting experience for me, apart from, you know, learning how the Australian Government does audits and all of that, that that was from sort of the professional angle.

Grace: 00:11:10

But I think you were the first person that taught me the word TCK.

Trisha: 00:11:14

So just to give you a little bit of a definition of what a TCK is, it stands for a Third Culture Kid, and it's a term used to describe people who spend a significant part of their childhood living outside their passport countries. A friend of mine, Tanya Crossman, is a researcher in this area and she has a fantastic blog explaining it.

Trisha: 00:11:36

So I will put that in the show notes as well.

Grace: 00:11:39

And I had never been taught that term. I never knew it existed. I mean, I knew there were kids like me out there, but I didn't know what we were called. Like it was a thing, but I think that was I like to think that was the beginning of my process in terms of understanding what happened with getting on the tree and getting off.

Grace: 00:12:02

Because all along I had never I had never come to know no one had adequately explained to me. I myself had not unpacked that properly. I sort of stored it away and and carried on with life life in PNG. Because also my culture that I am part of in Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is very diverse, over 800 languages.

Grace: 00:12:22

Everybody has a different culture down to yeah, every district it's very multicultural and where I'm from, we're sort of raised to, you know, cop it up and move on. We're not a culture where people will sympathize with you if that sort of it's not seen as a hurdle. It's sort of sort of that sort of like I can make reference to sort of like when they say first world problems, I don't like to refer to it, but it's like that I feel to someone from an emerging economy, it's the same thing.

Grace: 00:12:53

I couldn't I couldn't raise it. They they were just like, oh, well, you were just being disobedient. That's why you had attitude to get off the tree. But through meeting you, when I went on that secondment to Australia, I don't know if you'll remember, but there was you showed us the iceberg of what is culture. What else? What are the things we see and what else is below it?

Grace: 00:13:15

And then when you got to know me and then you were like, Oh, you're a third culture kid. And so I immediately went home, Googled a bit more, iceberg a bit more, and I read.

Trisha: 00:13:23

Some of the research.

Grace: 00:13:24

I read some of the research being the nerd in which I've now learned to accept that I am.

Trisha: 00:13:30

Absolutely.

Grace: 00:13:31

And then I realized, Oh, there's a wealth of information. There's people out there that understand what I'm going through. And so that really set the tone for when I went to Canberra and going to Australia, I realized also that Australians also differ from Americans. And so learning that that that shift as well, that okay, in Australia they're close to us, Papua New Guinea, the further from the US, but there's somewhere in that iceberg.

Grace: 00:13:59

Somewhere in there. And so learning, learning that was important I think for me. Canberra, the thing that stood out was meeting you and being introduced to the concept of TCK. So equipped with that, when I returned back to Papua New Guinea it helped because after my experience in Australia it also meant I moved up in the organisation and so that required me to be, you know, interacting with before I was sort of like I'd be like the intern, the understudy that went off.

Grace: 00:14:33

And then now I'm pushed into a more roles and responsibilities because I've gotten that experience from Australia. They, they expect a bit more for me.

Trisha: 00:14:41

Absolutely.

Grace: 00:14:42

This time when I'm going to the client once again, I'm confronted with whether to climb the tree or not, because often the people I'm interviewing are older, they're male now, but now being equipped with what you taught me during the ten months and, and my exposure back into, you know, in Australian life and then coming back here, I find that it made me a bit more sure of myself, Because I now know that there are times where I need to sort of back off and there are times that I have to do.

Grace: 00:15:18

I have to go forward and climb that tree because it's either there's a deadline to parliament or things that I need to do for work. Yeah, absolutely. That really helps me.

Trisha: 00:15:28

Recognizing what you are capable of and what you had. Yes, I'm also aware of then, you moved to Wales, which again would have been, you know, similar and different to both Australia and to the USA. So that would have been another shift as well.

Grace: 00:15:47

Yes, I'm glad you brought that up because I found moving to Wales when I did tell people, even from Wales and from the UK they were like, Why are you leaving the tropics? It rained a lot up there. Why are you doing that move? And I said, Well, for the sake of the degree that the specific degree I want, there are only a few places in the United Kingdom, let alone the world that offered this course so that's where I'm going in search of education, that's where I'm headed.

Grace: 00:16:16

And they're like, okay. And then when I arrived there, I think the thing that stood out to me was that the announcements at the train station, it was obvious when I had left Heathrow and I was on my way to Cardiff, I realized that when I arrived at the Cardiff station, the announcements were made in both English, Welsh first and then English.

Grace: 00:16:39

And I was like, and I've always I've always listened to sort of Gaelic music, Welsh pop up leading up to going because of the nerd I am. I was researching and all of that and so.

Trisha: 00:16:53

Gathering your knowledge. Yes.

Grace: 00:16:56

And I was like, Oh my God, it's that. It's their language. It's so beautiful. I remember feeling I actually got goosebumps at the train station because I thought back to Papua New Guinea and how we have over 800 languages. That's what we like to tell everyone, including what I'm telling you today. I really don't know how many of those 800 actually exist currently and every day.

Grace: 00:17:20

I'm pretty sure that some of the last speakers of certain languages are dying off because as Papua New Guinea becomes more educated, our our language for education and business is English. And the other other language we speak here Pidgin is sort of a mixture of English. It's like broken English. And so we're losing our mother tongue and none of our signs are in our languages.

Grace: 00:17:47

None of our announcements are in our languages. But I can understand why, because we have over 800.

Trisha: 00:17:52

So many.

Grace: 00:17:52

Languages.

Trisha: 00:17:54

And it might just be a small, small group that speaks your language.

Grace: 00:17:58

Yeah. And then we also don't have, I think, all the trained like we need linguists to sit down and translate for us the actual sounds for all those 800. So the phonetics comes in as well, and that will take some time. And that's still something that like that needs to be done.

Trisha: 00:18:18

In the meantime, we want people to be speaking their mother tongue, teaching their children not not just jumping straight to Tok Pisin or to English, but to to valuing the different languages.

Grace: 00:18:31

Absolutely. Because I think language development is also good. It's also good for your brain. Languages you learn as a child. It it activates more aspects of your brain, different parts of it. But apart from that, I also like to think I have sort of. It also impacts the way I think like I have. There are sometimes when I'm on my sort of PNG thinking and it switched on to that and then I have my American mind switched on.

Grace: 00:19:02

You describe it to people that go, Do you suffer from multiple personalities? What is it? But it is actually the lenses that I will shift. So even speaking, it's not just about speaking the language that they speak English in the U.S. they speak like English. In Wales, they speak English in Australia. But even the freedom of thinking, even if it's in the same language, for me it changes depending on where I'm at.

Trisha: 00:19:27

Yes. Yeah.

Trisha: 00:19:28

And so that's one of the things that you did to to help you make the shift to sort of think in the terms of the language that you were maybe the accent or the pace. Yeah.

Grace: 00:19:40

Yes, definitely. And I think for I found Welsh culture very similar to Papua New Guinea in terms of of being laid back. I found that similarity with Papua New Guinea, yet it had the right balance of laid back yet on time. Okay, so time is something that I see is there's a big stark difference from other cultures. Papua New Guinea island time is very it's it's yeah it's interesting.

Trisha: 00:20:13

Yes and you may remember when we spoke about it in in the training right at the start we talked about sequential time, you know like a like a line, like an arrow that you can chop up and manage and synchronic time, which is far more circular and you couldn't chop it up and manage it because it just is.

Grace: 00:20:34

That's, that's exactly what I think Island Time is. And yeah, often I do, I do. I will hear people sort of people from other cultures will sort of refer to it in sort of with a bad undertone. I'm sort of like I'm always left to decide whether I should also explain to them that the reason it being late is never anything like it's not good to do that to anyone.

Grace: 00:21:00

It's bad manners. But in our culture, our time is not just our time, it's our family's time. It's your neighbours time. It's it there's a lot more people that at stake because we live sort of in a group setting. And so we will have it's not that we don't plan. We do have a time that we're supposed to, but along the way we will have to divide our time along the way when we finally reach our destination.

Grace: 00:21:26

And, there is also the concept of in our culture, if you don't greet someone, even if you're rushing automatically, they think you're being rude. And so nobody wants to be perceived in their community that they're being rude. And so you're left saying hello along the way. And yeah, and sometimes it's hard and then it gets more complicated if you're talking to elders along the way.

Grace: 00:21:48

And for us, respect for elders is very important in our culture. And so even if I'm running late, if I bump into somebody that's, you know, an elder that lets a friend of my dad or my mum, I have to stand there and talk a bit. I go on.

Trisha: 00:22:03

And pay them the honour of time.

Grace: 00:22:05

It's been a number of times. So I like when that when the setting is right. I do sort of jump in there just again because I feel without that understanding, people who haven't had exposure to cultures such as that of Papua New Guinea and other parts of the world where we live in sort of group culture that they would perceive it as just being rude and there's a risk of that.

Trisha: 00:22:29

Do you find you have to sort of remind yourself sometimes, you know, like, you know, don't climb the tree right now. I guess that is maybe that is one of your most powerful sort of shift techniques, if you like to remind yourself which cultural way you're choosing to operate in.

Grace: 00:22:45

And definitely, I think recently when I went back to the States for the fellowship, I met another third culture kid and the person that was actually my manager had a very similar shift as me. She she had originally come from Nepal, moved to Canada, spent her high school years there and then moved to the US and there was something that she told me that that sort of cements further on how to deal with whether to climb on the tree or to get off the tree because apart from the cultural influences on my own, me, my sort of personality is very I'm not very passive, you know.

Grace: 00:23:36

So it really gets and you're absolutely that's why I'm laughing when you asked me that question, because you know me too well many times where I just want to run up the tree and shake the tree and be like, Hey, I'm here. It needs to be done, you know? But I she told me because she I observed her I observed in the office that I was attached where she works.

Grace: 00:24:03

I observed her also manoeuvring through, you know, the organisational culture, the culture and all of that. And she told me there's a time to be quietly bold and there's a time to just be outright bold. And I think and she didn't I realized that she didn't tell me out of the blue she because I had already shared with her some of the struggles I will have and the kind of things that I want to do.

Grace: 00:24:31

And and she realized that she had to share that with me. And she also realized that I had observed her be quietly bold because we had discussed a game plan for for this this sort of situation that she was in. But then when we went before the people that she had to sort of present to, she she took a different turn and see my face because my dominant let's do it now was like disappointed.

Grace: 00:24:59

I was like this was not what we discussed. What's going on but in the end it it it she achieved her objectives and that's when she she realized and she she knew that I had noticed that. And then I told her later on, on the drive back when she was going to go, leave me at my Airbnb, I was like, Hey, I noticed you did something there.

Grace: 00:25:18

And she said, Yeah, I saw your face in the crowd. You were like, Oh my God, that's not what we planned, right? You had this calm smile. And I said, Because I realized that you still achieved what we we needed to do, what you were trying to do. And so when after she dropped me at my Airbnb and journaling, which is, you know, something that you reminded me to do when, when you when I was in Canberra and it's still something I do today, I you know, I don't always have time to write every night, but there are moments when I feel like I need to unpack things.

Grace: 00:25:52

And that's when I reflected back and I was like, it's still again about when to know when to climb the tree, get off the tree. And so it's that reminder again. And I think that is something that I, I, I needed to be, I, I needed that now, sort of the shift in my career more than ever, I'm now dealing with more sensitive things compared to what I used to do before.

Grace: 00:26:18

And so I have to be very, very careful on which trees I get on and breaks and when is the right moment or to quietly climb up. Yeah. Being. And so that was a good reminder

Trisha: 00:26:32

And like you are a forensic auditor, one of the things that I've become aware of over the years is that auditors are often almost a culturally unique part of an organisation, and so they need to build bridges across organisational cultural differences, or if they're external, they're coming into an organisation and they might need to build the bridges to get cooperation and understand the organisation.

Trisha: 00:26:56

And so that sounds exactly like the sort of situation that you're saying that sometimes you'll go in and you'll go, I can climb the tree, I'll do it quietly, or this is a time to be quietly bold in this organisation rather than in another.

Grace: 00:27:10

Yes, absolutely. I think audit audit sometimes has sort of a bad connotation because everywhere people would be like, Oh, my God, I'm being audited. And they have this this view that we're almost like bad cops that come in, think this wrong, you did that wrong. And then oftentimes I find that it's just about building that repertoire with the client and it's all about respect as well because we can't get the information.

Grace: 00:27:39

The thing with audit is that we're not there to point out everyone's mistakes. We're there to improve the organisation and their processes. And so in order for us to understand that better, we need to we need to build that trust with the client and with the people that look after each of these sections, pieces of the puzzle that come together.

Grace: 00:27:58

And there are two types of auditors and, you know, there will be people that will go in and be like, I want this, this is that. And they're very cold towards the client. And there are others that, you know, will have to go with a higher sort of emotional intelligence to realize you're not going to get much information.

Grace: 00:28:15

And it's a skill that you have to learn. There's a lot of people also think that all auditors are great number crunchers, and we are, but we also have to have good people skills.

Trisha: 00:28:25

Absolutely.

Grace: 00:28:26

People skills are very, very important. And I find that there's there's times when I use the American sort of upbringing that the culture I learned from that if I've sent a polite email to the client, I've sat down and talked with them, but they're still sort of delaying. That's what I have to be a bit more bold, and I like to refer to that part as as the part of me that that comes from the American culture side.

Grace: 00:28:51

Yeah, well, okay, I sent that email and now I need this because we're only here for three weeks. This right given. And then when I go in, I often go in very Melanesian because we are operating in Papua New Guinea. So I go, you know, greet and figure out what they're doing and tell them that, you know, we're just here to help improve your processes, all of that and yeah, go from there.

Grace: 00:29:13

But like that's usually that's sort of what I did as a financial compliance auditor and I was for most of my career I've been an external auditor. So usually when you're coming from the outside in, people are always very edgy when you go in. But that edginess is edginess is sort of increased now when I go in as a forensic investigator, forensic audit as well, fraud, all of that when I go in for that, um, I can't really tell them, Oh, I'm here to improve your processes because I'm not.

Grace: 00:29:45

I'm here to find fault this time. I'm here to find where with the fraud occurred, where where the internal control processes were not occurring the way they were supposed to. And that led to this. But at the same time, I have to limit myself with the benefit of the doubt by the evidence. That's just the alleged. That's the probably the alleged complaint we got.

Grace: 00:30:09

But it might be perfectly okay. There might have just been a process with sort of the the data entry between the manual process to the system just being a system error or a human error. But I have to have it at the back of my mind. But then at the same time, all auditors are trained to have professional scepticism.

Grace: 00:30:28

But when you're a forensic audit, so you're suspicious of everyone.

Trisha: 00:30:33

But you still have to build trust.

Grace: 00:30:34

Yes. But at the same time, you still have to build trust to start to figure out and shift through. Okay, this is what this person said, that other person said. But wait a minute. That person was in the background. They didn't say much interviewing this set of people. Is there something there? That sort of thing? And then at the back there's also the cultural things at play.

Grace: 00:30:54

Being from a certain part of Papua New Guinea, we all can tell where each of us, we can tell what part of Papua New Guinea you're from. And so when there's a break time, whether it's at lunchtime or yeah, morning coffee, there will be someone probably from my part of Papua New Guinea that will be here to tell me something like, Oh, there's a you know, there'll be a slight whistle-blower on the side there.

Grace: 00:31:15

Yeah. You know, you know, is this, is this sort of something genuine, something for me to look into, or is it their own internal politics or if I listen to this person, is that a cultural bias? Because that's they're from the same part of Papua New Guinea I'm from. So I try not to tune in too much to people that are from the same part as me because I find that it clouded my judgment in remaining impartial.

Grace: 00:31:42

So I try, but I will listen to little like a trivial thing if they say, Oh, that's where the ladies toilet is. But if it try to get into details about why we're there and what they know, I often will tell them that if you'd like, you can write me a statement. And I know if they if they if they are turning around playing cat and mouse with someone else, then they won't come and see me after that.

Grace: 00:32:04

So that's how I sort of try to weed out what I hear.

Trisha: 00:32:08

It sounds like you need a lot of cultural intelligence. And I know you spoke about emotional intelligence, but you are also bridging the different ways people operate, you know, across different organisations, across different, as you said, different people, groups within Papua New Guinea. And so that CQ that you sort of, you know, you've built up over the years, built up as a TCK and then refined on all your that would be really holding you in good stead in those situations as well.

Trisha: 00:32:37

I'd love also to ask you, because I know this is something you've been doing a lot of lately about supporting other Papua New Guinean people who are applying for opportunities. So it might be like the Chevening scholarship and I know there are some of the other scholarships that exist that you're educating people around and you're encouraging people to take a step and to apply.

Trisha: 00:33:02

And I know you're helping people understand application processes and practice interviews and all of those things, which I think is absolutely amazing. So tell us a little bit about that and what your hopes are for that work that you're doing to sort of support others in in their own growth and development?

Grace: 00:33:20

Oh, yeah. That is I can talk about this till the cows come home. So yeah, it is sort of like a passion project that I have on the side. My little group is called WRait Meri Hmm. In sort of Papua New Guinean pidgin lingo, we will say Right Meri for someone that's like a good bloke, a good girl.

Grace: 00:33:43

And so I've sort of played around with that and have it sort of written. W R A I T, like writing. I like WRait Meri and basically with that I give scholarship advice for pretty much any scholarships that's eligible to Papua New Guineans to apply or other people around the world that I've had things to LinkedIn, I've had people in different parts of the world also message me scholarship advice.

Grace: 00:34:11

I like we, my team and I also review essays. We run through. If they've been shortlisted for an interview, we provide mock interviews as well, also give advice if they have to sit any of the graduate entrance exams like the GRE or English. The Australian and New Zealand universities often will require IELTS, but American universities usually require TOEFL.

Grace: 00:34:36

Okay. So we we provide that sort of coaching and guidance. And I think my main reason for sort of starting this on the side was that I realized that when I returned back from completing my master's through the Chevening UK Chevening scholarships. Yes, shout out to the British government. It was an amazing experience. A lot of people reached out to me, wanted to have coffee or informally send me an email like that that they wanted to apply and noticed that after all the coffees of the emails when it came time to actually click submit, very few people actually submitted and that got me curious as to what why didn't they submit?

Grace: 00:35:19

They seemed like really great applicants, potential applicants. Many of them had forwarded me their CVs and experiences and I was like, You hit you hit everything that they're looking for. And so then I realized that, oh, I think it's not only about having the right experience and exposure and the education sort of requirement, but it's also providing that accountability partner some of these people to to sort of encourage them that you can you are what they're looking for.

Grace: 00:35:51

You have what it takes all all the scholarships websites, you know, they have to market some of their star scholars. I also felt intimidated when I was looking looking at the UK Chevening website, you know, there were people that had already started their their businesses, their location, not for profits. Yeah, they were full on. And I was like, Oh my God, I haven't studied half the things they've listed.

Grace: 00:36:18

Do I have what it takes? And so that's when I realized that I think that could be what people are also going through and not applying When it came time for the due date. So we started this, I'm happy that now I've seen that slowly the number of applicants that have approached me, it has increased in terms of clicking submit because I keep telling them you can't you can't be in the race unless you submit.

Grace: 00:36:42

All it's going to cost is, you know, probably you know, your ego if you get a rejection email. But once you get over that, you know the process and you can try again next year. There are people that I've met and I tell them all the stories about the people I met in London when I went across, that had told me that they had applied for five or six times before me, and I was lucky that I got in on my first attempt.

Grace: 00:37:09

But I wanted everyone to know that there are people out there that have have tried many times and they still got in in the end. So it's all about how many times you apply. Chevening is not going to discriminate or Australian Awards or any other scholarships. In fact, it took them to the panel. They see that this is a determined person.

Trisha: 00:37:29

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Grace: 00:37:31

Yeah. So apart from providing, you know, the formal things in terms of reviewing essays and all of that, it's also getting people in the right headspace and getting through imposter syndrome, which is something we all go through. And so just letting them know that it is it is I think it's okay. And you just have to keep going.

Grace: 00:37:49

Just the way you sort of highlighted TCK to me. And then that opened up a whole world for me.

Trisha: 00:37:55

And I guess you yourself are sort of embodying it in front of them. So here's a Papua New Guinean woman who, you know, has been subject to the same cultural influences, told not to climb the trees, but she has gone around the world so if she can do it, I can do it too. And so that must be encouraging for them.

Grace: 00:38:13

Absolutely. I tried to share also with them that I was told not to apply. They had told me that I had still I was still too young to apply. That was just within my organisation. And they said that postgraduate degrees was meant for people that had served at least 15 years. And at the time that I had applied, I thought I'd only serve five years.

Grace: 00:38:44

And I was like, And that's when that was a moment when I was like, No, I'm going to climb that tree, because.

Trisha: 00:38:48

That's right.

Grace: 00:38:49

It’s my timeline.

Trisha: 00:38:50

Go for that tree, girl.

Grace: 00:38:51

Climb that tree. And I also held myself to a different standard because I saw I had reconnected with my friends from childhood, from the US, and I saw that in the US. People as young as 25 were going and doing their master's 25, 23, and I held myself to that ruler and I was like, No, I think it's within my reach.

Grace: 00:39:12

People I work with are doing that right now, so I think it's an opportune time and so I'm going to go for it. And so I tell them that story to encourage them because many of them are also going through that. And I think it's even harder when you're a female because you you could be a mother. And oftentimes people will also tell you that you're going to live like you're going to leave your family, travel thousands of miles away to go to school.

Grace: 00:39:38

You know, what kind of mother are you? What kind of, you know, you leaving behind your family, all of that. And so there's a lot of doubt that's surrounding you. And sometimes the people around you don't even know that they're being negative but you. And that just increases your imposter syndrome more. And so I tell them that, like, you know, sometimes you have to be you have to not listen and just climb that tree.

Grace: 00:40:00

And so I actually, in fact, did not get all the approvals. I went ahead and applied and then later was like, okay, So I did a thing. I mean, climbed a tree. I climb a tree and could you guys release me off to study now? Yeah. They were like, okay, we told you you were not supposed to do that.

Grace: 00:40:22

And I was like, Well, I did it. So it is possible. And so as a result of that, I'm quite happy that after I had gone and done that, when I returned back from studies, a couple of more people within my organisation, young people started applying for scholarships, and they went across to New Zealand, they went to Australia, and I thought, Wow, okay, there's something there's something good happening from climbing that tree.

Grace: 00:40:52

Despite me being told not to do that. And so now I'm thinking, I don't think it's only just within our organisation. It's probably happening in other organisations. And now through what I do with the writing coach coaching, I realize that it's happening all around and for me, I get excited that I get to tell more people to go climb trees.

Trisha: 00:41:12

Yeah, Agreed. I think that's wonderful and I think that's a wonderful place to leave it. And also I want to say, if anybody wants to contact you so that they can get that receive that help, that that assistance and guidance, they should do that via LinkedIn. And I'll put your LinkedIn contact in the show notes so that people can follow up with you.

Trisha: 00:41:32

Grace, thank you so much for your time. This has been wonderful to reflect with you and to see all your learning, your very many learnings through your different mobility experiences and the cultural intelligence and the growth that you've developed and all the shifts that you've made. So we really do appreciate it. Thank you for your time. It's wonderful.

Grace: 00:41:56

Oh, no the pleasure's mine. Trisha, always lovely to speak to you. And I. I hope I hope the people listening don't get too confused about what we're talking about when we're talking about climbing the trees.

Trisha: 00:42:07

I don't think so.

Grace: 00:42:08

Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. And yeah, I really hope that. I think a bottom line is that if there's only if there's one person that listens to this and goes and decides to climb a tree, whether that be applying for a scholarship or a job or just starting something new in their life, I hope.

Grace: 00:42:29

I think they do. And I also hope that we we build a world where people are respectful of the differences and similarities between cultures. And I think that we are more we're more similar than different.

Trisha: 00:42:45

Yes. And the differences are wonderful. So we should celebrate them, too. Yeah.

Grace: 00:42:50

Yes, absolutely.

Trisha: 00:42:52

Fantastic. Everyone, thank you so much. Please, you haven't already done so. Subscribe to the podcast on whatever podcast app you're using and would really appreciate it if you could rate the podcast. So thank you very much. I look forward to speaking with you again soon.