An American professor with Czech roots returned to her native country thanks to a Fulbright scholarship

Dina was born in Prague into a family of a Czech mother and a Costa Rican father who lived in the town of Mšeno near Mělník at the time. Therefore, Czech is not a completely foreign language to her and she understands it relatively well, yet she prefers English, which she mostly uses for both communication and teaching at the faculty. When she was about three years old, the family moved to Costa Rica, where Dina attended primary and secondary school. There, for a change, she picked up Spanish, which she had previously heard from her father. She later used it extensively during her professional career. But the country was not appealing enough to make her stay in Costa Rica. At the age of 18, she decided to study in the United States, leaving Latin America for good and separating from her parents and two younger siblings, a sister and a brother. "Costa Rica is a beautiful country to which I can return at any time to see my parents and sister, but I don't think I ever felt at home. I didn't want to stay there," Dina explains and adds: "I managed to get a scholarship to Louisiana State University in the United States, and I certainly don't regret taking the opportunity."

Having begun this chapter of her life in Louisiana, she later moved to New Mexico, namely to the University of New Mexico, where she met her life partner, with whom she has three children. In addition to the Czech Republic and Costa Rica, Dina also lived in Hungary, her husband's homeland, for four years. " Going to Hungary was a challenge to me. I thought it would be easy to learn Hungarian since I knew a little Czech, Spanish and English, but it wasn't easy at all. On the contrary, the beginnings were very difficult. But I started working for an American company in HR, helping build their Prague branch, among other things. Later, I started to focus more on the USA and was offered a job in Florida and then in other US states, so we finally went back to the US," recalls Dina, who also stayed briefly in Toronto, Canada. Although she holds both a Czech and an American passport, she clearly considers herself a citizen of the United States of America, although she has never given up by the idea of ​​returning to the country where she was born for a longer period of time.

Dina originally studied chemistry. Nonetheless, she decided not to pursue a career in chemistry and very quickly switched to business. Subsequently, she was extensively active in the field of Human Resource Management in corporate companies. However, having given birth to her first son, she felt she needed a change of profession and started studying again, this time to become a professor. She has been teaching at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire for 8 years, where she also settled with her family. "I think it is my home. At least, I feel at home here, even though you never know what the future has in store for you. I like to call myself a global citizen," she adds with a mischievous smile.

As a keen traveller, she decided to take advantage of the Fulbright scholarship and return, at least for a while, to the country where she was born. "I always dreamt of what it would be like to live, work and basically 'function' in the Czech Republic as an adult. That is, not just to visit my relatives there, as it had been the case before. So as soon as I learned about the Fulbright scholarship, I immediately contacted the Fulbright Czech office and asked for more information. I attended information meetings and seminars in order to find out whether I could be a suitable candidate as I knew the competition was fierce," Dina describes how the idea of ​​getting the scholarship was conceived. "It's a relatively long process that normally takes 6 to 8 months. I started preparing my application sometime in 2019, but then unfortunately the Covid-19 crisis came, so in the end it took me almost two years before I finally found myself here at the faculty," she explains.

Dina had always known she did not want a placement in Prague. First, she believed there was a higher chance of getting scholarship outside Prague, because, she believed, most Americans would be attracted to Prague. Second, in her view everything has been concentrated in large cities in the last two decades, so she decided to pass on her experience and knowledge to a smaller university.

Dina succeeded with her application and she taught two courses at the Faculty of Informatics and Management at the University of Hradec Králové and is also engaged in research activities, which she also likes a lot. Her course Introduction to Social Innovation mainly explores the Design Thinking approach, which has been around in the field of social innovation for a relatively short period of time. "Of course, innovation is mainly concerned with products and other things that need some improvement, but social innovation has only been gaining strength over the last 10 years or so. This is actually a more current view of the innovation, in terms of how to improve social challenges by modifying or reorganizing parts that we may already have in order to solve a social problem or issue. In a way, it goes down to finding and using the resources that are currently available. This can be applied both on a small scale as well as a relatively large one,” explains Professor Dina, adding: “As an example of using the Design Thinking approach, I would mention the “mothers2mothers” organization in Africa where there is a high HIV incidence in pregnant women. The main challenge is to help mothers with HIV to learn how to get treatment and what to do so that they don’t transmit the virus to the baby, not only during pregnancy, but also when breastfeeding. There are a lot of uneducated mothers without access to knowledge and information in Africa. The traditional solution to this problem is to raise more money, recruit more doctors and get access to other resources in order to prevent the mother-to-child transmission. Instead, the new approach of mothers2mothers is to start working with what is immediately available, that is, with mothers who have experienced such a situation first hand. In such cases, it is necessary to pay close attention to these mothers, emphasizing the correct use of medication and the correct procedure. This personal approach is especially important because it engages mothers who have successfully gone through the process themselves and prevented their children from the virus, into becoming mentors," Dina exemplifies the main idea of Design Thinking and summarizes: "Of course, this new approach does not solve the problem, but helps generate progress." 

The other course Dina taught at the faculty is Managerial Methods. She uses here the X-Culture platform, which is partly connected with the subjects Dina teaches in the USA, namely International Management and Human Resource Management. "We place students in global virtual teams of approximately 4 to 5 members. These teams then communicate virtually with real companies around the world and look for ways to expand to other countries. Therefore, the students prepare a market analysis, design a marketing plan and look for ways to succeed in fiercely competitive markets," says Dina. 

Early next year, Dina plans to return home to her family and current job and also wants to support her children during their studies. At the same time, she does not refrain from the idea of going someplace in the future. "Saint Anselm College has an exchange program with Orvieto, Italy, so I thought I might try to go there later. I just enjoy these semester exchanges!” adds Dina, who spends long autumn evenings in the Czech Republic not only improving her Czech language, but also bobbin-lacing.