My Australia Story: Pilar Kasat

20^th October 2023

My Australia Story: Pilar Kasat

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Dr Maggie Jiang:

Good evening, colleagues, friends, guests. My name is Maggie Jiang. I'm from UWA School of Social Sciences. We are very delighted to have you this evening for My Australian Story public talk series. This program is a joint effort between UWA School of Social Sciences and the Boola Bardip Museum. Can I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners, the land of which are we today and pay respects to the elders, past, present and emerging.

As many of you are aware, My Australian Story program has a mission to share the life narratives of individuals who have chosen to make Australia their home and have crafted successful careers. We hope this program could be served as a source of inspiration for Australians from all walks of life, transcending cultural boundaries. Our goal is to shine a spotlight on the remarkable resilience, achievements and invaluable contributions of first-generation Australians from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Following the resounding success of our inaugural session in May, we are brimming with anticipation and excitement as we come out here tonight for the second chapter of this journey. For those joining us for the first time, let me briefly explain the structure of our sessions. So, each episode we host a distinguished speaker who will generously share the stories of their career and the invaluable insights they have linked on the path to success.

We will leave 10 minutes for Q&A session, providing an opportunity to engage with the speaker and some for the opportunity for networking at the end to foster connections and conversations. This program could not be possible without the support from our school. Please join me in welcoming the head of our school, Professor Amanda Davies, to the stage who will introduce our distinguished speaker this evening. Please welcome Professor Davies. 

Prof. Amanda Davies:

Kaya, wanjoo. It is my great pleasure this evening to introduce to you our eminent speaker for the series Pilar Kasat. She is very well known as the Chief Executive Officer of Regional Arts Western Australia. She is Chilean born or Chilean Australian, Chilean born Australian, living in the ancient country of the Wadjuk Nyoongar people.

She is a highly respected cultural executive, diversity advocate and community cultural practitioner with more than two decades of experience. She has a track record in creative engagement and intercultural dialog with First Nations people and also people of color within a social justice framework, which really is a standout. She is the CEO of Regional Arts Western Australia but bear with me as I list some things off here. A Fellow of Leadership West Australia, a Master of Sustainability and Social Change and a PhD. She also has held non-executive roles, including as Chair of Arts on the Move, of Women of Color Australia. She was previously the Deputy Chair of Diversity Australia Arts. I’ll take a deep breath because I need to keep going. Peer Assessor of the Australia Council and served on the board of the Chamber of Arts and Culture, Western Australia for six years.

She's presented at national and international conferences. I don't know how you squeezed all this in! And her work on the role of arts in driving social change has been published in international academic journals and also national industry magazines. I'm really looking forward to, as I'm sure we all are, learning about her Australia story. Please welcome Pilar Kasat to the stage.

[applause]

Dr Pilar Kasat:

Thank you. Kaya, wanjoo wanjoo. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Wadjuk people of the Nyoongar nation as the traditional custodians of this land and for their enduring and unbroken connection to this place for over 60,000 years. I pay my respects to the elders past and present, and express my gratitude for their wisdom, culture and custodianship they continue to share with us.

Their acknowledgment to country has taken another level of relevance after the result of the referendum last Saturday. This land was never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Thank you to Associate Professor Maggie Jiang and Professor Amanda Davies from the School of Social Science at the University of Western Australia for the invitation to be here tonight.

Since time began, Australia has been a diverse continent. At time of colonization, there were more than 200 Aboriginal languages and 500 Aboriginal dialects spoken here. Today, there are more than 300 languages spoken in homes across Australia. And yet our country grapples with this diversity. Before I speak about my career in Australia, I would like to start by sharing fragments of my story which carry vivid experiences and emotions help me to affirm a political position from which I speak.

During my doctoral research, I came across a Chilean scholar by the name of [indecipherable 06:07], who suggests that 90% of Chileans have indigenous heritage. So, if you're a Chilean like me, you are a mestizaje, that is the product of European colonizers, mainly Spanish and indigenous people. So, despite the likelihood of having a Mapuche heritage, I cannot claim that. The erasure invalidation and construction of indigenous people are lesser than Europeans meant the rejection and denial of indigenous heritage in my country.

My grandmother would absolutely be rolling in her grave if she knew I would dare to suggest we have indigenous ancestry. As a nation, we have been robbed of our cultural heritage and denied access to the knowledge system of our ancestors. This is what colonization has done to us in Abya Yala, known as Latin America. In the language of the Kuna, of the Kuna people, land in its full maturity. That means Abya Yala.

This story is widespread. It has been repeated all over the world and is very well documented in Australia. The impact of colonization today with the monumental cultural fracture that continues to occur through land occupation and dispossession. I was born in a place that the Aymara people called Chile, the End of the World, which is now known as Chile. A long and skinny country situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes Mountain in South America.

I came of age during a very difficult and tumultuous period marked by the oppressive regime of a brutal dictator. General Pinochet’s 17-year rule cast a shadow out of fear and brutality over our nation, resulting in the tragic loss, torture and disappearance of thousands of civilians. Among the victims a significant number where indigenous - people who valiantly struggled to protect their ancestral lands.

Regrettably, akin to Australians, Chileans often sought validation of knowledge and culture from Europe rather than embracing our indigenous heritage. This mindset ingrained the belief that being of European descent was synonymous with goodness and superiority. I was eight years old when I encounter my first discrimination experience. My school year was putting on a nativity play for Christmas, and I thought I will make the best Virgin Mary ever. When the drama teacher started to call for the roles, Joseph, Angels, Three Wise Men, I was just waiting until he called Mary. Then I leapt off my seat. I was so enthusiastic that he had no option but to give me the part. A couple of days later I was in line to get into the classroom, when I overheard a conversation between two of my teachers.

‘It is great we are having the nativity play this year, isn't it?’ ‘Oh yeah. As you know, and did you know that Pilar will be playing the Virgin Mary?’ ‘Yes, I know. What a pity. I thought Valeria’, who happened to be my best friend, ‘would be much better. She's so pretty and so white’. My little heart sank. What happened next was a defining moment for me. Valeria's mum, Auntie Norita as I used to call her, stood up for me and told the teachers that Valeria was very pleased to be an angel, and therefore they should keep me in the role. So, I made my debut as the Virgin Mary, while at the same time I had my first brush with racism. 

Now let's fast forward to 1992 in the city of Perth, Western Australia. It was just a few years after I had fled my homeland because of my political activism. I was granted refuge through the Special Humanitarian Program, a lifeline for many seeking freedom and justice and safety. I was in my early twenties, and I found myself in a new country, a new culture, far from family, and grappling with the challenges of learning a new language.

I could not speak a word of English. It was a time of profound loneliness and intense yearning to find a tribe, a community that I could belong. The journey ahead was daunting, but it didn't take me too long to realize that I was not completely alone. There were a small group of other young Latin American women facing similar challenges, dealing with isolation and trying to adapt to a new and often bewildering culture. It became very clear to me that a sense of belonging hinged on understanding who I truly was. Affirming my own cultural identity was part of that answer. 

I founded a Chilean theater and dance group with a purpose of commemorating 500 years of colonization of the American continent and to shed light on its profound impact on indigenous women. Together, we put our hearts and souls into our craft. Dedicating months to choreographing dances, designing costumes, and finally putting on a great show. Regrettably, the story didn't end here. Following our success, the group faces long challenges and eventually disbanded. What happened, you might ask? 

At that juncture in my life, I was grappling with a profound sense of feeling out of place and rejected by my own kind. I was frustrated and deeply hurt. I found myself subjected to a barrage of accusations ranging from that I was too bossy, that I was getting ahead of myself, and even the claim that I was hogging all the accolades, and I was showing a little bit too much flesh when we were doing a dance performance. Looking back, I realize that this judgment were influenced by the entrenched force of patriarchy and the repressive norms we had all grown up with.

These young women were managing their own displacement traumas. Demands from young people, from their young children with no family support and balancing complex relationships at home. We were all actually damaged by the repressive regime and by the cultural dislocation. It was deeply complicated and difficult to navigate. And as much as I held a vision and I was driven, I had not yet fully really grasped the multifaceted challenges and pressures my fellow young Chilean women were navigating. This experience was very formative. It prepared me for leadership roles and a career in the arts sector where I mobilized people and resources and did some groundbreaking work with Nyoongar people in the southwest of WA for over ten years. 

Working with underrepresented communities I came to realize that oppressive structures create deeply entrenched conditions that are really hard to challenge and very hard to transform. I've come to understand that personal experiences of oppression and disadvantage don't automatically translate into the ability to offer solidarity to oneself or to others. True consciousness and solidarity emerge from our capacity to engage in critical self-reflection about our own identities, the world we live in, and the intricate power structures we encounter. We must educate ourselves to name and critique systemic and structural disadvantage and the barriers to achieving equity and justice. 

In Australia despite the freedoms and privilege many of us enjoy, the impact of colonization on Aboriginal people continue to silence their voices.  Which manifest in poor health outcomes and high incarceration rates, especially of women and children. This colonial legacy also extends to other groups of migrants of color through prejudice and racism. As someone who arrived here as a humanitarian intern, I cannot ignore this stark reality. 

True leadership demands a profound comprehension of oppressive patterns, along with a commitment to forge new paths in the world. It entails nurturing collaborations with others who have experienced oppression and demonstrating leadership through action. This is one of the reasons I choose to identify as a mestizaje or a woman of color. This term serves as a counternarrative against the erasure, invalidation and negation of my Mapuche heritage and the historical construct of indigenous people in Latin America, in Abya Yala as inferior to Europeans.

Additionally, they provide a meaningful response to the bureaucratic terms such as CALD, which for those of you who don't know is culturally and linguistically diverse, which narrowly defines people against the mainstream criteria of whiteness as the norm. Without a doubt, whether you embrace or reject your cultural identity, if you are not from European descent, it will shape the way you are in the world, the way others see you and the work you do. The research tells us that for those who identify as people of color, diverse or non-Anglo European, bringing their cultural identity to their workplaces can be challenging and, in many instances, culturally unsafe. Women of color have to think twice about what they wear or how they behave at work. They don't want to be too colorful or too loud.

A survey conducted by Women of Color Australia 2021 and 2022 revealed a 60% of women of color reported racism and discrimination in the workplace. This is something we can't ignore. 72% of those participants were young between the ages of 25 to 44. Among them, a significant proportion were high income earners in white collar roles, earning about 100 to 150,000 dollars a year. These women are our future leaders, and yet 60% of them reported that their cultural identities were either not valued or they didn't know whether their cultural identity were valued in the workplace. Considering how important cultural identity is to the formation of individuals and societies, this is a tragedy. 

How do we navigate the complexities of cultural identity in environments where we are continually being racialized? In situation where people say, ‘I don't see colour’, yet everything they say or do reflects the opposite. Knowing who you are and where you come from is paramount. Educating ourselves is the best strategy to carve a space of influence. And I don't just mean formal education. I mean you need to understand the colonial history of this place and the need to find alternative stories to give you a sense of the multiplicity of experiences that co-exist in this country. Make sure you get outside your circle of friends and colleagues so you can begin to know and understand how this place operates. You must be curious and will have to work harder emotionally and intellectually than anyone else. I can't sugarcoat that. 

I also suggest for you to be open and ready to receive. There will be people out there who will be ready to support and believe in you. Like my friend's mum who stood up for me when I was eight years old. I have had people along the way who have been instrumental in where I am today. The first professional job I had in Australia was in a women's health center. Ronnell Brusard offered me the role because she saw the potential in me. My first CEO role in the arts was supported by Sandra Temple, who believed I could act in the role until the role was advertised. Six months later, I won the job in a competitive process. 

Walk with your eyes wide open and sharpen your intuition to find those who will be prepared to open the door for you. This brings me to highlight the importance of our allies. An ally is in a position of power and an influence and commits to working for equity and social justice. Being an ally is not a title or status to impress. It is an ongoing commitment to action. Allyship is demonstrated in your deeds to stand with others who aren't like you. A good ally doesn’t speak on behalf of, they amplify the voice of others. An ally is very good at self-reflection. They understand their own story and where they come from. That means they know what informs their worldview and their values. They know that they’re a product of socialization, which is not value neutral. 

We have been socializing in a system that does not treat all equally, and as a result, some people can thrive, but others continue to fail. And that has been normalized. Allies educate themselves and they recognise that diversity’s complex unknowns and there is not one size fits all. Not all diverse people are the same. Lastly, good allies listen carefully and recognise their shortcomings. Otherwise, they risk that their good intentions may be short lived or worse still, can be detrimental. 

In my career, more often than not, I've been the only woman of color and the only one who speaks out. This can be difficult, and you must be prepared to experience self-doubt and regrets and occasionally be crossed off the Christmas list. But I've learned that going along with the tide does not serve you well if you have leadership ambitions. Speak truth to power can be a door opener. 

At a defining point in my career and after enduring months of bullying at the hands of a white manager, I attended a conference in Brisbane. I was vocal during the conference about the lack of diversity in arts policies in Australia. The second day I was standing outside chatting to someone when I was tapped on the shoulder literally by a man who introduced himself as the deputy chair of the Australia Council. An important person. The federal, this is the federal funding for the arts. He was an actor of Greek heritage whose family had migrated to Sydney after the war and endured racism and discrimination. He said, ‘I hear you are criticizing the Australia Council’. My response with hands on hips was, ‘Well, hang on, let me tell you’. He, he stopped me. [laughs] He stopped. He didn't let me finish. He smiled and said I was right. There were policy failures and that the Australia Council was offering scholarships for upcoming cultural workers like me and that I should apply and apply I did. 

I ended up on a three-month secondment in Sydney, working across New South Wales with Carnivale, the largest and most successful multicultural arts festival in Australia then. That experience changed everything. I came back to Perth with a renewed sense of who I was. I quit my job on my terms. I told that awful white manager what I thought of her politely, and I landed another role that paved the way to becoming the managing director of the Community Arts Network in 2004. 

The National statistics tell a story that I am the exception to the rule. Diversity Arts Australia found that only 10% of CEOs and 6% of Chairs in the arts and cultural sector identify as being from a non-Anglo background. Considering studies show non-European population in Australia now is approximately 25, 21%, these figures show how under-represented people of color are in leadership roles. This means a lot of people like me have made it in a system that was not designed for me. I'm in those roles despite of the system, not because of it. 

To navigate the systems, you need to be prepared to stand by your values and speak out in whatever form you're able to do. Know what you are about and what matters to you and have a position. This takes emotional and intellectual labor. To name structural barriers and inequities, takes courage. And courage doesn't mean you're not fearful or scared. What it means that you sit with that fear and doubt, and you don't let that paralyze you. You use that energy to propel you forward. It means that you don't give up. 

Be aware of the narrative and the myth of the self-made success. This is all up to you. That if you work hard, you'll make it because this is a lucky country. This narrative does not account for societal inequalities such as wealth distribution, gender, racism and discrimination, your birthplace or family connections and whether you have a physical or a mental disability.

But it's also true that all systems have cracks and crevices. Living systems are porous. You can make it career but you will not do that alone. History tells us across the world that when people come together around a common purpose, change is possible. There are many examples of social movements that have made great achievements for humanity by advocating for social justice, civil rights and various forms of equality.

To those of you who have migrated here and identify with some of my experience, I would like to encourage you to take up space. Do not hide under your multiple identities to conform to what you think is expected of you. Draw your strength from your histories, your ancestors, and from the stories that brought you or your family here. Extend your solidarity to Indigenous people and other people of color across your networks and use your voice. 

To those who commit to commit to being allies. I say we need your commitment for the long term. I invite you to help us to do the work of recognizing and confronting mechanisms of exclusion. The best way of doing this is by listening to the stories of people who have been silenced but continue to cut spaces to be heard. To those who have faced concrete ceilings, not just glass ceilings. And despite that, have succeeded. These are the experts. Help amplify their experience and viewpoints and open up the door. 

This way we can all share the actual benefits of living in such a prosperous and multicultural society. This is a journey I hope we can all invest in, and we need to turn to this task with urgency, joy and optimism.

I will leave you with a quote from Audre Lorde. When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. Thank you.

[applause]

Dr Maggie Jiang:

Pilar thank you so much for generously sharing your inspiring career story with us and shed light on meaningful elements that lead to success. Well, we are now opening up the floor for questions. If you have any, any thoughts to share with our speaker or anything you want to ask our speaker, please let us know.

Audience member 1:

Ola Pilar. Thank you very much for sharing your beautiful story. Of course, I identify with your story because I'm also a Latin American migrant. My name is Carla Venitez (?). I'm the founder of the first organisation in Australia that empowers and promote political participation to culturally, linguistically diverse Australians. My question is how is the future of advocacy for multicultural communities after, after the recent results of the referendum? You know, indeed we are all Australians but what happen when more than 40% of the population is still facing, as you mentioned, language barriers, limited access to programs, services and job opportunities essential for really achieving fair, a fair and equal society. Thank you, Pilar.

Dr Pilar Kasat:

Look, the obviously we yet, Aboriginal communities have asked us to have a week of silence on the issue of the referendum for obvious reasons. People need some time to reflect and gather on what had happened. So, so, in some ways I've sort of adhered to that I haven't quite fully formed an opinion on what is going to be the fallout of this after a week. My sense is obviously the key point that I want to make in terms of the referendum is that we were told Aboriginal, a lot of Aboriginal people did not support the referendum and yet what is transparent and so the polling in Aboriginal communities, in remote Aboriginal communities, they did support the referendum. So, I think that truth, it's really important that is shared and is continued to be shared. So, I'll invite all of you to, to keep that in mind in your further conversations. You know, it appears that Aboriginal people did want to have a voice in Parliament. So that's really important. 

Now how that impacts to the rest of the community. I mean, I think this is, this is, we need truth telling in this country. I think that's absolutely paramount that we engage in a better understanding. The colonial history of this country. Because in fact, in 1901, you know, the birth of Australia, it was birth at the same time that birth of the country, it birthed the White Australia policy. And whether we like it or not, there is remnants of that in structures in Australia. So, I think the, what we, it's incumbent on all of us is to engage in truth telling and, and have a conversation not only with Indigenous people, First Nations, people with all migrants. 25, 21% of migration reports with non-Anglo and therefore you know there is incredible diversity, and we need to give voice to those stories. And that brings me to say the arts is one of the best mechanisms to create that opportunity for stories to be told.  Thank you.

Audience member 2:

What was your best experience being a woman of color? Like, very positive. Which for example, it helped you or make a really big impact on the community. 

PK:

Yes, I have leaned on the fact that I'm not a white Australian in my connections and relationship with First Nations people and that has been an incredible experience. And probably my most memorable of all, when I left the Community Arts Network after 11 years, they threw a nice party for me. And in that, you know, there were many Aboriginal friends that came to that and the late Aunty Janet Hayden, in that occasion, she, I kept it together. You know, that, that, that job for me on that project was my baby and so it's hard to leave. But I decided to leave at a point that I'd done what I thought as all I could do with that organisation. So, it was important to recognise that I, it was enough, and I should move on. And the organisation should move on. But at that point, I remember feeling incredibly humble when Janet Hayden welcomed me in a way that I had not experienced that after 20 years in Australia.

And that point in time when she said, ‘You belong here, you're one of us’, not only I started blubbering, was a blubbering mess, but I truly it, it, it absolutely changed the way I saw myself in this country. And I'm a strong Australian and very passionate about that. And one of the projects that we want to do in the future is create opportunities for migrants of color in particular, and First Nations to have, you know, conversations that could lead maybe to new ways of cultural production. That is so unique of this place and carries the stories between this two incredible different and yet, you know, common people that we live in, in this place.

So that was my most exciting, well, I would, exciting is the wrong word, but a very profound moment in my career. Yeah. Yes.

Audience member 3:

Okay. Thanks. So, Pilar can you give some examples of where, where you've seen good practice happening in the workplace. I think, because I think one of the big challenges is that often we’re talking to the converted. And so, it would be great to sort of see an example where we’ve seen some of those barriers broken down in those very kind of colonized structures. So, have you seen any examples?

PK:

In workplaces?

Audience member 3:

In the workplace, yeah. 

PK:

I have been very fortunate that in many workplaces I have been the CEO, which then means that I've got some capacity to make change. I am, up until the Community Arts Network, I wasn't very senior in my career, so and I haven't really worked personally in that many situations. But so, if you like, I haven’t experienced, really good practice outside the workplace that I've been working in. But a maybe I can tell you that some of the things that I think that are required.

I think where, where we really need a deep reflection in Australia is about where each individual and a society where we come from. I talked about the conditionality of belonging, the idea that no matter how long you've been here, you're continuously being asked where you're from. Like the idea that someone looks like me cannot possibly come from here. And I think that conditionality is complex. So, we need a much bigger conversation about, hang on a minute, let's, let's look at the length of history of this country and let's talk about who's got the right to belong here. So, I think whether it's a workplace, whether it doesn't matter really in some ways, Kim, I think the conversation that's required, it will permeate workplaces.

But I think maybe, maybe this is the time. Maybe this is the moment as a country that we have to actually come to terms with the fact that we haven't done yet our homework. That our education system is lacking in really acknowledging historical events. And that if we are truly to describe ourselves as this diverse, you know, potential country, that we've got such an amazing opportunity to tell such unique stories here, but yet some voices are not heard. So. Yes. So maybe. Yes, alright. 

Audience member 4:

If I may just share my own experience as a, as a sort of a white male of Anglo-European, Australian, European descent. You sort of walk through life and with that sort of background, if you like. About 30 years ago, I entered the sphere of influence of Aboriginal Australia and then I went off and did a PhD in Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal negotiations. And, one of the points you mentioned tonight was a critical self-reflection about your own cultural structures and all those implicit sort of power structures, how you see the world. 

So, I thought I would go off and learn about Aboriginal culture and heritage and of course that was actually the wrong thing to do. I had to go off and learn about myself. And to critically reflect on being white male, all those kinds of things and what my cultural heritage limited me to in seeing the world. How I interpreted that world. And the process of doing that was cathartic and it sort of transformed how I see the world and enriched it, just enriched it. Since then, it's been a fantastic, enriching journey. In part because of entering that sort of Aboriginal world of knowledge and sharing of knowledge and sharing of culture and history and how they perceive the world. And it has been exceptional.

Sort of, my question to you is how do you go about getting people, particularly white males, to self-reflect and actually go into themselves to come out with a different way of looking at the world? 

[audience laughter]

PK:

[laughs] That’s you your job! Not mine! 

Audience member 4:

Well, I may have a slightly different approach. 

PK:

Sorry. What's your name again? 

Audience member 4:

Andrew.

PK:

Andrew? Andrew. No, I will. Sorry, beside the joke. I think there are precisely important people like yourself. That you've got, you know, a capacity, you've got a stage, you've got, you've got, you know, you've got a PhD. You're, you've got a captive audience. And I think truly the heavy lifting is left is always, you know, people of color, Aboriginal people, we have to do the heavy lifting and it's very tiring - to do the education.

So, we need, that's precisely why we need allies like yourself to say, ‘Hang on a minute, I'm going to answer that question. You don't have to.’ Honestly, sometimes it’s required that people step up. And let me give you an example. Regional Arts WA, under my leadership, we made it, we came out supporting the Voice because we thought it was absolutely the right thing to do, and we did that early on. Some of our other colleagues in other parts of the country they had, they left that decision to some of their, some of them have Aboriginal board members. So, you know, they left the decision to them. And some, many people said to me, we can't be making these decisions. We need this board of this organisations to make the decisions is not up to us. And we rely so much on, on, we’re continuously asking people for their thoughts and tell us what to do. And you know, we need, and I think it's okay sometimes, but sometimes we need to do the hard work ourselves and take a stand. 

Audience member 5:

I might just talk. I was going to go back to Kim’s question just about things that can change in the workplace. We had a discussion a few weeks ago about, we talk about grants and we're talking about individual versus collective grants.

So, we're talking about fellowships. And to me, in my mind, fellowship has always been an individual thing. You get a fellowship as an individual. And Pilar challenged my thinking and I think our whole workplaces thinking on that. And I thought in terms of what the question Kim asked, if you'd like to talk about that. 

PK:

Sure, sure. Yeah. So obviously, yes, the idea of fellowship as an artist, you know, the artist as an individual pursuit and you will never be able to collaborate or get accolades. And of course, that's a lot to do with the way that we value art. You know, we value individual pieces of art made by individuals. And so, I said to Catherine, maybe we need to be thinking about this idea of fellowship that can be collective.

So, we can have two or three people, maybe applying to a fellowship. So, in many, many cultures around the world, the practice of art making is not alone. It's not an individual practice. And certainly, here Aboriginal people that, that is a practice that they do together. And to just begin to kind of change this narrative that we value something that is absolutely made by an individual and that we devalue things are made by collective. Thanks Kim. 

Dr Maggie Jiang:

Well, we’ll leave some time for networking, and we can still continue the conversation during that session. And thank you for your engaging questions and for your very good responses. And can I invite our Head of School back to stage as we have a small token of thanks to present to Pilar.

Prof. Amanda Davies:

Oh, change sides. Thank you so much. Before I present this large bouquet [laughs] to you, I think your story (and thank you for sharing your story with us), whilst you may not have set out as an eight-year-old to change things, you've emerged as a role model. And in reflecting on what you've said, I think it's, you understand your values and you've somehow internally generated the courage to live with those values, to work for social justice. You wouldn't necessarily understand the impact of all that you're doing. You won't understand how the actions that you take in your office will be impacting many others around you. But I assure you it is. Even in sharing your story with us, you are changing how we're thinking now. So, thank you so much for your courage. Thank you. 

PK:

Thank you.