S5, E10: I Traveled the World With President Obama. Now, I Help Give Young Women the Same Chance

On the tenth episode of Travel Tales by Afar, season five, former social secretary for the Obama administration and co-founder of beGirl.world Global Scholars, Deesha Dyer, takes 10 teens abroad for the organization’s first trip. In the airport, she’s just as jittery as the teens and when they leave, she ends up learning just as much as they did.

Transcript

I’m Aislyn Greene, and this is Travel Tales by Afar. Every week, we hear stories of life-changing travel from poets, scientists, authors, entrepreneurs, and so many more.

This week, we’re going to hear from Deesha Dyer. Deesha has many phenomenal travel stories, but she has something many of us do not—a direct connection to former President Barack Obama.

For eight years she worked in the Obama White House and among other positions she held (she was the social secretary) she was the person who arranged all of the President’s and the First Lady’s travel—and even traveled with them. What a cool job.

She’s also the author of a new memoir, Undiplomatic, that chronicles her time in the White House, how she got there, and what all of that meant for her life. And during her time jetting around the world with the Obamas, she realized how few Black students study abroad. So she decided to change that.

Some people are London people. Some people are Paris people. And some people are both. My husband’s a Paris person—I’m a London person. I have family in London. I know London. I get London. Paris, however, is hectic for me. It’s fast-moving, like New York. As a solo traveler, it’s no problem at all. I’ve traveled around the world by myself.

But imagine stepping off the train in Paris on a hot summer day with 10 teenage girls—and their mountains of luggage—and a mounting anxiety of being responsible for their safety and well-being. That was me in August 2016. I was so freaked out we were going to lose somebody, because it was just this mob of girls and I was like, “At any minute somebody could snap, like one could go off.”

I desperately wanted to get a van and a driver to lug us around. But it was the inaugural trip of my organization, beGirl.world Global Scholars, and at that time, we just couldn’t afford it. As I looked around at these young, typical moody faces, I couldn’t help but wonder if this would even be worth it.

I found my way to travel through television. I’m an ’80s kid and I loved shows that featured different places, whether it was Three’s Company set in San Diego, or The Cosby Show set in New York, or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach. I grew up in Philly, and my family would take short trips to the Jersey Shore and New York, but we didn’t have the money to travel more than that, and honestly, it wasn’t really my parents’ thing.

That didn’t deter me though. It might sound weird, but textbooks fed my wanderlust as an older kid. Like my science book would have a lush picture of a mountain. And the text would say, “This is a mountain in Ethiopia where coffee beans are grown.” And I’d be so blown away. I’d look at the globe and I would turn it and be like, “Ethiopia is so far from Philly. What would it be like to travel there?”

When I was 19 years old, I was finally able to make my travel dreams come true. I got two jobs at the same time: One as a reservation agent at American Airlines. And one as a front desk agent at the Omni Netherland hotel chain. I had an airline discount and a hotel discount, and I was like, “Now, I can travel.”

And I did. I traveled all over the United States and eventually internationally. Every time I went to a new place, I just wanted to see more. It was such freedom.

But it was actually my job at the Obama White House—yes, the White House!—that led me to found beGirl.world Global Scholars. It was now 2010 and I was working as the associate director of scheduling correspondence, arranging all of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama’s travel.

I had a really good friend, Marcella, who was a mom of two daughters and always took them traveling. And she was Black. One day, I told her that I’d been traveling with the President and First Lady and I’d found out about something called the Foreign Service, where you could actually go work in another country representing the United States—as a job. I was floored.

I said, “We have to get this opportunity out there for more Black students, to encourage them to go into international relations in college so they can go into the foreign service.”

I told Marcella a story about how, when I was working at the embassy in Beijing, China, preparing for the President’s visit, a high school came through. It was an all-white high school, and I asked them, “Oh, are you here for, like, an assignment?” They were like, “Oh no, it’s just our school trip.”

And I was just like, “Oh my goodness. This all-white school, like who pays?? I mean, I’m sure it was a wealthy school, but still, who pays for their high school kids to go visit embassies in different countries? This is crazy.”

So Marcella and I decided to look at study abroad numbers because it seemed as if a lot of Black students didn’t know this existed. And we discovered that fewer than 6 percent of study abroad students are Black. I said, “We have to do something.”

So that’s what led us to found beGirl.world Global Scholars in 2014. As Black girls ourselves, we wanted to focus on supporting other women. We decided to start with basic international and travel education, with the goal of getting them trained up to want to study abroad by the time they get to college. I thought if we even helped just one girl learn what it’s like to explore the world, we’d be a success.

There were 14 girls in our first class, all based in the Philly area. We had a kickoff international day to introduce them to the program, which would meet once a month for two years before our big international trip.

Most of the girls were really excited. And I think they were nervous. The good thing is, for a lot of them, their parents knew each other. So even if they weren’t like best friends with another girl, they knew her name. For two years, we helped them prep and plan. We helped them apply for passports. We learned different languages, planned mock trips, took self-defense classes and discussed homesickness. We took a short practice trip to New York and Washington, D.C., just so they could experience basic traveling.

Our goal was a nine-day trip through London and Paris. When the day came to leave, I was so nervous! And so was Marcella, and so were the girls. They were nervous about saying goodbye to their parents and getting on the plane. Because, while they were ready, they weren’t sure what was going to happen. They were girls who felt like, you know, they were from Philly, they were Black—would people stare at them, would people make fun of them? Like, do they belong in these spaces? They had a lot of those feelings. So I think that kept them pretty shy.

We spent the first six days in London. We partnered with a local university that hosted study abroad students from Philadelphia’s Temple University. Plus, I had been to London several times, so I felt comfortable with the city. (Though it was a very different experience for me, traveling with 12 other people, rather than solo.) But it was so cool to see the girls come out of their shells once we got there and they saw like, Primark and H&M and Gap. They were like, “Oh, this is just like home.”

We did all the touristy stuff, like visiting the London Eye and Piccadilly Circus and Shakespeare’s Globe. We took them shopping at Primark and taught them how to navigate the Tube. We also sat them down with the study abroad folks at Temple University and had an event at the U.S. embassy in London so they could learn what it’s like to be in foreign service.

One of their favorite days, and mine, was the day we did high tea. We told them, “This is the time to dress up, put makeup on” and they went all out. And being with them in this high tea establishment where people aren’t necessarily used to seeing young Black girls, it was like a Gordon Parks photo moment for me, watching them sip tea and try tiny sandwiches in their nicest clothes. I think they felt like royalty. They were having fun. Even if they were uncomfortable, they were laughing over how small the things were and asking, “Can we eat more than one of these?”

I wanted to encourage that, but I also wanted to break it down for them. Like, “Guys, this is just a tuna sandwich. I know it looks really fancy, but legit, it’s like tuna and cucumber on a piece of bread.” And having them look at it and be like, “Oh, it is just a tuna sandwich.”

I wanted them to see that they are special, that they deserve to have high tea in a place that felt fancy, and I also wanted them to not be intimidated by it. It reminded me of why I was there—to help them navigate the world with confidence and courage, so that hopefully they always feel as though they belong.

And then came Paris.

While in London, I felt in my comfort zone. In Paris, I was on edge the entire time. Plus, it was super hot and this was the first time the girls were in a place with a foreign language, and we’d been traveling for a while and tensions were starting to get a little high.

We only had three days, but we did educational things like visit the Louvre, take a boat ride down the Seine, have a round table at the American embassy, and tour Notre Dame. There’s a photo of us all inside Notre Dame—it’s so funny. Marcella and I smiling and the rest of the girls look like they’re being tortured. So we met them where they were at and took them down to see the shops, to a local market to get souvenirs, and to eat at a French McDonald’s.

Of course, we also had to see the Eiffel Tower. Marcella and I really wanted to take them to get crepes and sit and watch the tower light up, to have that iconic Parisian experience. So we have our crepes, and it’s getting dark. We’re walking closer and closer and closer and the girls are getting so excited. We go to the big grassy area near the tower and let them run and do cartwheels and take pictures. They were having their fun.

As the tower starts to light up, all the tourists around us are taking pictures and they’re like, “Oh my God.” And one of our girls goes, “Oh my gosh, it looks just like the real Eiffel Tower.” Another girl was like, “Yeah, it does look like the real one.” And I said, “What do you mean?” I was shocked but didn’t want to just come out and say, “This is the real one.” So I tried to get her to explain. And she was like, “The real one is in Las Vegas. This is the replica. This is the fake one.”

Marcella and I looked at each other, laughed, and my first thought was, “Oh my gosh, we have failed. We’ve had these girls for two years and now we’re in Paris and we have completely failed.” But I kept trying to understand more. I asked her, “Have you been there?” And she said, “No, my mom was there and took a picture and showed it to us.”

Now that I understood, I finally said, “No, this is the real Eiffel Tower. The real Eiffel is in Paris, France, which is where we are. That picture she showed you is from a hotel called Paris, Paris and it’s named after this tower.” And she was like, “For real?” The best part is, she wasn’t ashamed.

We just started busting out laughing because she was like, “My mom told me!” And Marcella and I were like, “Don’t blame your mom! Don’t blame your mom.” Because I was like, “Maybe her mom doesn’t know, to be honest. Maybe her mom has never been to Paris.”

I think at that moment, both Marcella and I realized, “This, number one, is why travel is so damn important. And then number two, going forward, we have to explain everything to them, even things we assume everyone knows because they’re so iconic.”

So that was a moment of clarity and a moment of laughter and a moment of like, “This is why this program exists.”

The girls were happy to be home, and so was I. But we all learned so much from that first trip. Since then, Marcella and I have added official language classes to the two-year program. We work more with local guides in the places we visit, and we now bring younger chaperones on our trips, who are closer in age to the girls. And so much more. It’s always evolving.

While that first trip was the toughest one we’ve done, the girls were definitely changed by it. They became more open to and interested in traveling to other places. Five went on to do study abroad programs. Now those girls are out of college. They’re 23, and they’re working and traveling the world on their own, in their own way.

We’re about to take our third graduating class to Portugal—and four of the girls from the original trip are going to be chaperones. Marcella and I have done what we set out to do in 2014. We’ve given 100 girls passports, helped 35 girls travel through our program, and have given more than 10 scholarships to Black women studying abroad in college.

We want to do even more but I love that we have empowered each and every one of these girls to learn something about herself and also broaden her horizons. We’ve put down the foundation on which to build a life of travel and that is all I could want, need, or even ask for.

Aislyn Greene: That was Deesha Dyer; beGirl.world is now 10 years old and their latest group of girls is off to Portugal. If you want to support their work, visit begirlworld.com and you can find more about Deesha at deeshadyer.com. As usual, we’ll link to all of it in our show notes. And if you want to hear more about Deesha’s adventures traveling with and for the Obamas, watch my interview with her on YouTube; she has some fantastic stories. Next week, we’re traveling across the United States with Charlie Sprinkman, founder of Everywhere Is Queer, a map that helps LGBTQ+ travelers find welcoming spaces around the world.

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This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composed and produced by Strike Audio.

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