Lehigh announces new international advisory council

When the holiday season rolled around and Ashley Pritchard couldn’t afford to fly home from Thailand, where she was attending graduate school, she packed a backpack and joined a classmate on a trip to Myanmar. 

Unexpectedly, the ‘09 alum became transfixed with the Southeast Asian country.

At the time, an ethnic group that was a registered terrorist organization by U.S. standards was fighting for their children to be able to speak their native language. 

“That felt like an odd case for someone to be labeled a terrorist group,” Pritchard said. 

Challenging her Western education, Pritchard said she looked at the situation through a different lens. 

Though she previously decided to focus her dissertation on microfinance in India, she researched the conflict in Myanmar and altered her plan. Upon graduation, she moved to Myanmar and spent eight years leading an organization focused on educating citizens about elections and documenting human rights abuses at international refugee camps. 

Now, Pritchard is one of seven alumni who was recruited to serve on Lehigh University’s new International Advisory Council. 

Colin McEvoy, the Office of International Affairs’ communications manager, said the council’s goal is to broaden Lehigh’s global perspective and impact. 

“All (seven) of the council members have very distinguished careers in leadership roles with expertise that’s a brand new work with expertise and global perspectives on an international stage,” McEvoy said. 

The council members are Gilles Amadou Acogny ‘85G, the co-founder and CEO of Acosphere Ltd., a business consultancy based mainly in Africa; Ramesh Ananthakrishnan ‘90G, the founder of DSM Soft, a company based in India that provides geospatial, telematics, and GIS mapping services; Wade Cruse ‘92, a Singapore-based managing partner at the management consulting firm Bain & Company; J. Penney Frohling ‘85, the founder of Ethos Partners, a firm that specializes in corporate strategy and financial services based in London; and Demetrios Papacostas ’77 ’77G, the former CEO of Greece-based Hellenic Aerospace Industry. The newest recruit to the council is Marcela Miguel Berland, the president of Latin Insights and one of the leading political and corporate strategists in Latin America and the U.S.

Pritchard said her passion for helping underserved communities began when she volunteered at local homeless shelters in California as a child, and her undergraduate experience at Lehigh ignited it further. 

She worked at Lehigh’s Community Service Office, where she spearheaded programs such as Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, Wonderful World of Sports and Spooktacular to help the community. 

“That really helped me understand how I could translate my passion for helping underserved communities and empowering them,” Pritchard said. 

She said study abroad and internship opportunities also helped her explore what she wanted to pursue and how to make it happen. 

While studying in New Zealand through the Martindale Scholars Program, Pritchard said she sat with government officials, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations to better understand global economic and political issues. 

She said this was when she began to understand why governments write policies the way they do and how the implementation of them translates to the actual governance of a country. 

In addition to her semester in New Zealand, Pritchard was a part of the Lehigh in London Summer Program and was the first full-time employee from Lehigh at the UN.

Now, with her interests in international relations, economics and politics aligned with her desire to help those in need, Pritchard leads a team at Meta Platforms that works to combat hate speech on Facebook.

She said the team is trying to ensure users are safe and comfortably use the platform.

“Often in different countries, people have a different relationship with social media, it’s not just how the U.S. does it,” Pritchard said. “We want to make sure that for different users, based on where they are, we can create an environment for them that’s safe.”

Cheryl Matherly, vice president and vice provost of International Affairs, said Pritchard and the other council members’ areas of expertise align with the four major pillars of Lehigh’s Strategic Plan: Inspiring the Future Makers. 

Within the plan, there are four major pillars – recruitment, global learning, access and community — and Matherly said by meeting twice a year and working individually, they’ll play a consultant role to advise the university on how to advance global initiatives. 

McEvoy said the council helps position Lehigh as “a premier destination for the world’s best students, ensuring all students have access to international education experiences and expanding resources that advance the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge.” 

Matherly said the international experience is part of what makes an education from Lehigh significant and distinctive, and ensuring every student has access to some kind of global experience is pivotal.  

She also said there’s value in having alumni from a variety of graduating years. 

“For us to be able to go from (the) early 70s to 2009 with (Pritchard), it gives us almost 40 years of Lehigh history and experience and coverage,” Matherly said.

She said each member will serve for three years, with the opportunity to remain on the council for an additional three-year term. 

McEvoy said when it came time to create the council, Matherly already had an idea of specific alumni with particular expertise that would serve the council well.

Matherly said she began thinking about forming the council before the pandemic but had to postpone the project until last year. 

She said she worked with Mark Erickson, the interim vice president of strategic planning and initiatives, to select board members, and it was a slow process because there were a lot of characteristics to evaluate. 

Matherly said ensuring geographic representation that reflects countries around the world was important to her when recruiting alumni. 

She said she also sought out individuals who were invested in Lehigh’s global work. 

“It’s been exciting to be able to engage this whole other group of people who really, really care deeply about what Lehigh is doing globally, and want to play some role in helping us think about how to be most impactful as an institution,” Matherly said. 

She said by bringing in people who have expertise in different fields, she hopes the council will be able to engage with the campus community and serve as a resource for students. 

“Everybody should be able to have access to that regardless of your background (or) where you come from,” Matherly said. 

Matherly also said as the university works to mitigate through various scholarships and programs, students might struggle to understand where a global perspective fits into their discipline. 

Matherly said this is often overlooked, but she thinks students of any major should have an international or global experience during their time at Lehigh. 

“That comes down to the diversity of the types of things that we do and make available,” she said. 

Pritchard said the questions of how Lehigh can make international experiences accessible and equitable for domestic students, and how the university can make its programs accessible and equitable for international students are difficult to navigate. 

To her, equity is the biggest priority. She said while she believes Lehigh has made progress in that regard since she was a student, there’s still room for improvement. 

“How can we better develop international partnerships with international educational institutions to really further research or further what partnerships could look like in attracting more students to Lehigh and vice versa?” she said. 

The university should push the boundary on the accessibility of education, especially given AI and other technologies, Pritchard said, and Lehigh could be on the cutting edge of understanding partnerships with international institutions. 

McEvoy said there will be opportunities for council members to visit campus or engage with students via Zoom, and Pritchard said she’ll be visiting campus in spring 2025. 

Though Pritchard said Lehigh does a good job of building well-rounded leaders, she hopes the university and the International Advisory Council can move toward creating more well-rounded global leaders. 

“In the world that we live right now, you need the global experience to be successful,” Pritchard said.