 Good afternoon, everyone. I don't think I could put into words how excited and proud I am of this moment right today. I'm Carlo Capua. I'm the Chief of Strategy and Innovation for the City of Fort Worth, Texas. I'm a proud graduate of the TCU School of Business class of 2000. So today is three things that I love more than just about anything, and I share this with the students behind me. We love TCU. We love the City of Fort Worth, and we are passionate about global affairs and see Fort Worth poised and ready to be on the stage, the international stage, for taking advantage of this opportunity to create an office of global affairs. So a little background on today. About six months ago, I get a call from a professor at TCU and she says, Carlo, I've got a deal for you. And you know I'm already skeptical when they started with the deal. She says, I have a group of students, and they need a project for this semester to work on, like a real world project. And I said, tell me about them. And so she talked to me and I said, I've got a good project for them. Now, when people volunteer their time, whether it's students or adults, sometimes you get what you pay for, right? So I didn't know what to expect, but I saw the amount of determination and professionalism and poise by these five students behind me. At a certain point I thought, now this doesn't need to be just a presentation in my office with the door closed. This needs to be a presentation in the city council chambers in the middle of city hall, and let's invite the whole community. So I'm so excited. We can go to the next couple slides, Marina. They have, as you can see on the next slide, they have done a ton of research. They have traveled all around Dallas, Fort Worth, interviewing content experts and elected officials and refugees and nonprofit leaders. And they put an incredible amount of thought into today's presentation. From the handout that you got when you walked in to the slideshow, everything has been done with a very specific and clear purpose. And this is where I say, but wait, there's more. Because about three months ago, the city of Fort Worth with some other stakeholders from three different chambers of commerce visited Fort Worth, American Airlines, Dallas, Fort Worth International Airport, UNTL Science Center, Tarrant County College and many others, we pooled our ideas together and we visually hired a consultant to create an office of global affairs. And when I told them about this presentation that these students are about to make, they got really excited. And they said, please send us the research, the recommendations and all of the stuff that they did including the video of this presentation. And they're going to build those recommendations into the actual office that they will be creating. So students, I turn to you and say you are going to leave Fort Worth better than when you found it. Because the recommendations, all that hard work you've done, this is not just a case study. You will put your recommendations and your thoughts and your hard work into the DNA, into the future of the city of Fort Worth. That you will have an impact on the people who live and work and play in this city. So on the next slide you can see this is why this is so important. This is the city of Fort Worth 30 years ago. And this is a picture of our vibrant downtown. It doesn't look so vibrant. We had about 460,000 people back in 1993. But since this year, we have been arguably playing city in the country every single year for the past 30 years. So look at the difference between then and now. I see a city that's vibrant. I see a city that's multi-ethnic with a ton of potential and this city is ready to play on the global stage. And the top levels of our government have noticed Fort Worth's opportunity. Actually I was talking to one of my contacts at the State Department last week. I was telling him about this presentation these students were going to present. And he was so excited. He was wishing me good luck and he said actually let's hear from him directly. Hello to my friends in Fort Worth, Texas. My name is Daniel Rochetti and I serve as the Deputy Special Representative for City and State Diplomacy here at the U.S. Department of State. Our team leads and coordinates the Department of State's engagement with mayors, governors and other local leaders and officials both here in the United States and around the globe. We are excited to hear that the city of Fort Worth is looking to set up an office of global affairs. The creation of such an office will no doubt strengthen the city's capacity to engage internationally and play a positive role on the global stage. Fort Worth already has the key ingredients to become an even more dynamic and vibrant international city. You have DFW in your backyard. You have multinational corporations like American Airlines and BNSF Railway that employ thousands in your city. And Fort Worth has a robust Sister Cities program. If anyone can make this a success it's you. Getting your community involved in international affairs helped achieve our mission of protecting and promoting U.S. security and prosperity as well as bringing the benefits of foreign policy to the local level. The more that our cities in the United States can support our multi-ethnic communities attract foreign investment and simply expose our residents to international culture and understanding the more we can build global stability and peace. We wish the city of Fort Worth success with this global affairs project and we look forward to continuing to partner with you in the future. Thank you so much. So get this, what started out as a group project for a grade has turned into a full presentation here in City Hall with a message from the State Department. This is a big deal. I'm so excited and this is not normal by the way. This is not normal. Students don't do this, right? This stuff doesn't happen. But we've made it happen. These students have made it happen. Quick show of hands, how many of you are a staff or faculty member at TCU? Okay. This is the kind of support that we have for our students in these educational institutions in our backyard and I'd like to take a moment and ask if you are a current TCU student would you please stand and be recognized? All the TCU students, come on, we want to see you. Thank you. A special shout out to the Neely Leadership Program who volunteer students from the Neely Leadership Program and thanks for waiting until after I graduate to start this great program and to the City of Fort Worth event. Now you've heard enough from me, now I'm going to introduce the superstars and I told them that I wanted you each to make a slide with four very meaningful pictures because I wanted the audience to get to know each one of them and I also said tell me what your dream is. What's your dream job? So my ask of all of you in the audience is if you know someone or a connection or contact that may help them take one step closer to their dream would you please seek them out after this and I'll make sure it gets to them because that's what we do in Fort Worth and that's what we do at TCU. First we have Ms. Dalia Sharif a junior from Dallas, Texas she's studying marketing and global business you can see the picture in the top that's a picture of her studying abroad in Florence, Italy with TCU and then at the bottom with her family and her dream, get this is to work for a Formula 1 racing team. Pretty cool, on the right there's actually a picture of her meeting her favorite driver Daniel Ricardo at the Austin Grand Prix this past October a round of applause for Dalia and if you are a race car driver please ask Dalia's parents first before you make any recommendations next we have Ms. Caroline Farmer a junior from Fort Worth, Texas studying marketing, entrepreneurship and innovation her dream is to have a career in sports marketing management and a few pictures up here Caroline's been working so hard that picture at the top left that was a picture of her when she was a freshman she's been studying really hard she's grown up really bleeding purple I think you've been going to games since you were 5 you've lived 5 minutes from the campus of TCU really excited, has her proud mom and dad Katie and Jeff Farmer who are here thank you for being here and supporting your daughter thank you for lending your daughter to us for this next we have Mr. Brendan Nolta a junior from Seal Beach, California I have to pause and ask has anyone ever been to Seal Beach a few people were you lost or did you go there on purpose your grandparents live there so tell me, okay Heath Einstein, director of admissions from TCU I looked up Seal Beach, California and I wondered what is Seal Beach, California known for do you know Heath Seals, okay Mike, do you know I saw you raise your hand let's go to Brendan what is Seal Beach, California known for okay I hear that it's famous for kite surfing and building sand castles seriously, that's on the website that's the draw, kite surfing and sand castles is it a fun place to be it's a fun place to be so Brendan is studying entrepreneurship and innovation and his dream is to one day run operations for a major league baseball team his picture up there is his family in Portugal, second from the left and then on the second from the right, that's a picture of him and his siblings graduating from school so let's give a hand for Brendan and I missed, you know what, I made an emcee faux pas let's give a hand for Caroline too sorry Caroline alright next we have Parker Awful a junior from Plano, Texas studying supply and value chain management his dream is this is a very specific dream so see if you can follow me here to be a contract specialist for a Fortune 500 company so as a contract specialist someone who makes special contracts or someone who contracts specially, what does that mean, here use the microphone tell the group I can figure out whenever I do it so to invent the position and then be that person okay well very good he so in the pictures at the top left that's him with our chancellor, Boschini who sends his best regards, he couldn't be with us today and at the bottom right that is him, he's become a runner that's him finishing a half marathon, right are you going to run a full marathon next year? yes, yes, okay you've heard it here first let's give a hand for Parker Awful please and finally we have Ms. Marina Magnant from Porto, Portugal she is studying marketing and supply and value chain management now get this, her dream is either one of two things and they're very far apart either to be a director of an educational non-profit foundation or to be a diplomat so she is multi-talented I hear that you hold a number of nationalities different passports how many nationalities do you hold? so I have four nationalities Portuguese, French, Brazilian Belgium, giving my parents background so walking, talking United Nations right next to me you can see on the pictures up here you may remember when TCU rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq well you can see, if you look closely you can see Marina on the left in the front row in the light purple the same suit she wanted to make sure you could recognize her you'd prove that she's in that picture and then on the right is a picture of her studying abroad in Rome, Italy please put your hands together for Ms. Marina Magnet did I get applause for everybody? did I do it right? okay, very good so ladies and gentlemen, please help me give a warm welcome to our TCU students as they present their recommendations for an office of global affairs right here in the city of Fort Worth so there's an old African proverb that says if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far, go together although this quote originated on the other side of the world we believe it fits Fort Worth perfectly the city has always had a cowboy culture of taking care of each other so in this presentation, we'll talk about and we'll showcase how we propose that the city goes together in order to benefit not only the Fort Worth community, the global community as well as the economy so as a quick overview of our presentations we'll go into some testimonials then we'll talk about the need of a global affairs office in Fort Worth we'll then talk about what the cost of an action is so what will it cost to the city of Fort Worth of not having a global affairs office and we'll finalize with some recommendations for the future so throughout this past couple of months we've had the incredible opportunity to interview various stakeholders, individuals entities and organizations around Fort Worth and around Texas who gave us incredible feedback and completely affected our recommendations and outputs so during the next few slides we'll highlight a few of them and we'll go more in depth so our first interview were with Jessica from Sweden and Liliana from Argentina they both graduated from TCU and although they graduated over 20 years ago as an international student myself I can state for a fact that a lot of what they shared still deeply resonates with my personal experience the first thing that they talked about was how community was incredibly important to them as international students finding a community allowed them to feel a sense of belonging to feel understood and fully integrated as Carla mentioned I'm from Portugal and I spent half my life in Brazil too given my parents I also took a gap year and traveled all around Europe got to meet so many cool people so many wonderful cultures and feeling understood and assimilated to these cultures completely redesigned my life and was incredibly important now both of them also talked about three different challenges one of them were feeling integrated to the Fort Worth community as a whole the second one was navigating resources in Fort Worth whether that was finding a job after graduating figuring out salaries the third one was mobility so as international students they either didn't have cars or they couldn't access an international driver's license and also public transportation as for reference none of them stayed in Fort Worth after they graduated and I wanted to highlight that fact because it is incredibly important to retain international students after they graduate in the city since according to the US Chamber of Commerce in 2018 alone international students contributed to 45 billion dollars of the US economy we didn't have to go too far for our next interview we talked to my dad, Hassan Sharif who immigrated to the United States 27 years ago from site to Lebanon to Dallas, Texas when he married my mother he was lucky enough to have all the opportunities from my mother's family they supported him with a lot of help through resources like languages and getting him involved within the Dallas community however he still had a hard time assimilating into the culture being somebody coming from somewhere so different from the United States so he talked about the importance of learning the language and really becoming assimilated to the culture he also had a hard time when he had his medical degree he got it in the Soviet Union and then he couldn't transfer that to the United States so he had a hard time finding work in the States because it wouldn't transfer well for him in learning the language which he said earlier was super important for him he had a very hard time at first now he's good enough in English he gets around but he definitely talked about how it's very important to learn the language and become assimilated with the culture so you feel like a true citizen of the United States we found that 21.7% of all businesses in the United States are started by immigrants and my dad actually contributed to that he started his own business a few years ago in the US economy by creating jobs and working in that economy supporting other people working in the States throughout the semester we were able to meet with some pretty incredible people in Fort Worth we met with Catholic Charities we attended the Metroplex refugee networking event and we also listened in on Fort Worth's quarterly consultation meeting by doing so and attending these meetings we really found the importance and significance of refugee services in Fort Worth now, refugees when they come to Fort Worth and resettle they have various needs that they need support with such as healthcare, housing, education and employment by creating a global affairs office that would incorporate refugee services we would be able to help these people meet their needs and also help the local communities of Fort Worth by creating a refugee by creating an office of global affairs in Fort Worth we would be able to help the local communities create diversity in Fort Worth encourage economic development and also innovation and by doing so make Fort Worth more prosperous as a city next we did a deep dive into the city of Plano they are a city that has sorry that a lot of international business growth in the past few years this is a multi-faceted approach that involved a high ranking city official Harry LaRose Sillier the former mayor of Plano he gave us a really deep insight into how the process works for the city itself what it looks like with the companies coming in as well as the chief marketing officer of NTT data a Japanese based company that is headquartered in Plano, Texas so we saw the different benefits that are given to the city given to the companies themselves in the city and then we also looked at a citizen of Plano itself which is me I've seen firsthand the different benefits that can come from international companies moving into cities and I've seen the different cultures and growth that can happen from that now we're going to dive a little more into the need data and statistics behind Fort Worth global affairs office Fort Worth is currently the largest city in the nation without a global affairs office on top of that since 2010 Fort Worth is more than double the growth rate of every single top 10 city in America this means that while we're competing with other Texas cities such as Dallas and Austin we also have a higher growth rate than large well known cities such as New York Chicago and Los Angeles although our population currently sits below one million we're projected by 2045 to exceed 1.2 million Texas is an amazing place to live and move to land is cheap energy is cheap and there's no state income tax unfortunately this also means that we're competing with large Texas cities as you can see on the map Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio currently all have and hold the world global affairs office but it's not just in Texas we're also competing with other cities and states much smaller than Fort Worth Anchorage, Alaska, Baltimore, Maryland and even Champaign, Illinois currently have the global affairs office now we're going to jump a little bit more into the local Fort Worth scene a little over 60% of Fort Worth is non-white 63% to be exact as Fort Worth grows as a city as is projected to annually at a 1.83% this percentage is only going to grow make the need for global affairs office even more apparent now taking a look at a snapshot of Fort Worth we can first see this statistic that really emphasizes the growth that's currently happening in Fort Worth as you can see we currently have over 900,000 residents with a projected growth rate of 31% by the year of 2045 additionally DFW has 24 Fortune 500 companies in the Metroplex alone that really speaks and is a testament to the competitive culture and business environment that DFW currently has now Fort Worth has just two of the 24 Fortune 500 companies looking towards the future by creating a global affairs office we could support the companies and large corporations that are currently here and that reside here but also look to encourage those that are wanting to relocate and plant their roots somewhere else to want to come to Fort Worth by providing support and resources for them next over a third of households in Fort Worth speak another language other than English and out of curiosity does anyone here know in Fort Worth Spanish correct, as most of you can guess Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in Fort Worth behind English now does anyone know the third Vietnamese so what I was surprised to find through our research is that Vietnamese is actually the third most commonly spoken language behind English and Spanish in Fort Worth and also almost 17% of residents were born in another country this truly speaks to the diversity that already exists we can not only provide support to local communities that already exist we can also encourage economic development but we can also make Fort Worth a city that is more competitive in the global market now we're going to go into the cost of an action of not building a global affairs office in Fort Worth first is the missed opportunity for economic growth as Caroline just touched on lots of cities around the US have these offices to bring those resources so companies from other countries will come and thrive in Fort Worth we've talked about the city of Plano having Japanese companies come in has completely changed the way that Plano looks now they have people coming in all the time from Japan, India, everywhere just to bring that culture and to bring more economic growth to the city next is the challenges and the quality of life as Marina and I both spoke about international students and residents have a really hard time kind of assimilating into the culture so we would want to create a better quality of life by creating those resources for those people to come in as Marina said the two international students that she talked to left Fort Worth right after college and they moved to cities that do have global affairs offices that show that they assimilated into those cultures and were able to have those resources to keep them there and become contributing members of society next is the lack of building relationships and synergies we're going to talk soon about the stakeholders of this project so there's a lot of relationships that can come out of this office so if we're able to create that office and have those resources so people can feel more comfortable and the society and culture would be able to build stronger relationships that will help grow the city even more lastly and most importantly is the reduced influence nationally and internationally that Fort Worth is missing out on because of all the connections that other cities have made in the United States they've been able to have an international influence and show that they can bring people in from other countries and create those cultures for them to make them feel comfortable in their communities if Fort Worth is able to build a global affairs office would be able to have that international influence and be stronger through all of this research we've been able to compile a solid list of recommendations outputs and opportunities for the city of Fort Worth going into the opportunities this is really divided into two different categories personal and professional as well as businesses from the personal and professional side this really stems from trying to help the actual international residents and citizens of Fort Worth starting with programming and networking this could be things such as resume workshops interview prep and networking events to try to get international residents of Fort Worth connected to the city and employed to increase their ties and have them stay in the city of Fort Worth next is a compilation of resources there already is a robust system in the Texas government as well as the city of Fort Worth government however some of these are hard to navigate and hard to find for the international residents lastly is the cultural connections it's been strongly shown that there's a good link between feeling a sense of community and wanting to stay in a city and that also increases your professional and personal output next moving on to the business side of things Fort Worth should be a national and international hub while whenever you think about the US you think about cities like Chicago Los Angeles and New York however Fort Worth should also be on that shortlist whenever people are thinking about the US whether it is to relocate a business internationally or move domestically next is fostering global ties Fort Worth has a very good sister cities program and there are strong ties with a lot of those however we really can harbor those relationships even more to increase the business outputs within Fort Worth from international companies lastly is Fort Worth should be a prime business destination over the past two years the DFW international airport has been the second busiest airport in the entire world there's already so much traffic coming through the city of Fort Worth all that we have to do is really postmark Fort Worth itself and increase the desire to come here and stay here and through all of our research we have found a common theme between all of the other big cities who have all of these programs and resources for international residents is having a solid website starting with this it's very important to have a page such as a testimonials page this can highlight a lot of different success stories and different stories from people who have moved to Fort Worth or international residents in Fort Worth to really increase the desire to come here as well as increase the confidence for international residents in Fort Worth knowing that they can succeed and they have the support and resources to do so next is having a page to highlight a lot of the data that includes a lot of the concrete results from the city of Fort Worth and the office of global affairs itself and all of these things such as the hardcore quantitative economic impact from international businesses and international residents and other things such as that now we will discuss the three recommendations that we suggest those three being implementing initiatives maintaining connections and monitoring and evaluating progress so our first recommendation is to implement initiatives by developing well designed programs and events throughout the city through engaging different stakeholders since cross-cultural connections are so important these should be aligned with the office's missions and values and should also seek to address all the challenges faced by the local and the global community under implementing initiatives we also recommend creating partnerships and key stakeholders so actively seeking them since this will promote collaboration this will allow us to leverage different resources and experiences of organizations of individuals and every single stakeholders to connect everyone and then the third one is engaging stakeholders will allow us to bring in more FDIs or foreign direct investments and different investors and companies to the city of Fort Worth our second recommendation is to maintain connections we have seen through and through to so many different experiences how important it is to maintain connections and as a global affairs office it will be our duty to do so for international students international residents cultures and subcultures in the city this will allow everyone to understand and appreciate different cultures as well as fostering relationships this can be done through different communication channels by utilizing tools like parker just mentioned a website but also social media video conferencing emails since this will allow to stay in touch not only with Fort Worth residents but also with the global community our third and final recommendation is to monitor and evaluate so to ensure the effectiveness of this global affairs office it will be essential to continuously monitor and evaluate performance in order to see if all the stakeholders needs are being met and to assess the impact this can be done through using feedback from the different stakeholders now this information will allow us to identify areas of improvement in order to refine our approach to these programs and initiatives to make sure every single one of their stakeholders is happy I mean we can't make everyone happy but at least meet everyone's needs and our third and final recommendation inside monitoring evaluate is to continuously evaluating the effectiveness of the global affairs office so this will be critical for success and will allow us to see if we are truly making an impact in the community and in the world now we wanted to end our presentation with a quote by Amon G. Carter that says a man cannot live off his community he must live with it there has been perhaps no individual more influential to Fort Worth growth than Amon Carter himself and even though he said this 80 years ago and a lot has changed and he was referencing one's local community in today's interconnected world we are all members of a growing global community therefore creating a global affairs office will be a critical step to ensure that Fort Worth continues growing and becomes a truly world class international city without a doubt this project has truly been a labor of love and we are so grateful to be able to showcase it here today we have been working on this for several months and just getting to present at city hall is and will be without a doubt one of our most memorable college experiences so we wanted to take the time to thank every single one of you today for your presence for your time and for attending as well as a huge special thank you Carlo for your ongoing support through this whole year and for believing in this vision and for bringing it to life so thank you so much and we would now love to open for comments, thoughts or feedbacks thank you I've got a microphone we want to capture all this so if you'd like if you have a comment or feedback or anything question raise your hand I'll run right over Jessica McCackern assistant city manager city of Fort Worth please I think y'all did a tremendous job and I agree that this is something that Fort Worth definitely needs to continue looking at in the future when you were researching some of the global affairs offices in other cities did you see anything that made them especially successful that we need to kind of keep in mind as we as we look to this well a lot of the things we saw that were successful were being really intentional with the types of programs that were being developed we saw that a lot of different global affairs office across the US had a lot of events and used that to engage the population which is incredibly important but having actual programs like mentoring programs we looked at one of the global affairs office that had mentoring programs of I thought I think it talked about refugees so having a seasoned refugee who's now living in the US helping welcome a refugee in the country and actually fostering those relationships made such a difference and we saw so many different stories and that truly made a difference and having those stories highlighted on a website like Parker was mentioning having that testimonials page allowed us we're just doing research to see the impact that they were having so being really intentional with the types of programming that are being developed is super important doing it actually for the people through the people because that's what we've seen made a difference I saw the gentleman who's actually the busiest person in the city of Fort Worth right now because you know the main street arts festival is happening well this is the guy in charge of main street arts festival the president of downtown Fort Worth Inc Andy Taft and Andy who's running the show while you're here thanks for getting me off the street we've got a really great festival producer named Jay Downey and he's doing the event so I'm really curious to know as you looked at these other examples around the country what kind of staffing what kind of people need to be in the office and for a city our size and our ambition and the assets that we've got going for us what would the budget need to be did you look at any of that well we did look at some of that and I know that Karlo helped us a lot with just figuring everything out and how that would look like Karlo I don't know if you want to talk a little bit more about the logistical side and how it would look from the city's end we need a big budget with lots of people any other questions Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Dr. Kathy Cavens-Tull at TCU thank you for being here well congratulations students you make us proud it sounds to me like you have an arm that is like social services that is like welcoming people having resources compiling a lot of resources for international people locating in Fort Worth there's a programmatic arm festivals and sort of engaging the community in an international arm and then another arm that is really the reaching out and looking for opportunities to bring international business to Fort Worth and that's a lot that's a really big budget and a lot of people and are there ways to collaborate with units in Fort Worth instead of having a big office with a lot of people and a lot of budget are there ways to strategically collaborate with some social services some programmatic arms and maybe this office really prioritized driving business to Fort Worth or are there priorities that you see that I don't see we definitely saw the multifaceted way approach for this we thought it would be really important to have multiple different ways to go about this when we went to the Catholic Charities meeting that was eye opening there were a lot of different resources there that we saw and we had a meeting one on one with them as well and everyone that we talked to which included the refugee that Marina was referring to they were all very interested in this idea so that would be a great way to kind of merge the more social side of things bringing people in because they really focus on that refugee program and bringing people here to have those resources they give them a fund, they give them an apartment things like that so we also wanted to focus on international residents and not just refugees so that's where that would kind of be different but hopefully we could work with them to kind of have that support system we definitely did want to have the business side as well that would be probably more what this office would be working on because we've done all these case studies on cities like Plano but it would definitely be helpful to have Catholic Charities help and I know that there's a lot of support coming from government officials in Fort Worth already and they're all really excited about this idea so One key stakeholder that was mentioned was the sister cities program and we have there are 500 different sister cities programs around the country Fort Worth has the number one sister cities program in the country and arguably in the world we have with us the president and CEO Mae Ferguson who has something she'd like to say Thank you Karlo for that great recognition when you were studying the other global affairs offices around the country did you see a difference in those that were perhaps in city government as to the public-private partnerships was there one that stood out we're researching that now through this consultant of whether to establish this office within the city government or have it more in community control so was there a big difference one way or the other we actually went to the Dallas world affairs council hoping for some sort of support from them it's technically officially called the Dallas Fort Worth world affairs council but they were not very welcoming to the city of Fort Worth we actually walked in we'll have a talk later all of but um they um they their programs were a lot more kind of government based so it just seemed more not what we were trying to do we want to help people coming into the city rather than just having events for people who already live here do you want to add more? yeah no absolutely we saw a lot of differences between the offices being actually through the government there were some who were affiliated to specific universities and to their global affairs if like a university had a particularly big international relations or global affairs department they housed the office through there so there are big differences like Dahlia mentioned we went to the Dallas world affairs council and they do a lot of programs and it's very program an event driven so we have seen just the impacts that it makes and how they are targeting their audiences which isn't something that we imagine the global the Fort Worth global affairs office to be so to answer your question yes major difference we do think that working with the community and creating programs specifically for them not at them is a big difference if that makes sense and just again like I mentioned earlier just being really intentional and creating collaborations also to kind of touch on Vice Chancellor Kathy Kivenstall's question collaboration is the key word for this office we can't do anything alone like the first quote said we can go fast but if we want to go far we have to collaborate together so it will be an effort from different parts of the city bringing it together because Fort Worth has already I mean as someone who's not from the U.S. Fort Worth has so many incredible resources and opportunities already it's just a matter of bringing everything together and utilizing every single one of those stakeholders to add value well I will second that I mean thank you for what y'all all of you have done because I think it being one of the on the partners council with about I think there's like 15 office now that are working with the consultant on this I think this is some valuable information and we will certainly move forward on it thank you so much thank you we also have with us the director of human resources for the city of Fort Worth Deanna Giordano y'all did a fantastic job I'm thrilled to see the presentation and the ideas that you brought forward and I want to share that we have contract specialists that we actually hire for the city of Fort Worth we also have communications and marketing programs and we don't have F1 but we have police and they do fast and furious driving so I just wanted to share that I also wanted to share our just kind of ask questions around kind of measures of success I know the testimonials are really critical and you could tell from the website those cities that have have made improvements in their global affairs are there other measures of success that you saw that were publicized by those other cities that really can help us kind of get our foot off the ground are some small big wins things that we could measure to help promote the big staff big budget that might be needed to fund a program like this well it's I always say it's it's harder to develop KPIs in terms of when we're talking about people those are definitely incredibly important one of the offices we saw they had a survey that they put out like it basically a census on just targeting there the international residents and asking them this was an anonymous survey how they felt and what their experiences were like and what could be better so a lot of that feedback was used this was also something that we had brainstormed about because it's directly again reaching the community and seeing what they want and what they need data collection super important I mean we're all business students so we understand that could be a measure of success through also the testimonials it's a lot harder I mean we conducted a lot of interviews it took us several months so that's more of a long-term measure of success but definitely through surveys and through also pulling stakeholders and seeing if their needs are being met so talking to I mean you talked about the police talking about the police and I mean one of the meetings we went to they were talking about refugees and how they had very close connections to the police department in terms of just helping them out when they needed so reaching out to every single key stakeholder and figuring out are their needs being met how can we do better so through that it's also super important and again honing in the word collaboration all this can only be done if we reach out to every member of the community thank you for sharing of course thank you Mike you guys have done a great job talking about bringing a focus a global focus to Fort Worth what I was sort of sitting here thinking about was what about the other direction what about where citizens who are interested in learning more about you know that maybe passionate about travel or passionate about learning about global business opportunities or people who could really benefit by understanding the rest of the world a little better are there opportunities or did you see in these types of organizations of you know facilitation of looking the other direction we definitely saw a lot of two-way communication there a lot of the immigrants are really wanting to teach people about their communities we talked a lot about having immigrants kind of get to know each other so if you're coming from Afghanistan you kind of come with a group of other people who are from Afghanistan so you feel welcome in that community but also if somebody wants to learn about Afghanistan for example they could kind of have some sort of meeting and have some sort of event where they kind of celebrate it rather than just like keeping to themselves because it's important for people who are already members of the Fort Worth community to learn about these people and have them become a part of the Fort Worth community as well we talked about everybody like learning the languages things like that just having events so that people are interested but I think the global business thing really does go both ways having companies coming from other countries but those people can also bring people who are wanting to work employees from Fort Worth can go to those companies and kind of bring in people who are wanting to work employees from Fort Worth we've got Dr. Wilburne up here from TCU Dr. Thank you so much as everyone has iterated already thank you for your contributions I think it's always a sacred and beautiful thing when students live the value and attest to the value and the power of higher education and I think your project and your proposed initiative certainly embodies all of that promise so thank you for that presentation I was struck by three particular slides this one in particular the last one how to not live off of one's community yet live with it and what does that mean within the context of global this global affairs initiative so I'm wondering if you've thought about the implications and or challenges associated with the proposals that you're making for the range of people in a city like Fort Worth who may never be seen under the glitz of that particular that beautiful image of the skyline 30 years after what Fort Worth looked like in 1993 I asked this question as an African-American from New York City whose virtual whole life has been on the east coast and living in some of the major cities of our country along the coast and I'm just curious as we think about multiple types of diversity and the local diversity they may exist in any particular region what might the implications or challenges of the proposals you have for a global outlook working and living within the communities of a variety of diversities that exist here I could even think moving even further when we get to a point of first generation international you know students or individuals who live in the community what might diversity look like and how might this global office impact that type of diversity that's local and central and equally organic to our community well thank you for your question I mean just touching a little bit about my experience I don't look international I don't sound international if you were to just meet me in the middle of the street a lot of people don't know what my story background is so for me from my experience and what I've lived in the US and in other countries just fostering that inclusion is so important not only based on obviously what people look like on the outside but our goal is to include every single person in the forward community which is so important we talked to and we did a lot of research from just different communities and what that lack of inclusion does to the city and how it's felt throughout the city so with this quote specifically when we chose it living with the community is incredibly important is utilizing every single resident of Fort Worth no matter what they look like what they sound like and bringing everyone together because again I don't look international I feel like I sometimes have things to say and people wouldn't necessarily see that based on the way I look and the way I talk so bringing everyone together because every single resident in Fort Worth does have something to add to the conversation and will be so important in actually ensuring the success of this office thank you got time maybe for one more question Mike I just want to make a real quick comment since you mentioned you didn't get quite as warm a welcome when you went to the Dallas meeting and since you have a quote from Aiman Carter up here you have to know Aiman because I'm sure you don't know that you're not from Fort Worth Aiman Carter had another really famous quote that said Fort Worth is where the west begins and Dallas is where the east just sort of peters out yes and the other thing about Aiman Carter he whenever he knew he was going to Dallas for a meeting he would always bring a sack lunch because he was never going to spend a single dollar in Dallas and he'd fill up a tank of gas before he left as well so it's never a good idea to put an elected official on the spot but I'm going to go to our count district to council member Carlos Flores who represents the north side a very multi ethnic part of the city thank you so much for being here would you like to share some closing thoughts with the students I suppose so thanks Carl I thought I was going to survive unscathed but I don't have any questions for you but first thank you very impressed you know by the presentation the data that's collected in fact I recall the conversation that I had to Carl you know Carl over in the hallway one time I think we're just fresh off the sister cities trip and we were talking about the ability for you know city government to mount some kind of ambassadorial greeting reception when needed because it always seemed to me since I've been here since 2017 it was always ad hoc right we're cobbling together who's available who can speak as a mayor available if not mayor pro tem etc right it seemed to come together the best we could manage at the time but it was never really organized it was never really formal and in my opinion I think sometimes you know despite our best efforts you know we fell short we needed help so we started engaging more so sister cities and that helped augment you know our ability to do that the seat that Fort Worth you know which is an arm visit Fort Worth has been a really good help you know yours truly when you have you know folks visiting from a Latin American country or Spanish speaking country hey what's Carlos doing it's fine you know I mean I'll do my part and step in that role and help out because I really do think it should be under a collective umbrella right for a city that Fort Worth is and aspires to be we need that I'm going to give you a couple of examples you talked about refugees right might surprise you to know that there are three zip codes where there are a lot of refugees that come over here by virtue of Catholic Charities amongst some of the groups I think it's if memory serves it's called country of origin change well there's a zip code in District 2 that is second highest for refugee reception you know in the city you know that's important to know there are other ways I think that we can do this the Fort Worth Police Department they have visitors that come over from Toluca for example and they do training fire departments beginning to look at that more so just a couple of things that we can certainly think about I'd love to share some other ideas just from my perspective and how we can do that because I'm really bullish on this idea thanks to Carl and for you for making this happen and I'm really hopeful it will happen thank you thank you council member Flores so in closing I'll just say a couple quick things I think global affairs in Fort Worth is like a symphony we have a lot of great players we are one step closer to finding the conductor thanks to all of you I hope this has been, thank you Marina your thoughts I think echoed the group I hope when you think about your experience in Fort Worth, wherever life takes you all and at TCU you'll remember this moment this is your moment right you'll remember this forever the skills that you learn through this program use those in whatever you do and wherever life takes you and if any of you out there who remember their dreams and things about them feel free to just chat with them right after we thank you so much for coming to the city of Fort Worth again thank you to our friends from TCU who helped make this happen Dr. Sherrod out there has been a key person doing this all the folks from TCU thanks to the city of Fort Worth and one more round of applause for outstanding students