 But I just want to hear more about your story and what you were doing before OIST and now in the years that you've been here, how it's changed and just tell me more. I'd love to know your story. And don't hesitate to interject because it's kind of a long story. I'd love to hear it. Okay, so I'm a New Zealand that would she can probably tell from my accent. Yes, I can. I grew up in small town New Zealand, went to a one-room schoolhouse. I'm kind of a little bit of an anomaly to have ended up here from there. I attended University of Targo where I studied psychology, completed my clinical training. So I'm a licensed clinical psychologist in New Zealand, but I also completed a PhD in neuroscience which made me a somewhat unusual person. I'm concerned about people's welfare, but I also want to dig down and find out why potentially biologically things may go awry. So anyway, trained at the University of Targo, which I loved and then actually practiced as a clinician and then came back to the University of Targo as a faculty member where I taught on the clinical psychology training program for a number of years. Developed interests in working with children and families, dealing with attention deficit hybrid, diabetes disorder, which kind of combines my interest in neurobiology with my clinical psychology training and desire to contribute. And so we've been at the University of Targo for a number of years. My husband is also a faculty member there and he came home one day and said, What do you think about moving to Japan? Because he had connections and I just didn't react entirely positively. We had a small child, you know, six months old baby. And it was kind of like, yeah, I have some significant reservations about that. So we didn't pursue anything at that point. Roll forward five years and an opportunity came up again. And we were looking at opportunities in Tokyo, but at that stage we had a five year old and a two year old. And actually Kenji Doria, who has a long association with West, was hosting, was hosting Jeff for a visit. And when he heard that we were thinking about Tokyo, he said, Well, have you thought about West and Okinawa? And so he got us to come over and we had a great look around and it was kind of like, Yeah, we could see, we could see the vision. Nothing, nothing was here. I was going to ask you what year that was that what we first looked. Well, I first came to West in December of 2005. Wow. So everything was in a rented accommodation over in a room city. I think there were maybe six PIs by the time we visited. Oh my gosh. So there was really not much here. And this, this just didn't exist at all. How could you see that vision though? Could you even picture anything like this? Well, there was some wonderful computer generated imagery. So Kenji said, well, this is what's here now, which was a hillside. This is what is going to be. And it is, you know, those images are a reality. And so we knew what was going to be and we knew what the vision was going to be. And so we gave it sort of just over a year later. So we gave up our permanent positions at the end of the targo and made the move with far too much furniture, too many suitcases and a six-year-old and a just three-year-old. Do you have any hesitation about Japan from a cultural perspective or your children being small? I mean, it is a big difference. Even though I've met a lot of Kiwis in Tokyo, they're all great. It was, well, it was wondering if I could, if I could work in Japan, you know, because even though I have a family work is a very, very important part of my life. And so I was wondering if it was possible to do what I do. You know, the first time when thinking about coming to Japan and at that point it would have been living in a large city with a small baby, not speaking the language, which I still struggle with. And just, you know, my stereotypes about what it would be like to be a woman working in Japan. Yeah, you know, interesting. So all of those things, you know, were part of that kind of anxiety. And it was new, you know. Right. I had colleagues that I worked with in the U.S., like colleagues in Europe, but Japan was, yeah, it was something different again. So we did hesitate. And Japan, for me too, I think for a lot of people who come here, you're temporary, you're a visitor, you're on an exchange program, which is what I did in the 90s on a professional exchange a few times. And then there was a 16-year gap. And I returned on an exchange through the State Department in the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo. So you're never really fully living here. And I would be asked a lot, how long are you going to stay? Because it was just, you're coming here to see Japan, but you're going to go back to your home country. So I can understand that hesitation and also gender aspect as well. That was quite notable to me in the 1990s, that all the principles we met with in the ministries were male and the women came in with the highly educated women. Came in with the two. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, and the other thing for us was when we came here, we came on five-year contracts with no guarantee that those would be renewed. We didn't have a university tenure system or anything like that at the time. So it was, we were giving up permanent positions to take a chance. And yes, we were concerned about the kids, but we also wanted them to have that experience because we lived in the south of the South Island, which is reasonably monocultural when we were in Dunedin. And so for us, it was actually an opportunity because we would have loved to have had the opportunity to live overseas as children. And I think our children, they're growing a bit now, but they certainly don't regret the opportunities, you know, it wasn't always easy for them. Sure. Yeah. I didn't go abroad until I was 20. Yeah. And so I'm feeling that same way when I see young people here growing up and being so bicultural, multicultural. So I felt like I was sort of fully cooked at 20. I wasn't even sure about taking on another language. But so now you've really had this long history here. And I know there's, but you've been here kind of from the bottom up. You've seen this grown. And in 2015, I suppose it was really coming into its own. And yet even then, I felt like I had discovered this hidden gem of Okinawa. And the reason I say that is because on mainland, so many Japanese have not visited Okinawa. Close friends of mine with maybe a cousin living in Okinawa said, oh, I haven't yet gone. And I said, this is part of Japan. You do realize? Well, they've only been here on a school visit for one or two days. Right. And I don't think you get to know Okinawa. You know, you need time. You need time to get to know the locals, to kind of get to know the rhythms, to kind of understand how Okinawa operates. And it's a complex place. I'm sure. Did you feel when you moved here, did you have a sense, though, of sort of coming home as a new place, but that sense, it's such sort of an old soul place to it? Well, I think, you know, when anybody asks us, you know, what's what Okinawa is like or what's Okinawa like? You know, the thing that we always talk about is the kindness that we were showing. We were showing remarkable kindness by so many people when we came. People went out of their way to help us and to make us feel welcome to help us with very many tasks. And this wasn't just the people from OIST. You know, this was, you know, our landlords. They took really good care of us. You know, we were remarkably supported. And I think that was what, you know, made Okinawa home for us. And I think also, even though New Zealand is a lot bigger, it's an island as well. Right. So there is that notion of island culture. That's right. You know, island calmness. No, I felt that my first time and that would have been 2015 when I came to OIST. The Japanese government was hosting a cyber security conference. So this was an additional tour that we made. And I'm so glad that we did because it was it really does. And first Okinawa did. I mean, even at touchdown, I just had this. And if you come through, you're walking through the airport and you go past the orchids. Yes. And we kind of do that. Right. I'm sure. I know. I get that with Tokyo. But when you're describing people going out of their way and being so helpful, of course, Tokyo's energy, it's much more frenetic. And you, I think here with the rhythm, that's everything. And OIST, as far as the architecture, and we could talk endlessly about the, really the union of sort of humanity with the natural environment. It really does open up the mind and calm the mind. That's the way I feel here. I'm very stimulated, but you can also work on things and be focused. And you can think. Yes. You know, one of the things that I think we often say to the students when they're thinking about whether or not they want to come here, it's that idea that, you know, yeah, we don't have the big city things. You know, we don't necessarily have Broadway or all of the art galleries and opportunities that you would have in a very large city. But what we do have is a way of life that makes living easy so that you can actually focus on the research. You're not spending a lot of time commuting. You're not being jostled all the time. You can look out the window and see the ocean and just kind of breathe. And that's so important, you know, for people to be able to really think deeply about their research. Yeah. I mean, when I came here, I thought, now I did a PhD, I completed it in 1992 and I was ready to fill out my application here. But I don't know if I got my dad's brain, though, to be able to handle the study. That is, I am kind of curious, though, as far as steam and, you know, the sciences with the arts does always have a bit of a balance here of people wanting to, I'm assuming you might bring in social science or arts, humanities, people. At the moment, you know, we are very much a STEM university, but I think there is an appreciation that you can't entirely separate science and art. And you certainly, if you're talking about communication as an art form, it's a critical part of science. That's right. We are actually always saying to people, if you want to learn to write well, you need to read a lot. And you don't need to just read scientific papers. You need to read novels, because that's where you really learn to appreciate language and the ability to actually communicate. Does that come as a surprise to the person you're telling this to, that you do need to read a lot because I asked that, I taught opinion writing for many years and I would get students, they just needed it for their degree. And they would waltz in and there was always one in every class who said, I don't know about this writing because I just can't stand to read. And I said, it's so great that you said that because I'm so glad you feel so comfortable telling me that because that's a really good sign. Writing, communicating, it's about vulnerability. Yeah. And so the presentation and putting your opinion on things or writing a personal essay, I had to tell them what we talk about in here is for us. That's what makes it special and whatever you want to share if you want to share to me personally or to the group and they would really share a lot with the group. And that was just a special moment. But it's... Yeah. Well, as I say, I think we have to encourage our students to, of course, we don't want to stop them being completely focused on their research, but that if they really want to learn to be able to communicate about science, they need to be able to communicate with people. That's right. You know, and it's not just about writing dry scientific papers, although we do spend a lot of time doing that. Sure. But it is actually about being able to talk to people about what you do, being able to connect with people. And often those connections, like, you know, before this... before filming started, we were talking a lot about people that we knew and connections that we made. And that was about the people we knew. That's small talk, you know. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And it's not small talk. Right. No, and it is... Critical talk. It is critical because it's the person to person. I mean, in Chinese guanxi, you know, I learned that early on or what we would call just networking, but it's so much more than that because it's about your natural curiosity about people. I get so much energy from other people's work. And our work may be far afield, but you're centering on communication. I feel like, okay, that's our common ground with each other. That's our common ground. That invites me, then, to kind of look at your work more. I might have been more intimidated and thought, oh, I don't really know the language that you use. But that was something that also struck me. I think OIST would be pleased to hear that we were introduced to the researchers, the doctoral students in their labs and they had to communicate with us and we were a group of international journalists and it really impressed me that they were able to explain it. Maybe I didn't get all of it, but they did a very effective job. And I wondered if that were part of their training here. It seems like it's set up so that they do that. They have a professional development course and that does involve opportunities and I think you're going to be working with them this afternoon as well. It's about telling the story and telling the story simply. One of the things that we're always saying to them, particularly because many of our students are not English as a first language, and we'll say, use the small word. Don't use the big one. Make sure that there needs to be precision. Say what it is you mean, but say it as simply as possible using words that everybody can understand. Otherwise, you risk losing your audience or you risk miscommunicating the key points. So we're always saying, use the little words. That's true and when you're doing your dissertation or for some of these papers that we work on, you often think you have to use the more complicated language to show how educated you are. Well, we're saying small sentences, words that you know that people can understand and words that actually convey the true meaning. So I think we might think of science as being all about STEM, but if we want it to be funded and continued, it actually has to be all about communication. Oh, indeed. I would think climate change, the environment. My childhood was Earth Day and reading Ranger Rick magazine, the National Wildlife Foundation, or National Geographic. They'd have a lot of these publications for kids. And so my dream was to grow up to be an environmental attorney. I wanted to save the planet, defend those that can't speak for themselves, the animals and the trees. But we use climate change. We kind of ping pong it around and we forget that fundamentally, I want to understand this. Sometimes graphics will work, the visuals, but also the story of how we got here and that's where you bring in legacy ancestry. That's why this setting is so significant too because of the history of this place and all of the stories that are emerging from the locals here. I know they have a very strong and active town and gown program as well. And that's something that USC, where I taught at the University of Southern Cal, they turned around its relationship in the community and that really helped a lot to get the word out about what they were doing but also invite people from the community. And I think that's one of the things that oysters very aware of and our communication team are very aware of. It's about actually making the university accessible so that people feel comfortable. I'm an academic but that's because that was what I was good at. I wasn't that good at many other things. I don't know. But I think people often see universities and academics as people that are not accessible. That's right. And one of the things that we really want to make clear is that I don't come from an academic background. Well, yeah, I'm hearing about the score. I can remember when I finally got a job, my father said, you're going to pay you to do that? And I said, yes. And actually it's not a bad salary and I'm pretty much getting to do what I want. And that's something that my husband and I often talk about is however hard the work is, in his words, we get to come to work and play. Yes. Right. And that's a very rarefied opportunity. It is. We are so fortunate to be able to do that. And sometimes we also say, talking with the students, it's kind of like, well, we're really dependent on you. You think you depend on us, but actually you bring the energy. You bring the ideas. And if it wasn't for you, the truth is I wouldn't have a job. Right. Yeah. And it's very important to remember that. That the only reason that, as academics, we have jobs, is because of the students who come to the university and want to work with us. It's such a privilege. And I felt that way when I woke up today because I knew I'd be on the campus and I'd have students. It just immediately gave me that burst of energy. Because they also, they keep me young in that I think of myself as a student. And so your word about accessibility, too, that's why the writing and the communicating is so essential. Because I know I'm so privileged and I have something that few people have. I'm not talking about my work, but this position that we have as academics. And it could be very self-indulgent and just doing your own thing. But sharing with people who have a real interest in, I mean, I find a lot of people are very interested in, you know, what are you working on? But they sometimes feel like it's a little closed off. And so I just think the philosophy of OIST is something that would be good for mainland, too. To embrace. Even though the funding came from mainland. But it is one of, you know, it's one of our goals, it's one of the, you know, the overriding reasons for OIST's existence. Yes, scientific excellence, world excellence in science is part of it. But we are also charged with, you know, innovating academia in the rest of Japan. And so we have to, and we are in Japan, so we do need to kind of lead by example. We have to demonstrate that it can be done. And we have to demonstrate that it's worth doing. Right. You know, we have to be a model. And I really feel that too. And that's why I've gotten more involved. The OIST Foundation, probably back in 2015, I might have felt like, well, I don't have the background, the science background as a social scientist. But I didn't let that stop me because that's where I connected with what my dad did. He's from what we call the silent generation. He never talked about his work. He served on the USS Missouri in 1946. He heard very little about that until I came across some family photos of him on the ship with, it was part of a diplomatic Mediterranean cruise during Truman administration. But even though he died in 2005, I retained that connection afterwards by looking back. And so that becomes then part of my story too. So now I feel like I'm legitimately connected to OIST through my father. But my mother was the communicator, so I don't want to forget her. And they met in Cambridge. So I hope you all, she was not at MIT, but she grew up in Cambridge, Mass. And I hope you all have some connection with MIT. Well, that's a beautiful part of America. It really, really is. Talk about history as well. So can you tell me more about your work? Okay. So, you know, a lot of the work that we do is about trying to understand kind of the presentation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which I'm sure that you've heard about, particularly in the US. It has good press and it has bad press. And so our work is all about understanding that both at the level of the individual, what is happening for them, why they're having the challenge and the challenges that they're facing. But we're also really interested in what could underlie that at a basic biological level. And so we do research that, particularly, we focus on how young people with ADHD respond to the consequences of their actions. Because that's, you know, at a very basic level, that's what drives our behaviour. We repeat those actions that are enjoyable or rewarding or reinforcing for us. We tend not to repeat those actions that have poor outcomes. Theoretically, my husband and I have worked on a theory called the Dopamine Transfer Deficit Hypothesis, which is a biological explanation for what we think is happening for some individuals with ADHD that might lead to them responding differently to the outcomes of their actions compared to other children. And how that could be driving symptoms of ADHD and how we could use that to actually try to improve their lives and the lives of their families and the schools that they're in. So that's kind of very much in a nutshell. But as I said to you earlier, it combines my background in neuroscience with my clinical psychology training and wanting to work with children and families. And so we do work looking at reinforcement that in my lab at the moment, I also have graduate students are great at dragging you out of your comfort zone. And so I have a student who's really interested in language use in children with ADHD. She has a background in sketch language therapy. And so we're looking at children with and without ADHD. We're looking at the structural and pragmatic language. And so she's looking at their language and conversations, their language when they're having to tell a story because so much of communication is storytelling. How they ask other people questions because that's how we negotiate. And how we give instructions. So we're trying to cover this, the broad aspect of communication because we know that many children with ADHD struggle to form and maintain good social interactions with others. And we're really interested in what degree language might be contributing to that because if it is, then we can do something about addressing the language. So that's an offshoot in our lab. I have another student who's really interested in the expectations that we have of other people and how that can colour how we interact or how we approach other people. She's just beginning research there, now looking at how our children with ADHD solve problems, social problems, and the factors that can be contributing to that. Again, so that we can look and say, well, if we understand the mechanisms, then we have an opportunity to actually begin to develop interventions that target the nature of the problem and then the outcomes of the problem. How does it compare to, say, New Zealand and the U.S.? In the U.S., with ADHD, I read a lot about adults sort of self-diagnosing. Oh, I've got this. And that sort of comes across sometimes a little flippant. You haven't been formally diagnosed. You've read about that and you've thought, well, that must be what my problem is. We were six or 12-year-olds, so my goal is to kind of make as much of a change for them as we can when they're younger. That makes sense. But the whole issue of adult ADHD, to be perfectly honest, I trained quite a long time ago, and back then people believed that, well, if they believed in ADHD at all, they believed that you out and grew it. We know that that's not true. We do know that for many individuals who may be diagnosed with ADHD in childhood, they will continue to experience some level of impairment. And it may not be so significant as to disrupt their lives, but they may not achieve at the level they have the potential to achieve. And so for a long time, adult ADHD was kind of a bit of a myth. I've run groups with parents of children with ADHD and if I didn't believe in adult ADHD before I ran the groups, I certainly believed in it afterwards because I saw the struggles that they had to pay attention to all of the content. I saw the struggles that they had withholding their desire to jump in and answer the questions for everybody and things like that. So I'm in no doubt that adult ADHD is a real thing. I think the internet is both a wonderful thing and a bit of a curse. One of the things we always ask our children and our students is, well, where's the evidence? Right. Well, I looked it up on the internet, but was it a reliable source that you looked up at? Oh, gosh. I think there are a lot of people out there who may be struggling and some of them will have ADHD. Some of them may be looking for an explanation. Now, because it's self-diagnosed, it may or may not meet the criteria for ADHD, but something is happening in their lives and they need support. Now, it may not be ADHD, it may be relationship problems, it may be, you know, maybe they have problems with anxiety, maybe they just have difficulty in their social interactions with people, but they're looking for something. They're looking for some support, they're looking for some help. Whether or not they have ADHD, well, I think that's for a professional to work with them to determine. Right. And I think, culturally, there's a group I work with, there's a volunteer and support them called TEL, Tokyo English Lifeline. Yeah, I know them. And it comes up a lot when I'm talking to members of their board that there is this cultural gap, it turns out a lot of Japanese will call that line and they feel more comfortable talking to some of the internationally trained staff to open up and they'll say, I haven't really disclosed the way I feel. Yeah. So is that an aspect, do you all end up talking about the cultural differences? It's really interesting actually that you raised that because, you know, ADHD is pretty universal. Right. You know, the behaviors that we would describe as the symptoms of ADHD are present across countries and cultures. To some degree, the way they may manifest is going to be culturally influenced, but what is even more important is that the way in which they are understood or reacted to is going to have cultural determinants. You know, we talk about Japanese culture and I mean, I'm saying this as a foreigner, but you know, harmony is very important. Yes. Being humble is very important. Which puts individuals with ADHD and particularly their families in a very challenging position because the symptoms of ADHD in and of themselves don't lend themselves to being humble, to being quiet, to being making sure that you don't disturb others. And so that puts a lot of pressure on parents, for example, kids who have ADHD because their children are not fulfilling expectations. You know, and we're supposed to not make mistakes. Right. As opposed to in the US or New Zealand, we all say to our kids, well, you know, that's how you learn. Yes, exactly. We did the best we could. And as long as you learn from what you're wrong, it's fine. That's what we expect. That's what we hope for. But if you turn it around and you have a situation where you're not supposed to make mistakes, you're supposed to stop and think and very much consider how your behaviour impacts on others. So it is very important that we have quality sort of psychoeducation to make sure that parents and teachers and grandparents understand that these behaviours are not deliberate and to help them understand that simply telling children not to do them is not going to work. You know, you can give them as much advice or gentle criticism, but it's not necessarily going to change it. You need to change the way, perhaps, that you're thinking about this and also to understand that it's not something that you need to be ashamed or embarrassed of. Right. Well, if you take it to the neurological origins, is it related to the... not knowing all the aspects of the brain, but some impulse control? Well, if we're right in our theory about the dopamine transfer deficit, what most of us do is our behaviour is controlled by our expectation of... maybe not reward, but good outcomes. You know, you come into the classroom, you get your books out, you start to do what you're supposed to do. That's because in the past, when you've come and got your books out, you've been reinforced. And so what your brain does is it learns that, you know, coming into class and getting your books out is a cue that reward will follow. Right. And so we are... we believe our behaviour is made... appropriate behaviour is maintained on the basis of expectation and learned history that when I behave this way, there's a good outcome. And I don't mean that they think, oh, if I do this, there'll be a good outcome, but rather the neurochemical system and the brain-the-dovemen system, it actually responds to the cue. We think for kids with ADHD, that's not working effectively. And so they're actually responding to the actual reward. So the cues don't serve to maintain or control behaviour. So you need to have more frequent reinforcement. You need to avoid delays in reinforcement because it's the same for you and I. You know, we're being continuously reinforced for doing the right thing. I'm all about the cues. But for children with ADHD, they're not being continuously reinforced. And so we'll often say to teachers and parents, you're not spoiling them. Reinforcing them is not going to make them swell-headed. It's not going to make them not humble. You're actually just trying to bring them up to the same level that everybody else in the class or everybody else in the family is operating at. You are not spoiling them. You are correcting a biological limitation. This is fascinating. Because sometimes teachers will say to us, well, why should I reinforce that child more when they're the child that's not doing their work? And it's like, well, that's precisely why you need to do it. Because for them, they only get the sense of reinforcement when you actually deliver the reward. Their brains are not anticipating the reward. So you actually need to provide the reward. And we say, a reward doesn't have to be a prize. I was going to ask you. A reward can be best. Or a sign. That is all that you need. Social reward is extremely powerful. I'm going to talk today about persuasive writing and I've got a few slides to share with the group. And the first slide is of the front of George Washington Carver Elementary, where in fifth grade, speaking of the reward, my teacher, social studies teacher, handed me back my paper and said, have you ever thought about being a writer? Exactly. I've told this probably 500 times that story, but that changed everything for me. Because now my identity is a 10-year-old. It was beyond just the immediacy of living in a happy family home to, oh, I can, I have something to say. I can express myself and I was thrilled. And I'm trying to figure out now who that teacher was and so those connections. But it really just meant the world. So I'm so glad to hear about reward in the sense, in my mind, I was thinking it was non-material. I was thinking a bit more as, yeah, this, the gesture. We've actually just published a paper where we were, you know, a lot of, it was an fMRI paper looking at, you know, regions in the brain and bold activation to indicate, you know, that one region might be more active than another. And there's been a lot of work done with kind of like monetary reward. But we've recently completed a study where we were testing social reward, affiliate of reward to get the same effects. Yeah, I think so. Especially, I wonder, you had mentioned the internet and the sort of the good and the bad and we can remember the pre-internet days and the post-internet days. And we're aware of the social media world with all the influencers that people are feeling more disconnected. Even though we have these, we can scroll and go through the videos. There's that sense of greater isolation. And it didn't begin with the COVID era. It's really sort of marched in tandem with a lot of this technology where we don't have to meet face to face like this. Well, look, we had a meeting yesterday. It was about fundraising and stuff like this. And it was so nice because the room was full of people. And it's, you know, the struggle is to bring people back. We've got so good at using Zoom and yes, it's incredibly convenient. But it's not the same. Not at all. I hated teaching on Zoom. Me too. Because, you know, when I teach, and I sometimes teach in this room, I come, you know, and, you know, I was fortunate I cut my teeth on teaching in classes of four or five hundred students where you're performing. Right, exactly. You're not always performing like I am. It's like a frustrated actor sometimes. Well, you know, but you could always tell when you let, you know, when you lost them. Yes, you can. And you would know where in the room you had to put your attention. Sure. In order to hold them, you know. Yeah, you can't pick up on that. And you can't do that at the same time. It's just impossible. You don't know. Well, sometimes people have got their screens turned off. Right. And, you know, when my screens turned off I may have gone to the bathroom or made a cup of coffee or something like that. Or I'm just sort of having a bit of a rest. But it's just, you know, I just miss that one-on-one connection. Oh, I do too. And as I say, it can be a class of five hundred, but you can still have a one-on-one connection. Sure. And also, I need to be able to move. Oh, absolutely. You know, and like we're sitting still. I'm moving a bit because my leg had fallen asleep there. But the worst time, the only time I couldn't teach I was heavily pregnant. And I couldn't breathe to walk and talk at the same time. And so I had to sit and I couldn't teach. Right. Because I always... Sure. I'm always moving. Uh-huh. And you and I have been moving with our hands. I know. I know. It's my real talker with my... I think with my hands. Well, I wanted to ask you about gender as well. And living here over time, I never majored in comparative politics. I have a PhD in international relations and a BA in political science. So coming to Japan really at the invitation first of the Fulbright program and then the Abe Fellows, that's this century. That's when it all sort of came full circle with what I had observed in the 1990s with this sort of stereotype. Yeah. The archetype really of the ideal woman. And I've had Japanese female friends tell me about the ideal housewife is the Japanese woman. So then when I went into a Japanese classroom and taught for six years in Kyoto, the women who had gone abroad and it's a disproportionate percentage who do, Japanese females who go abroad, the ones who would return would tell me that they felt like they developed a different self, a different personality. And they'd go to Australia, New Zealand or the States. They learned to overcome hesitancy. They found their voices. They were now different in the classroom. They were more like an international student. Not all because I don't want to re-stereotype them, but I sort of started thinking about these Japanese women as gender diplomats because I do think that stereotype is a bit more of a stigma for the women. I mean the men have their own as well but there's so much talk about the gender gap and these women often when they return they don't feel as welcomed. Right. Japanese on the outside. Yeah. No, I think that's a real issue. This is also about language because one of our team went to the US at 18, did her undergraduate and graduate there and thinks of herself more or less as someone from the US now. But she finds that her personality changes depending on which language she's speaking in and she said she's not sure. It's probably partly because she left Japan when she was 18. But in Japanese she's quieter. She isn't as able to express her opinions and it's not about her fluency in Japanese. But she said she changes. Right. And she doesn't actually like the change. Sure. Because she feels less strong. Sure. But the reward cues though, see she's getting rewarded for that because that's more of the norm. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So no, I think it really is an issue and one of the things I think that OIST really could do is really bring Japanese women home because it's bringing them home to an international setting where they are valued for their minds, not their bento-making skills. Right. And I mentioned that because that was one of the hardest things for me. You know, we're now youngest, I was at Yotsuya and I'd be making the bento in the morning and like I had all the cutters, I had all the bits and pieces and they were, it was like, I just don't give enough. I don't care enough. Do they want us to try the bentos? But I'm sure it's the talk of the town if you have the worst line. I failed. I was a bento failure. And I use that as an example because I think it is, you know, I think for women in science it's challenging anyway because we have to overcome the stereotypes, but we have to overcome the things that we hold inside that hold us back as well, that we question our ability. I worked in a psychology department where there were a number of women and sometimes we'd get together on a Friday night and we'd talk about things and we'd go, oh, we feel like you don't know what we're doing. We'd admit to feeling worried about how well our work was going. We'd admit that sometimes we just figured that we just would keep on faking it until we made it. And my old colleagues didn't have the luxury of that communication with one another. They had to kind of keep the image and I think that women do have that ability but we also hold within ourselves those questions and I think for Japanese women it's kind of like a double stereotype. They're females, they have to overcome that and they have to overcome other people's expectations of what they can or cannot achieve and so I think OIST is a wonderful place to bring, you know, the very best Japanese... I love that idea. And honestly I often say to my male colleagues that they will confirm this that if you don't have as many women as men working in a particular endeavor, then you're only going to do half as well because you've only got half the brains that you could have. You know, I've been here and I'm in my eighth year of residency and I have a lot of Japanese friends who they see me speak up and speak boldly and I have the freedom to do that because of course. And in my case I'm not young anymore so I think it was a big difference and you know, sometimes I get away with things because that's attributed to being not of, you know, Japan but actually I do know the roles. I know them very, very well but sometimes I just choose to pretend that I don't but I can do that where I'm really aware how much harder it is I actually have a lamb half of which is made up of Japanese women most of them are from Okinawa and so we actually do discuss the issues about it being easier for me to stand up and say things because I don't have to over you know, I have to overcome my early training as being female but I don't have to overcome what it's about, what women can and cannot do but I think in terms of change it really would have to come more from them, you know, because I love being a role model if that's how they see it but I'm also in such a different position, if it didn't work out here I can just leave tomorrow, you know. We have to give them opportunities to shine. That's what it really is about about this whole opportunity to gain and to practice and to have an opportunity to share I want to give you an example of that my colleague Shizuka Shimabokoro has mentioned she developed this parenting program for Japanese mothers of children with ADHD and we call it Well-Parent Japan and it's not just about teaching management skills, it's about actually providing psychological well-being for the women so that they feel empowered to make change but it's actually a group for women because when we did our co-production with Japanese mothers of children with ADHD, they were feeling explicit about wanting to have it a women's only group because they felt more comfortable to be able to share with other women rather than with other men and I don't think that's necessarily unique to Japan at all I'm not raising it as a cultural thing but more an opportunity for women to work together to support one another and to lift one another up and I think that's something that we as women who have had a degree of success need to remember because women are not always kind to women at the higher levels we have unrealistic expectations of women we expect more from them so I think it's not just working with male colleagues but we need to actually look to ourselves and making sure that we are taking every opportunity to take our female colleagues with us I agree, I heard Kathy Matsui talk about when she went out on her own with the venture capital firm with two other women now of course she's operating at a very high level but nevertheless something that I took away from her talk and it was for a tal event last year was the idea she said I have a my own women board of directors and these are close friends and we talk maybe every month but it's just a way of sort of cheering each other on the other thing I thought of too was the couple of years ago some university around Tokyo 2020 where the head of the overseeing committee said that the women there they talked a little bit too much and they didn't really have much of substance and so there was some moderation some reform of that so that image of women talking without maybe making sense I remember the work of Deborah Tannen from Georgetown about how men and women communicate differently women do talk a lot but it's more in the private space in the private sphere so when we get around that board of directors meeting then the men dominate and it's just this opposite effect so when a woman speaks then it seems like she's almost intruding so I think the communicative atmosphere really does make a difference thank you so much I feel like I've just gotten to know you and know more about your work and I want to celebrate what you're doing now with your program to help people with and whose children may have ADHD and trying to support the sort of town and gown aspect to OIST as well I just want to appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about it because as I say but a little bit humble about what we do and we're always about the yes but so I'm going to come to you and say well I want to get beyond yes but so that we can get it out there and make sure that we we can connect with the community at all levels and engage them and interest them in the things that we're trying to do Professor Tripp thank you so much for your time and for meeting with me and I want to wish you well with your work and with your center and I want to hear more about it in the future Nancy thank you so much this is a fantastic opportunity for us to meet a new person who's interested in what we do obviously but also to help us get what we do out there into the wider community to be able to communicate about OIST and about our own research so this is not the last opportunity I hope be happy to be a bridge among many others thank you so much thank you