Sages & Seekers – Page 2 – Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity

June 28, 2021August 12, 2021

Alia Salem: Conversations about Community and Resilience

In this episode of the Hunt Institute Sages & Seekers podcast, Alia Salem emphasizes the importance of connecting with one’s community and beyond. For Salem, the only way to enact change and fight injustice is by supporting movements that are different from our own. Listen to this podcast to learn how we as a global community can work together to solve issues that can’t be solved in silos.

Alia Salem is the Founder and Executive Director of FACE (Facing Abuse in Community Environments). Her professional background is in organizational development, community organizing, and communications with a particular focus on the intersections of institutionalized racism and the push towards an equitable pluralistic society. She also has a certification in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).

Alia is a co-founder of the Palestine Action Committee of Texas and an active board member with both the Dallas Peace and Justice Center and the North Texas Fair Housing Center. She is a proud 2019 Roddenberry Fellow and a Dallas Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. Alia is the former Executive Director for the DFW Chapter of CAIR and is a 14-year veteran of community work within the broader DFW metroplex. She is a published writer and public speaker, and her work has been featured on most major media outlets globally. She is a graduate of UT Arlington with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with her three focuses of study being in Communications, Sociology, and Religion/Culture.

Alia Salem says, “I’ve always had a propensity to [a] serve, but also [b] to do so in a way that kind of fills a void and contributes my skillsets for the broader good, for the greater good.”

What is Hunt Sages & Seekers?

The Hunt Institute Sages & Seekers Podcast shares the stories of innovative social leaders and the resilient communities that have shaped them. The series explores guests’ personal experiences with social issues ranging from inequity in the arts and school segregation to climate change and police violence. Through conversations with these agents of change, listeners gain insight into the history of these matters and discover how we as a global community can work to correct them. Follow us on SoundCloud at Hunt Sages & Seekers Podcast.

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

September 17, 2018March 23, 2022

Anna Grace Carey ’19, Hunt Institute Associate

Anna Grace Carey ’19 joins the Hunt Institute as an Associate, bringing with her a passion for marketing and giving back to the Institute as an alumna of SMU and the Hunt Institute.

Anna Grace is a Marketing Specialist at Sendero, a management consulting firm in Dallas. Prior to joining the marketing department, she worked as an Associate Consultant at Sendero where she led various organizational change management initiatives in IT departments at two Fortune 500 companies. She graduated cum laude from Southern Methodist University in 2019 with majors in journalism, fashion media, and political science; and minors in law & legal reasoning and history of visual & performing arts.

Outside of the office, she is a member of the Genesis Young Leaders Board of Directors and volunteers through the Junior League of Dallas. She enjoys writing, traveling, and spending time with Henry, her energetic Goldendoodle.

During her time at SMU, Anna Grace worked at the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity as the Communications Team Lead. She created the communication strategy and edited blog posts for the Hunt Institute Digest. She also developed the Sages & Seekers Podcast with the Hunt Institute for her honors distinction thesis in the SMU Division of Journalism. The goal of the podcast is to facilitate conversations about community and resiliency.

While at SMU, Anna Grace also completed research on the Supreme Court and copyright law. She contributed to “Give Me a ©: Refashioning the Supreme Court’s Decision in Star v. Varsity into a More Complete Copyright Protection for Fashion Designers,” a paper written with Professors Jared Schroeder and Camille Kraeplin. This work was published in the UCLA Entertainment Law Review. Additional honors and awards include membership in Pi Beta Kappa and Kappa Tau Alpha, the Outstanding Senior in Writing & Editing award for the Division of Journalism, and the John Goodwin Tower award for leadership in political science.

When asked what her motivation is for doing impact work she replied, “Nothing is more rewarding than doing work in the impact space. Contributing to initiatives that move us towards a more sustainable, inclusive and conscientious future is such a gift.”