Jim Kiernan’s AFS experience in Germany in 1961 was an eye-opener. He had never left the northeast United States, but after just a summer in Germany he returned home with a strong desire to learn more about the world and, in his words, “live more.”
In this episode, we hear about Jim’s AFS experience, his Fulbright program in Brazil, and his extensive professional career with the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. After a few years in New York, Jim moved to France to help build up the firm’s European practice. Jim is now retired and splits his time between London and Washington DC.
Jim’s path is a clear example of how AFS can influence your professional and personal life. In AFS’s 75 year history, there are so many participants whose lives have been guided by their experiences with AFS.
In honor of AFS’s 75th anniversary, The AFS Exchange is releasing 4 episodes this month! That’s 4 times the stories of the impact AFS has had over the years.
Guest: Jim Kiernan
Study Abroad with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/study-abroad
Volunteer with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/volunteer
Host with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/host
Contact us: podcast@afsusa.org
Jim Kiernan’s AFS experience in Germany in 1961 was an eye-opener. He had never left the northeast United States, but after just a summer in Germany he returned home with a strong desire to learn more about the world and, in his words, “live more.”
In this episode, we hear about Jim’s AFS experience, his Fulbright program in Brazil, and his extensive professional career with the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. After a few years in New York, Jim moved to France to help build up the firm’s European practice. Jim is now retired and splits his time between London and Washington DC.
Jim’s path is a clear example of how AFS can influence your professional and personal life. In AFS’s 75 year history, there are so many participants whose lives have been guided by their experiences with AFS.
In honor of AFS’s 75th anniversary, The AFS Exchange is releasing 4 episodes this month! That’s 4 times the stories of the impact AFS has had over the years.
Guest: Jim Kiernan
Study Abroad with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/study-abroad
Volunteer with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/volunteer
Host with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/host
Contact us: podcast@afsusa.org
Kate M.
Hello and welcome to The AFS Exchange. I’m Kate Mulvihill. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of AFS, founded in 1947, we will be releasing 4 episodes this month! That’s 4 times the stories of the impact AFS has had on the lives of its participants over the years.
And yes, if we think about 75 years of AFS exchange students… host families… volunteers… sending families… that’s a lot of people. There’s also the friends that students make while on program, their connections with their teachers and other members of their community… How many lives have been affected by AFS at this point? Really? It’s in the millions. I can’t get more exact than that, because there really is no way to measure it. But I’m glad I get to hear a few of them, and share them with you!
So, what’s the goal of AFS? Passing Peace Forward. AFS empowers people to become globally engaged citizens by delivering meaningful intercultural experiences. AFSers help create a more just and peaceful world. And they’ve been doing it for 75 years now!
[Music]
Kate M.
Jim Kiernan’s AFS experience in Germany in 1961 was an eye-opener. He had never left the northeast United States, but after just a summer in Germany he returned home with a strong desire to learn more about the world and, in his words, “live more.”
After his AFS experience, Jim also completed a Fulbright program in Brazil… and he received his BA, MPA, and JD degrees from Harvard. After starting with the international law firm Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, Jim moved to France to help build up the firm’s European practice. Jim is now retired and splits his time between London and Washington DC.
Jim serves on the board of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. Jim is also on the board of the American Foundation in Paris, a student residence and cultural center.
It is clear in my interview with Jim that his AFS program has impacted him professionally and personally. In AFS’s 75 year history, there are so many participants whose life paths have been guided by their experiences with AFS. So… let’s hear from one of them!
[Music]
Jim K.
Hello, how are you?
Kate M.
I'm doing all right. How are you?
Jim K.
I'm fine.
Kate M.
So Jim introduces himself to me as Jim, but professionally he goes by James A. Kiernan III.
Jim K.
My name is Jim Kiernan. I live in Georgetown, Washington DC for most of the year. The rest of the year we live, my wife and I, live in London.
I've spent most of my rest of my professional life in Europe and my wife is British. We have a flat in London. We also have a son and a daughter in law and two kids in England so we spent a lot of time in Europe.
Kate M.
Okay. And how did you first hear about AFS?
Jim K.
The last two years of high school I switched from a public high school to prep school, as they call it. And that school had an AFS student from Uganda. And he was in his senior year. So I did not really get to know him that well, but I obviously knew AFS and the program. I don't think I actually knew that there was, or I hadn't focused on, the fact that there was an Americans Abroad program.
Because we lived in a different town, we basically had carpools. And one time one of the teachers at the school needed a ride home, I don't know why maybe his wife needed the car or the car, his car was broken or something. And so he came home with us and three or four students from the same town went to the school. And he mentioned that there was an Americans Abroad program and why wasn't I applying for it? And it was really last minute. So I applied for it and somehow I was selected, and there my life began.
Kate M.
Where were you placed in Germany?
Jim K.
Oldenburg in Oldenburg, because it happens to be in Oldenburg in another province or state of Germany. It's in Northwest Germany. This state is now called Lower Saxony. It's right on the border, Netherlands and the North Sea. So it's really north northwest.
From my perspective, even though it is described as a city it seemed much more like a town. My host family lived on a street with houses. And actually a very famous street, although I didn't know it at the time. The name of the street was Helene Lange Street, or Strasse. And she was a very, very prominent pedagogue and activist feminist in the late 19th and early 20th century who happened to have been born in Oldenburg.
Kate M.
To quote Lange, "education is everything." For women, education was "self-emancipation and self-realization," opening doors to life outside the home, and offering promising careers.
Jim K.
I lived with a wonderful host family that had eight or nine children. There were three boys: Verner, who was 19, Bernard who was 17, and Harold was 16. And we just biked all over town and played sports and did all the things that you know, teenagers like to do.
And there were a number of activities that AFS put together, so I went to Hamburg once and we went to Bremen. I just remember always having people to practice my German with and just having a wonderful time.
Kate M.
But, to provide a bit more context about Jim…
Jim K.
I have to step back a second. I grew up in a middle class town in New Jersey. had very rarely been out of New Jersey other than going to summer camp and summer vacations in New England. It was a suburb of New York City, but my dad didn't work in New York City. So we didn't go to New York or Manhattan as often as other people did, because they just go in to see where their dad worked or something like that. So although I grew up in a suburb, had I grown up in the Midwest, I would have been described as a hick. Or just… unfamiliar with the outside world.
My experience in the summer of 1961, which was a long time ago, was transformative. And it certainly was, because it affected the rest of my life. But it was very much of an eye opener more than the actual transformation. I mean, the transformation came later.
My first impressions were that the people were, there were many more similarities than differences between the Germans or the family I was living with and their friends, and my family and my friends at home. So it was a wonderful experience, but it really just exploded my mind in terms of wanting to learn more, live more, get to know other people.
But you, you know that there's something out there, and it's something you haven't experienced before. And it's something you definitely want to experience. And the rest of my life, professional and personal, demonstrates that really quite clearly.
If I remember writing my dad a note from Germany and saying, was a little bit arrogant. saying, Dad, you know, why don't you get a life, you know, see the rest of the world? How come we've never been out of New Jersey?
Kate M.
But Jim was in for a big surprise when he got back from Germany that summer.
Jim K.
My dad was very quiet and soft-spoken, but with a wicked sense of humor. And he picked me up when we came back and he said, “Well, Jim, I've been thinking about that. And so we're moving to Brazil.” I said, “I was talking about going to visit Paris or London, not Brazil.” So that was quite a shock.
Kate M.
Wow.
Jim K.
And they did move to Brazil. And I lived with family friends for my senior year at prep school.
Kate M.
To clarify, Jim’s father did not decide to upend his life and move to Brazil as a result of the letter Jim sent to him that summer. He was transferred for work, the timing is just a funny coincidence. His parents ended up spending 5 years there and loved it. Jim also made his way to Brazil, but we’ll get to that in a minute…
Jim K.
But AFS changed my whole life, got me interested in international stuff. I ended up going to Harvard, whereas I probably would have gone to another school. And my roommate at college at Harvard was a fellow at AFSer that I met in Germany. And, you know, things went on from there.
Kate M.
What skills did you gain or improve while on your AFS program? Or skills that maybe you didn't realize until years later came from your program?
Jim K.
I'm not sure how many, how much it was skills, so much as this thirst for knowledge of what was out there and what I hadn't seen before. I then went on to Harvard and studied government international relations. I spent summers in Brazil with my family. I wrote my senior thesis about the coup d'etat in Brazil in ‘64. I then had a Fulbright in Brazil.
Kate M.
So, in case you aren’t familiar with the Fulbright Program… in many ways, it is similar to AFS. Both programs have the same goals of fostering intercultural exchange and understanding. The Fulbright Program is managed by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Fulbright provides awards to approximately 8,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals each year from the US and 160 countries. These Fulbrighters are given the opportunity to study, teach, or conduct research in each others' countries and exchange ideas. In the US, the earliest you can participate in a Fulbright program is after finishing college, but there are opportunities at many later stages of life and career.
Fulbright was created in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II through legislation introduced by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Harry Truman.
And if you’re interested in learning more, when you look this up online, it’s spelled F-U-L-B-R-I-G-H-T, just one L. I personally spelled it wrong for years.
Kate M.
There are a couple of things I'll go back to but can you talk a little bit about your experience as a Fulbright scholar in Brazil?
Jim K.
It was much more significant because I was there for a full year and I was five years older. And I knew a fair amount about Brazil, but I really got to travel all over the country. I took some courses in international law at the Catholic University in Rio in Portuguese, and just had a wonderful year.
And believe it or not, my first roommate at Harvard Law School was a fellow Fulbright scholar that I had met in Brazil. So life repeats itself.
I got to know a family in Brazil that my parents had met when they went down on the boat to Brazil in 1961. And they became almost like a host family to me. Even though I was older and living in an apartment. And so that was just a really fantastic experience. And I've taken my wife and children there to meet that family.
Kate M.
So yes, despite Jim’s initial startled reaction in 1961 to his family moving to Brazil, Brazil became a very important part of his life. It really expanded on his AFS experience. He spent five summers there with his family, and then an exceptional year during his Fulbright Program. He gained a passion for Brazilian music and made life-long friends.
So after his Fulbright…
Jim K.
I went back to law school and studied a lot of international law. For my law firm in New York, they sent one associate every two years to Paris at a very small Paris office. I jumped at that and was selected, went to Paris.
Kate M.
Jim and his wife have lived in the US, England, and France over the years.
Jim K.
We got married in New York or two children were born in New York and in ‘84 we went to Paris. As I was then a partner and head of the office. Our children were raised in Paris. We lived in Paris from ‘84 to ‘98 and then from '98 to when I retired in 2011 we lived in London.
My children are both bilingual. My son is an international journalist and lives in Cornwall. He’s married to a Brit and has two children. Our daughter lives in Maryland, but she's trying to raise her children bilingually, which is difficult to do in Howard County. I think it's a lot easier if you're living in a metropolitan city.
Kate M.
So. Jim attributes his international life, both personal and professional, to that first AFS experience.
Jim K.
And so my whole career was basically international after that first experience. When I lived in Brazil, I learned Portuguese, and spoke Portuguese very well. I don't speak very well now, because the French has taken over.
When I lived in Paris, I was a member of the Paris Bar and I practiced law in French. And none of that could have happened, well it was much unlikely to have happened... Much more likely that it did happen because of the first experience in Germany.
And this real thirst for living abroad, learning about other cultures, raising our children that way. And my wife is even more international than I am. She's British. But I mean, she goes to places in Africa and Asia that I would never go. I mean, she sleeps on desert sand.
Kate M.
That’s pretty intense.
Jim serves on the board of two organizations- the Center for Public Integrity and the American Foundation in Paris, a student residence and cultural center.
So, you did touch on how your AFS program has had an impact on your professional life, but could you talk a little bit more about the Center for Public Integrity and the Fondation des Etats-Unis à Paris?
Jim K.
The Fondation des Etats-Unis... I've been a member of the Board of that organization since 1984 when I first went to Paris. It’s the American House at the, which is an American dormitory and cultural center, at the Cité Internationale Universitaire, which was set up in the 1920s.
It’s very similar to AFS in the sense that the government of France offered land, with a condition, on the outskirts of Paris, to various countries. And those countries would then build what's called a house. Or there, a maison.
And there's an American one, which is what the Fondation des Etats-Unis is. There's a German one, there's a British one, there's a Belgian one, there's 20 or 30.
And the idea behind that, from the French government in the 1920s, believe it or not, was that maybe this is after the First World War before the Second World War, that if young people study together and learn about each other together, maybe they wouldn't kill each other. And that was the foundation, or the idea, behind the Cité.
The American house was an enormous investment, it was $5 million that was raised in the United States in the 1920s.
Kate M.
That's a lot of money.
Jim K.
That is a lot of money. And it's a big house. rooms for the good 260 students, 258 students. It's one of the biggest houses in the Cité.
Originally it was part of the University of Paris. Now it's its own separate equivalent of a French not-for-profit corporation.
Kate M.
And the Center for Public Integrity?
Jim K.
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit investigative news organization. It was established over 30 years ago by Chuck Lewis, a famous journalist who was a producer of the CBS news program 60 Minutes. He left in the late 80s to establish the Center for Public Integrity. For 10 years I've been on the board and the last three years I've been chairman of the board.
Kate M.
The Center for Public Integrity seeks to counter the corrosive effects of inequality by holding powerful interests accountable and equipping the public with knowledge to drive change. They are an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the US.
Jim K.
It's recently changed its focus to inequality in a very broad sense of the word. And the organization has become much different.
And so it's been a wonderful experience for me, and a learning experience. And I, as I mentioned, my son is a journalist, but I also worked when I was at law school for a public television program. Part time, obviously, while I was in law school. There was the National Public Affairs debate program on Sunday night on PBS in the US. So I've always had an interest in journalism.
Kate M.
Jim was also one of the initial members of the editorial staff on the award-winning PBS public affairs series, The Advocates, from 1969 to 1971 while in graduate school.
So, I asked Jim if he had any advice for students who are considering a study abroad program?
Jim K.
I would enthusiastically encourage them to do it, go for it. Both the AFS experience and the Fulbright experience were very important for my development and my awareness of the rest of the world. And I can't think of a better use of the time. Whether you're 16 or 21.
I mean, some people say you’re taking some time out of your career, I think you're broadening your career and creasing the your abilities in so many different ways. So that that was certainly the case and for my professional life.
It's unlikely that I would have been selected as a young associate to go to Paris, it's unlikely that I would have been as a young partner, given the rein to run the office and build it up. And to build our firm in Europe, because when I went to Paris, there were six lawyers in Europe, all in Paris. And now maybe 150 to 200.
But that's what I got to do. Starting with experience in Germany.
Kate M.
I think that’s it for my questions for you. Is there anything else that you wanted to add, Jim?
Jim K.
I don't think so. I think I've said I've tried to say how important AFS was in my life, both personal and professional. And thank God for that.
Kate M.
If that was your goal, you were successful. I can absolutely understand and see and I'm sure the listeners will really see the impact that AFS has had on your life. So I guess if that is it, then I just want to say thank you.
Jim K.
Oh thank you it was a great opportunity. I enjoyed it very much.
Kate M.
Have a good afternoon, thank you, bye.
[Music]
Kate M.
That was Jim Kiernan, AFS returnee to Germany.
You know, who knows what an AFS program will set in motion for someone. This summer program in Germany opened up an interest in Jim, and a drive to further his knowledge about the rest of the world. And here we are, 50 years later, and it is clear how much Jim’s AFS program impacted him professionally and personally. A Fulbright scholar, 3 degrees from Harvard, being chosen to expand his law firm’s presence in Europe… as well as his travels with his wife and 2 kids who were raised bilingually in Paris. Jim attributes much of this life path to his AFS program.
[Music]
Kate M.
Well, thank you for listening to The AFS Exchange. I’m Kate Mulvihill. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of AFS, we released 4 episodes this month- this interview with Jim is the last of the 4. Did you miss any? Go back and listen to the stories shared by Fen, Dave, and the Rutson Family released earlier this month. We’ll be back in a few weeks.
Let us know what you thought of this episode by sending a message to podcast@afsusa.org. You can also rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe there as well! Season 2 of The AFS Exchange will bring you conversations with hosted students, educators, host families, volunteers, and more.
This podcast was created by Kate Mulvihill. Social media by Julie Ball. Editing support by Nina Gaulin. Thank you to our guest, Jim Kiernan.