Ryan Malone: [01:56] Actually, I wanted to start with actually before you were even born. I am super curious because you have such an amazing last name. Do you know the genealogy of it? 

Damianne President: 02:09] You know, that is an excellent question and one I’ve wondered about. The one thing that I do know is that the way we spell my last name, President is not the way that my great-grandmother spelled it. In my great-grandmother’s vision, there was an E on the end. And then we’ve also found out that that wasn’t even really her name.

So in the Caribbean, it’s very common for people to have their true name, the name that’s on their birth certificate, and then the name everybody calls them. So everybody called my great grandmother Euphelia President. And she went to vote one time and there was nobody called Euphelia President. So her name was actually Clement Gravillis and it turns out President was her father’s last name. And so, because she lived with his family, they just gave her another name, but nobody actually recorded it anywhere. But I don’t know anything else about the last name of President, but that’s something I’d like to find out someday.

Ryan Malone: [03:07] I feel like Euphelia isn’t used enough in modern day names. 

Okay. So like most people you were born a baby. Unlike most people though, you were born in St. Lucia and grew up there; you spent your childhood there. What sticks out from that experience?

I think one thing that was very different to me, That sticks out from living and growing up in St. Lucia compared to when I moved to Canada, was that there was such a sense of community, that everywhere you went in the place where I grew up, Mon Repos, and where I walked around, I would meet somebody who knew me, who knew my family. And I always felt very safe in that environment because people cared for each other. 

Damianne President: [03:55] You greeted each other everywhere you went. It was very comfortable and very comforting there. And I don’t know that I’ve ever found that anywhere else. 

Ryan Malone: [04:08] Do you still find it that way when you go back there?

Damianne President: 04:13] No, but I think a lot of that has to do with me. I don’t walk as comfortably in the neighborhood now, like I, I go and visit my family and my aunt, but I don’t walk through the streets with the same confidence that I did before. 

Ryan Malone: [04:32] So most people in North America are constantly trying to get to the Caribbean. And you did the opposite. You left. Um, Uh, when you were 12 years old, is that right? 

Damianne President: [04:45] Yes. 12, almost 13.

Ryan Malone: [04:47] And why was that? 

Damianne President: [04:49] Well, that was not my choice. I was living with my grandmother, who is my paternal grandparent, who was my paternal grandparent. And at some point she was getting older and my dad lived in Canada. The decision was made by the family that it was time for me to live with my dad because as my grandmother older, she would be less able to control me.

And I think I was a bit of a precocious child and maybe a bit of a handful at times. So like I never really got in any trouble, but I was quite confident and very assertive and I think from my dad’s perspective, it was like, okay, if you don’t let her come and live with me now, if she becomes more of a handful later, don’t blame me kind of thing. And so that’s what led to me going to live with my dad in Canada. 

Ryan Malone: [05:45] Do you remember that, um, that conversation that, uh, you were going to be moving? 

Damianne President: [05:53] I don’t have a clear memory of it. The only thing I really remember from that, and it was said in Creole. I overheard it, but I overheard my grandmother telling somebody that my father had said, when she makes you climb a coconut tree, don’t come crying to me.

And I’m translating that from Creole, from French Patois. And so basically it was kind of what I explained earlier, where if she gets to be… I think there is. I think there is that mindset in the Caribbean that girls could be more trouble because girls can get, girls can get pregnant . And I think that was what that was referring.

Ryan Malone: [06:40] Do you remember your feelings towards the move? Like was it apprehension or excitement? 

Damianne President: [06:45] I did not want to move at first. And then I got a bit excited about moving because Canada, North America, England, those are places that people yearn to move from, from the Caribbean, because they see it as being the land of opportunity.

And so I didn’t want to leave my grandmother and my grandfather. So I was very sad about it and I wasn’t very excited, but as the time drew nearer, I thought, Oh, I’ll be going to Canada where there’s more opportunity and that was a bit exciting. So I was a bit torn. 

Ryan Malone: [07:19] You got to Canada and you started in ninth grade in the Canadian school system.

Damianne President: [07:24] Exactly. 

Ryan Malone: [07:26] What, uh, what were some of the big differences between, uh, that and St. Lucia? 

Damianne President: [07:32] I remember ninth grade because school in St. Lucia is based on the British system. And so it’s very academic. When I grew up, it was very rote learning to some extent; it was a lot of focus on math at my school and I loved math.

And then when I moved to Canada, it was a lot of asking your opinion about things to some extent, which wasn’t something that was a factor in my earlier education. The other thing that was very different was that I went to a school where I was the only black student. Uh, all of my teachers were white. There were a few Asian students, but we lived in the countryside. Then there was winter. In fact, you should ask what was the same? And I would say nothing. 

Ryan Malone: [08:20] Do you remember having any type of culture shock or did it affect you in any way that you can pinpoint. 

Damianne President: [08:27] I remember it was very difficult because I was somebody who had a lot of friends. That’s not true. I did not have a lot of friends, but I had very good close friends in St. Lucia. And my cousin, for example, lived just down the street from me and we were the same age and we spent a lot of time together. And then all of a sudden I was in Canada, where in Carp, Ontario and going to school in West Carlton where all the students traveled from all over. And so there was nobody that lived close to me. If you had to meet up with anybody, you have to plan ahead; you had to be driven there. 

And I remember that for maybe the first few, six months, let’s say I had a history teacher and he would ask questions and I would put up my hand and I would give the answer and it would be correct, but he didn’t understand me. He couldn’t understand my accent. And so then he would call on somebody else and he never asked me to repeat myself. But it was always clear that he had no idea what I was saying. And I found that incredibly frustrating.

Ryan Malone: [09:31] I was listening to one of your other episodes. And you mentioned that at that time, that your family wanted you to focus on learning at school and not clubs and friendships. Um, could you elaborate on that? 

Damianne President: [09:48] Yes. Well at that time, my step mother and my dad felt very strongly that school and university and thinking about a career were the most important things and they didn’t really value clubs and those types of things. Basically they were like, okay, if you go to school and come home and don’t get into any trouble.

 That was a lot of focus on not getting into any trouble in my family and I think part of that was a lot, I don’t know if it’s a lot, but my family knew some people, some children who had come to Canada from the Caribbean and they kind of struggled in school. So maybe they were doing fine in the Caribbean, but then they came to Canada. Oftentimes they were put back one grade because we go to school at the age of five in St. Lucia but in Canada, we used to in my days, but in Canada, people start school at six. And so they would put you back one year so you could be with people who were the same age as you. 

My stepmother really fought and she actually had to sign a paper so that I could be allowed to go to grade nine and not grade eight saying that if I failed, she took first full responsibility and the school was not responsible for my failure, but many Caribbean children didn’t have people who went to bat for them like that. And so they would be bored or maybe they had the same kind of issues that I had where nobody understood them and school was not a pleasant experience. And many people didn’t get good grades or they didn’t go onto university. And so my family did not want that to be an option for me.

So it was like, go to school, do your homework, get good grades, come home, stay out of trouble, kind of a thing. And I remember being a bit resentful about that because I was not the kind of person who got in trouble. But I was certainly the kind of person who likes to be part of clubs, like I was in the environmental club and the math club; I was a bit of a geek.

 I wanted to try everything and so there was a bit of tension always in the family, between my desire to do all those things and the inclination for me to focus on school without other things being important. 

Ryan Malone: [11:57] Tell me about why you, uh, or how, how, how you chose your major.

Damianne President: [12:00] I chose to study math because I loved math. One of my favorite teachers in high school was Mr. Bender. He passed away a few years ago. I was interested in lots of things. I thought, well, maybe psychology, maybe something to do with the environment. I had lots of interests but math was the thing that I got the best grades at.

And so I said, Oh, I’m going to study math. And my family tried really hard to get me to study to be an accountant or an actuary. I still don’t know what an actuary does, but I always thought that sounded really boring. So I just I’ll study pure math and see what comes out of it. But then I got worried at some point thinking if I studied pure math, the only option would be to be a professor, like what else do pure mathematicians do? 

Ryan Malone: [12:43] You were afraid that, that, that studying pure math would lock you into the position of being a professor. And then you became a teacher for like 15 years.

Damianne President: [12:54] It’s kind of interesting. I never really thought about it that way, but my goal was actually to become a teacher, to study math and be a teacher because I really enjoyed seeing people get it. Like, I, I enjoyed that experience for myself and I enjoyed sharing that experience with other people. Yeah, I don’t know why. Hmm. I never really thought about why teaching and not being a professor before. 

Ryan Malone: [13:22] Hmm. Um, but you weren’t just a teacher from Ottawa, you decided to teach internationally. So how did you make that choice? 

Damianne President: [13:29] That wasn’t really a decision so much as a… I think a lot of my life decisions have been around what’s pragmatic. And so when I finished my bachelor degree and then I did a Bachelor of Education, that’s when Ontario went from having six high school grades to five high school grades. So we used to have 13 grades in Ontario and the year that I finished my degree, that got stopped so there was a huge surplus of teachers.

Some teachers were offered early retirement, but basically I needed to move out because my parents’ position was once you finish your degree, it’s time for you to move out. And so I did not anticipate being able to get a full-time teaching job because I saw how difficult it was for people, but I wanted to get a full-time job. And so I was like, what are my options? And I found a conference in Toronto where it was for people who were interested in teaching overseas. And I thought, why not? In fact, they told me that it was unlikely for me to get a job so they would allow me to come to the conference for free. And I would only have to pay if I accepted a job offer.

So I really had nothing to lose except enough money to pay for a hotel room for a couple of days in Toronto. So I did that and I was offered positions in India and Trinidad and Columbia. And my family was very resistant to the idea of Columbia because of all the stereotypes. And I didn’t want to go to Trinidad because I’m from the Caribbean and that just felt too familiar. And so I went off to India. 

Ryan Malone: [15:11] So you, uh, started teaching in India and then can you go over a broad stroke of the different types of teaching positions you had and the different countries? 

Damianne President: [15:22] So in India I actually applied to be a math teacher but they didn’t need a math teacher; they needed somebody to teach computer science. So they offered me the computer science position which I was also qualified for. So I taught for two years, computer science in India. Then I moved to Sudan and I taught for four years in Sudan, computer science, and also started working more with teachers to help them integrate computers in their classroom.

And then I moved to Japan to Nagoya and I worked for four years in Nagoya. And then I was doing a lot of the same things so mostly teaching middle school and high school elective classes, and then also working with teachers in elementary school for them to integrate, actually working with teachers from K to 12, for them to integrate computer technology into their classrooms. There, I was also doing a bit more server stuff with managing a Powerschool server, managing our database for blogging and that kind of thing and also leading the department there for IT. 

 Then I moved to Czech Republic to Prague and I worked for four years at international school of Prague doing a lot of the same kinds of things, but with focus on elementary school and not the other two areas. So Prague was the biggest school I worked at and this was where I did a bit more focused on one section, which is kind of ironic because I was actually trained for middle school and high school, but I ended up working in elementary school only in Prague. 

Ryan Malone: [16:53] Fifteen years in education in lots of different places. Um, Hmm. I guess, um, why did you decide to leave the profession?

Damianne President: [17:03] I decided to leave because I was tired. I was tired of having the same conversations with people, and I felt like I had been having a lot of the same conversations for most of my career. And I was also tired of education in the sense that often principals and schools want to say that they want one thing, but they have a hard time actually prioritizing that or making the resources available for that to happen.

 I felt like I kept going around in circles in the same way. I also felt my role, my job was changing in ways that I didn’t think was necessarily very helpful for students or teachers. And so …

Ryan Malone: [17:51] Elaborate on that. 

Damianne President: [17:54] Well, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing but I think that often in education, schools and educators will try to they’ll get on a bandwagon and they’ll try to implement something without giving it enough thought and enough planning. So one of the things we were trying to do, which I think is great, is incorporate more steam and STEM and my role started to be seen as having some overlap with supporting STEM and STEM in the classroom. Well, first of all, I wasn’t trained for STEAM, right. And so I could do the computer science part of it. I could figure out a lot of it, but there seemed to be an expectation that you could just make these things happen without adequate thought, without adequate consideration of the curricular elements and of the learning components, the learning goals. There wasn’t enough planning and forethought into the impact on teachers and students and learning. And I found that frustrating. 

Ryan Malone: [19:01] What would you need from the, from the profession or from administration, uh, for you to be tempted to come back into education? How would you define your own role I guess is a better way to say that? 

Damianne President: [19:18] Hmm. I don’t know if I can be tempted to come back to education. And I think a lot of that is because part of my mindset is always there is a whole big world out there of things I haven’t done and haven’t seen and haven’t experienced. So why would I go back there? And also it’s like, okay, am I uniquely qualified in some way? Do I have a unique skill that will help make a change here? And I don’t think that I do. I think that there are lots of other people still in the profession excited about the profession, enthusiastic about their jobs, who can make that change happen if they will empowered in some ways to do it.

Ryan Malone: [20:03] Damianne you lived all over the world and your job right now affordsyou the choice to live just about anywhere. And you’ve chosen to live in the place that has suffered one of the world’s highest infection and death rates with about 17,000 deaths at a country of just under 11 million. So how’s that working out for you? 

Damianne President: [20:21] You know, I have been working from home for the past, well, over two years now. And so I continued to work from home.

I it’s, it’s kind of funny because I was taking a course about a year ago; I finished it in November last year. And one of the modules for that course was to choose a decision that’s difficult and works through the process of coming to a decision about it. And that decision that I was facing was whether I should stay in Czech Republic, move elsewhere in Europe, or move back to Canada. And this had been kind of in the back of my mind since I stopped working at international school of Prague about three years ago. And so I did a decision tree and I thought about the things that were important to me, and I wrote them all out in a table and weighted them and filled in all of the information and Prague won. 

Won? I won Prague, however you want to say it. And so I’ve put that decision aside for the next three years. I have a really good life in Prague. I enjoy living in Prague. I have a small network of close friends here. It’s in the center of Europe and it’s easy to travel. I think mentally, I kind of like living in Europe and I think if I move back to Canada now, have I done everything that I want to do here? And I think not. 

So I’m going to keep hanging out here for awhile, but right now I don’t have a lease. And so I’m telling myself all these stories, right, about why I don’t have a lease, but my newest story that I’m kind of happy about and comfortable with is, well, you know what Damianne, if your landlord increases your rent to some astronomical level, you could go somewhere else.

Where else might you want to go to? The decision would be made for you. So, yeah, I’m very, I’m sitting very comfortable in this place right now with this new story that I’ve created. 

Ryan Malone: [22:33] So before you had your current job, and I do want to talk about that, um, you, uh, you left teaching to become an entrepreneur. Um, president technologies, was that, is that your company?

Damianne President: [22:46] Presidential Tech

Ryan Malone: [22:47] Presidential tech. You did that for about a year, is that right? 

Damianne President: [22:52] So there are kind of multiple parts of it. First I thought, okay, maybe I will stay in the edtech world and I could offer workshops to teachers and that kind of thing in terms of using technology. And then I realized this entrepreneur thing is hard. And I’m not very good at marketing; I’m a bit of an introvert. I don’t really know how to do this. I’m not enjoying having to do this. Then I thought, Hmm, I think I’m being, I’m playing it a bit safe by trying to stick with EdTech simply because that’s what I know. So what else might I be able to do? What will allow me to work from home? And then I found a position that would allow that. 

Ryan Malone: [23:37] And that position is a happiness engineer. So imagine that you are describing this position to an alien from another planet. How would you describe it?

Damianne President: [23:51] I help people who want to create websites, mostly e-commerce websites, so websites where they can sell stuff. I work for a company that sells software applications that people can use for creating their own online store. And so people contact us when they need help with that, when they’re not sure what the right tools are for them, when they are using one of our tools but they’re having some sort of problem. And I help them find a solution. I help them troubleshoot. I help them solve problems.

Ryan Malone: [24:29] I don’t think an alien would be able to understand what you just said. 

Damianne President: [24:34] Well, I don’t know. If the alien doesn’t speak English, I guess I would have to mime this or something. I’m not really sure how to bring it across,

Ryan Malone: [24:40] That’s exactly what I want you to do which is by the way, really good for an audio podcast and everything. You also, in [2019, near the end of it, you started this podcast Changes BIG and small, and you named it Changes BIG and small despite you being a huge Ice Cube fan and refuse to name it, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Um, and I think your whole audience wants to know what is the most change that you’ve ever been given at a convenience store.

Damianne President: [25:12] I’m not going to answer your question directly, but I’m going to change the question. When I lived in Sudan and Ryan also lived in Sudan. I don’t know if he had this experience, and maybe it also happened to me a bit in India, but sometimes when you went to a store and they didn’t have enough coins to give you change, they would give you gum.

I used to get so annoyed about this cause I don’t chew gum. I’d be like, I did not want gum. I want my money. 

Ryan Malone: [25:40] That hasn’t happened to me. That didn’t happen to me in Sudan, but it has happened to me in Prague. And I get really super annoyed. 

Damianne President: [25:46] What? You get gum for change in Prague?

Ryan Malone: [25:50] Well, they don’t give you gum. They give you whatever trash they can find like tissues or whatever. And like, Hey, here, take this instead of me giving you change.

Damianne President: [25:56] This has never happened to me here. Where do you shop? 

Ryan Malone: [26:01] At the, uh, at the high class convenience store is next to the subway. 

Damianne President: [26:06] Ah, okay. Well that puts everything in perspective.

Ryan Malone: [26:11] I have no other questions, but you know what, um, I think they’re very close to, to the questions that we have from our listeners mail bags.

These are letters from listeners, listeners like you. And this first one is from M Parker. It reads Damianne you’ve been a vegetarian since living in India. But in the summer of [2019, you became a meat eating vegetarian. How does that work?

Damianne President: [26:36] Some years ago, maybe about two and a half years now. I was working out a lot and there was a bistro in the gym. Basically you could smell the food that they were cooking while you were in the gym. We were doing CrossFit. And if you know anything about CrossFit, people are really consumed with eating meat and being in ketosis and getting enough protein and all of that stuff. But that Saturday, we were all having breakfast, brunch, whatever. And the bacon smelt so good that I said to my friend, Oh, that bacon smells really good. And she was like, well, do you want to try it? And I was like, you know what? I kind of do want to try it. And I did. And it was good.

Ryan Malone: [27:23] I was a vegetarian for a while because I hated plants so much.

This next one is from, uh, M Johnson. Uh, I’ve heard people describe you as a person who believes in simplicity, kind of like a personification of feng sui. Would you agree with that sentiment?

Damianne President: [27:44] I don’t think, I don’t know that anybody’s ever described to me that way. Um, simplicity. I would like to believe in simplicity and have things be more simple, but I wouldn’t say that’s the case yet. I’d say that I really make things complicated at times. So, no. 

Ryan Malone: [28:05] Yeah this next question is from G Peterson. You’ve traveled the most continents except for Australia and Antarctica. How has that travel influenced your life? 

Damianne President: [28:16] How has this travel influenced my life? Well, I mean, this is quite cliched, but I think… Well, no, I’m going to use a different answer than that, what first came to mind?

I think what this has taught me from being able to travel everywhere, from all the places I’ve been and all the travel I’ve done, is confidence that I could manage in a lot of places in the world, even in places where I don’t necessarily speak the language.

 It’s interesting when I hear people talk about their experiences in different places and how terrible it was. It makes me realize that my mindset is more of finding what I can appreciate and experience in the culture for what the culture is. So I try not to bring in my own background, my own experience, but rather experience the culture of the place, of the people that I meet. And I think that’s one of the things that living in so many different places and knowing people of so many different cultures has taught me, is that even when I disagree with something, there may be an opportunity for learning and having a fantastic experience.

Ryan Malone: [29:34] When I was living in West Africa, the way that you say yes, Is more of a, like a, a grunting tonal sound like, uh, and you also shake your head furiously. I don’t shake my head when I say yes, but I do, I did, I have kept that for decades. Uh, just as a way to say yes, especially when I’m talking to my wife, but Is there anything specifically that, that you have a captured, uh, that you use or have incorporated into your life.

Damianne President: [30:07] That’s a very good question. I don’t know that I had the answer to that is yes, but I think if there was anything that I would like to incorporate my of is Japanese simplicity going back to the question you asked me earlier.

 One thing I’ve always been fascinated by is the tiny house concept. I don’t really want a tiny house, but I’ve been fascinated by this concept. And I think it connects to Japan in some ways, in terms of creating things that are really beautiful, that are of great, excellent, best quality, but also very usable, very user-friendly and not wasteful or excessive.

I don’t know if there’s a term in Japan for this, but that’s kind of the impression I got, what I learned from living there. 

Ryan Malone: [30:56] Where do you consider a home? Do you consider Prague your home or Canada your home, or St. Lucia your home. 

Damianne President: [31:03] This is an excellent question. And actually I have a blog post in progress, which is on this topic, but I think that I would like home to be… I’d like to be like a turtle where I carry my home with me. I don’t think it is St. Lucia or Canada or Prague. I think it’s wherever I decide to be at that moment. And so ultimately I want home to be where I’m comfortable in this moment, in any moment.

Ryan Malone: [31:34] That’s what you want, but what do you consider it? 

Damianne President: [31:37] Well, what I tend to say right now is home is where I don’t have to live in a suitcase. And the only place that I don’t have to live in a suitcase is Prague.

Ryan Malone: [31:47] So you don’t you, so you don’t have, um, you don’t have an affinity towards, like you don’t consider Canada or St. Lucia, your, your, your home. It’s basically where you are. 

Damianne President: [31:59] Yeah, pretty much. When my grandmother was alive, maybe I thought of St. Lucia more as home. And certainly there are people in those places that I care about, that I don’t want to meet, but if there were not there would I, like if I had no family in Canada, would I be attached to Canada itself? And I think the answer is no. So I think it’s less about the place than about the people, but even bigger than that, I think it’s where I feel most like myself and that’s in my own home, which is the place that I can do what I want, be what I want, feel comfortable. 

Ryan Malone: [32:44] All right. So now it’s time for our lightning round of a mailbag questions. This one’s from T Anderson. Uh, you’ve been given an elephant, but no one wants to talk about it. How would you address the elephant in the room? 

Damianne President: [32:56] Pretty directly, 

Ryan Malone: [33:01] This one’s from F Smith. Matt Damon famously said, I’m going to have to science the shit out of this when he was stuck on Mars. How would you do that? 

Damianne President: [33:11] By using science? 

Ryan Malone: [33:13] Perfect. If you became a leader of a small nation, would you rule with your head or with your heart? 

Damianne President: [33:19] Can I use both. 

Ryan Malone: [33:22] Uh, no because the other one will be given away to a donor. It’s important. They need limbs.

Damianne President: [33:32] I will lead with my head. 

Ryan Malone: [33:35] And then of course the follow-up what gives you the right? 

Damianne President: [33:38] Well, I’m going to take this question very seriously, because as I said, I was writing a blog post that I started yesterday. And there is a psychologist; I believe he is Richard Schwartz that I heard about an a podcast. And I really want to learn more about him because he talks about that inner self, capital S self, that inner knowing. And I think that is the noble within us; that’s the warrior within us; that’s the sovereign within us. And that is who gives me the right. 

Ryan Malone: [34:12] I’m so glad that you took that seriously. So you’ve been running this podcast for over a year now and it is called Changes BIG and small, despite your love for Ice Cube. 

So during that, that year, what changes have you gone through or has the podcast gone through or the vision of your podcast coming through? 

Damianne President: [34:35] Yeah, I think when I first started the podcast, I just knew that I wanted to start with the topic of change because it was interesting to me and I was curious about it and I wanted to talk to people about it.

And now, I’m thinking more about exploring different topics, more in depth. And so while the first season and even the second season of the podcast was more on interviewing individuals a lot more, I would like to have the opportunity in this coming season, season three, to really …

Ryan Malone: [35:07] be constantly interviewed by other people.

Damianne President: [35:09] No, that’s not it, but to reintroduce concepts that are more more research-based. So I would like to still interview people, but I want to bring in more research and maybe that’s my head trying to butt in a little bit. But yes, I’m one of the people, I’m one person who likes to know the why and I think that there are other people like this as well. So I would like to balance having both elements of head and heart a little bit more this season. 

Ryan Malone: [35:42] All right, Damianne, I don’t have any more questions for you and you answered them like a champ. Thank you so much. 

Damianne President: [35:49] Thank you so much.