Deborah Fallows

Today’s dominant political refrain is that America is in a state of decline. But to author and linguist Deborah Fallows nothing could be further from the truth. Over the course of a five-year journey across the country, she (along with her husband, journalist James Fallows) discovered many surprising points of reinvention, in every region of the country—and enough to refresh the bleak national conversation to reflect a positive truth.

In this keynote, Fallows reports on the wide range of civic projects underway that are rebuilding America—a cross-section of generations, races, and political affiliations working far from the usual metropolitan hubs. You’ll hear how local heroes, community-minded action, and big dreams are signaling an end to the second gilded age. You’ll learn how real private-public partnerships, resuscitated downtowns, flourishing arts scenes, and schools—research universities, community colleges, and experimental classes—are renewing the tattered social fabric. And you’ll hear how these small, innovative, open places are producing an “archipelago of startups and reinventions.” This is the quiet revival the media can’t hear—the sound of America, in every corner, coming together again.

Using her experience as a trained linguist and a new student of Chinese, Deborah Fallows shows how simple words, phrases, or bits of the grammar of the Chinese language can become windows to understanding  much of the Chinese culture—their sense of romance, humor, protocol, personal relationships, and interest in foreigners, to name a few. Why, for example, does abrupt language in Chinese actually signal a closeness between friends, rather than impolite behavior? Or why do the Chinese have such trouble saying “I love you” to the ones they love the most? With fluid grace and on-the-ground experience, Fallows provides a necessary human perspective on an emerging superpower that many in the West still struggle to comprehend.

American universities welcome international students for their diversity, perspective, and experience. Today, with growing numbers and nationalities of foreign students, campus dynamics are rapidly shifting. The new, young melting pot brings both advantages and challenges. What does it mean, for example, that there are suddenly 100,000 Chinese students, who have grown up with a largely pop-culture introduction to America and who are met by a western student body that is mostly unfamiliar with them and their country? How can the university community—faculty, staff and students of all sorts—get behind the change to understand the growing pains and pleasures? How can they help steer change in the best, positive directions toward a story of academic, social, and personal success? Fallows uses her first-hand experiences of living around the world to help scrutinize our own impressions of each other, and to move toward a more inclusive, generous context for living and working with one another.

As Western companies and their leaders think about how to do business with China, they know that part of their success depends on crucial but elusive “soft” cultural issues that are always in play. What aspects of the culture are critical to the work and social dynamic between Americans and their Chinese colleagues and competitors? How can Americans look for and interpret similarities or differences with the Chinese in human qualities like humor, respect, trust, friendship, and identity? Fallows recently lived and worked in China for three years and traveled through every part of the country. She uses her own experience of coping with the Mandarin language as one model of how to be a good observer and a sensitive interpreter inside a different culture. She describes how some of her own foibles and missteps finally led to some insights. This is a talk that can encourage your company’s people to thrive both professionally and personally, and may ultimately help your company in its mission with China.