Building Impactful Community Programs | Elizabeth Wittner

Founder's Story

In the debut episode of 'The Founder's Path,' host Saba Safari interviews Elizabeth (Liz) Wittner, Academic Director at UVA's Center for Ame

Key takeaways

• Becoming a language learner again—specifically studying Farsi—provided profound empathy for students facing similar challenges, revealing the emotional weight of starting from scratch.
• The most effective community programs emerge not from top-down planning but from grassroots collaboration and listening to real needs in the moment.

Main topics

• Founding community-driven nonprofit initiatives
• Language learning as a tool for empathy and connection

Notable quotes

"It was so humbling... I found progress to be extremely slow. I wanted to be speaking in paragraphs, but I ended up needing to learn the alphabet first."

Conclusion

Liz Wittner's story illustrates how vulnerability, curiosity, and community-centered

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) It wasn't just for the students in the classroom. It was the students who came to the class to, quote, help out. They learned so much and they enjoyed it so much. They brought their friends. And the next thing I knew, it was like, well, this is already happening. We should just formalize this. Speaker 1 (0:16) The nonprofit sector in the U.S. alone employs about 10 % of the entire private workforce, bigger than the entire construction industry or the financial sector. Most people picture nonprofits as small, scrappy charities, but many of them, think major hospitals or universities, have multi-billion dollar revenues and thousands of salaried employees. Welcome to the Founders Path. I'm your host, Sabwa Safadi. Today, I am so excited to share our very first official interview with someone who has had a massive impact on my own journey. I had the privilege of serving as an English Circle Assistant in a non-profit where she serves as the English Program Director. She does so many incredible things for our community, which is why I knew I had to start our very first interview with a woman as amazing as she is. Her name is Elizabeth Wittner. She is a faculty member at the University of Virginia, where she prepares international graduate students to teach. She is also the founder and director of major university-wide initiatives, including VISAS, which is short for Volunteers with International Students, Staff, and Scholars, and MOVE, Multilingual Outreach Volunteer Effort, and the English Program for Civil Tulips. Speaker 1 (1:55) Hi, Liz. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you so much for squeezing us into your busy schedule. I feel like I can count on one hand the number of times that we've been able to just sit down peacefully and chat like this. Having you here in a quiet room for our very first episode truly means the world to me. Speaker 2 (2:12) I'm really happy to be here, Saba. Thank you. And I feel honored to be your first guest. Speaker 1 (2:17) Thank you so much. So I have to start here. Continuing on the conversation we had the other day, I found out that you've been learning Farsi. After decades of being the expert teacher and guiding everyone else, how did it feel emotionally to sit in the student chair again and tackle a complex language like Farsi? Well, don't give me too Speaker 2 (2:37) much credit because I started and I was very committed for a while and then things got super busy. So I haven't been the best student, but it's been really a great experience because it's so humbling, first of all. I've learned other languages but with the same alphabet and this was a big change and it really helped me. I was so glad that I was learning a language with a different alphabet. Because so many of the students that I've worked with throughout my life have done the same thing, but they haven't had the advantage of having many, many years of schooling, formal education and literacy background. So it was so humbling because I found progress to be extremely slow. I wanted to be speaking in paragraphs, but I ended up. really needing to learn the alphabet first. And I was so impatient and realized after a while that, you know, I had to listen to my teacher. I was kind of thinking, oh, well, she must be leaving something out or maybe her approach is not so good because I really should be learning more speaking. But after a long time working on the alphabet, I realized, first of all, it was super interesting. It gave me so many insights as to, you know, what some of my students experience. Also, it introduced me to a whole different world of sounds and that one sound can be represented in so many different ways. And sound that doesn't exist in my language exists in another. And, you know, it's just a great way to pull you from the familiar. I loved that. Then I got really interested in trying to decipher. It was a big puzzle, and that was fun. But I realized that some of my frustrations were really informative because I could see some of my students getting really frustrated because I taught in a different way. I taught sort of from the whole to the part, where my teacher was going from the part to the whole, the parts of the. alphabet the sounds of the words and from reading and writing to speaking and listening and I usually start with listening and then speaking to reading and writing. and from a whole communication to breaking it down. It just kind of opened me up a bit to thinking about how students that I work with may be used to a totally different approach and may be really feeling impatient and lost like I was feeling. So I just felt like it was a great experience for me. And I need to pick it up again. And you're reminding me. I need to be a better student, more consistent. I Speaker 1 (5:27) love that so much. That's true. It takes a lot of vulnerability to become a beginner again when you're used to being the expert. But honestly, as a native Farsi speaker, that is really so inspiring that you're trying and you feel like in the road. Speaker 2 (5:40) That was another thing I have to say that was so humbling was to see how even with just one word, people were so just joyful about. my using a single word from their language and so open. You know, the Farsi speakers and the Dari speakers that I interacted with in our program, they were so oddly grateful, you know, and I think, wow. If the shoe were on the other foot and somebody poorly pronounced a word in English, would they get the same reception from, I hope so, but I don't believe that's always the case. But it's so lovely to have that reception when you're making yourself vulnerable and trying to speak another language. So that was a really great experience. Speaker 1 (6:42) So before we jump into everything, I'd love for our listeners to get to know you a bit first. Can you just tell us a bit about yourself and the work you do? Sure. Speaker 2 (6:53) I have been working at University of Virginia since 1999 as the academic director at the Center for American English Language and Culture, where I work on English language learning programs for graduate students, undergraduates. international students and domestic students and also university employees. Before that, I worked in the classroom. I was a reading specialist. I was an ESL teacher for the public schools in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Virginia. And I worked in the migrant education program. I spent a short time in Brazil where I worked on a literacy program and taught English. And I've worked in various community centers, adult education centers, community college, and etc. So my background is mainly in TESOL, teaching English to speakers of other languages, and also reading, writing, literacy. Speaker 1 (7:53) That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It's amazing to see how much you've poured into this community over the years. Back in 1999, when you were trying to launch visas, I imagine you had to convince a lot of people to support an untried idea. What