Tuck MBA Shares Her Refugee Experience

Ema Pasic Reid, Tuck 2017, came to the U.S. with her parents as a 6-year-old refugee from the war in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Courtesy photo

‘AT THE END OF THE DAY, I AM AN ORDINARY PERSON’

Ema Reid reposted her Tuck Talk video in response to President Trump’s executive order banning all refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days, which has since been blocked by the courts, with no appeal currently planned. But even if the order is moot, the message has been sent, Reid says, and she hopes play a small part in countering it.

Reid says her goal in reposting her Tuck Talk video was simple. Chiefly, she was trying to humanize refugees, a term she considers loaded. “When we think of refugees, we often think of poor people on a boat, because that’s all the media ever portrays,” Reid says. “When you see all the articles and the way that people reference refugees, they’re just so deeply suspicious of the motivations of anyone who is a refugee. Who are these people? Why are they stealing our jobs? Hopefully my story will sort of humanize what a refugee is. It’s such a loaded term. And I want people to understand that refugees are just seeking kindness and normalcy and safety — versus more of what seems to be happening now, which is a door being slammed in their face.”

Her experience offers a different perspective, she says. “The current administration has labeled refugees as ‘bad hombres’ or whatever, and what I wanted to do is stand up in front of my fellow classmates and say, ‘Hey, you’ve known me as a normal person and it turns out I have this other side of me that is really different.’ No one here knew I was from Bosnia. When people ask where I’m from, I tend to say ‘Louisville’ because the second you say ‘Bosnia’ it just opens up a whole conversation. I think I wanted to stand up and show that at the end of the day, I am an ordinary person — my parents and the other people I reference are students and doctors and lawyers and CEOs, just normal people that came to the U.S. with nothing in search of a new, safe life, and I think that’s also something the video was able to accomplish.”

BRIDGING THE COUNTRY’S DEEP DIVISIONS?

It’s never easy to talk about the loss of a loved one. Every time she recounts her story, Reid gets choked up about her grandfather, as well as the many friends of the family who were killed in the war. But when she decided to publicize her Tuck Talk, she had to prepare for more than the remembrance of a family tragedy. She had to steel herself against the ugliness that often accompanies political discussions online.

But a funny thing happened as the views and shares accumulated. The ugliness never materialized.

“The video garnered attention right away, and on day two I ended up clicking on the share list of the video, and I was obviously touched by all the support that I received and comments from friends and family members,” Reid says. “But then I saw something that was incredibly unexpected: There were actually a couple of right-wing — very right-wing — individuals, who were otherwise posting very biased pro-Trump sentiments, who ended up sharing my video on their wall. There wasn’t any comment or anything, they just shared it — and I think that was a really powerful moment where I just realized that my story went beyond Democrat or Republican and just succeeded in humanizing the situation.

“Honestly, I’m getting a lot of people asking if they can share it on their Facebook timeline, and one individual reached out to me today and asked whether they could share it with their family, saying they are living in a Republican part of the country with very different views. And you go through the comments, and the second you post something political you expect people to jump on it and to have some viewpoint, but here every single comment is people being like, ‘Incredible story, this is great.’ No one is reaching out and saying anything mean. I was open to that — I did this purposefully, I put the video out there expecting negative comments. So it’s just interesting that I haven’t received any.

“So if it’s resonating, I just need people to see it. I want to play my little part in this larger-than-life debate we’re having right now.”

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