Oh. Everyone, my name is Mina Ramin and I am a senior journalism student here at the University of Florida. Welcome to our town. I am also a 2013 Corral Fellow. I spent my summer with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids working on communications projects to increase education about the health effects of tobacco and about the marketing tactics of big tobacco to children and teens. As a result of my fellowship, I consider myself a miniature expert on tobacco control and prevention. If you are a friend of mine, I’ve probably talked your ear off in the last eight months about something related to tobacco. And my fellowship helped nurture a passion for public health and communications that had been brewing prior but hadn’t really boiled over yet. Today, however, I don’t want to really talk about my fellowship as much as I loved it. I’d like to focus my talk on the definition of public interest communications and how we can translate that definition into different languages by making it simple and concise. The Curl Fellowship provides minority and first generation students an opportunity to experience the field of public interest communications with the hopes of diversifying it. I’ve been told that this field needs diversity but doesn’t have it yet. I think part of that is because we don’t really know how to translate it. I’m first generation. My parents were born and raised in Iran and my cultural heritage is a tremendous part of my life. In the Iranian culture, you have three recommended career choices, and you’re innocent or law. And when you attend college, you usually attend a university nearby or if you go away, you return post grad. So both my decisions to go to DC and pursue a degree in journalism and career in communications were culturally abnormal and it took my family some time. In the weeks leading up to my departure for DC, which was June 12th, I could see my parents and Persian parents are notorious for being worrisome. I could see their worries building. Would I be safe? Would I eat? Would I get lost on the metro and never be heard from again? The answers to those questions are yes, I was safe. I ate way too much and I only got lost on the metro once on the green line and I figured out my way back home. But I think their biggest problem was that they didn’t really understand what I was doing in DC and in a lot of ways I think they still don’t. Public interest communicator is a phrase that does not translate anywhere in any way in Farsi, which is the Persian language. When I decided to pursue a degree in journalism, my family automatically thought one of two things. I either wanted to be the next Christian on month four, cultural note if there’s a famous Persian in your field, everyone’s going to assume you want to be him or her. Or I wanted to work at a newspaper or a TV station. So when I actually started delving into this world of public relations and public interest communications, my parents had no idea how to explain it to the family. I had no idea how to explain it to the family. And that’s because there’s no word to describe it. In Farsi, the only word that describes the media profession is Ruth Naminar translates into news giver. And that’s usually used to describe TV journalists. So my question is, how do we explain this field to people whose languages don’t have the words to describe it? How do we convince students with parents who may not really understand the culture that this field is growing, it’s exciting, and it has job prospects? In my opinion, we need a clear cut definition that we can share. And I’m targeting this to different cultures because that’s my experience. But I think our own American culture doesn’t really have an idea of it either. When I explained to friends what I did, I say that I spent my summer crafting social media posts for Twitter and Facebook about the health effects of tobacco use. I helped out with a use symposium that brought high school students from around the country to talk to senators on Capitol Hill. And I worked on a variety of other projects to talk about the health effects of tobacco. I don’t know if I will use a similar definition at my next field or organization, but I would like to have an idea of how to explain it. My role here in Frank was to manage the social media, so if you’ve ever been on Twitter, Facebook, or anything at all, that was me. I’m sorry. And to encourage students and professionals to attend this event. And that was actually really difficult to do because it’s hard to describe what you all do in 140 characters. So my question is, can we come up with a definition that can be put into 140 characters that can be easily shared with people? In order to be messengers for social good, I feel like we need to be able to message this field. If there’s one thing I learned at the campaign for tobacco free kids, it’s that they can motivate behavior and change and be powerful if visual and memorable. I graduated from UF in 66 days. I’m not counting down, I promise, to ask anyone who knows me. And I don’t know what I’m doing. But I do know I’d like to write and use social media to somehow create some sort of change. But I don’t think that’s exactly the words that should be used to describe this field. So my question is, how do you describe it? How would you describe it? And how can we describe it in a way that we can translate into different cultures to get different people interested? So my challenge is, I’d like you all to think about that. And if you can come up with an idea, tweet it at us at Frank2014. It’s on your lanyards, which I don’t have on me if you’re curious. And we want to hear what you say. So thank you so much for your time. And I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the gathering.