Not Just Another NAFSA: A Personal Reflection on This Year’s Conference

The 2025 Annual NAFSA Conference and Expo in San Diego marked my fourth time attending that yearly event. From my experience, four NAFSAs means a lot of:

• scheduled meetings with key partners, as well as joyfully running into people I haven’t spoken to in many months (and hoping I can remember their name without looking to a conference badge for help).
• well-arranged social opportunities to strengthen meaningful relationships, as well as way too much coffee and other questionable dietary choices (good thing conference calories don’t count, amiright?)
• game changing ideas that enhance our abilities to do impactful work as well as swag that looked useful when I picked it up, but later makes me question my understanding of what is and isn’t useful. 

So I find myself asking why we do this, and why do I look forward to this with genuine excitement literally every year? More than any other, this past NAFSA conference gave me clear answers to those questions.

NAFSA reminds me of the good in the work that we do:

We know that the work we do makes an impact on the world at large. But nothing drives that home to me like being around 8,000+ people from all parts of the globe and all walks of life, all dedicated in some capacity to making international education happen. Every year, I find myself dumbfounded by all the different ways people have found to contribute to this work — from folks in tech making software invitations that support programing, to travel and insurance folks mastering the logistical ins and outs of planning and risk management, to the universities and providers sending and receiving eager learners… this list goes on and on. There are so many sides and angles to the work that we do. And I find it so rewarding to connect with individuals whose work differs from my own but ultimately aims to achieve similar goals. 

This year in particular, I believe that those of us whose professions depend on the exchange of ideas and scholarship across national lines needed this space where we could be reminded of the tremendous power of our collective efforts. In times when scholarship and ideas seem to be under attack — attacks on funding, attacks on visas, attacks on leveling the playing field for students and professionals alike — I felt emboldened by such a mass gathering of all of our passions and skills and perspectives. I was reminded of how many of us are in the fight to protect our shared values and how many different ways there are to address the challenges that lie ahead.

NAFSA reminds me that I have a part to play:

Obviously, we need these spaces for business and professionalization reasons. I have the tremendous pleasure of working for CIS Abroad, and as such, there is a clear incentive to use these spaces to build our brand, connect with various partners, and display our areas of expertise as an organization.

As much as I love working with my CIS Abroad colleagues (they are truly a remarkable encapsulation of all that is best in our field), events like NAFSA provide opportunities to reach outside of our specific teams and organizations to collaborate with other remarkable individuals in the industry. This year, that collaboration took the form of my very first presentation at a national conference. I am so fortunate to have willing university partners as well as partners from other providers all willing to share our perspectives and expertise in these sorts of settings. Our presentation took some work. Its focus was on outreach and how we as a field can be more effective at using student success stories to reach a wider range of historically minoritized and underserved student populations — a topic which is at the very heart of why I do this work, but unfortunately requires tactful navigation in this current social climate. But the finished product of our session was one that we are truly proud of. And I’m proud to have reached a point in my career where I feel more comfortable sharing what I know with my industry on a larger scale.

NAFSA reminds me to dare and to grow:

I occasionally wonder what a 20-year-old me, freshly returned from his summer study abroad, would think about the fact that there is an entire industry focused on making those sorts of experiences happen. I had no idea that all of this existed, let alone that I’d be a part of it as my career. And I’ve had a few different roles along the way - from visa processing (ISSS people are saints and I would never ever trade places with you even under the best of circumstances), to program management, to outreach, and now business development. But, to be honest, a lot of those changes were kismet, they just kinda happened, and fortunately to my benefit. I haven’t always been intentional about career goals and moving in a particular direction. 

But this year, I was fortunate enough to speak with several colleagues over the course of the conference who were in the midst of change in their own work. A few friends and colleagues were intentionally making the effort to reconnect with their sense of purpose and find new ways to align their interests with the needs of our field. To me, this takes courage, tremendous amounts of confidence, and knowledge of one’s self. I applaud all of my peers who are trying to make such moves — this sort of bravery is exactly what our field needs right now. 

And I’m inspired to think about my own ikigai (the nexus between our passions, skills, mission, and profession) and how I can continue to bring my best self in alignment with my contributions to international education. As Rumi says, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

NAFSA is a lot, and this past conference was no exception. It’s a lot of water and cough drops to recover from all of the talking. And it’s a lot of walking (so much walking). But it’s a lot of connecting and reconnecting with people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives but often very similar goals. It’s a lot of building and developing, both our professional interests and, if we let it, ourselves. NAFSA is a lot, but it’s worth it every time. May what we took from the last one stay with us till the next one.