Shay Chan Hodges is an alumna from Lund University. She was an exchange student from University of California Berkeley (via the University of California Education Abroad Program) and studied in Lund 1982-1984.
When we met Shay Chan Hodges outside Ariman café in Lund, she was enjoying a well-deserved break in Sweden, after running for Congress in the election to represent the 2nd congressional district of Hawaii. Shay is a true driving spirit and matters concerning family, work-life balance and raising children lay close to her heart. She recently released the interactive e-book Lean On and Lead, Mothering and Work in the 21st Century Economy.
In the beginning of the 1980’s Shay was a young linguistics major at UC Berkeley, with a desire to broaden her horizons. She had studied French for several years and had a long-time dream of sipping coffee at a Parisian café. But when it was time to apply, France did not feel so appealing after all, and instead, her gaze fell on Lund University. However, the first weeks of her studies abroad in Sweden did not start exactly as she had planned.
“At that time, you could go to Sweden knowing no Swedish, so I did. And the funny part is, I don’t know if they still do this, but they took us straight to Malung, in Dalarna. At that time in Malung, every Friday night, everyone would get in their big American cars and drive around the “Domus” store. There was no cell phone, no internet, no way to communicate with home. You couldn’t even make a phone call home because it was so expensive. But you know what, you learned Swedish because there was nothing else to do.”
Once the studies started in Lund, Shay found a home at Östgöta Nation, the city library, Stadsbiblioteket, and Ariman Café. “They had free refills,” Shay remembers, “you’d buy one cup of coffee, cause you were all poor students, and get refills all day long. It was definitely the place where we all hung out.” The city library offered another vital part of student life; “Stadsbiblioteket was a place where we hung out a ton. There was a table where you could listen to music records with headphones. We would pull out U2 records and sit around the table, listening together. It feels like we were the last generation before the major shift in technology.”
Shay says she loved her time at Lund University and chose to extend her studies to a second year abroad in Lund. She left the linguistics studies in favour of Peace and Conflict studies. Once back in the US, she started working in Los Angeles for a non-profit organisation, the American Foundation of AIDS research. After a few years she needed to broaden her horizons again and took off for Hawaii where she has lived ever since.
“I worked with non-profits and became a grant writer for different non-profit organisations. I met my husband through politics and got involved in politics very early on because I realized that you can make a big difference in Hawaii since it is a small state.”
While raising her own family, she encountered the challenges of balancing work and raising children. These challenges have been her inspiration both in her political career and as an author. The Swedish parental leave policy and Swedish friends from her time in Lund are included in the book. About the book, Shay says, “the point is to look at the lives of real people. There’s an interview with a senator talking about his real life, not policy, and how they do with their two kids. We’re always talking about policies, but what are people’s real lives really like? How do we contribute to society? How do we work and take care of our kids?” She is convinced that the US policy makers could profit from looking at other cultures, and other ways of doing things, when it comes to parental leave and life-work balance. “What do you want a strong economy for if not supporting families? These are the people who drive the economy whether it is being consumers, participants, workers, innovators.”
Shay is certain that her time in Lund had a big impact on her life. “It may sound so crazy, but I have actually dreamt about Lund on a consistent basis the last 20 years.” Nine years ago she visited Lund again and realized that a lot had happened with the city and the university. “I actually thought on some level that it was going to be exactly the same way I remembered it. Which of course is ridiculous. Part of it was that I never wanted to leave. But Lund decided to have a life without me.” However, Lund is now forgiven and after her time in Sweden, Shay is considering staying a little longer. In her ebook, she writes about Family-Centered Design Thinking, a concept for designing society from the kitchen-table out, and she has been exploring opportunities for working on that idea in Sweden. “We are doing a lot of work here now, so we are actually talking about if Lund or Stockholm could be our home. We are curious what that would be like.”
Text: Maria Johansson
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