We’re excited to invite you to the second FOLD Symposium, an initiative Fulbright Austria launched for our alum community in 2022. But what exactly is the FOLD Symposium? 2022–23 combined grantee Bailey Fernandez, who successfully applied to organize this year's event, came in to talk about what we can expect from the 2024 FOLD Symposium, which will be held on 14 June in the Upper Austria capital of Linz. You can watch the interview above or read the interview below.

Transcript of interview

Fulbright Austria: What is the FOLD Symposium?

Bailey Fernandez: So FOLD in the FOLD Symposium stands for Fulbrighters of the Last Decades. It is a very recent alumni initiative at Fulbright Austria. There has only been one before this one, and this is the second one. And what it is, is that every year, Fulbright Austria hosts a competition for alumni of the Fulbright Austria program to propose an event in a topic in which they’re interested, with the aim of building and networking the Fulbright Austria community. The authors of the winning proposal then get to lead the organization of the event.

Fulbright Austria: What is the topic of the 2024 FOLD Symposium?

Bailey: So this year’s FOLD Symposium is called “Listen Up!: A Joint Austro-Bulgarian FOLD Symposium for Disability, Inclusion, and Fulbrighters of the Last Decades.” For me, this is a very personal topic because I also have a disability. We are organizing the symposium jointly with Fulbright Bulgaria, and our aim is to connect and network American, Austrian, and Bulgarian organizations which are working in the disability space.

Fulbright Austria: Why did you choose to organize a symposium around this topic?

Bailey: So I would never have actually thought to do any work in disability myself were it not for a partnership between Fulbright Austria and the Zero Project International. And what it is, is that every year, the Zero Project extends invitations for Fulbright Austria grantees to attend its annual ZeroConference at the UN office in Vienna. And so what happens there, which is really cool, is that organizations from around the world convene to present solutions that they’re working on to problems which people with disabilities face. I always saw it in my case, with my disability, as something that was very private to me. To see that other people shared this experience and that there were so many bright and really smart people working around the world to create solutions to help make the lives of people like me easier, was really, really inspiring. And so when Mitch Sims, who was the alumni relations manager at Fulbright [Austria], pulled me aside at the end-of-the-year ceremonies for Fulbright Austria last year and asked me if I would be interested in proposing a topic, I instantly knew what I wanted it to be.

Fulbright Austria: What is the connection with Fulbright Bulgaria?

Bailey: Fulbright Bulgaria came into the project through work they had done with the NGO deaf.BG. When I was first thinking about proposing a FOLD Symposium, I read an article that was published on the Fulbright Specialist World Learning website about the partnership between Fulbright Bulgaria, deaf.BG, and Gallaudet University in the United States. So because of that, I reached out to them really early on, and they became really instrumental in the planning and the finances for the event.

So once Fulbright Bulgaria was involved, we began to think of the symposium as more of a trilateral partnership between America, Austria, and Bulgaria, instead of a bilateral partnership between just the US and Austria. We also started to ask ourselves what we could do by thinking of this event as a collaboration between these three countries.

Fulbright Austria: Who is involved in this year’s event?

Bailey: Of course, Fulbright Austria and Fulbright Bulgaria have formed the core of the financial partnership, as you’ve already heard. We also have very generous support from Central European University through the Civic Engagement Fellowship.

In terms of the people who are speaking at the symposium, we have two keynote speakers. The first is Ashod Derandonyan, who is the CEO of deaf.BG and currently a Fulbright scholar at Gallaudet University in the US. The second is Barbara Levc, who is the co-founder of the Austrian disability union Uniability and director of the Zentrum Integriert Studieren at the University of Graz. Uniability advocates for the equality of disabled people across the Austrian university system. We’re also organizing a panel, and this will be moderated by the Zero Project. The participants are still being finalized, but they will include a representative from the ATHENA project at the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz and Ivelina Gadzheva, founder of Design for All Bulgaria.

Fulbright Austria: Why should people attend the symposium?

Bailey: If you have any interest in disability at all, this is a fantastic opportunity to network with a lot of international partners. On top of this, Fulbright Austria and Fulbright Bulgaria do not have an existing partnership. So, on both sides of that exchange, this is a great opportunity to meet a lot of fantastic people that you might not get a chance to meet otherwise.

Maybe another, more general reason: if you are interested in business and work in Europe in general, you should also be interested in the EU Accessibility Act, which goes into effect in the EU in 2025. This act will implement requirements across the entire EU for businesses and governments to make their products and services more accessible to people. And this event is a great place to find out more about that.

Fulbright Austria: What do you want people to take away from the event?

Bailey: I think that the main thing I want people to take away from the event is that people shouldn’t think of accessibility as a faceless burden or legal requirement that businesses have to meet, but rather that it’s an issue which affects real people with real lives who our businesses, workplaces, educational institutions, and governments can serve better.

Just as much, I think the event provides a great opportunity to see the differences in the barriers disabled people face in different national contexts. Over the past year, there’s been a lot more attention given to disability in the US. However, the issue has a very different legal and social context for Americans than it does in Austria or Bulgaria. And my hope is that a general kind of Fulbright spirit may help us think about new ways we can approach and think about this issue in different national contexts.

Fulbright Austria: Why should Fulbright Austria Alums apply to organize a FOLD Symposium?

Bailey: So organizing the FOLD Symposium is the single hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m going to be completely honest about that. But I think it’s also some of the best experience that I’ve ever had. You really learn how to manage a project, and they really let you make the decisions.

So if you’re someone who is really driven about a particular issue or project or something else and you really want to try to network people to come up with solutions in that area, the FOLD Symposium is a really incredible opportunity to do that.