Not Really Strangers

Discover just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives, and to the social issues that matter to us most. Join host Suzanne Ehlers, Executive Director and CEO of USA for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, as she and her eclectic guests share personal stories and frontline insights. We’re more connected than we may think.

Not Really Strangers is a business podcast hosted by USA for UNHCR, with 18 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

USA for UNHCR hosts Not Really Strangers, a business show with 18 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #8

  How Emma’s Torch is Building Community, One Kitchen at a Time

  Jun 3, 202641 minS2

  <p>Recorded on location at Emma's Torch — a restaurant and culinary training center for refugees in Brooklyn, NY with locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area — Suzanne sits down with staff members Kira O'Brien and Alexander Harris and alumnus Giorgi Tabukashvili to explore what home, belonging, and hospitality mean when displacement is part of the story. Now in its tenth year, Emma's Torch runs an 11-week, fully paid culinary training program for refugees, asylees, and other newcomers. Giorgi shares how the program helped him find community when he was new to the U.S after fleeing his home country of Geor...

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  Episode #7

  “It’s a Power Question”: On Wakanda, Funding Change, and Compassion Across Oceans with Global Leader Ada Williams Prince

  May 27, 202631 minS2

  <p>In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with global leader and major sci-fi fan Ada Williams Prince to discuss how her career spanning multiple continents has shaped the way she thinks about the best way to fund social change. Ada shares how she first came to feel a personal connection to the issue of forced displacement and why it’s not just a humanitarian crisis – it is also a political crisis, a gender crisis, and a climate crisis. Ada also makes a compelling case for what she calls a “liberation practice”: designing investment strategies not in b...

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  Episode #6

  Building Better Futures for Refugees: The Power of Education

  May 20, 202630 minS2

  <p>In this episode of Not Really Strangers, Suzanne Ehlers sits down with two UNHCR DAFI scholarship recipients and leaders of the Tertiary Refugee Student Network (TRSN) — Monicah Malith, a law graduate from South Sudan now completing her Advocates Training Program in Nairobi, and Krista Rivas, a Nicaraguan architecture and international relations student finishing her final semester in Mexico City. Together, they explore what home means when you've been displaced, the unexpected ways education equalizes and amplifies, and what they want people who've never met a refugee to understand about our shared humanity. The episode also shines a light on th...

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  Episode #5

  Grit, Gathering and Going for It: Maryam Banikarim on Living Life Wherever You Find Yourself

  May 13, 202640 minS2

  <p>In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with Maryam Banikarim, an Emmy Award-winning storyteller, community builder, and host of The Messy Parts podcast, for a conversation that moves from the streets of Chelsea to the streets of Tehran, and back again. Maryam, who fled Iran as a child and arrived in the United States in the middle of the hostage crisis, reflects on what it means to build a sense of home when home is not a fixed place. She shares how New York City became the city where she found her voice, raised...

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  Episode #4

  From Assumption to Curiosity: Susanna Pollack on Immersive Media and the Distance Between Us

  May 6, 202627 minS2

  <p>Susanna Pollack, President of Games for Change and a cross-sector leader with over 25 years of experience in traditional and interactive media, joins host Suzanne Ehlers for a conversation that bridges virtual worlds and lived realities. From Clouds Over Sidra — the UN's landmark VR film set inside a Syrian refugee camp — to the immersive theater of The Jungle, the award-winning text-based game Bury Me, My Love, and Minecraft Education's use in displaced communities, Susanna illustrates how games and immersive media can build empathy, teach skills, and restore agency in ways few other mediums can match. She also reflects on Games for...

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