My Fulbright Experience: The Chance of a Lifetime

My Fulbright Experience: The Chance of a Lifetime

By Fulbright Alumna Vinita Godinho (awarded 2019)

“I connected with virtually everyone on my wish-list, meeting leaders from the business, government and non-profit sectors who shared my passion for taking evidence-based action. I also spent quality time with those leading cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary research in my field, debating how we might share learnings with one another.”

It’s not often that you come across people whose professional careers have seen them transition between sectors. In my case, having switched hats from banking to academia and then to the community sector, I was pleasantly surprised to meet others with similar career trajectories as part of the Fulbright Program.

The Fulbright Program is a unique opportunity which connects researchers and practitioners in Australia with like-minded professionals in the United States (US), to foster longer-term collaboration and exchange of ideas between the two countries. Awarded a Professional Coral Sea Scholarship, I spent three months (August to November 2019) in the US, learning more about how to improve financial wellbeing for vulnerable groups at the Center for Financial Inclusion in Washington DC.

Ever since then I’ve been asked the same question many times over by colleagues, family and friends alike – was the Fulbright experience worth it, and why? So here is my attempt to answer this question in full, and I hope it convince others who might be considering putting their hat into the ring for a Fulbright scholarship, to go ahead and take the chance of a lifetime.

Four short words describe my Fulbright experience – the chance of a lifetime! For the first time in my long professional career, I took three months off my day-job to embark on this journey, which saw me visit twenty cities across the US and Canada. Whilst most of my travel was related to work and site-visits to meet the key players in my field, I also made the time to tick off some of my ‘bucket-list’, catch up with schoolfriends I had not seen in decades, and immerse myself in the local culture.

The luxury of having uninterrupted time to focus on one topic of interest turned out to be not just the stress-busting break I badly needed, but also a very productive opportunity to map out the key players in the ecosystem which supports those facing financial stress in the US. I connected with virtually everyone on my wish-list, meeting leaders from the business, government and non-profit sectors who shared my passion for taking evidence-based action. I also spent quality time with those leading cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary research in my field, debating how we might share learnings with one another.

Investing the time and effort to develop these relationships has paid off richly, as I am now partnering with some of these key contacts on joint projects, as well as exploring collaborative research opportunities to investigate the commonalities and differences in the approach being taken to address the common problems faced by our countries. I am also co-authoring articles and blogs on financial wellbeing with the Center for Financial Inclusion, as they offered me a Research Fellowship to continue working with their researchers.

US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump stand with Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Jenny Morrison on the Truman Balcony during an official arrival ceremony at the White House in Washington, US, September 20, 2019. Photo: Reuters

I loved being based in Washington DC which in many ways is similar to my home-town of Melbourne, and was thrilled to be invited to the White House to welcome our Prime Minister when he visited the President during my stay. I was lucky enough to live near the Kennedy Centre, and regularly caught a free evening performance at the  Millennium Stage. The Fulbright Washington chapter was also very active, inviting us to free theatre performances at local venues, and opportunities to meet scholarship holders and alumni from other countries who were also visiting the US. Now that I am back in Australia, I look forward to contributing to the Australian Fulbright community in whichever way I can. My Fulbright journey has turned out to be a genuinely life-changing opportunity to connect the global dots in my area of research, as well as create an entirely new network of like-minded professionals from across the world, whom I would otherwise never have had the opportunity to meet.