Emily Brunjes
The opportunity to blend interests in China’s language, culture and socioeconomic problems brings student Emily Brunjes to the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Brunjes has traveled extensively outside the United States, taking many trips as part of her job with the non-profit organization Youth With A Mission, an international volunteer movement of Christians from many backgrounds, cultures and Christian traditions. For YWAM, Brunjes conducted leadership development for University of Wisconsin–Madison students and coordinated and led volunteer trips to China.
In the 13 years Brunjes has been visiting China, she has witnessed the changes taking place as the country has industrialized and economic inequity has increased. “With all the economic growth that has taken place, the distribution of the benefits has been very top heavy, with a few people gaining the most wealth,” she says.
Brunjes first traveled to China on a cultural exchange and tourism trip in 1998, shortly after she graduated from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “The trip was part of a volunteer training program for that exposed us to Chinese history, culture and religious life,” Brunjes says. “My fascination with China started then and has only increased.”
She came to Madison in 1999 to join YWAM. “My true cross-cultural education began with YWAM,” Brunjes says. “During my 10 years with YWAM, I traveled numerous times to China as well as to East Africa, Switzerland, Mexico and Thailand. I developed my current interests in poverty relief and economic development, specifically that kind of development that benefits people in the lower strata of the socioeconomic hierarchy.”
On a trip to Uganda in August 2009 she saw the difference a small investment of time and money could make. “At a seminar on small business and personal finance, it was really rewarding to empower people by offering encouragement and new skills.” She says, “Small business loans and little bit of training gave them courage to make new choices and try new things. The idea that somebody’s life, especially somebody at the bottom of the economy, can be better drives my sense of public service. It does my heart good to see people empowered to provide for their families.”
Brunjes went back to China for 11 weeks in summer 2011 through a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education. She completed the UW–Madison’s Chinese language program’s first-year Mandarin curriculum.
Brunjes used her one-week field study to explore how people in China think about cultural preservation in the midst of rapid economic development. Brunjes asked shop owners in tourist areas what they thought about cultural and historical preservation. “I found they thought that economic development is most important,” Brunjes says, “They don’t deny the historical significance of these places, but they tend to think of them largely in terms of the revenue they generate.”
Program organizers selected Brunjes’ report — written in Chinese — to use as a model for people considering going through the language program, to show them what they can accomplish through their enrollment.
After completing her first year in the master of international public affairs degree program, Brunjes hopes to intern in Beijing or Washington, D.C. After graduation, she can see herself working for the U.S. State Department, a nonprofit labor rights organization or for a multinational corporation concerned about labor conditions of its suppliers in China. She plans to focus her coursework on employment and labor policy, as well as China and Mandarin.
By enrolling at La Follette, Brunjes is shifting her career. “My faith undergirds my desire to make a difference in China, but I don’t see myself doing religious work professionally,” says Brunjes, who was awarded a La Follette School fellowship for her first year. “My bachelor’s degree in molecular biology fit my analytical gifts, but not my love for people. My work with YWAM suited my attitude of service and love for people, but left my analytical skills untapped. A La Follette degree will help me marry my analytical and humanitarian sides.”
“Through my studies and subsequent work in international public affairs I hope to create new ways for disadvantaged people to enter the mainstream of commerce, enabling them to provide for themselves and their families,” Brunjes says.
— posted December 8, 2011