This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solman. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guest, Portia Childs. She holds a master's degree in higher education from the University of North Texas.

She is currently the Associate Director of Global Research at Wake Forest University, moving from Texas to Japan to North Carolina and other places in between Portia has a wealth of experience in language and intercultural studies.

Portia, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.

Yes, let's start with just a little of your own introduction. Portia, can you introduce yourself and tell us just a little bit of who you are and what you do.

Alright, yeah. Portia Childs, she her pronouns originally from Dallas, Texas as Brent Shares, my background is in Global Research and I work at a private school like Forest University in North Carolina.

A good bit of my time in education has been spent on diversity, inclusion and social justice work through both domestic and international lenses.

So I teach, I train, I do research and just spend a lot of time on those areas. I also support faith-based communities in my local community through a program called Can We Talk, where I've been working with them for about three years and getting church folks engaged in the conversation around race and our belief system, our faith.

I lived abroad and that definitely impacted my life live in Japan for a year in Todd English and those things definitely shaped my understanding of ethnic identity and who I am and you know, give me some insight into, you know, just guys amazing design for human beings.

I'm master's in education and I love learning. I'm getting a second master's degree right now in Global Affairs, Mike Forest University.

And today's my birthday actually so I am now in my late 30s, which is a hard thing for me to come to grips with but excited about that.

And you agreed to talk to us on your birthday?

It's a gift. I pick it's a gift to myself. There you go.

That is good. Well, it's a gift to us. So I appreciate that.

So now you've talked about who you are and what you do. Tell us about your story and just personally where you've come from and what your experience just has been being you.

So raise and Dallas parents that were believers grew up in Baptist environments.

And so reading the Bible was always a part of my life going to church, to non-denominational churches, majority white churches, most of my life.

But about third grade my parents decided to go to school for the degrees. And so we packed up and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But they are attended or Robert University of private Christian University there.

My dad took Hebrew and so it was amazing and great hearing different languages spoken and practiced in my house. He also took Russian.

We were really encouraged as kids. I'm one of three kids. And so we were really encouraged to challenge and analyze things.

And so if we had questions for our parents, we could always ask them that we were engaged to kind of challenge or push back a little bit.

...