Rising Stars: Meet Clodagh Lyons-Bastian

Today we’d like to introduce you to Clodagh Lyons-Bastian.

Hi Clodagh, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
As a two-time immigrant, I’ve negotiated differences from an early age and gained a love of diversity and of studying how humans tick.

I was born in Dublin as the youngest of five kids. The Irish economy was very bad at the time, so our family was forced to move where my father could find work. That place was Berlin; a city still divided into East and West from World War II.

Bridging the new German culture and language was a challenge for our family. We kids adjusted quickly and became proficient in German in less than six months, but my parents had a harder time of it, struggling with the nuances of the language as well as a culture that was very different from the Irish.

Both Ireland and Germany had recent histories of conflict and separation among their people. The Irish Troubles between Catholic and Protestant neighbors and Berlin’s East and West made me aware of how we are shaped by geopolitical factors; forces that have little to do with our personal lives, but that impact us so severely in their experience and consequences.

I became intrigued by how neighbors with the very same wants and needs can come to such fundamental divides, often violently. And I became interested in how those divides might be bridged.

In my early twenties, I fell in love with a handsome American soldier who was stationed in the Berlin Brigade. When Jerry returned to the U.S. to finish his electrical engineering degree at North Carolina State University, I emigrated for the second time in my life to become his wife.

In Raleigh, I enrolled as an undergrad in sociology and psychology at NCSU. The combination fed my curiosity about what makes us tick as individuals and how we are shaped by our societies. I connected with so many people from the area and others from around the world who welcomed me here with their friendship, and I came to regard Raleigh as my home.

I continued to pursue my interest in connecting folks across cultures in my professional life as I taught languages, ran a business and a non-profit, and produced the International Festival of Raleigh over the next few years.

Next I wanted o find out how we negotiate our interactions with others, which led me to complete graduate school in Communication at NCSU. This wonderful experience opened my eyes to new paths and prompted my web design and consulting business among other adventures. I’m honored to say I now also teach in the Communication Department as adjunct faculty.

Chasing down the dynamics that connect people and those that keep them apart was a passion that started early in my life and still intrigues me today. I’m really excited to share some of the insights I learned along the way at TEDx Raleigh this November.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I don’t think any worthwhile road is ever really smooth – sometimes the bumps turn out to be what we gain most from in the end. 

Some setbacks are harder to deal with than others though. I did have a recent experience that forced me to reboot, as it did many others.

In early March of 2020, I was finalizing the production of the International Festival of Raleigh. The festival was scheduled for March 9-11 and the crew had begun to build the large event at the State Fairground’s Jim Graham Building and Expo Center. Over 500 volunteers, 50+ ethnic communities, and tens of musicians and artists had been preparing for months to celebrate Raleigh’s international communities and cultures. On March 6, Wake County got news of its first COVID case.

Local health authorities had not placed any closure advisories yet, but I had been following news of COVID spreading around the world and in other American cities, and I had an idea of the possible magnitude of a super spreader event for Raleigh. Our festival audience and participants were international travelers, any of whom could have picked up the virus. To complete the perfect storm, many of our large volunteer pool and ethnic community contributors were elderly and at high risk.

The International Festival was the primary fundraiser for our small organization, and its cancellation would cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, destroying our budget and savings. Canceling the festival would also in all likelihood mean losing my job.

The night of March 6th was the worst night of my life as I grappled with the implications and what to do.

The risk to participants and attendees was just too great. In the morning, two board members and I recommended to the Board of Directors that we cancel the festival.

I lost my job and income, and I lost working with communities and a cause I love. That first year I felt physical pain as in grief, but it lessened. For a long time, I wasn’t sure I had made the correct decision. Looking now at the more than one million U.S. dead and what might have been here in our city, I’m more comforted than I did.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My work is all about communication and collaboration, so it feels like a better fit to think of myself as part of others, rather than set apart from them.

I’ve been lucky to engage in some great and fulfilling work over the years. While studying for my undergraduate degree at NCSU, I taught English and German, which inspired me to start a language school after graduation. The World Company provided language instruction and testing in over 30 languages, and running it connected me with the Raleigh business community, which I really enjoyed.

Part of this outreach brought me to International Focus. The organization produced the annual International Festival of Raleigh, bringing together local international cultures to celebrate friendship in dialog and the arts. International Focus was looking for new leadership, so I sold The World Company and took on the role of Executive Director. With support from the community and the city, we were able to build the festival back up to make it profitable again into its 36th year.

I took a break for graduate school and gained new skills, working on exciting projects from political consulting to community building and digital platform creation. When I lost my beloved International Festival to COVID, I updated those skills and started a consulting and web design business: Oghma Web Design. I’m now happily splitting my time between web design, communication consulting, and lecturing at NCSU. I teach PR Campaigns, International and Intercultural Communication, Public Speaking, and Writing for Digital Media, which is a mix that keeps me on my toes, but really feeds my head and passions.

What’s next? Who knows? I consider myself so very lucky to have had all these wonderful opportunities, to get to do what I love, and to keep growing and discovering.

What matters most to you?
My life centers around trying to understand human dynamics and build bridges. 

The welfare of animals is another passion close to my heart. I believe we can and should improve how we treat our non-human fellow beings.

We see many examples of the dehumanization of people throughout history – mostly because it was expedient and convenient and allowed another group to profit. The treatment of people of color, women, Jews, and Muslims at various times are some examples of this. It seems to me that we use that same rationale with animals today, exploiting them at will under the guise that they exist only for our use. Factory farming and pharmaceutical and cosmetic testing are some sad examples of how we routinely designate animals as merchandise, a categorization that strips them of status as sentient creatures and allows us to deny them any mercy.

It matters to me to stay engaged to advance animal welfare and to recognize the common intelligence, needs, and emotional life they share with us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://oghmawebdesign.com/