Thru The Grapewine

Ready to Raise Your Glass to Change? Discover Maryam Ahmed's Trailblazing Impact in the Wine World

• Ute Mitchell • Episode 36

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Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Maryam Ahmed, founder of Maryam + Company, as she shares her mission to revolutionize the wine industry. From family gatherings in Italy to her ventures in New York's Finger Lakes, Maryam's story is one of passion and purpose.

Discover how Maryam's ventures, including the Diversity in Wine Leadership Forum and Field Blends, are fostering diversity and accessibility in wine. Whether you're a wine enthusiast or industry insider, this episode offers insights into the transformative power of inclusion.

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Ute:

Hello again and welcome to the Thru The Grapewine podcast. I am your host, Ute Mitchell, and I have a very special guest here with me today. Her name is Maryam Ahmed and she's the founder of Maryam and Company, and the company's mission is to help and I'm taking this right from the website "purpose-driven brands grow their businesses, increase engagement and deepen their impact, while celebrating food and wine through diversity, sustainability and community-based educational initiatives and program, and I love it. Thank you so much for being here, mariam.

Maryam:

Thank you so much for having me, Ute. I'm excited to talk about all the things.

Ute:

Yeah, me too. So you are obviously a very, very busy woman who wears many hats, and I'm very curious how this all started. Was it always going to be the wine industry, or did you transition into the industry? How did it all start for you?

Maryam:

I think it sounds cheesy, but in a lot of ways the wine industry chose me. I was really lucky to have a group of people in my life when I was young, a big Italian family that celebrated everything, and at every celebration there was wine and, of course, really good food. But I noticed how much wine was linked to celebration and conversation and just people spending time with one another, and it clicked for me then, although I wasn't even old enough to drink at the time. I didn't know necessarily then that I would be able to pursue a full-time career in wine, but I knew that I liked the conviviality of wine and the way that it gathered people together.

Maryam:

And I had kind of grown up a gatherer. I'm an oldest sibling, I have a number of friends throughout the country, I have traveled and I'm just the one that kind of people rely on a lot of the time to get everybody together. And so wine and gathering, I think, was an inevitability. It was just a matter of when would the discovery happen.

Maryam:

So I went to my undergrad at Cornell University. I went to the hotel management program there and that was where I learned that I could really get into wine. I had grown up about 45 minutes from the Finger Lakes region in New York, but I didn't grow up in a wine household. So it took me kind of leaving home and getting to college to realize that there was an industry so close to where I had grown up that was so aligned with what my interests were, and so I got a job at a local winery while I was in school and I honestly just never looked back.

Ute:

Yeah, oh my gosh. That's so funny because the region I grew up in in Germany also very much a wine region. I was in the Baden wine region and it just never occurred to me that at some point I'd be working in the wine industry. It took me over 40 years to kind of fall into it and, like you were saying cheesy as it may sound I feel like it found me because I wasn't really actually looking for anything. It was just like one of those moments where it's like, oh, I think I might try this. And here we are, seven years later.

Maryam:

I think wine is an amazingly powerful tool in that way. So many of us have different stories that were entry points into wine and also those same stories in form how we move in the wine world and how we spread the joy of the wine world, so there's not really any wrong path to getting there. There's just so many different ways to arrive.

Ute:

Yeah, that is very true. So the reason I know about you is because you spoke last year at the Women in Wine Conference in Oregon and your talk was really, really captivating. It was very inspirational and you made it very clear from the moment that you started talking that you are fully aware of the fact that there would be some audience members that would get a little bit uncomfortable, as you're speaking on behalf of every woman of color and your journey to bring equity and diversity into this industry, and personally I embrace this discomfort and I appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow, because I feel like I'm never done. But what was it like for you for that very first time that you stepped onto a stage to share your message with an audience?

Maryam:

It's very similar to the feeling that I get stepping on stage now. There's always a risk to teach through vulnerability. There's a lot that comes with letting your shields down in order to be of service to other people, in order to help people harness their own perspectives more thoroughly or to call into question, maybe, some of the things that they never thought about before. So that's uncomfortable work. As I had mentioned during that talk, there are so many folks doing uncomfortable work I couldn't possibly represent everybody getting up on stage, my experiences and my privilege and who I am. The makeup right of Miriam is different from the next person, but the feeling of getting on stage to share how your experience informs your professionalism, your personal life, it's always gives you a lot of fluttering in the stomach region because you know you have a purpose.

Maryam:

You know what you need to share is important, but you just kind of have to acknowledge that sometimes that level of discomfort means you're really doing something so important and in line with your own mission that is worth it.

Ute:

I think, especially when you then know that somebody a year later will remember an experience that they had in the audience. I have to assume that you are told this by more people than just me coming up to you and going hey, Maryam, I was there for that talk that you did, and I feel like that must be incredibly rewarding to know that there is that feedback and that you know that you're doing the right thing so that, even if it's uncomfortable, you know you've got to continue.

Maryam:

Definitely. I think I've always had a fascination with education. I have extended family. That's been an education for generations, and I just don't think it's of any surprise to anybody that this is one of the most rewarding forms of work that I do through Maryam and Company, and it is always rewarding. But it's also very valuable to hear from people because I can understand what resonated or where more information might be needed. I mean, I take all the feedback I possibly can, whenever I can.

Maryam:

But, yes, it is always a little bit like rewarding and you have to not be too humble but you have to have humility and there's all of these things. And at the end of the day really, I just like thank anybody who comes up and says anything, because it's so helpful to know that it resonated.

Ute:

Yeah for sure. So that your talks and your writing are powerful is also evident by the fact that you were nominated one for the Wine Star Award recipient for the social visionary of the year 2022. You were named one of Wine Enthusiast's future 40 tastemakers of 2022. You received the Impact Award from Wine and Culture Festival. So that's you know, obviously, a lot of things. What does that mean for you to be one so widely recognized? I mean, it must be an incredible sense of accomplishment that you must be feeling that your hard work is paying off like this.

Maryam:

Yeah, there's so many questions in one question, so I'll start bigger picture, which is that you know, some days I vacillate between being an award winning beverage professional and home gardener and cat mom.

Maryam:

You know, I mean sometimes depends on the level of confidence one wakes up with. And just to be perfectly honest with you, receiving the cover of the 2022 issue of the future 40 tastemakers from Wine Enthusiast was a complete surprise. They did not provide any warning at all and it was such a beautiful surprise, I think, for me seeing that cover, I just it was very emotional, not only because of being the one on the photo, but also because that was the first time, you know, I had seen someone Pakistani like on a cover of a wide magazine. Like it's so cool, I just like. I imagine, hopefully, that it will encourage women from all kinds of backgrounds, but especially thinking about the kind of girl I was like to pursue something in wine if they're interested. So that was such a big deal to me. But the other reason I was so excited is because the future 40 is a reenvision version of the 40 under 40 list.

Ute:

Right.

Maryam:

These issues to put out and yeah you know, I'm so excited that they're doing future 40 now because it's removing this, this age limitation, and hopefully breaking down some of the ageism and barriers we have in our industry. And then I was so proud to be in the inaugural list of those people that not want to me, to folks who were really like elbow to elbow with me doing work and pushing boundaries. So it's an honor in that regard to be recognized among my peers and among every single beverage professional in the nation. You're one of 40. It's, it's an incredible honor.

Maryam:

And a week after, basically, I celebrated the cover of the magazine, I found out that I received the nomination for the social visionary award. So it was like drinking water from a fire hose a little bit, you know, for a couple months there in 2022. And the impact award that I received from Wine and Culture Festival very recently July july of 2023, is so special because it's community nominated. So it's the folks who follow along frankly every day. It's the people who send you a reply to your newsletter like, yeah, keep going. You know, it's the who you're trying to serve ideally, and that just means so much to me because that is a piece of feedback To me. That means we should keep pushing and that we are doing something that is changing the game for some folks in the industry. Hopefully continue to ripple out and change the industry at large, but that one is just so, so special for those reasons.

Ute:

Oh my gosh, that gave me goosebumps. So let's talk about your company. It is called Maryam and Company. Can you please explain to our listeners what do you do and who are you doing it for?

Maryam:

I mean, first I can just say you can name your business anything. I named mine after me and that was actually in and of itself an uncomfortable decision because I tend to be someone who does a lot of the work that I do. A lot of the impact work is behind the scenes, and it isn't so much that I need the name recognition for my own ego, but more so that if I had named it something else, I may have very well hidden behind it. And I think, just as we talked about the cover of the magazine, being in front of a company like this hopefully means other people will be pursuing a career like this one, right? So I made this decision that I wouldn't typically be comfortable with. So then, of course, I named it and company, and there's a really particular reason why we didn't use the and person. We use a plus side, and that was because together, as a formula, Maryam and Company is the brand right, it is how we operate, it is how we serve, and it was a small but important choice right in the naming. And so we are a company legally on paper as one, and I tell anybody who asks me the structure of Merriman's company but the and company piece. It's an internal thing, right.

Maryam:

We have a supply chain of really amazing, diverse, mostly women, providing services that we often ask we are asked for. As far as references are concerned, we work with independent contractors as well to help with some of our projects, and those folks are always women at minimum always. You know, most of our folks are diverse women that support Merriman Company. In addition to the people who work with us, like we collaborate with so many other organizations. That's the company we keep, like all these folks and social impact people doing furthering the work. They're the company. And then, of course, the people who get to interact with us from a public facing standpoint and who we get to interact with from a public facing standpoint. I consider those and company to, and so we're never not in good company is basically, potentially could be my new tagline. I like that. Anyway, that's only all about the name.

Maryam:

So what we do at Maryam and Company is basically we will create educational initiatives.

Maryam:

Oftentimes those are industry facing. They can be wine lover facing, they could be employee facing. But while we are simultaneously producing something that looks like a glossy, fun experience to be part of, we are at the same time dismantling systems behind the scenes that are maybe outdated, maybe creating unnecessary barriers to entry or access, especially for the diverse community systems that are slowing progress down, systems that are built on the premise of while we've always done it that way, so why would we do it differently? So I'm hired to be both creative and strategic on the internal side and to hold people accountable, you know, especially around their sustainability and diversity goals, and so that looks like creating conference programs, creating panel series and education sessions, as well, as you know, taking a look at messaging, taking a look at how the messaging matches the internal culture and initiatives happening within a business, and trying to connect the dots between a lot of these larger companies that have the resources that many of the diverse folks, diverse organizations, anybody who has historically not been resourced helping bridge the deal.

Ute:

Yeah, okay, that's wonderful. When did you start the company and how many people are there now? So in the direct company?

Maryam:

Yeah, so I started in 2020, in July of 2020. I had previously been the public programs director at the Culinary Institute of America for nearly five years, so I was already very entrenched in creating educational programs and tracking efficacy of programs, of course, and also connecting the importance of thought leadership with the importance of the bottom line, etc. And I really loved that work. It was very, very intriguing, it kept me curious, it kept me excited and I kind of knew like I could continue to be of service in that way to the food and beverage industry if I continued the work on my own. So I launched Mariam Company in 2020. And, like I said, we are a single member LLC, but I have had incredible operational support as well as marketing support the whole time. So on any given day, mariam Company is probably about four or five people big to make them work.

Ute:

Yeah, so I have to get back to this 2020 thing, because what I'm noticing is that there are really quite a lot of women that I've been talking to recently who started something in 2020. So you have Tiquette, with Our Legacy Harvested that she started in 2020, I just spoke with Stephanie from FlyWines. She started in 2020. Here you are in 2020. So I find that really fascinating how, you know, during this, this time, when so many people were just kind of like, you know, pulling their covers on and kind of crawling into their little holes, so many others kind of stepped out of that and went okay, so what can I do? Was that a pretty specific thing you know in 2020? You know I have time on my hands. What am I going to do with that? Or was it going to happen regardless?

Maryam:

Well, I'll answer Maryam and Company first, which is that it was going to happen regardless. I had been laying the groundwork. I was passionate about the work that I was doing, but excited to expand on it and to support more brands in these initiatives. So I think Maryam and Company was an inevitability. I don't know if it would have been 2020, but I like to think it would have. You know, I like to think it would have happened exactly when it should have. But I think you know you're making an interesting observation about 2020, especially when you're when you're speaking about our legacy, harvested and some of the other initiatives right that were born not from the pandemic but from the murder of George Floyd and Breonna

Maryam:

And I think, in either scenario, as far as 2020 being the year, we were faced with an option of do I have to do this or not? And I think, when we talk about especially work around equity, there were plenty of folks already doing work, but there was a huge, huge growth period for equity work beginning in 2020 because we as a nation realized how much was going wrong, right. So I think there are a few different reasons as to why 2020 is such a big, pivotal year for people.

Ute:

Very true. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right and I think there is, like you said, we have an option, and I think for many it's not an option. It's if not now, when am I going to do something? So, yeah, totally understandable. So you also co-founded the Diversity and Wine Leadership Forum and, per your website, this is the mission. I'm really good at reading from websites.

Maryam:

What does it say?

Ute:

It says the Diversity and Wine Leadership Forum brings together leaders of organizations with a core commitment to equity and diversity in the wine industry to act as a collaborative resource for support, discussion and positive change. Such collaboration is done with the recognition that change can only occur over time, through intentional, ongoing commitment. The Forum also acts as a central resource for the wine community and its supporters to connect, support and work with these organizations. First of all, again, how did you decide to get this foundation started?

Maryam:

So I co-founded the Diversity and Wine Leadership Forum in 2020 with Elaine Chukan Brown, and the impetus was that, after having worked for a nonprofit education institution for nearly five years, as well as having served on a number of boards and working with nonprofits, I knew that there's a high level of burnout, the initiative burnout or initiative fatigue, would be inevitable at some point, and also that a lot of nonprofits spend time reinventing wheels that other nonprofits have already built, and I just saw the emergence of so many organizations dedicated to the diverse community in wine and creating access or offering education or working toward career development and elevation that I figured I don't know. I thought maybe if we got everyone in one room, we could talk about all these initiatives and find ways to collaborate where most nonprofits are encouraged to compete, and we could idea share instead of gatekeep and bring together people that could both celebrate and commiserate right all in under one umbrella.

Maryam:

And so the forum started as a biannual gathering meaning everybody log on zoom and talk about your organization and we'll facilitate, through some conversation, work toward these tough questions. And the room was filled with leaders of some of the organizations we all know very well now.

Maryam:

Over the past three years we have worked with about 20 to 22 organizations in the United States and in Canada that are dedicated to equity work in wine in some way, whether they provide mentorship programs or scholarships, annual events, education, job placements etc. And those folks over the past three years have come together every August and February to talk about their initiatives, some of the things that have come from those biannual kind of closed door forums, our collaborations among the organizations, shared resources, conversations around things that are needed and things that could be given. So it's this really supportive space that we've tried to create as a place that people who are doing really hard and really, really difficult I know I said hard, but it's like it's hard and difficult we're, you know to come together and to just have a space where they can talk honestly and openly. And from the forum was born a couple of the other things that we do as overall the diversity and wine leadership forum. Now we run the forum in partnership with Dr Akilah Cadet, who's the founder of Change Cadet here in Oakland, and what we've done is add a workshop series that's open to anyone in the wine industry. It's called Do the Work, and people attend a three part workshop series. They're 90 minutes, either once a month or once a week, for three weeks, depending on what time of year we offer the program, and the goal there is to just help equip people with foundational DEI training. We're tackling power and privilege, we're tackling becoming an accomplice, the anti-racist of journey, and we're painting in, basically, examples from the wine industry, which is a very gray area of business, right, yeah, and needs a little bit of nuance when we're teaching these things. And so we've had over 200 global wine professionals attend the series since we launched it in early 22,.

Maryam:

I want to say yeah, and that means so much. But I think the important thing is that this resource is something that the organizations that are part of the forum can rely on as well. They can send sponsors to attend, they can send their board members to have basic training. Some of the mentors that work with the organizations go through this process, so it's a tool for our organizations as well, right.

Maryam:

And then the last piece of the forum is around resource sharing. So every time we have a forum, it's very evident that there's resources that are needed. Maybe a sample code of conduct or a sample memorandum of understanding or how to build a board, things that these organizations need but don't have time to create themselves Right, and they also need it for the sustainability of their work. So we try to act as a central resource for the organizations. And then anyone who wants to see this long, extensive list of orgs dedicated to equity work in the wine industry can use the website as a tool for that too, to get in touch with those orgs, to donate, to volunteer, et cetera.

Maryam:

It's a little ecosystem and it's very exciting. It's a tough time right now for folks in DEI work. And it's a place that we can all come together and keep pushing forward.

Ute:

Yeah, for sure. And this workshop series. I know so, as we're recording this, it's August. This episode will air in September of 2023. And there is a series coming up in October. From what I understand, it's $150 per person. It's a three-part series. Each one is 90 minutes, and you did say it's open to anyone in the wine industry, so basically, that includes me. So if I wanted to be part of that, I could sign up for that without any issues and yeah the more the better.

Ute:

I love it. We are going to put that into the show notes, of course, because it's important stuff and I feel like what you were saying. It's so important to especially people like me who are, yes, as a woman. I face some backlash about being a woman, but I still have the privilege of being a white woman, and so it's important for people like me to recognize our power and our privilege and recognize our potential to become accomplices, and then also to learn how to become accomplices and to not just not be racist but to be anti-racist. So I love that and so, yeah, I definitely want to sign up for that.

Maryam:

I'll see you in October.

Ute:

All right, so we are kind of already hitting the end here, which is always crazy to me. That's always so weird because I'm in the middle of this conversation. I feel like we've been talking for 10 minutes and it's been half an hour.

Maryam:

Yeah, you have a hard job, that's for sure.

Ute:

I know it's really hard. So I do want to shift a little bit away from that work and a little bit more into the actual wine industry or the wine work. Let's talk about wine regions and then, of course, as part of that, about field blends. Can you talk about field blends to us a little bit? What is it, who's it for and what's planned next?

Maryam:

Yeah, field blends. It's helping me keep my love of wine alive. Honestly. You know, these regions that we're visiting with field blends are absolute darlings of domestic production and everybody should know about them and visit them. So I'll back up just to say that in 2022, we launched field blends with our inaugural trip to Walla Walla, washington, and the purpose of field blends was to kind of just challenge the status quo of wine tourism and wine travel education, to use wine as a vessel to explore a little more about the land and labor and agriculture surrounding a wine region, to understand who is involved in pushing regions forward and what are the geologic or demographic implications of spending your time there.

Maryam:

And I had always wanted to have an awards part of FieldBuns. I wanted access to be immediately available for people to attend. I think immersion trips are very closed door, gate kept experiences in our wine industry. Often folks are going to the same pool over and over again and I just wanted to create something that would like blow that model up honestly, and so we launched with three trip awards available for folks in, you know, in the diverse community, intersectionally diverse, whether that's by Poc or disabled or LGBTQIA plus. You know, these are folks that we want to uplift through these experiences and so people could apply.

Maryam:

And for Walla Walla, we launched with three. We just got back from our trip to the Finger Lakes region in June of 2023, where we had six trip award recipients, which is hopefully we'll be on track to continue just a double every year the number of folks that go. At the same time as we're prioritizing access to industry folks, especially those emerging or looking for career transition, we are also inviting wine lovers to come, conscious consumers, people who want to experience top tier access to individuals that are changing the game in certain regions, to properties and to kind of exclusive or one of a kind experiences, and that has worked really well. I think a lot of people would say what do you mean? We're mixing consumers and industry and it's like, yeah, everybody needs to be humbled sometimes. Everybody needs to learn how to have a real life conversation.

Maryam:

You know, yes, and that has been so much of the community building aspect of FieldBlends, and I mean we spend four days sometimes five days depends on the region, exploring all these different things, telling stories from multiple narratives, including perspectives we might not even agree with right in the program to give people things to think about this coming year, in 2024, we only just announced it, but we will be traveling to Michigan, so we will be in and around Traverse City, Michigan wine country, celebrating the immensely diverse state, as well as some of the wineries that are just like paving the way for world class wine making in Michigan.

Ute:

Oh my gosh, see, and I think that's also such a great thing to be traveling into places that people don't necessarily think about first. When it comes to wine regions, you know anybody that you ask generally when they're saying, in the United States, where do you go to drink wine? Well, the first thing is going to be California. You know, the first answer is like oh yeah, california. We're starting to really kind of see that, that growth in Oregon. So the second answer is probably going to be Oregon. I would be surprised if I heard anybody say oh yeah, I'm going to go to Michigan.

Maryam:

Yeah, well, you know, we're we're trying to change that. I think also how people understand that the wine tasting experience can be different from what we all already know, which is, you Vitis Vinifera, and cheese, or Vitis Vinifera and chocolate, or just more Vitis Vinifera and like, maybe we could also, you know, explore co-ferments with apples. Or we could explore, of course, hybrid wine making. We could explore other, like in Michigan, cherry wine, you know.

Maryam:

And so like just again asking what have we not seen? What have we not been taught? How can we expand, especially for our triple award recipients, on how they view the potential of their career in the wine industry after they leave field blends and how they go out and, you know, act as an ambassador of the region that they get to visit? I think that that is just so important and everyone, hopefully, can take something away from from thinking about things that way. The other thing that's really special about field blends although shouldn't really be all that unique is that we use 100% local supply chain. So, you know, we're supporting, of course, a family owned lodging partner. We are working with a film crew from the region. We are, you know, engaging local chefs, regional organizations. Honestly, like you name it, we probably thought about it, if not included it in a program. So it's just a really special, unique experience and I think I just still get my text messages, you know, from my field blends family year round and it just, you know, become this community. It's, it's really awesome.

Ute:

Yeah, do you feel that this is also something that could make wine in general more interesting to a younger crowd of people Because of your you know approach of diversity and equity in everything that you do? I feel like you know I just had this conversation with Maria Ponzi and she was talking about we need the young people, we need young leaders and you know a lot of. You know the wine industry is perceived as pretty, you know, stuffy and you know there's the old white man is kind of like that picture, and so it's naturally already uninteresting to younger people. And I feel like field blends and the work that you do could probably be used to kind of draw in this younger crowd and really kind of change the wine industry as we know it.

Maryam:

I hope, I hope that's the plan. I mean, we we just did an age range report on, like our applicants and attendees, and we have from age 22 to 66.

Maryam:

No way, you know I think when we think about oh, we need younger, we need younger consumers. That drives me nuts, actually, because what's young. Young is assuming so many other things about the people, right, but we also need diverse people. We need moms, we need the disabled community to engage with wine. We need, we need, we need and it's like well, what do they need? Have you stopped to ask?

Maryam:

What do they need? Because when you have the answer to that question, then we don't need them so bad. We would have them so like field blends is, I consider, a solve for some of these things? Right, it's not impossible for a region or a group of leaders to replicate something that we've done. I'm not a closed book. You can download the itineraries for both trips on the website right now.

Maryam:

I want people to feel welcome in them, I want them to see themselves in these regions. But if we can saying we need something without asking what the person we need needs from us, then we might as well not bother saying the statement at all.

Ute:

All right, I'm gonna pick this microphone up so I can drop it.

Maryam:

I honestly feel passionate about it, yeah.

Ute:

I know and, like I said at the very beginning, yes, make me uncomfortable, because I'm still, as I'm speaking with Maria and everything, and we need, we need, we need. That's like. That's totally the mindset that I'm in. And to approach this from this completely different side. Now hang on a second. Why do we talk about what we need? Let's talk about what do they need, and all of a sudden it's like, oh wait, yes, oh my gosh. So I love that, I love your response to that. So, thank you, I really appreciate that, of course, so Fieldblends does it. Is the plan to do like one trip a year, or is it going to be more than one trip? And is it always going to be in the United States, or do you eventually think you might be going elsewhere?

Maryam:

All of the questions everyone wants answers to. I you know I think I would love to see Fieldblends happen more than once a year. It's part of this immensely important body of work of mine and I would love to just see it expand. It takes resourcing, it takes conversations like these. I apply for grants. I you know I'm out there looking for sponsors, so like we do have to resource it for it to be successful and right now, one time a year is a good pace for us. The other reason why one time a year is a good pace for us is because I pretty much act like it's a conference for 500 people and some people might think that's a super inefficient way of doing things, but it is also a key like success measure right of how we deliver Fieldblends. In in the Finger Lakes, we worked with over 60 people for a program that welcomed 14 people to the region. You know, in Walla Walla, 40 people. So it's a lot of moving pieces to deliver something of this level.

Maryam:

But I can tell you that the regions themselves, the folks who participate as hosts, as speakers, all feel like they walk away having learned something too. Maybe they go and make a change in their business. People have gone and updated their websites. They've changed how they speak to people when they walk in the door. They've changed overall narratives, like the work or the experience isn't just for those who come, it's for those who participate in it as well. And so, anyway, to answer your question, that's why it's like one time a year. That's a lot in one year, not just planning a trip. Right, we're trying to influence change and that takes longer than hosting a five day long trip.

Ute:

Oh, for sure.

Maryam:

International is, of course, of interest. However, I am very you know, I continue to be keen about supporting our domestic economy. Frankly, I think that we need to be better about that as consumers overall, and so I'm proud to like explore these regions within the US, while also considering where there might be opportunities abroad too.

Ute:

Right on, lovely, wonderful. Thank you so much. I am very interested in going to Michigan. Honestly, I've never been to Michigan myself, so this would certainly be one of those opportunities where you said there's people from 22 years old to 60 something, and to see all of them connecting like that, I just I love that idea. That sounds absolutely amazing to me.

Maryam:

I would welcome you. You are more than welcome to come, and I say this every year. Largely, you know, my community partners like Fiona Mack and Maya Johnson Dunn and Simonne Mitchellson, who's my new community partner for Michigan, are responsible for this, but every year I say this is going to be the best one yet. They're all so different, they're all incredible and it just it takes a village you know and it's just so fun to share with people, so hopefully you do get to come.

Ute:

Yeah, oh, my gosh, that would be so amazing. I mean, I have a little bit of time to plan it, so that would be great. The tickets are live on the website right now. Okay, good to know. Yes, so we are, of course, going to have this in the show notes as well, and, just as we're going to have all of Maryam's links, we're going to have her website. We're going to have those articles that she's featured in. We're going to have field blends in there, so it'll be really easy for you to just scroll down and click on any of the links that are of interest to you. Maybe I'll even see you in one of those workshops, and I'm going to be there for it for sure. Merriam, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and to chat with me so openly and candidly. I really always appreciate that, and I will let you know when it comes out.

Maryam:

Well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for inviting me, Ute, and for supporting our work and for letting me know that when I got on stage a year ago, you were excited by the outcome. Appreciate that so much and keep doing the amazing work that you're doing, thank you.

Ute:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Well, dear listeners, that was it once again. Thank you so much for being here. Check the show notes, as always, and with all that, all I have left to say, of course, is Prost.