Humphrey Fellows Leave an Impact with Their 2026 Ignite Talks

Shared experiences transcend borders, cultures and languages, shaping how people connect, process the world and find meaning in everyday life. Eight visiting Humphrey Fellows shared some of those universal themes in the Ignite Talk series this spring at International House Davis, delivering brief TED Talk-style presentations that distilled personal lessons into powerful reflections for the UC Davis community.

Since 1986, UC Davis has hosted mid-career professionals from around the world through the Humphrey Fellowship Program, fostering cultural exchange, global partnerships and deeper cross-cultural understanding. 

Mentorship and the Art of Storytelling

Under the guidance and mentorship of Oliver Hack, director of fiscal sponsorship with Social Good Fund and a frequent collaborator of fellowship programs at UC Davis, Humphrey Fellows wrote, edited, practiced and ultimately delivered three- to five-minute speeches in a storytelling style that packed a punch.

“We spent about five weeks learning and training for the Ignite Talk, and the entire experience with Oliver was amazing,” said Song.

Fellows were encouraged to write from their own experiences and work both independently and in groups to refine their approaches and delivery.

“[Working with Oliver was] perhaps the most impactful part of the whole Fellowship,” said Sevilla. 

Delivering a Message

In their Ignite Talks, Fellows from the 2025–26 cohort, including Zahid Pervez (Pakistan), Miguel Sevilla (Ecuador) and Minjeong Song (South Korea), reflected on loss and perseverance, the unifying power of language, and how sound shapes cultures and human experience.

Zahid Pervez

“Like most of us, I have been practicing loss for a very long time,” said Pervez in his Ignite Talk. 

Pervez detailed his experiences adjusting to losses, great and small, learning throughout his life that adjusting to change brought new beginnings, not disasters.

In his speech, he shared how the losses he experienced early in life, moving from his home in a small village to a big city as a child and learning to cope with the disappointment of replacing his favorite sport with the responsibilities that come with growing up, prepared him to weather change, often out of his control, as an adult.

Still, nothing prepared him, he said, for the loss of his parents, who died fewer than three months apart.

“No practice helped. No experience applied. And yet, heartbeats continued, mornings returned. Life went on without asking my permission.”

His message: Change is inevitable. How you handle it matters.

“The art is not pretending loss doesn’t hurt. The art is learning how to live with that hurt.”

Miguel Sevilla

In his Ignite Talk, Sevilla explored his unique relationship with sound. He recalled memorizing a childhood friend’s phone number by the tones of the buttons and knowing he’d overslept when his mother’s initial major chord shifted to a minor note.

“Sound to me is a way of understanding the world… a way of navigating the world… a way to connect with what I love the most,” Sevilla said. 

That connection continues in his work in Ecuador’s Cloud Forests.

“Here, millions of years of evolution and competition over the airwaves have sculpted a majestic soundscape, where each creature occupies a slim sliver of frequencies to form part of a larger, balanced and beautiful natural symphony,” he said. 

After seven years of advocacy, Sevilla’s work to have the soundscape of the Cloud Forests declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site has very recently paid off. This “natural symphony” of sounds is now recognized as a part of Ecuadorian culture. 

“This is my heritage. This is our world heritage. This is worth protecting.” 

Minjeong Song

Song’s Ignite Talk centered on language, specifically how languages connect people to places and to one another around the world. An English learner since the age of eight, Song grew up exploring the world through entertainment franchises such as Disney and Harry Potter.

“Through English, I connected to the world beyond my own,” she said in her Ignite Talk. “I discovered a new world I had not known. I also laughed and cried with people who live far away.”

Song spoke about language that goes beyond functional communication to convey feelings in hidden ways. She gave the example of the American use of the phrase, “How are you?” as a greeting. Its purpose is less about the actual question and more about the emotion behind it, which carries warmth and connection. 

“Why do we learn languages?” She mused in her talk. “There could be many reasons. But one of them must be that we want to connect with more people, more cultures and more worlds. We want to understand them and communicate with them, through language.”

Lessons Learned

Through their Ignite Talks, Fellows connected with the community by sharing relatable, insightful experiences. This kind of meaningful cultural exchange has shaped not only the Davis community but also the Fellows’ futures.

“Going forward, I believe [my] Ignite Talk experience is going to stay with me in terms of how fulfilling it was, how well it was appreciated and how much I was grateful to have the opportunity,” said Pervez.

Next month, UC Davis bids farewell to the 2025-26 Humphrey Fellows as the program concludes and Fellows return home. Ignite Talks are a fitting end to an academic year filled with leadership development, cross-cultural exchange, and collaborative problem-solving at UC Davis and within our surrounding community.

This year, Fellows have planted trees that will eventually grow and contribute to the beautification and sustainability of our neighborhoods; fed community members in need; worked with campus and local organizations to improve important systems, such as water and energy in Northern California; and built professional partnerships designed to advance solutions to shared local and global challenges long after the Fellowship ends.

“One of the most meaningful takeaways from this experience was realizing how enjoyable and meaningful it is to share ideas with other people,” said Song.