Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/76514
I n a bustling Madison coffee shop, it's easy to spot Rohany Nayan. Though her salmon-hued peasant top and blue jeans is the outfit de rigueur for busy west side working moms, her mega-watt smile gives her away instantly. She grabs a seat and starts chatting, her band of bracelets jingling softly as she gestures—which she does frequently—during the conversation. Her voice is light and lilting, with just a slight hint of an accent. As she settles in with a bowl of soup and a cup of tea, she pauses and looks up. Her wide eyes are framed by a snow-white hijab. She's been a bit busy lately, she admits. At the time of this inter- view, Nayan was preparing to defend her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions (LISAR). It's an achievement she never once imagined for herself. "I was the first in my family to complete high school, the only one mother and a father whose highest level of education was elemen- tary school, Nayan says, quite candidly, that she grew up "poor, on the wrong side of the tracks." Gifted with a sharp mind and a passion for learning, she easily to go to college, and the only one of my family to ever live overseas," she admits modestly, explaining how atypical her educational achievements are given her age, her upbringing, her gender and her geography. But it's not only her educational achievements that have put her on the map. A quick skim through her 14-page curriculum vitae gives you a sense of where she's been and where she's going. Not only has she presented her current work in speeches and lectures at more than 65 locales—church basements and synagogues, classrooms and lecture halls—she's become a local advocate for tolerance and a champion of courage. She's the "genius" (in the words of LISAR director Charles Co- hen) behind a unique Madison-area interfaith program for high school teenagers simply titled the Courage Project. It's a fitting project for Nayan, a woman whose life is an example of building bridges and creating trust from misunderstandings. There's no getting around the fact that at every turn in her adventurous life, Nayan has risen above stereotypes. In the face of personal challenges and the roadblocks laid by history, she's managed to fuse solid connections through something that more often produces friction worldwide: differing religious beliefs and backgrounds. For Nayan, life is about continually defying expectations. Nayan refers to herself as an "accidental immigrant." With a flash of her big smile, she explains. Her tale begins humbly. Nayan was born in Kuala Lumpur, the 40 BRAVA Magazine August 2012 bested her parents and siblings in educational achievements, and was selected to attend a renowned school away from her family home as a teenager. "I was not taught to have dreams," she says. "I was taught to al- ways 'do my best.'" Nayan's best soon led her to receive a prestigious scholarship from the government of Malaysia that allowed her to choose to study either in the U.K. or in the U.S. After being courted by representatives from universities in both countries, Nayan settled on one. "I chose to enroll at Indiana University because I was mesmerized by the sight of snow in one of the slides shown about the univer- sity," she says. She would be a world away from her homeland, but Nayan had every intention of returning. "I had a contract to return and teach ESL [English as a Second Language] courses at my alma mater in Malaysia," she explains. Nayan touched down in Chicago in 1985 and headed to IU's cam- pus in Bloomington, Ind., to study language education. "I arrived in January where it snowed heavily," she remembers. "I was surprised to see that the town was very quiet and there were not many people walking in the streets as compared to the capital of Malaysia that was always bustling with people." As a young student far from home for the first time, Nayan found capital city of Malaysia—a predominantly Muslim country in Southeast Asia. The youngest of seven children born to an illiterate solace in a network of people she met in Indiana. While an Ameri- can "host family" helped her adjust, spending time with other Malaysian students allowed her to speak her native language, enjoy Malaysian food, and practice traditional customs. "This helped alleviate our nostalgia of home," she says. But there was another aspect of Malaysian life she missed: her faith. Making a conscious departure from her family's more secular