Speaking
Taira is an accomplished speaker who makes big ideas engaging to general audiences.
Current subjects include:
- What You Don’t Know About Politics May Bite You.
- There Is No B Team: The Future Of The World Is In Your Hands…so what are you going to do about that?
- Speaking The Global Conversation Fluently
Taira is currently speaking about events in Ukraine including this presentation.
Ukrainian David and Russian Goliath: The Story of Two Vladimirs
The events of the Russian “special operation” are splashed across every news channel in the world. Reporters on the ground risk their lives to give us the most accurate accounts. Citizen journalists document everything they can and work with any technology at hand to get the stories that are unfolding into the public eye.
We listen to analysts trying to make “geopolitical sense” of it all. And yet, it doesn’t quite add up. Is there anything else going on under the surface of all these events? Are there unexplored cultural forces at work in this brutal war of “brothers?” And how can the stories we tell about the history of these nations and these people offer opportunities to reinvent Russia and rebuild Ukraine with a new narrative leading the way to a better future?
Dr. Taira (Koybaeva) Stuart was born in Ukraine. Her first language is Ukrainian. She graduated from high school in Mariupol, the city now leveled to the ground. Russia was home for a significant part of her childhood and young adulthood. There did not seem to her to be any cultural, or even historic differences between Russia and Ukraine. Then the improbable became reality, Russia, seemingly inseparable from Ukraine, attacked. As she worked nonstop through fearful nights on the other side of the world in California, fearing for her family’s safety, and working to make a difference behind the scenes she re-analyzed and reconsidered the culture and history of these two nations and has insight to share.
This presentation is a deeper analysis of the war, examined through the lenses of history and culture. Why, against all odds, is the “David” of Ukraine withstanding against the “Goliath” of Russia? Is this just another geopolitical conflict, or the end of an era? This is an analysis of the tectonic shifts that are currently taking place in the world and their impact on our global future.
"I would like to highly commend Dr. Taira for her efficient and dedicated work in facilitating US-Russian exchanges for the Committee on National Security that I chair in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her ability to grasp the most essential and crucial components of sensitive exchanges with regard to a number of important defense issues, as well as her skills in communicating them are superb.”
"Dr. Taira has, through her unique blend of linguistic skill, cultural insight and political acumen, helped… to build a bridge of trust, understanding and friendship.”