
Decades of her life, including her family’s background and early experiences at Pitt, have shaped her career, Kati Csoman, director of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs, told Staff Council’s Coffee and Conversation event on Aug. 1.
Her father came to Pittsburgh as the Soviets put down the 1956 Hungarian revolution, and his work with the Hungarian community here was an early inspiration, Csoman said.
At Pitt, she had “an amazing mentor,” Csoman added, in Bob Donnorummo, then associate director of the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies. He “encouraged me to apply for a scholarship through the Nationality Rooms’ intercultural exchange programs” — the very program she heads now. That sent her to Hungary, where she stayed in a small village. Later, she went to work for the American embassy in Budapest on a fellowship. She returned to Pitt for further study at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and also worked in the University Center for International Studies.