UCLA International Institute, November 11, 2015 — Jonathan G. Fragodt (UCLA 1991) wasn’t accepted by UCLA when he first applied as a freshman — “probably one of the biggest disappointments I’d ever had,” he said. When he applied again two years later, it was almost as a fluke. He was home visiting from college when he noticed that this younger sister had an application for UCLA that she wasn’t going to use. “So I applied again and got in as a transfer student,” he remarked. He moved to Los Angeles in 1988 and entered UCLA as a business economics major, but ended up switching to political science after a couple of quarters.

“One of the common themes in my life is that it’s always taken a second effort,” said Fragodt to a group of UCLA students, faculty and staff at an informal meeting on November 30th. Fragodt, partner and portfolio manager for Castlelake L.P. in London, was in town to meet a few beneficiaries of a scholarship he has funded to help UCLA students study in Germany.

The road to Germany (and fluency in German)

Germany was the initial target of the scholarship because it has become a big part of his professional and personal life. Germany is where he acquired his international chops, weighing into the real estate market in 2001–2002. Most of the real estate agents he was then working with did not speak English. “So I sort of got thrown in the deep end of the pool,” he said. “If I hadn’t spoken German, I wouldn’t have succeeded in my job. And that’s a big motivator.”

Germany is also the homeland of his wife, Anja, whom he met in the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis, MN) after finishing his MBA at University of Michigan. Having secured his employer’s promise to transfer him to Germany — and hoping to continue seeing Anja when she returned home after an expat assignment — Fragodt began studying German in the mid-1990s at the Goethe-Institut. Eventually he went to work for Henkel in Dusseldorf, but was hired away by an American investment firm to set up their investment operations in Germany. Fragodt and his family now live in a small town in Switzerland because he and his wife wanted their two children to grow up multilingual.

In his current job, where he is tasked with finding good investment opportunities throughout Europe, Fragodt said he often hears, “Wow, I've never met an American who speaks German, or rarely.” Being immersed in the German language and culture, he relates, “One thing I’ve learned — which is very effective for work — is to be a lot more direct. I just call a spade a spade and say things in as short as sentences as I can. People have told me that I have a totally different personality in German than I have in English!”

Although Fragodt is now a proficient German speaker, he studied French at UCLA. At the time, however, he was a bit distracted, as his “study buddy” was actress Heather Graham.

Willow Stowe, Johnneson Mymala, and Rebecca Quist.

Stepping into the world via Germany and Austria

When he first met UCLA’s development officer in Europe, Matthew Daines, Fragodt said he wanted to do something for UCLA students that he had been unable to do. “I was the first one in my family to go to [university],” he said. “So I was working my way through school and didn’t have money. That was the dream — to go and study abroad — and I never got to do it.” 

Of the five young Bruins at the meeting who studied in Germany thanks to Fragodt’s scholarship, four attended a travel study program in summer 2015 that took them to Austria and Germany. The fifth attended the summer 2015 UC Education Abroad Program at the Free University of Berlin.

Asked what had stumped them most at first — for Fragodt, it was learning that Germans take their kitchens with them when they move apartments — all responded that logistics had been a big challenge. Transportation systems alone are a discovery for California natives, much less in a foreign language, yet by the end of their stays abroad, all four had figured it out.

Michelle Lawetzki (UCLA 2018), an anthropology major who hopes to pursue a double major in International Development Studies, admitted, “I did get lost a few times, but I also noticed that getting lost is a really great way to see a city and see things you wouldn't see otherwise.”

Elizabeth Diaz (UCLA 2015/ German major/ education minor) visited Vienna, Munich and Berlin in turn as part of her travel study program. Despite some initial disappointment, she found her persistence paid off. “I thought, there's no point to me being here if I'm not going to practice my German,” she related. “It's a language that, even though it's very challenging, I'm very passionate about. So I really forced myself to speak in German, even if they would answer back in English, and then they would start answering in German.”

The first in her family to study abroad, Rebecca Quist (UCLA 2018?) said her travels had taught her a great deal about what “home” means, which has given her great compassion for the migrants now streaming into Europe. “We learned that whichever side you were on in [World War II]. . . people had homes that were destroyed, homes that they fled, and when they came back, there was nothing there.” A novice German student, Becca came away with the resolve to gain fluency in another language. “I don't want to be one of those people who goes into other countries and just speaks English because [the people there] can speak English,” she remarked.

Johnneson Mymala (UCLA 2016), a geography major, learned how to navigate German dialects while traveling in the country and studying in Berlin — even being teased once in Stuttgart because he was from Berlin! The scholarship, he said, “gave me a big opportunity to experience Europe.” His time abroad prompted him to apply for a summer 2016 internship program in Hong Kong, where he has some family.

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Laure Murat observed that people have different ways of interacting with one another in Europe, noting that she had been amazed by the cordiality of Americans when she came to UCLA nine years ago.

One of the cultural lessons that Willow Stowe (UCLA 2017) quickly learned in Germany was not to greet someone at a check-out register with the question, "Hi, how are you?" As she recounted, "I realized that that's not a pleasantry that occurs commonly there.” Willow, who had studied the language for a year before she attended the travel study program, backpacked around Germany for two months after the program to try to improve her accent. Upon her return to UCLA, she became a German major (with a double major in philosophy) and hopes to spend her senior year studying in Hamburg.

Scholarship will soon include other European countries

When he began the scholarship, said Fragodt, he was unsure whether UCLA students would be interested in going to Germany. “It's been more successful than I expected,” he said. In fact, according to Sergio Broderick-Villa, associate director of study abroad at UCLA’s International Educational Office (http: //ieo.ucla.edu) (IEO), it is precisely the Germany programs attended by these students that have grown the fastest over the last decade.

IEO Faculty Director Kal Raustiala, who also directs the Burkle Center for International Relations, remarked that scholarships are invaluable for helping UCLA students study abroad, particularly because many are the first in their families to go to college. “What you’re doing is making a huge difference,” he said to Fragodt. Murat concurred, noting that people had different ways of accessing a country and its culture. For some, it's through culture, for others, it's through history or science. "But nothing can replace the experience of living abroad," she said. UCLA students interested in learning about Europe can start simply by attending events at the Center for European and Russian Studies (http: //www..international.ucla.edu), which Murat directs.

The American businessman is now determined to expand the scholarship program beyond Germany and recruit more alumni in Germany, the UK and other European countries to build it into something bigger. "That is rewarding, seeing the program getting legs and starting to run,” he said.

Elizabeth Diaz (UCLA 2015) and Sergio Broderick-Villa, 
IEO associate director.

All photos by Peggy McInerny/ UCLA.