Out of the shadows

And back into the light

Entering NuVu Studio, a full-time innovation school in Cambridge, MA, you’ll find two men sitting in the back corner of the office space. Sometimes, they speak Arabic, then English, or a mix of both. Sometimes, one of them pops up to take a photo of a NuVu student wearing a hat or cape while the other walks around the block to take a phone call from Turkey and Jordan.

Amro, a tech-savvy NuVu veteran who knows all the shortcuts, sits in the back corner of the office with perfect posture. His official title is art director, but he does so much more.

I walked over for my first conversation with Amro. Quiet and patient, he listened to me as I proposed meeting times. He remained reserved.

The next day, I came to see Amro meticulously working on a website for NuVu. He slowly walked me through each step. All the steps had equal importance even the ones that lead to nothing. One time he was trying to work on the homepage he fixed it in a was but the lighting was not great. “I think I need to sleep on that.” He would approach designing the homepage tomorrow.

Amro’s desk space is impeccably organized. This mirrors his brain: always knows the next step, always knows where to find things, always aware of time and space around him. He showed me the sketches of the website layout this was in a notebook on top of his spotless white desk.

“I get visually distracted so when there is so much stuff I keep looking at that instead of the main screen. That's probably why I sit in the corner too.”

Amro started working on a picture of students working, everything was still in the picture, the only thing that wasn't was the students hands as they moved to type, drill, draw and other things. This picture will soon be animated and placed on the home page. He keeps finding minor flaws in this picture he tried to fix them the best he could. When he was taking the photos he only had one light which ended up causing problems later in the process.

Amro’s good friend and across the desk neighbor, Ramzi, has a different vibe about him. Ramzi has a very laid back presents he is usually wearing a t-shirt with jeans and boots. He’s quite the jokester, he was always making people around him laugh. He has a great appreciation for the work of the students.

“We did a prosthetics virtual exchange studio where kids in Turkey worked with kids in Florida and they made prosthetics for people with injuries from the war in Syria. One of [the projects was] a boot that allowed a girl [...] whose foot was fractured to walk. She was able to use that boot to walk.” 

“I manage the schools we work within the Middle East... Turkey and Jordan now and whatever random things that come up there. I work on developing the curriculum for these schools. I work closely with the teaching staff in Turkey.”

Ramzi said that he loves rock climbing but doesn't have time because the people he works with life in different time zones. For example, at 9 am in Boston it's 5pm in Turkey and at 5pm in Boston, it’s 1am in Turkey.

In the middle of our conversation, I asked Ramzi, “What is the funniest story from Nuvu?”

He paused. “I need to think for a second, I've been too busy to find anything that's funny.”

Because Ramzi works for NuVux in Turkey, he goes to Turkey every 2-3 months, which means that some of the time he isn't even in the Cambridge location. When Ramzi isn't in Turkey, he is on a Skype calls with the teachers and with the principal of the NuVux program every week. This is a very tiring job.

“[In Turkey], the daily schedule there is 9am to 6pm. So when I go I stay at a hotel. The town is a bit dodgy so someone is supposed to pick me up and bring me to work. I tell the coaches, we call them mentors, that I'm going to be in a little early like before 9am. So they’re like ‘ok great we will work [with you in] the morning. So I get up super tired, but I'm late because he's late picking me up so I get there at 9:45.”

He appears exasperated yet remains so enthusiastic about the work he’s doing. It’s contagious.

They both affect everybody at NuVu starting with Amro making a website that will be used all around the world. Ramzi is helping students in Turkey and Jordan with his work every day.