Since he was just a boy at Hilliard Davidson High School, comedian Fumi Abe used his jokes to ease the alienation of being one of the only Asians in his class.
Years later, his comedy took him to Stephen Cobert, James Corden and Jimmy Fallon. Now, he’s coming back home to Columbus for his tour.
After spending a month in Russia as a teenager, Emelia Sheeley decided she wanted to pursue a career of international service.
For almost 10 years, she has been involved with the Riverview International Center, assisting new Americans in the Riverview Drive neighborhood with their basic needs.
We’ll meet the executive director of PBJ Connections, an organization providing professional behavioral health therapy for families through several forms of counseling, including horses.
The discussions are all part of this week's Fascinating Ohio.
Guests:
- Fumi Abe, comedian
- Emelia Sheeley, executive director, Riverview International Center
- Holly Jedlicka, executive director, PBJ Connections, Inc.
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Since he was just a boy at Hilliard-Davidson High School, comedian Fumi Abe used his jokes to ease the alienation of being one of the only Asians in his class. Years later, his comedy led him to perform standup on The Tonight Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He's also written jokes for NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and the Late Late Show with James Corden. The list goes on. And he joins us today, Fumi Abe. Welcome to All Sides.
Fumi Abe: Thank you so much for having me.
Juravich: So what made you decide and when did you decide that you were gonna pursue comedy as your career?
Abe: You know, um, I have some friends who I've met in New York and LA who like known for a long time. They may have gone to school to study like dramatic writing and stuff. Um, you know, growing up in Hilliard, like nobody I knew, nobody, none of my friend's parents worked in the entertainment industry. So I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know you could do it professionally. They used to watch like Dave Chappelle's stand up specials. I thought he'd like measured. In comedy in college or something. Like I just had no idea that you could even do it. So I didn't, honestly, like it didn't even really hit me until I was 24, I was feeling, I was going through kind of like a quarter life crisis. We're just sort of envisioning my life in an office at 24 and I was like, is this just what life is? And then I was at a bar with my friends on the Lower East Side. It was like a heavy metal bar. And like an open mic, a comedy open mic just started happening around us. And it like ruined our evening because it was so bad. It was so, it was bad. It was bad, it so racist, it's like, but you know, that's what happens when you just get a bunch of amateurs to go up there and you can say whatever you want. And I was, my friends were disturbed, but I was like fascinated. I was just like, oh, I didn't know you could just like I didn't know the barrier to entry. The comedy was so low, like literally anyone can just do it. And so I got the comedy open mic host information and I just went back. The next week I wrote five minutes and I just went and I never stopped going. And that's kinda how it started. I had zero professional aspirations when I first started.
Juravich: Wow.
Abe: And it was really just a journey about like, I was really interested in like finding my comedic voice. They say if you do it for a long time, you can find your voice and that's what, I mean, still to this day, that's kind of mainly drives me, but in the beginning, like I had a job in advertising. I didn't need money from comedy. So like, I was just like really fascinated by this art form and kind of exploring deeper into who I am and how I think about the world.
Juravich: You mention a lot about your personal story in your comedy when you do your standup. And when you were on Jimmy Fallon, we saw a clip that you shared that your parents' reaction to you wanting to pursue comedy. Tell us about that when you told your parents like, hey, I'm gonna do this.
Abe: Why didn't tell them for like quite some time? I don't think I told them for three, four years, only because I was like an amateur, you know what I mean? I wasn't making money doing comedy, so I was what's the point of even telling them? But I went full-time in 2020. And by that time, I was already like 30, so there was a little bit of pushback, but their whole thing is like, as long as you have insurance, we don't care what you do. So that was their whole think. They're like, we just want you to have insurance. And luckily I had insurance with the WGA, the Writers Guild, the union. And so that I was able to like check, check their box there. But they had no idea. I got the health insurance. All right. Yeah. But they have no idea that since, since that gig, I've been through times where I don't have, you know, when I haven't had health insurance, so I don't tell them that part, but I remember that was the first thing they said to me, that you have to have health insurance
Juravich: Spoken like a true parent, yeah. When you were at Hilliard-Davidson High School, you were one of the only Asian kids, and you talk about some of the weird interactions you had with fellow students, and you talked about it in your stand-up. So here's a little bit from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Let's listen to a little of that.
Abe: I'm from Ohio, and I don't know if you guys been out there, it's not a very diverse place, so I remember growing up, I would have very strange conversations with my classmates, like one time I asked this girl out, and she was like, hey listen, don't take this personally, but I'm just not that into Asian guys. And I remember I was sitting there like, but dude, Megan, I'm literally the only Asian guy you know. Like this feels extremely personal. What are you talking about right now? She just kept going. She's like, I don't know, Asian guys are so short. They're kind of skinny. Their name is always like Fumi. I'm like, that is me. You're describing me.
Juravich: So yeah, tell me about that. Tell me about comedy as a way to cope with experiences as a minority.
Abe: God, that was so painful listening to my own jokes. That was really bad. And for some reason, I couldn't hear the laughs. It was cut out, and I was like, I was just bombing on.
Juravich: No, there were laughs. I promise. I promised you'll be able to hear the laughs.
Abe: Um, well, sorry, what was your question again?
Juravich: Um, tell me about how comedy has been a way to, you know, help with your experiences as a minority. Is it a way? Is it? A way to cope with that? Or like, yeah, talk to me about that.
Abe: Yeah, I think even before I was doing stand up, I had always used comedy as a tool to like survive, you know, like, I don't think I wasn't like class clown or anything, but I think I moved to the States when I was like eight. And I think if you're sort of like others in a community, I mean, I dunno what Hilliard looks like now. When I was there, it was pretty white and Christian middle class and You know, I think you have to figure out like a way in. So maybe some people, for some people maybe it's sports, you know, some people for, you know maybe it maybe it is academics, maybe they relate to academics or they find their own community. But like, I'm terrible at sports and I'm really stupid. So I was like, I'm just gonna like try to make people laugh. And so like, I just, I've always used it as a, like a social lubricant, just as a tool to like make friends, get by, you know not to get picked on and stuff like that. So I think I've had that. It's always like my instinct is to like. Find the funny, not necessarily for attention, but it's just to be like, don't look at me. You know what I mean? Like nothing to see here. You know?
Juravich: Did you in high school, you mentioned that you were not named class clown or anything, but did you participate in like, I don't know, plays or musicals? Were you ever on stage?
Abe: No, nothing like that at all. I was really into music. Also, I guess I was on stage with that. So like I did like the concert band stuff. I did jazz band. That was zero, period. We had to wake up at like 5 30 to play jazz. It was crazy.
Juravich: What did you play? What instrument?
Abe: I played trumpet for a long time and then I was like also like in a rock band with my friends. We were like bad of the bands and stuff like that and yeah, those were like some of the best times of my life. Actually, I look back and like we used to play like Newport and like the main, I don't know if those venues exist, like Newports.
Juravich: Oh, the new port's still there. Yeah, just fine.
Abe: Yeah, we played there, like the basement, like all those venues that were under like Promo West Productions, which I have no idea if it exists anymore. We're talking like 18 years ago, but yeah, like we did stuff like that. We thought we were so cool because we were like 16 and like playing at these like venues downtown by the OSU campus and stuff. So like, like I think entertainment and like arts and like expressing yourself in whatever medium you are comfortable with has always been a big part of my life. And it was music for a very long time, because my mom was a musician. And so we just always had music and instruments around the house growing up.
Juravich: Tell me about other parts, other things that you work into, other topics you include in as jokes, besides your experience as a minority. What are some other topics that you like to use in your stand-up?
Abe: Yeah, I mean, I've been doing it for 12 years now. So like, you know, like the clip that we just heard, like I think I was like maybe 29 or 30 when I filmed that. And those are jokes I kind of wrote in my 20s. And as you get older, like what's cool about standup is like every year you can like tape a set and then you look back and you're like, oh, that's what I was thinking about at that age. You know, it's sort of like a diary in an interesting way. So like you know I'm 36 now. So like sure, there's some stuff. About me being Asian-American, but it's, like, sort of less about, like... I feel other and more just, like the ridiculous things that happen to me. I'm also, because I'm getting older, like, you know, just like any aging millennial, there's a lot of, like millennial angst, like, not being able to buy a house, like, my health is failing, you, know? My parents are getting older. My sister has kids. Should I have kids? Like, so there's all, like- All of that is wrapped up in my millennial anger, but I think everything is from this point of view like at the end of the day. I was an immigrant kid who grew up in Ohio and that like still shaped who I am today. So like everything is always through that lens. But I don't always like say that I'm Asian or whatever like on the nose. I think it's just sort of like a verb and like through my life stories, you can kind of tell that that's sort of the background I'm referring to.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking to Hilliard native Fumi Abe about his journey in becoming an accomplished comedian. And Fumi is going to be at the Funny Bone at Easton tonight. That's August 13 at 7 p.m. So since this is public radio, I have to ask you about your time working for Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. What was that like?
Abe: Oh, it was so cool. I mean, the producers, they're like, amazing. We did like, me and my writing partner at the time, we did like an eight week program with them. And then after that, I did like something on my own. But they like came to a show of mine in New York and they were like, yeah, we're just looking for like contributors. And so we like worked with them. Everything was over to zoom. Like I never went to Chicago or anything like that. But uh, it was, yeah, we just literally like, you just, they just sent it to topics and you just write a bunch of jokes and you send it. And then, and then you hear Peter say it on the podcast the next day. And you're like, it's like the coolest feeling in the world.
Juravich: So that they did use some of your jokes you have to you got to hear them.
Abe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And that was like, maybe the first time that like, I'd like been paid to write jokes that somebody said on like a large platform. And I got like such a high from it. And it was so refreshing because this is earlier on in my career, like I wasn't full time comedy yet. But like, I think. I was working in advertising and like, just anyone with any like regular job, like I felt sometimes you, you're working all day and you're like, what is, what am I doing again? Like, is anything I'm doing meaning, does this have any meaning? I mean, like, is anyone doing any of, like no one using anything that I'm making, but like with jokes, it was like, Oh, I wrote a thing. They liked that. He said that people laugh next. Like it was so, it was show satisfying and I was like I never want to go back to like some BS office job ever again. Like I don't even know if I can anymore. Like I dunno if I have the patience for it because I just so enjoyed like the clear path of like, I worked on this thing, I wrote a thing, they said that people laughed, boom, you know? And so like, it was a really cool experience for me. And it's like, it was probably one of my first writing gigs. And through that I was able to like, make a lot of mistakes and learn, which led me to like a thing at Common Central that actually led to me writing from late night. So like, I really, you now I'm very thankful to those guys for giving me the opportunity when I was like a really young comedian.
Juravich: Tell me what it's like to write jokes for someone else to use, rather than writing for yourself and doing your own stand-up. Like, what is it like to right for somebody else?
Abe: Um, it really depends on who you're writing for. And like, that's why I like TV writing. It can be really fun if you vibe with the host or if you vibe with people in the room. But like, I've had TV writing jobs where it's like, I do not vibe with them at all. And then it's just like so painful and so terrible because everybody has like such a different style of comedy, the way they like to be communicated and it's interesting because like, like people who come up wanting to be TV writers. They're training themselves to be like mercenaries. So if you remember like Game of Thrones, all the millennials out there, the unsullied, right? They fight for anyone who has that like little stick in their hand, right. That's who they're trying to be because their goal is to be like I want to write for anyone and everyone who will give me a job. Danup is weird because as I mentioned earlier, I spent my entire career figuring out my voice, my brand, what do I think is fun. It's very me, me,me, me. So when it lines up, it's amazing. But when it doesn't line up, it can be like a lot of friction, you know, because I just, I don't really, I may not know how to write in that voice, nor, or I may be interested in writing in that boys, right? It's very like, you become kind of like a selfish artist as you do stand up, which is good and bad. And so like, I think it's been a cool experience. There's a lot like mechanical things I learned about joke writing and stuff in the rooms. But as I get older, I'm just like, oh yeah, like I started this because like, this is all about me. Like I'm trying to find my tribe through my jokes. I'm try to find people who think I'm funny, when I'm validating my life experiences. So they're very, very different experiences, but very cool in different ways.
Juravich: Well, speaking of you, you're so I mentioned earlier, you're doing a show at the Funny Bone in Easton tonight. So how does it feel, you know, coming to be back home, coming home?
Abe: Dude, it's hilarious because I used to do my back-to-school shopping at Easton with my mom. Of course you did. And we would eat at California Pizza Kitchen afterwards. Shout out to CPK. I don't know if they're still around. But yeah, it was like, I don't know if you can shout out brands. Actually take that out. That's not appropriate for public radio.
Juravich: It's really okay
Abe: Yeah, no, it's, it, it it's crazy. Like I, cause I'm, I'm I went to college in New York. So I moved when I was 18 and I've been back a couple of times for like weddings and stuff, but like my family doesn't live in Columbus anymore. So like, I don't have a lot of ties to Columbus. I don, I, don't go there that often. So this might be the first time I'm going back to the Easton mall in like 18 years, maybe 15 years. Like it's been a very, very long time. And I, it was very funny because I used to, when I used to go to that mall, I used walk by the funny bones. And I didn't really know what stand-up was when I was in high school and stuff because my parents weren't into it. I think I knew it as an art form, but I looked at the people coming to that club and I'd be like, because at that time I only know Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, these are the people that I know because I'm in high-school and those are famous comedians. But then there's all these comedians coming to the funny ball and I'm like, I've never heard of these people. Why would anyone go see these? These comedians, no one's ever heard of it. Now, like, I'm literally performing there. So, like I'm really imagining, like some kid walking by saying the same thing about me when they look at a poster of my face, at least, and all. Do you think you might? But I'm fine back, and yeah.
Juravich: Yeah, do you think you might see some familiar faces? Maybe someone from high school you literally haven't seen since high school is gonna come.
Abe: Yeah, I've been getting some DMs, but it's, it's I'm in this weird phase in my life where like, I think if I did this five years ago, more people would come. But now like a lot of my friends have kids, like brand new kids. So, and it's a, it' a Thursday. So I don't even know if they like can do it. You know what I mean?
Abe: Like, I don't know, like, I always picture it up.
Abe: Yeah, I always pictured a homecoming show to be like me and all my high school friends and we're all gonna party afterwards. But like, I actually don't think it's gonna be that. I think it'd be a bunch of like random people from my marching band or something that I haven't seen in like 20 years. And like, it'll still be fun. And no, it will be good. I like performing for strangers and if you're listening to this and you went to high school with me, please come. I need to sell tickets, but it would be great to see you. And I think gonna be interesting to see. How much I've changed slash not changed, you know, like, I mean, I haven't seen some of these guys in like 18 years, so I don't even know if they'll recognize me. So it'll be, it'll, be interesting for sure.
Juravich: Well, just to end on, tell me about some future career plans, you know, post-Funny Bone at Easton. What, any dream performances, dream collaborations? What's next?
Abe: Green collaborations. I mean, I think the goal is to just always be like, just writing more faster. I would love to be putting out, you know, like I'm, I'm putting out a special soon, like a half hour special with, uh, this comedy group that I'm really excited about. Um, we're taping in October. And so like, yeah, I'd love to just writing. I think, you can have materialistic goals, but again, like after you do comedy for like over 10 years, you realize like These goals, they mean nothing, you know? You can get the thing, you feel nothing the day after, right? I've always, I open for Ronnie Chang sometimes, I'm open for Lana Glazer from Broad City, and I'm so thankful, and it's been so cool, but the day you're like, well, I'm just back to my life. None of these things last, so I try to make all my goals things I can control, so it's like, I really just am really feeling the stand-up thing right now, I'm not writing in a TV show right now so all mine are just going to that. And I'm really enjoying writing a lot of material and performing a lot. And so like the only goal I ever have is just like writing more and becoming a better comedian every year and like feeling that pressure of my friends. You know, sometimes like the best thing about living in LA and New York is that you'll see your friends go up and give a brand new 10 minutes. Let's kill it. And you're like, oh my God, like that's amazing. I'm still doing my stupid old jokes. So like, you know, you're gonna write more. So like those are my favorite moments in standup. And I try to just kind of focus on that. So like yes, I have. Do I want to sell out of theater? Absolutely. But like those are not that's not like what gets me up in the morning.
Juravich: We've been talking to Hilliard native and accomplished comedian Fumi Abe. Thank you so much for your time today.
Abe: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna talk to the executive director of the Riverview International Center. That is when All Sides and Fascinating Ohio continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides on WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. When she was a teenager, Emelia Sheeley spent a month in Russia. It was the catalyst for her career in international studies and service. For almost 10 years, she's been involved with the Riverview International Center, assisting new Americans in the River View Drive neighborhood with their basic needs. She started as a volunteer in 2017 and now has worked her way up to executive director. And she joins us today. Welcome to All Sides, Emilia.
Emelia Sheeley: Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Juravich: All right, so the Riverview International Center provides immigrants with basic needs. Tell us who you serve, where they are, like what's your service range and who are you serving?
Sheeley: Um, well, we serve immigrants from all over the world who now live all across central Ohio. Um, in 2025, we served immigrants from 60 countries.
Juravich: Sixty countries.
Sheeley: Um, more than 2,000 individuals came to us for support, programs, services, appointments in 2025, we started in an apartment in Riverview drive because that was a neighborhood with a lot of serve a lot immigrants, a lot of new Americans and not a lot of resources. And, uh, we operated there for eight years in a two bedroom, 585 square foot apartment.
Juravich: Oh, like literally an apartment, not even an office building. No, an apartment.
Sheeley: An apartment. We had neighbors, you know, on either side of us, we could smell their dinner when it was cooking. Uh, if we went down to the basement, we could smell the laundry soap. Um, it was an apartment. So, um, but what came out of that was that we were a place that felt like a little home. If you lived in Riverview and you didn't know where to go for English classes, for example, or to enroll your kids in school. You might hear from someone else in Riverview, oh, just go to 552, apartment B. There's a little sign on the door. They'll help you with anything. And that's really how we grew. We never advertised. We've never been paid for our services. It's just been word of mouth. People come, they have a good experience, their needs get met, they feel welcomed and cared for, and then they tell somebody else.
Juravich: And so you kept the name, Riverview International Center, but you now serve more than just people in that one area, that one street, right?
Sheeley: That's correct. In 2024, we moved from Riverview Drive to Old Henderson Road. The building that we were in, um, along with many others on the street were sold to Coastal Ridge and we're going to be all flipped and redeveloped. And so, uh, we were losing our office and 88 families were going to have to find a new place to live. So we undertook an effort to ensure that families were set up to be able to find new housing, that all of these evictions didn't happen at once. And I shouldn't say evictions, but all these forced relocations didn't have to happen at one because, you know, as we know and as we talk about all the time, Columbus is in a housing crisis. We don't have enough housing. So we were part of that effort to ensure that our families would be able find new homes that worked for them. And at the same time, we moved our office to Old Henderson Road. A happy byproduct of that move is that we have three times the space now, lots more space for programs. We have more people coming from more countries. We're in a bit, I think we feel a little bit more agnostic now than in this very little apartment and this little street. And now we have air conditioning. Oh!
Juravich: Extra bonus. All right. So you originally joined in 2017 as a volunteer. Can you tell me about that journey from volunteer to being executive director? I mean, in charge of it? Yeah, so I...
Sheeley: I should clarify, I actually began as someone who would just come to the office two nights a week and just help people with Medicaid applications. However, I was paid because I started fundraising for the organization before I started. So I wanted to start working there. And the founder was like, we'd love to have you. But we don't have money to pay you. So I said, well, what if I tried to raise some money for the organization, then could I be paid? And she's like, sure. So I actually kind of began as, you know, in small nonprofits and startups, you wear a lot of hats. So I was recruiting people to volunteer. I was raising money. And I also was there two nights a week helping people with anything they needed. A lot of it was Medicaid for kids applications. School enrollments, just answering questions about life in America. And I am an Arabic speaker. So most of the people who would come for assistance were Arabic speakers. And so there was a comfort there and an ease. And the bonus for me was that I was practicing language that was really hard to learn.
Juravich: So tell me how you ended up executive director though.
Sheeley: Oh, yes. That was the question. So, well, I gradually just took on more and more work. I started more intensely coordinating volunteers, so volunteer opportunities, meeting and training volunteers. And then when you have volunteers, you have to have programs to put them in. So then I was working to create partnerships and, you know, make new programs. And still doing Medicaid appointments. You know, I was still going every Wednesday night and I would just open the door and we didn't do anything by appointment then. It was just walk in, whoever came, I would try to get to them. There were some Wednesday nights we would have 50, 70 people come through and those nights were still like, you know, some of the most fun and rewarding of my life because I would do applications for two or three hours and then somebody would invite me to their apartment after and we would have... Tea and food, and sometimes I would stay in Riverview until midnight. And just getting- A Medicaid paperwork party. A Medicaid paper party. So I began working in the programs and then our founder stepped down. We needed a director. I balked. I said, no, I'm not ready. I don't have a degree in finance. I can't be a director, I put it off for a while and then, you know, fast forward a couple of years, it was my time. The board asked if I would be our interim. And I said, yes, that's how they get you one thing led to another it's been about three years now that I've been the executive director
Juravich: And I did read that this all kind of started when you were a teenager, because you went on a trip to Russia. Why did you go on that trip, and how did it spark your love of basically international studies?
Sheeley: Well, I was desperate to travel. I had been looking at magazines. I had be watching Lonely Planet every day after school, checking out travel books from the library. I was desperately to travel, I had never traveled internationally. No one in my family had a passport. I grew up in a really small rural town, southwest Ohio, German town, and I learned through my church about you know, some people travel and go on mission trips and you could do this. So I found an organization that took teenagers to Russia and we hung out in the Russian summer camps with Russian kids and we did crafts with them and we did theater programs and music programs and basically just got to play with kids all summer and it was very fun. It opened my eyes to a new world in every way. And I thought, okay, I want more of this and I want to learn about more places.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with the executive director of the Riverview International Center, Emilia Shealy. So also I read that you and your husband moved to Egypt in 2009. What did you do there? What was your job?
Sheeley: Well, I had studied Arabic at Ohio State in Middle East studies, and I was really fascinated with the region, the language, literature, but also very aware, painfully aware, that I still didn't really speak Arabic after graduating.
Sheeley: I knew that if I was going to do anything with this, I really need to have an immersive experience. So, um, my husband was on board and we went to Egypt at the time. It was a very, um. It still is an easy place to get a visa to, but it was one of the more stable countries in the region, um to visit, to stay in. We went on a tourist visa and we joined a language program and we did Arabic studies four or five days a week. And then when we weren't studying, we just were living a normal life and trying to meet people in practice. And then after about two years of that, we both started working. I started working with an Egyptian doctor, teaching birth classes for foreigners in Egypt. So I would teach in English and Arabic. And my husband worked on an aquaponics, an aquaculture project in the Nile Delta. So we did that for about three years and then, um, decided it was time to come back.
Juravich: Well, backing up to when you decided what to study at Ohio State, I mean, of all the languages to pick, what made you decide to pick Arabic?
Sheeley: Well, I, I think a part of me wanted to do something very different, maybe a little uniqueness syndrome. Um, I knew I wanted to work internationally in some capacity and, um, you know, it studied Spanish in high school. That way it wasn't really it. Um, yeah. And Ohio State had a program and at the time and you thought, why not? It wasn't that common. Yeah. And so I did it.
Juravich: Well, tell me about how that impacts your work today at the Riverview International Center. I mean, are people surprised whenever they come to seek help and you can answer them in their language or anything like that?
Sheeley: Yes. They're always shocked. And usually the question is like, they want to ask, are you Egyptian? But they know they can look at me and deduce that I'm not Egyptian. So then they'll say, is your husband Egyptian? Are your parents Egyptian? And I can tell them, I got to study and live in Alexandria for five years. Usually they're surprised because not very many people get to do that. And I say get to, because it was the greatest five years of my life. It was the best, most formative experience. And I loved the people that I met there and having that experience, I flavors, you know, the work that I do every day because living in Alexandria, I was a foreigner. I didn't speak the language hardly at all. I... Didn't know my way around, didn't have a vehicle, didn't how to get jobs or how to buy things I needed or set up internet in the flat. And Egyptians that I met were there to help me and support me through all those steps. And I wouldn't have succeeded and loved it there if it weren't for those people.
Juravich: Your center offers a lot of services. I mean, I'm just gonna list a few. You have English classes, employment services, citizenship assistance, financial literacy. Of all the things that you offer, what is the most popular program? What do most people come to you for?
Sheeley: You know, until this year, I would have said it's just this kind of umbrella we call advocacy. It's help, all kinds of general help you need when you're brand new to a country. And so, you know, getting your utility set up, getting you kids in school, you know, figuring out how to find a doctor. It's those services. I say until this year, because now we don't really have very many people who are brand new to the United States anymore. Um, so, um, our workforce development program has been growing since 2020. We launched it right as COVID was hitting. We had made our first hire then, um but it's been growing steadily and steadily. And so workforce now has overtaken that program, um as our most sought after service, so it's helping people with every step of the job process. So if they're brand new and they've never worked in the U S before it's learning our job culture. Learning how to make a resume, learning expectations around communication, around hygiene, around timeliness. If you've had a job in the US before, we can help you equalize your foreign degree. Like maybe you're an engineer in Iraq and you wanna become an engineer here. We can help through that process. So workforce development is our biggest, I'd say most sought after program right now.
Juravich: You mentioned the current political climate. I mean, I have to imagine there's some extra pressure on your center right now. I don't know if people are coming to you with help on immigration or, you know, worries about ice chaos or anything like that. Like, how are you, as your organization, dealing with that?
Sheeley: Well, we have a wonderful partnership with Community Refugee and Immigration Services. So if people come to us with immediate legal needs, we refer them to the attorneys at Criss. And they are so helpful with our neighbors who need that kind of assistance. We see a lot of people who are being illegalized by the loss of their legal status, temporary protected status, for example. Needing very basic assistance, rent assistance, food aid, because they can't work anymore. So I wouldn't say it's affected, I want to minimize how much it's effected our center and focus on how much its effected are our clients and our community. Because people are, you know, people are afraid. And so it's been a dark time. I apologize.
Juravich: I started choking a little bit on something there, but as the executive director, talk to me about what vision you have for the future of the center, even though you don't know what the current political climate is and about this dark time. Talk to me about the future. Mm-hmm
Sheeley: Well, the future is, you know, the kids who come to our office for summer reading, for homework help, for tutoring, for science experiments, to listen to the Columbus Symphony play. That's I think the future. And those kids are the reason that most people make the decision to emigrate. And so, when we plan programming... We really are prioritizing families, longevity, what will contribute to their belonging and their success here. So our biggest thing we're working on right now and putting a lot of our resources into is our workforce program, because whether we have new arrivals to the United States or not, people need jobs and people need newer jobs and then they need better jobs and then their teenager needs a job. So that's our know, our strongest program right now that we're pouring the most resources into. And we actually, late 2025, we began offering our job help program in Northland, first at the Carl Road Library, and then now we're at Ascension Lutheran Church right at Morrison Carl. We're there every Friday offering job help for people who live in that area. There aren't a lot of workforce resources there. And we kept hearing from other nonprofit leaders, especially from Congo, from Rwanda, from Ghana, that people living here from Haiti need job help. So I see us continuing to serve in the Northland area, hopefully offering even more services in Northland, like our, you know, assistance with benefits, with school things, navigating all of that. And, um, I... I don't think I know that we will outlast this administration and the changes that are happening right now, because our services are about belonging, because they ultimately lead to the success of people who live next door to you and me.
Juravich: We have been talking with the executive director of the Riverview International Center, Emilia Shealy. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. And coming up, we're gonna talk to the executive director of an organization that uses horses as a method of counseling for children and families. That's when Fascinating Ohio from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides on WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Equine assisted psychotherapy is a counseling technique that uses horses or donkeys to provide solution oriented mental health therapy. It's one of the ways that PJB Connections offers professional behavioral health therapy for families. And joining us now is the executive director and co-founder of PBJ Connections, Holly Jedlicka. And she joins us today. Welcome to All Sides, Holly. Thanks for having me. So first things first, can you explain equine-assisted psychotherapy?
Holly Jedlicka: I will do my best. It can be a little abstract sometimes for folks. But essentially, we're using the prey animal, herd animal nature of the horse to give feedback to people. So the model that we use is called EGALA. That's E-A-G-A L-A. It's recognized around the world. We have all our folks certified in it. And there's no writing. In this model, and it's always a licensed mental health professional working with a trained equine specialist. And there is a lot of metaphor, depending on the population. There's a lot a metaphor that comes out in the model based on the belief that the client really has their own answers within them. We just have to help them figure out what those answers are. So kind of helping them tell a story or externalize their feelings, their behaviors, their stories out onto the horses and the environment. And then, of course, the horses are not trained to do this work. They're just being themselves. But they're highly tuned into our intent and our emotions, and that's because they're prey animals. That's how they survive. So they can read our intent even if we're not really congruent, like if our insides and our outsides aren't matching, they're aware of that.
Juravich: Well, I mixed up your letters. So your organization is PBJ Connections, right? Because I wanted to say, so tell me what the PBJ is, is it peanut butter and jelly? That's what I thought. OK, good. Tell me. That's what, that's what.
Jedlicka: It is. I'm not sure it was the best branding, but we've been around for 20 years. And honestly, sometimes we say, well, it was Pino, Bert, and Jenny, three of the original horses. But the real story is that the co-founder, Glenda Childress and I uh, had a horse training business prior to starting the nonprofit. And we were at a horse show, literally eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was a big fancy horse show. People were eating things like crudite and caviar and we're with our peanut butter jelly and we caught that. And we thought that's kind of hilarious. We're kind of the, the goofballs here at this horse show and so we started our horse training, business named PBJ George Sage. And then when we started the non-profit several years later, we wanted to keep the PBJ. And we do serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at a lot of the events that we host. Of course, you have to. Yes.
Juravich: To. Well, I'm glad to know the PBJ is related to peanut butter and jelly, but although the horse names is cute too, you know. So you mentioned that horses as a part of therapy, they kind of are in tune to how people are feeling. I mean, tell me about how a can help someone feel better.
Jedlicka: Yeah, so probably the best way to do that is just through a couple of stories, maybe? One of the stories I really like to share is that there is an element of projection, right? We're all walking around projecting our own beliefs onto each other, onto the horses, onto the environment. We had a little girl that had come to work with us. Her her and a mom were immigrants. And they came to Pataskalo, which is a very, you know, it's kind of rural out there. And she wouldn't really talk to anybody, including her mom. Dad had been left behind wherever they were from. And she was working with a horse who literally fell asleep. So the horse was standing there, his head was down, his eyes were closed, super relaxed, just taking a nap. And she told us that he was stressed. So it was her projection of how stressed out he was, he was so stressed out that he was shut down, which of course was her story, right? So through her interacting with this horse and helping him not be shut down. I put rabbit ears around that because we know he was actually asleep. She was able to start telling her own story and be more open about what she was experiencing, how sad she was to have left her country and her dad and all of these things, and really helped her in a very few sessions start talking to mom again. So you can imagine a kid like that who shut down like that, just sitting in an office trying to talk to a therapist might've been a hard pull. I am a therapist, and I can imagine trying to engage a kid that's really not wanting to talk. And I didn't engage that kid, the horse did.
Juravich: The horse was the middle man here. Exactly. Well, you call it yourself a lifelong horse person. And when was the moment, though, that you realized, I can help people with horses?
Jedlicka: Yeah, I think I obviously was privileged enough to grow up with horses, but my parents did a very good job instilling in us that these are sentient beings and that even though I was a competitive rider at one point in my life, that they really should have some autonomy and recognize your privilege. So that was instilled in me. I remember being about 16 years old and thinking, there's got to be something helpful we could be doing with horses. And it took me from that point, about 16, until I was in my 30s, which is when we founded this program, to really kind of navigate all of the paths life took me on to founding this program that's doing equine assisted psychotherapy. I've done, you know, the horse industry. The way people think about it, and then also was involved with therapeutic writing, which is super powerful. I am so glad there are programs doing that. It just wasn't my thing. So we landed on this non-writing element of the equine assisted psychotherapy model that we use.
Juravich: Been doing it ever since. This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 MPR News, and we're talking about equine-assisted psychotherapy at PBJ Connections with the co-founder and executive director, Holly Jidlicka. So your website mentions locations in New Albany, Pataskala, and Galena. Are those the main areas you serve?
Jedlicka: Yeah, we serve all of central Ohio. We obviously have folks coming for our services from 11 different counties. I shouldn't say obviously, but we do from 11, different counties, the new Albany location is not an equine facility. That is where we see most of our office based clients. So we do a lot of talk therapy as well and have been doing that since about 2010, maybe 2012. Okay, so
Juravich: Okay, so not everyone is with the horses. Correct.
Jedlicka: Correct. Yeah.
Juravich: And so, whenever people do, when you decide that a client would benefit from the horse therapy, though, do they go to the Petasca location?
Jedlicka: Petascula, yep, or Galena. The Galena is a satellite facility, and we opened that just under two years ago. It's a much smaller facility and a smaller, we see a smaller number of clients there, but we're trying to ramp that up and continue to grow so we can serve Delaware County as well. And the horse.
Juravich: That you have are they horses that maybe used to be ridden a lot or they used to be like are they are they all older are they like retired or do you have young horses too all kinds
Jedlicka: All kinds, so our business model is a little unique in that the nonprofit, the program, does not own the horses. What we essentially do is rent the equine facilities and the horses that live there for the hours that we're seeing clients. And it keeps our overhead much lower. So when we're raising funds for programming, it's genuinely for programming and not to pay for the care of the horses And what we've discovered is that the horse industry in and of itself, there's a lot of horses in the United States. And there's lot of people with horses that maybe aren't competing anymore or they don't know what to do with them. And people are constantly wanting their horse to have a job. I'm not sure the horses care, but the people care. And so it feels really good to people to allow their horses to do this good life-changing work. Oh, wow. I like the idea of a horse having a job, whether it cares to or not. Right. Their job is to stay alive and thrive and eat grass. But yes, so there's a lot of different horse owners, and they're just two private facilities that we work out of right now that have several different horse owners keeping their horses in those barns. Some of them are still riding horses, so they may still be. Trail riding or competing or doing something like that, and then also doing this on the side. But we also have donkeys. We have a 33-year-old horse that obviously no one's riding anymore. So it's kind of nice that it can be a variety of horses, including very, very calm and relaxed horses, and then much, much hotter, excitable horses, and all of that comes into play in the therapy. You're...
Juravich: Vision and value statement mentions adaptability. And so I think I'm learning what that adaptability is, but tell me why that's an important value, because now I know you have therapy that doesn't involve horses, but then you have that involves horses in different ways. So tell me about the adaptability?
Jedlicka: Yeah, I think that's very much kind of two things. Adapting to what clients' needs are. We see people from ages six on up into adulthood. And then also adapting to the needs of the community or kind of what society is throwing at us. So we've been around 20 years, and we have on purpose stayed outside of that community mental health realm. So when you think of, when people think of mental health, they're often thinking of these big community mental health centers. Nationwide Children's kind of falls into that category. You have places like the Buckeye Ranch, Southeast. And they get big funding from the county, from the state. They're getting government funding to operate. And we have stayed out of that on purpose to help ourselves stay adaptable. To not only serving all kinds of clients, but also to stay out from under the bureaucracy that a lot of those agencies end up falling into. And that's worked really well for us. It makes us have to do more fundraising ourselves than we might have to. But it also has allowed us to really pivot. COVID is a great example. Places were really struggling in 2020 and we were thriving because we could see people outside. And the horses didn't mind. Horses didn't get COVID we discovered. So yeah.
Juravich: Well, we're down to less than a minute left. Can you tell me your vision for the future of the center in just about 30, 40 seconds?
Jedlicka: Sure. I mean, our vision is just to continue serving as many people as we can. We've never turned anyone away due to their inability to pay and we can bill insurance. So just keep doing that good work and, you know, hopefully continuing to expand over time to other areas of Ohio.
Juravich: And you have some fundraising opportunities. I know there's one in October, so people can visit your website to learn more. And we have been talking, this is Fascinating Ohio. We've been talking about equine assisted psychotherapy at PBJ Connections with co-founder and executive director, Holly Jedlicka. Holly, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for having me. This has been Fascinating, Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich, thanks for joining us.