Azita Ghanizada was born in Kabul…

Yes, that Kabul as in Afghanistan.

Photography Jeff Vespa

Azita opened up to us about what it was like growing up with a dream that could have gotten her killed in her home country.

V: What was your childhood like?

AG: In a nutshell … rough, we were lost in translation in the suburbs of Washington D.C. nothing really made a lot of sense. There was conflict we had just escaped, a lot of news about war & death, a lot of merging two cultures into school. Trying to fit in, trying to be pretend to be kid when you had already seen too much to believe in the innocence of the world. TV & books were my escape, they taught me English, they taught me how American culture worked … it was everything to me. TV & the public library, the only two things I was even really allowed to experience safely.

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Riley Voelkel

Don’t ask Riley Voelkel why America is the best country in the world!

Photography by Jeff Vespa

Even though she is Canadian, that question has been a prosperous one for her and as of now she is inextricably linked to it. If you tuned into HBO anytime over the past 6 months you will know who Riley is, she is the girl in the new show “The Newsroom” starring Jeff Daniels who sends him into a tailspin when she asks “Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” That scene played out thousands of time in the promo for the show to the point where if you reference it, everyone knows that scene, but unless you were completely curious and read the credits in the first episode you didn’t know her name until now. We got a chance to talk to Riley recently about her life growing up and how she got where she is today, tetering on the Verge!

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