Build It and They Will Come
How losing my career led to a sold-out play—and the start of something bigger
Written by Hannah Peterson
“So… I’ve decided I’m going to write a play, and I want you to act in it.” That was the line I casually tossed at all my closest friends in D.C. when we reunited after the holidays in January 2025.
They’re used to my unpredictable whims: adopting a dog despite being terrified of them, or launching a country line–dancing class after taking one class during a trip to Arizona. But even by my standards, this idea felt like a leap. I had never written anything in my life, let alone a full play, and I had exactly zero experience in theater. None of my friends had acted a day in theirs, either.
So yes, I fully understood why my announcement landed like it came straight out of left field.
But I was ready for their bewildered stares. I told them I had a story that I wanted to tell, and that creating something together might be the dose of creativity and connection we’d all been craving. What none of us knew at the time was that just a few weeks later, our careers would be upended indefinitely, and this project would become exactly what we needed to get through it.
I had worked in international development since graduating college. What started as a one-year volunteer position in Nicaragua turned into a 14-year career across Latin America and Africa, working in education, health, and innovative finance. I worked with contractors, social enterprises, advisory firms, and NGOs, all funded by USAID. So when USAID was dismantled, everything changed. My contracts were terminated overnight, and I was suddenly without work. My network in D.C., who are mostly former colleagues and grad school classmates, also found themselves in the same position.
What had started as a side project quickly became something more. The play became my sole focus. And my friends around me were also searching for direction as the lives they knew began to unravel.
Just a few months later, the idea became real. In April, twenty of us performed the play I had written called Vacate to a sold-out audience of 150 people. It exceeded anything we could have imagined. We pushed through stage fright, memorized our lines, and stepped into our roles with conviction. In the process, we built something that felt like family.
But it was the story that lingered long after the lights went down. Vacate explores the immigration experience in the U.S. which we know is one of the most polarizing issues in our current national conversation. But I wanted to approach it differently. After years of working in Central America, immigration wasn’t an abstract issue to me. It is my dear friends and colleagues that are being villainized in the media. I know firsthand that their stories are far more complex, human, and nuanced than the narratives I kept seeing.
I wanted to change that.
So I drew from the lives of people I know to create something more intimate, an experience that invites audiences to step into someone else’s world, even if just for a moment. It was my attempt to move the conversation beyond headlines and talking points, and toward empathy by using storytelling to reveal the humanity that too often gets lost.
After the play ended, the messages started coming in. People wanted to know when the next performance would be, whether I was planning a sequel, maybe even a prequel. They were genuinely invested in the characters—so much so that it felt like they weren’t ready to let them go. That’s when it began to dawn on me that there was something bigger behind all of this.
I’d never thought of myself as a writer, but I started to see that my experiences gave me stories worth sharing—stories shaped by living abroad, by meeting people from different cultures, by forming connections that crossed borders. And I knew there were so many more people with similar experiences, people who had learned to bridge worlds in their own way. Their experiences hold perspectives the world desperately needs right now if we are going to find a path to understanding and unity. In fact, in a recent conversation with someone at the Peabody Awards, she told me “when USAID was shut down the first thing I said to my partner was ‘those people need to become filmmakers’”.
And that’s how Wonder Productions came to life. I wanted to create a place where people who have lived away from their home countries could transform their experiences into stories that break down boundaries and illuminate what connects us all. Our storytellers come from every corner of the global landscape: international development professionals, humanitarian workers, immigrants and refugees, athletes, diplomats, students, missionaries, military families—anyone who has lived between cultures.
Most of them never set out to be storytellers. Many never imagined themselves in the media or creative world at all. But that’s exactly what makes this moment so powerful. So many of us have been forced to pause, to pivot, to reimagine what comes next. And in that uncertainty, there’s also an opening to be agile, to rethink how we use our skills, and to step into new ways of creating impact.
A year ago, if you had told me I’d be starting a production company, I would have laughed. Now, I feel more energized and aligned in my work than ever before because I’m building something on my own terms. For so long, many of us relied on institutions, systems, and job titles as the vehicles for the impact we wanted to make. But when those structures fall away, the work itself doesn’t disappear. It simply asks something different of us. It asks us to build our own vehicles. And they may take a different route than we planned, but they just might lead us somewhere even better.
So when everything you once relied on begins to crack, what light is finding its way in—and what will you choose to do with it?
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If you are interested in being a guest writer for The Fed Up Features, you can email me (Jordan) at jordan@thefedupcommunity.com. I look forward to collaborating!
Until next time,
Jordan
Hannah Peterson is the founder and Executive Director of Wonder Productions. She is an international development professional who has spent almost 14 years working in Latin America and Africa on education, digital health, and innovative finance projects. She started her career working for community development projects as a Volunteer Coordinator in Nicaragua. That is where her love of connecting across cultures began. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Global Human Development from Georgetown University and a BA in Sociology and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. She wrote her first play, Vacate, in January 2025 and performed it in April 2025 to a sold-out audience at Joe’s Movement Emporium. It is there that she found the power of storytelling and her ability to tell stories that connect people and build empathy. She is looking forward to writing more stories in the future.
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