 So I want to thank Douglas and Joanna for joining us today. They've been out of school for 15 plus years, right? And have done a lot of work with UN, UN agencies, UN missions. So they're going to share that with us today. And if you have a question, please put it into the Q&A or you can throw it into the chat. And what I'd like to ask you guys each to start with is to kind of just give us your bios. How did you get to where you are today? So Joanna, do you want to start? Sure, OK. Yeah, no, thank you so much for hosting this and hi to the students. And it's great to be in touch. And sorry that some of your summer plans have been adapted or put on hold. It's a tough summer, I think, for everyone. So yes. So as Heather said, I graduated from Tufts in 2004. And I was part of the Epic class that year. And following that, I knew that I wanted to go into international affairs, but I wasn't really sure sort of in which direction that would take, whether it would be towards the peace building side or humanitarian and development side. And so I ended up going to Senegal for a year on a Fulbright research scholarship. And that helped me to sort of solidify that I wanted to work on women in development and women in humanitarian affairs and sort of have that gender angle. But I still wasn't really sure what that looked like. So I knew I needed to sort of get to work. So after that, I went for a master's degree at Columbia in New York. And through that, I started doing some sort of more hands-on work. So I worked with UNDP in the Central African Republic. And then that led to some other opportunities in Africa. And so basically, I've been working in the sort of early recovery context or humanitarian context, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean as well. And then in the past few years or so, at a global level, advising UN agencies that are working in humanitarian affairs on their programming specifically across basically all the regions that they work in. So I came at it from sort of the development angle. And now I'm really sort of squarely in the humanitarian affairs world. And so I've worked with UNICEF, UNHCR. And now I'm working with UNFPA. So I mean, I started out so as a Fulbrighter, it was mostly research. And then so I kind of came at it from that angle, from the research angle. But I also knew that I wanted to work with NGOs and really have that hands-on sort of programming approach. So that's why I started with NGOs and then moved to the UN a little bit later in my career. So that's the summary. Great. Great. Thank you. And can you just explain, I don't know if everyone knows what early recovery? Sure, yeah. So there are different terms now. I think we call it more the humanitarian development nexus. And even that is kind of a recycled term that's been around for a while. But basically, I would just to differentiate it from what Douglas will speak about. We have peacekeeping in the UN. We have UN country programming that takes a more long-term development view and typically works with governments. And so some UN agencies have that development view and work with governments. And then they also do emergency response, which is the humanitarian side. And some UN agencies are really squarely in the humanitarian side of things. But they're being pushed to connect more with the more development oriented agencies. And basically, the whole UN is being encouraged to sort of bring those sides together. And that's been happening for a long time. But there's been sort of substantial UN reform lately that has brought those things together. So that's a roundabout way of saying that early recovery was one of the terms maybe 10 years ago for linking the immediate humanitarian response to thinking about long-term development, linking to government programs and that sort of thing. And so that's continued to be really important. And of course, we see it today in terms of the COVID response, that you have crises in countries that not only have development issues, but also emergency at the same time. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Douglas? All right. So I graduated in 2002, and I did EPIC in 2000, 2001, and then I audited in 01, 02. After, I studied philosophy at Tufts and peace studies. So as every good philosophy major does, I moved back home with my mom after graduation and then worked as a mediator. So I mean, my background is a little bit, I guess, rooted in political activism. And so I knew I was very much interested in sort of interpersonal conflict. And that sort of in a ways come around full circle now in the work that I do now. But initially it was doing victim offender mediation, doing that in courts and in prisons and then also just sort of general activism and getting arrested in 2003 at the start of the Iraq war. And that kind of stuff, which is more of my satisfied that part of the reason why I was interested in mediation is that violence has always been, I don't know, fascinating is not the right word, but it's always been a very important thread, I guess, in everything. My mom is German and I grew up in Germany. So a lot of the way that I think about and approach the world is sort of in the lens of World War Two and the Holocaust and trying to come to terms with what that means and trying to think about institutional ways in which we can respond to atrocities, which is really very much a topic of this year's Epic Class. So I worked for a couple of years as a victim offender mediator in local courts and Hartford, my mom, taught at Trinity. So that was very easy to go to live there and still show up for some epic stuff than the following year. Then I went to Nigeria and I realized at a certain point I was working there doing local work on an inter and on a communal basis in some communities in the so-called middle belt and in the Niger Delta. And it occurred to me when I was looking for jobs and I wasn't hardly getting paid anything that every all the jobs that I was interested in that seemed really exciting to me, all required a master's where they would say master's required, PhD desirable or something like that. And so I thought, oh, shit, well, I guess that means I'm going to go back to graduate school, something that I thought that I wouldn't do because both my parents are academics. So it didn't really make, you know, it wasn't something that seemed obvious. So I went, I did a JD and then an LLM. And after that sort of during that time with the initial idea was to work in mediation and doing that. And so I thought that having a JD would at least make me sound credentialed in the way that having a philosophy degree might not. I still love having a philosophy degree. So I'm not trying to bad enough for any philosophy majors out there. And so then I, but while I was in law school, I sort of fell in love with with international criminal law, so-called humanitarian law, which is different, you know, for I don't know if you've how much reading you've done on humanitarian law, which is different from the humanitarian work that there was just, you know, that Joanna was just talking about. So then I went off to Cambodia and I started working at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in the prosecution and that sort of precipitated, I don't know, five, six years of working at the Special Corp for Sierra Leone in The Hague and working at the International Criminal Tribunal for Wanda in Arusha on two different stints, working in Bahrain on a Truth Commission or sort of a human rights investigation out of Truth Commission by the Human Rights Investigation, the so-called Bass Uni Commission and then working in Sicily on the Libyan Civil War. So then, you know, while I was in Rwanda, sort of the story of my life with the UN has been in some ways, sort of short term consultancies and then getting jobs as a staff member closing missions. So I worked at the Rwanda Tribunal and then got a job in 2014 to go to the Liberia to work with the peacekeeping mission there. And that's when my sort of career shifted a little bit from doing international criminal law to doing a rule of law work, which is different again, because that sort of talks about if international criminal law is looking retroactively or retrospectively at what has happened and trying to figure out what to do about it. Rule of law work and the type that I do is very much thinking about prospectively and the types of work in these institutions that we create to do or to prevent atrocities or to rebuild states in a way after they've been broken in some profound ways. And now the last few years I've been in Afghanistan and we'll be going to South Sudan as soon as things get better. So that's the short part of it. And I just say that, you know, in Afghanistan, we talk not just about the so called double nexus, but the triple nexus since everything always has to increase in number and seriousness, I guess. So we can talk about that, too, if people are interested. Great. Great. Thank you. And so now I'd like to ask each of you to really kind of talk about your experiences working with the UN, kind of, you know, whether it's been as a consultant, whether it's been hired as a staffer in missions in the home offices, you know, like, what are all the the different pieces of that to think about if people are considering and kind of wanting to work with the UN or going in that direction. Joanne, do you mean? Yeah, sure. Sure. So I mean, so I've been working with the UN, let's see, for about about six years. And I've worked mostly as a consultant, actually, but also as a staff member, temporary staff member for various reasons. But yes, there are those different sort of contract types, which are important to think about. There are opportunities like UNB and JPO, which is UN Volunteer and Junior Professional Officer, which I think can be very good opportunities if you can get in young, because you do start kind of at the bottom of a very long ladder. And I'd say, I mean, from the humanitarian side, at least the biggest difference between NGOs and the UN and from someone who worked, you know, in the field with NGOs for a while before switching back to the UN. There's a there's a big hierarchy in the UN. And it's a little bit tough to to sort of jump around that or jump over that. So so when you start sort of right out of grad school, it typically would be in a like a UNB position or a junior professional officer position, again, at least on the humanitarian side and also from what I know of UNDP. But those can be interesting entry points. So, for example, you know, Tufts has a very international student body. So if they're if your countries are sponsoring JPO's, I would really encourage you to apply, you know, that being said, the UN takes JPO's who are, you know, I think up to 34 and they take people who are, you know, 33 and eight months and you have people who've already worked as a lawyer somewhere or have done other things. So the competition is stiff. But I think if you can start that way, it's good. And otherwise, there's also the possibility of starting out with NGOs or with with civil society organizations or or basically just anything outside the UN and sort of coming in laterally when you develop a sort of technical expertise or perhaps a regional expertise that would that would make sense for certain agencies. And so I guess in my experience, the thing that I liked about it and what drew me to it after having worked with NGOs for quite some time, both in the field and the headquarters was I was looking for sort of more of a global viewpoint, having a just a larger scale impact just because the UN works in, you know, almost every country. So it does have that that ability to sort of go to scale to be able to have also a little bit more of an advocacy role with donors. So obviously the UN has donors, but it can also advocate back to donors in terms of global policy. And and and I think also the the the component of working with governments looking for sort of national solutions. Working locally is really, really important. And I, you know, throughout my career, I've been happy to support local organizations, but I think that there has to be something also embedded at the national level in terms of sustainability. So that that also sort of drew me into the to the UN after having worked with NGOs. Yeah. That was also for me. I mean, if you want to do international criminal law, there was obviously the International Criminal Court, but that was when I was sort of coming into this, that was not realistic for a variety of reasons and Cambodia sort of presented itself. So for me, you know, coming into the UN was inevitable in that sense. If I wanted to do international criminal law, there was no other real avenue. Now, there are some others you can work with NGOs. There's some really interesting work being done in Syria and Iraq with ISIS. There's there's a lot of different ways in which you can approach it. But if you want to do a courtroom work and having sort of in spite of myself falling in love with the workings of the wall and thinking about how it functions, going or entering the UN was was almost inevitable. And so I always say this, I mean, you know, if you want to work for the UN, I think you have to understand what the what the advantages are, what you can do and what you can't do. So it's it's it's incredibly powerful in terms of the access to leadership to heads of state. I mean, it's it, you know, in the I mean, it's an intergovernmental organization. So it's not an NGO. So we are, you know, at least I work in the Secretariat, the so-called Secretariat. So there, I mean, our budgets are approved by the member states in the General Assembly. We are accordingly sort of handcuffed because our job is is is in part to be critical and we do we do criticize. But the the way in which we approach things is very different. And so there's a tradeoff in terms of the access that you get and what you can do. And then conversely, what you can't say are the ways in which you can say something. So, you know, I mean, I people make fun of me. I mean, I openly identify as an anarchist and I'm a lawyer and I work for the UN and people think I'm crazy and I am. But, you know, there's certain sort of positional stances that you have to be willing to take and what you can say and what you can do. Now, you know, for me on Saturday, because that's the start of the Afghan work week, I'll have a meeting on on or MS teams with the Chief Justice of Afghanistan. Now, that's not something that most people can do. I've met several heads of state where I've sat and meetings with them. That's not something that a lot of NGOs can do. Just by by by dint of what they are. But conversely, because they can do that. And this is sort of the activist side of me that comes out to things. Shit, this is bullshit. Like, what are you doing right now? Why are you doing the work this way? Why are you soft peddling on on important issues? Right. But then you think about, well, you know, if I'm doing this work, then I can also advocate and I can implement a training program that will have an impact on these things. So there's a real trade off between, you know, your positional stance and how much you're wedded to your own approach. So that's the nature of it. You know, I would say and that sort of feeds off the last part. I mean, about getting into the U.N. Yeah, the JPO, the junior professional officer group is great if you want to be spend a career in the U.N. That basically gives you lifetime employment. So that's really the and it has the Cadillac contract, a so-called permanent contract that you get with it, which there are only very few of those in the U.N. system. The other route is a U.N.V. route. And that's also, I think, a good route. But, you know, it again, depends on where you want to go and how you want to work. There's a lot of flexibility, especially in the agency's funds and programs, because they are program driven a lot of times. So they're dependent on donor support in a way that the secretariat isn't. So the secretariat is probably the most conservative in that sense, where I work in a special political mission in Afghanistan, is the most sort of formal and the most procedural and hierarchical in that sense. The lowest, you know, I mean, and then you can go to and maybe join as a different experience of this, having worked with U.N.HCR and other entities. But if you can find a project budget, if you are on the ground in a place where the U.N. system is doing work, that that might be a way of getting into the system. But in the secretariat, which is my experience, it's a little bit more conservative, I guess, I would say. And can you both talk about kind of the differences and the impact of if you come in as a consultant, if you're there as a staffer, like what percentage of people are consultants, say you're working on the ground in a mission versus in a home office type of thing? Whoever. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for the agencies and funds and programs, as Douglas was saying, I think it really depends on the agency and on, you know, any given year. There are quite a few, there's a pretty high percentage of consultants, I don't know what the actual percentage is, but both at headquarters and in field offices. But honestly, I would say, I think for colleagues who are coming in after having a bachelor's or even just right out of a master's, you can look for those good contracts, but that will set you on a certain path of always looking just for those, as Douglas said, Cadillac contracts and you might then also lose out on really rich field experience, which not only will make you better for the UN, but possibly bring you greater reward. So I think, you know, even for the UN I would agree with Douglas that starting in the field is really important. I have seen, you know, I've been in Geneva for almost five years and I've seen quite a few interns who have just finished their master's and they're really fresh and ready to go and they start in Geneva and they keep, they're desperate to stay and to keep getting a job in the headquarters. And I just want to tell them, get out, get out. This is not it. So that's great. I mean, so if that's, you know, just knowing Tufts and the kind of people that go there and the type of people that end up in Epic, I think my biggest advice would be, get out to the field, get out there. However, that may be whether it's, you know, with an NGO or on a UNB contract or on a consulting contract. And again, once you're there, especially if you consider, I mean, places like Central African Republic, speak French, if you're willing to go to these places, Chad, I mean, you'll move up pretty quickly, which would be much harder to do if you were in Geneva or New York. So that's another thing to consider. So it's a little bit of both. You can think a little bit strategically, but also get really good experience in the field. Douglas? All right, so I was so engrossed in the answer that I forgot the question, but I'll just riff on that, but that's okay. I'm a little bit, you know. Consultant versus staffer. Oh, the consultant versus the contract. Oh. Your contract. So at this point, I've been up, I've been sitting at my desk for 13 hours working today because I'm on Afghanistan time. So that means sitting down at six. So I'm sorry if I'm a little bit spaceier than usual. So yeah, I mean, so in the secretary again, which is my experience, there are fewer consultants. My first job was in the secretary in the tribunal as a consultant, working in Cambodia for $500 a month and no health insurance. Which is sort of on probably the lowest end of the spectrum. And it was also the most fun that I've ever had working, prosecuting. And then again for me, sort of because of my sort of internal, sort of trying to reconcile with myself what it means to be German, what it means to think about atrocities and so on. I mean, it was super exciting and also sort of because of my political stance, thinking about how wrong the Khmer Rouge got things in the final analysis and sort of trying to come to terms politically as sort of a civil libertarian, but then also as sort of a Marxist in that sense. So that was hugely fun. And I would say don't preclude that. So I mean, as handcuffing as perhaps working for the UN can be especially, I think in the secretariat since it's a political beast, there are some really amazingly fun experiences that you can have. And I have never worked in the headquarters. And this is the longest stretch that I've had working in Europe. I guess when I was doing the Libyan Civil War I was living in Sicily. So that was quite nice. But this is the longest stretch that I've had in seven or eight years of living in Europe. I'm not living in Africa or Asia. So I have no desire in that sense to go to Geneva as much as my mom would love me to get a job in Europe. It's really fun, I think, being in the field because you can get access. I mean, in many places, just because of the local context and the local circumstances, there is more freedom in some circumstances to get involved. I mean, that also means that you have to be sort of more conscious because you are an outsider. I mean, I think that I am free to say things about the US or about Germany in ways that I don't feel comfortable saying about Afghanistan or Liberia because it's not my country. And so, I mean, in that sense you might want to be, you have to be culturally delicate about it. But the amount of access that you can get, I think, and the amount of impact and also working with people is, I think, much higher in the field. So in that context, I would definitely try to go through the field route. And then, if you're like me and then you don't have, you end up, I mean, it does have a consequence on your life and your sort of personal life and your friendships because I spend all of my life in places where nobody can visit me and I live in armed compounds. And that has a certain sort of toll as well of working in the field. And maybe it's different in the Central African Republic. I think there people live in Bungie in the city itself. So, but again, I guess, yeah, consultancy is good. If you can get a job, good. But go wherever your heart leads you and wherever you're curious. I think that if you're fascinated by something, that's always the best thing. And if you are fascinated by a job in New York on the sanctions committee or wherever it might be with UN women talking about their global coordination with law and the so-called global focal point or something like that, then do that. I mean, that's because that's fun. That's the exciting part of it. So, you don't have to go to the field either. I'd say just do whatever your heart tells you and your mind tells you to do. Great. I mean, I guess one of the things that comes up in thinking about that is sometimes people are in school or they're leaving school or maybe grad school and they think there's kind of a straight line options to things, right? And I wonder if you both could talk about the role, kind of opportunity or serendipity played kind of in where you ended up or how you found your choices. Hope you get to everyone. Yeah, no, let me come back. I just wanted to come back on something that Chuck said because I think also at some point, and you'll think about this if you're working for NGOs as well, sometimes you come back to Europe or to your home countries also for different reasons. So there's always that later. So, I mean, I have two small kids now so it's just a little bit easier here than in some other places. Like I wouldn't wanna be in a non-family duty station and be away from them but some people are willing to do that. So these are also questions that will come up down the line, especially for those who are still undergraduates. And I certainly was not thinking about that. At that point or in my 20s, but it comes. So it's a question I think for any of these jobs where you're really working at the front lines, so to speak and trying to find that balance. But in terms of serendipity, and I think this links, I saw that there are a couple of questions in the chat box just about, if you can't get in through the JPO side and I didn't, I had applied as an American and I think I got to the final interview for one but they're very competitive and there weren't many American ones at the time. So there are other avenues and I think the serendipity and also the connection comes from the, I mean, linking with alumni is really a huge, huge way to go. So if you can link up with your undergraduate or your graduate alumni, that's how I got my first internship that I did with UNDP was through an alumnus from SIPA but still, and then I also maintained contacts with Tufts alumni and I asked them for advice. And so I think, that sort of sets you on a certain path and then it goes from there. But I think that can be a really great way to also get a foot in the door. If you say, look, I'm willing to go here or here, I'm passionate about this and I see that you're working on that. Use all your skills that you have, language skills. If you've already, I saw one of the questions, if you've already been to grad school, then pitch yourself, show what your niche is, what you can add. And I think also, we're saying about the passion and doing what you're interested in that that will come through. And so even if you're open and you can show that and you're willing to maybe not take the perfect contract but you're willing to be a consultant, then I think there are entry points for sure. Yeah. Douglas? So just to pick up on that, well, being ready to move and to not be locked down. Now I lived in five countries but before the time I reached 10. So I mean, this is sort of being a nomad is sort of easy for me in that sense. And what was it, you know, was it, you know, be wary of any job that requires new clothes. And so now all of a sudden, you know, you get a little bit older and you sort of move along and all of a sudden you have multiple suits and then you have multiple blue colored suits and world gets more complicated. So that's something I don't like, but in the sense that, you know, if you're willing to travel and to be available, you know, I think that, so for instance, when I was in Arusha the first time at the Rwanda Tribunal, I busted my ass for a stretch and then I've been promised that, oh, well, you know, we'll get the funding and we'll keep you on and then that didn't happen. So I went home to Germany and I was really down about it because, you know, you put in the effort and people recognize the effort and then that's not enough. And I was sitting, I was at my cousin's wedding and I came home on a Sunday and I got an email from a former colleague saying, hey, I've got a job. I know that you're looking for something. Can you give a call? So I called and he said, okay, I'm in Bahre working on this Human Rights Commission. If you want a job, you've got it, but you got to be here tomorrow. And so I thought, okay, well, why not? So I just throw all of my stuff in my backpack and they got on a plane. I showed up at the airport and the ticket was there waiting for me and that was actually the bizarre part is that I didn't even have any information about the flight. So I just got in the second class line and I come up to the counter and then I give a woman my passport and then she says, oh, why didn't you go through the business class lane? And I thought, oh, I didn't even know. So that kind of making yourself available I think is important. And in that sense, hard work does get you recognized. People appreciate, I mean, there are a lot of people I don't know what Joanne's experience is. The UN is a mixture of people who are committed and sort of married to the notion in that sense. But there are also a lot of people and this is a hard thing for me sometimes and since I do think of myself as being very ideological in that sense in a positive sense is that you have a lot of people who are there because you earn better than you do in NGOs and you do earn better than you do in a lot of other positions. Although not always if you work in American law, private practice, you'll earn more than you do in the UN but there are a lot of people who are simply working for a paycheck and that's hard. So if you bust your ass then people will also recognize that and they'll work to keep you around. And so I think that making yourself available and being hard working are the two, I think the two most important aspects of that. Obviously being smart is important, being interested is important but really industry I think gets you a long way. And can you talk a little bit about kind of having both kind of soft skills and hard skills and kind of what's helpful to have or what's helpful to develop whether you're still an undergrad or you're going to grad school. Like what would be complementary? What would be seen as an asset? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think on the programming side certainly the social science research skills are really important. I mean, if I think about between Epic and Professor Penben who's now retired but who was basically my inspiration and Tufts. I mean, I learned I think everything that I know now about monitoring and program quality and things like that started at Tufts with just the social science research either in the history department or in international relations and I'm sure they have even a much broader spectrum of things now. So I see the question also about having a background in research. And so I mean, I think it really depends on what you want to do. I did consider in graduate school I wasn't sure if I should do more of those quantitative courses, statistical methods and things like that. And I did the basics but it just wasn't really my thing. And I think then the question is what do you want to use and what do you want to do? So now, I certainly supervise research and I hire consultants and I've been a consultant even for a couple of years myself but I didn't do the quantitative research because it just wasn't my passion. So I think that's also important. So if you think that there's something that you should have the basic skills in and then certainly do it but if it's really not something that you think you could see yourself doing in the long term sort of on a day to day basis then go in a different direction and try to get the other skills that you need. So I think I mean having a background in research certainly didn't, doesn't hurt. And for me it helped me to also refine what I was interested in. And again, for programming I think they're in humanitarian programming and in development programming there's more and more of a push now to show results and to show outcomes. And even if you can contract with different digital service providers and different researchers and things like that you wanna have the basic knowledge to be able to oversee that kind of work. I think it can be helpful. But yes, I mean I think the sort of mix of skills that you can get in the social sciences at Tufts is pretty good and you can top that up with a grad school degree if you're looking at programming. But I also have colleagues who don't have that background at all and they've certainly managed to move ahead in program management. Douglas. So for me I don't have any quantitative skills and I don't have a background in any of that. So for me doing the work that I do I guess the hard scale was becoming a lawyer or getting credentialed at least. And for better or worse the world looks at the number of degrees that you have. I think in the UN the P11 or the personal history profile that used to apply for jobs before you even get to what you've done lists your academic background for better or worse. But so depending on what you want to do you might have to go and get a specialized degree in it. I think that also part of my personal value I mean I don't have any great illusions about how good I am as a lawyer. I think I write well. I think that I'm smart enough but I'm certainly not the smartest person around. But I think that the soft skill of being able to forge effective relationships I think is really important because you do work at least in the UN context where your effectiveness is based on the relationship or at least in the secretariat context and political mission is the relationships that you build with government counterparts and sort of navigating that. My boss who is a really great lawyer is smarter than I am. She often dispatches me to sort of fix relationships and to sort of get things done in that sense. So I think that that's the other skill to have is to be agreeable I guess to people as well. My way is sort of being self-effaceted and joking about going bald and being old and all of those things and that works for me and I think everybody has to find that sort of skill because there are also jobs. I mean, there is a guy named Tochilovsky at the Yugoslavia tribunal and he spent his entire life as a so-called P4 which is senior, it's not the top but he had an encyclopedic mind of case law and so he could say, oh, you'd go to him and ask for a specific problem and he would say, oh, look at page 12 of this pretrial motion or the decision on pretrial motion in case X and you'll find there the answer to what you need and the citation you need and there are people who have that sort of skill and that's their value and then there are other people whose value is really to be a men's in that sense and that's sort of I think where I fit in I mean, I think I'm a good enough lawyer. I don't wanna disparage myself that way but again, I think just being able to get things done and to facilitate those relationships is also an important sort of soft skill if that's what you were asking for in soft skill. Yeah, no, it's exactly. It's like in part of that kind of networking and building relationship, right? So that you can build on that and just going off of that, one of the questions is for you Douglas on how does your JD and LLM degrees, how do they support your work in the UN with the tribunals and other agencies and in the missions? Like, is that what is the critical piece for you in being where you are? Well, obviously I work as a lawyer for the UN so having that, maybe the law is one of the most has the greatest divergence in the way in which people approach problems. One of my colleagues in the office, I mean, I'm a common law lawyer in the sort of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. One of my colleagues is a Kenyan or two of my colleagues are Kenyan and one is Austrian. And then we have a Sharia law scholar and we have a civil Afghan lawyer who doesn't use Sharia. And so then trying to reconcile very different modes of thinking about problems had to approach a problem because my first instinct is to go to American constitutional law or American criminal procedure law, which is a lot of ways similar but also has a different approaches to it. So for instance, right now we are because of COVID, we're talking about the introduction of remote hearings in Afghan courts. And the way an Afghan trial works is so radically different from what I understand as a trial. So in Afghanistan, the prosecutor interviews everyone, puts together a case file, gives it to the judge, the judge reads it, maybe gives it back to the prosecutor for more evidence, then calls everyone in, everybody makes an oral submission where the defense might make a written submission beforehand on the case file. And then basically the prosecution says it's peace, the defense gets up and says it's peace, the judge asks some questions, the accused person gets up and says her peace and then the judge issues a verdict which is so radically different from how I conceive of a trial working. And so then thinking about, okay, so now I've got to put myself in the context of working in an Afghan court. And then also thinking, well, what are the mechanisms for doing a video trial and how would that work and having parties in different places? And so there's a lot of those questions, but of course you always go back to your well of your training. But I think in the end for me, being a lawyer and studying philosophy, I guess in that context too, is just thinking about how to approach problems and thinking about things, I guess. And that second order approach to problems has been really, I think the most important part in being beaten into submission as a first year law student, especially in that first semester is a painful experience. But it also, it breaks you in a lot of ways and you get rebuilt and think about problems in a different way, maybe worse, maybe better in some ways. So for me, I think it's indispensable for what I want to do, although not always because American constitutional law, for instance, has no bearing on the way in which a case might proceed in Afghanistan, in Liberia it's slightly different because of the American colonial experience there, the experience with sort of an almost de facto colonial experience. And then at the tribunals, there was just sort of picking the systems and depending on the vagaries of the judges and your colleagues. So I think law is fun. I mean, I like being a lawyer and I like the way that I think about things, but it also makes you, it changes you as well, I guess. That makes sense. I don't know if that responds exactly to the question. So if I ever do just say Hansen, get on track and then I shut up. No, it's fine. And then Joanna for you. So a question about how valuable the research you did during your fall bright was in terms of next steps, whether grad school or the NGOs or the UN. Yeah, I mean, I kind of talked about it in the last question as well, but I think, I mean, especially if you have a topic that you're passionate about, I think it can help to sort of refine your thinking. If you're working, especially if you're doing field research and you're working with local organizations or international NGOs, that can also be an interesting way to enter into some of those kinds of organizations as well. And I mean, certainly again, having access to and working with national academic institutions as I did on the fall bright and local women's organizations or other sort of local networks is also, you know, it's another way to do that. So it can be really interesting in that sense as well. So I think it did help me. And then, you know, maybe if you have that experience then you may not need to do as many of those kinds of classes in graduate school or vice versa. If you don't do research in the field, you might do it in graduate school. I know for example, now at SIPA where I went to Columbia, they have a required course that all development and humanitarian students have to take where they're doing sort of a pro bono consulting project, which typically involves some kind of research as well. So I think, you know, it comes in one way or another, but definitely do, you know, try to focus on something that's of interest to you. Great. Okay, another question is that I think, Joanna, you mentioned having read, but what advice do you have for a grad student who is later in their careers and too old for the junior officer program? What avenues would you recommend for getting into the UN system? Yeah, I mean, from my side, as I mentioned, I think that, you know, linking up with alumni is really a smart way to go. You know, if you just apply sort of cold, you know, through UN websites and you don't have any connections, sometimes that can be difficult. You know, I'm speaking in my personal capacity right now. So it's not that if you know someone, that means you get a job, not at all. But if you, you know, if you can understand a little bit better the context of where that, you know, what that role is, if you know sort of the kind of experience that's being looked for, and if you've already had some, you know, internship or consulting experience with, you know, the team that you're looking at, because there's so many different sort of niches that you can have within the UN system, as you've seen already, you know, so far, I think that can really help. So if you can work through alumni or be able to get, you know, small projects at least or your first foot in the door or your first internship in that way, even for grad students, I mean, I started as an intern after grad school with, you know, some tiny stipend, and then from there was able then to get sort of first jobs, real jobs. Then that was, yeah, I think that's a good way to go. Great, great. Douglas, anything, did you want to add to that or? Okay, so another question is, to what extent have you considered working for your own national government versus staying at an international organization? We're both fine. Douglas, do you want to take that first? Yeah, well, you know, for me working, well, my boss in Liberia for a while was an American State Department lawyer, and she then tried to afterwards recruit me to go to, it was Rhode Island, the Naval Defense Academy or something like that. Naval College. Yeah, the Naval War College, there you go. You know, and she was a D1, I mean, fairly senior than also in the State Department when she went back and then was seconded from there to Rhode Island. And then she wanted me to come and it was very hard to tell her without seeming sort of insulting about her. Is that there's just no way that I could work for the federal government, you know, even under the previous president. That was just for me because of my approach to the world. That would have been impossible. My father was declared before they introduced conscientious objectors in the U.S. during Vietnam. My father before that was declared, I think, you know, mentally unfit for combat because he refused to be drafted in the early 60s while he was in the civil rights movement. So it was inconceivable and even now, you know, having to, and I say all this off the record, so please don't sort of comment too loudly on this to other people is, you know, look, again, it depends on what you're willing to do. I mean, I'm sort of an internationalist. I don't, I've spent parts of my life in the U.S., I've spent parts of my life in Germany. You know, part of me, the sort of the German experience is that, you know, governments can do wonderful things, but governments can also do horrible things. And I'm aligned to I think principle rather than patriotism in that sense. So, you know, for me working for a government, at least working for the U.N., I've never had a problem so far where I've had to support a position that I don't support. And I'm not to disparage my colleagues who, you know, work for the, for various foreign ministries in the countries where I work, but, you know, they also have to take certain professional stances that I'm not sure that I'd always feel comfortable with or prospectively that just the worry about it would be too great that it wouldn't feel comfortable for me. And that's again just a function of who I am and sort of the way in which I look at and approach the world and I already feel somewhat out of place sometimes when I, you know, working for the U.N., not quite being sure if that's quite the right place for me politically. But I think that at the same time, you know, we are dependent in that sense on our colleagues from national governments. And a day doesn't go by in which I don't call up the head of INL at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. And we have a very good working relationship and we're friends. I mean, he invited, he invites me to some social gatherings that they have. And getting into U.S. embassies anywhere in the world is a moral pain in the ass. So sometimes I just decline just on a logistical basis. But at the same time, it's just what you can, what you can reconcile yourself to, I think is the ultimate question. And there's dignity in doing that work as well. And I think standing up for institutions and right now, you know, speaking sort of very politically, I think right now more than ever, there's a need to strengthen institutions and to really ensure that they have the strength to resist, I think, a real onslaught on them. And so in that context, I think it's also, you know, working for the government is dignified. Doing right is dignified. Being principled is dignified. We're dignifying, but it all just depends on what you feel comfortable with. And for me, I don't think that I would feel comfortable working for any government, national government. Gotcha, gotcha, Joanna? Yeah, no, I think it's a good question. And I'm not sure if the person who asked the question was American, but certainly for, you know, the U.S. State Department, I had a number of colleagues in, especially from graduate school who went on to work for the State Department and came from very diverse backgrounds, even though, you know, from within the U.S., but, you know, with different, many of them with dual nationalities. And so I think there's a lot of work to be done from the inside, for sure. And the same could be said for the U.N., that, you know, if you're looking to make changes as well in big bureaucracies, that could be within your national government, foreign affairs department or development departments, or it could be within the U.N. or even some of the larger NGOs. So there certainly is work to be done in that way. And I also have a number of colleagues who've gone back and forth between their various national governments as well. So France, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, the U.K., they have quite strong sort of rosters and cohorts of technical experts in humanitarian development affairs. And some of them, for example, the Norwegians and the Danish even have standby rosters, they call them, where they deploy people to the U.N. And so, you know, if that's a possibility as well, sometimes you don't even have to be a national of that country. So it can also be another way, actually, I should have mentioned it earlier to even an entry point to the U.N. in different areas. So yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, for me, I just, I was interested in international NGOs and the U.N. for sort of intergovernmental nature, as Douglas was saying, sort of being the sum of its parts in that way. But I think there's also, of course, interesting, certainly interesting technical work to be done on behalf of national governments. And then, you know, eventually, I think once you move up to a senior enough position, then you can also have sort of an advocacy role to play. But maybe it depends on the personality as well and sort of your level of patience in order to get to that level. So I think maybe I was a little impatient after getting out of grad school. Yeah. Okay, here's a question. Thank you both for sharing your experiences. I had some questions about the humanitarian field. I spent the past year working at Oxfam America with their humanitarian team on disaster risk reduction. While there, I heard a lot about the evolution of the humanitarian sector and the humanitarian nexus and particularly on the role of development slash humanitarian agencies and NGOs, which are shifting focus from directing their own interventions and sending people in the field to becoming a more supportive and donor role for local actors and initiatives. I was wondering what you thought about this shift occurring in the humanitarian sector and maybe what you would advise to someone interested in starting out in the humanitarian world. Yeah, no, this is a whole other conversation maybe, but no, I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's certainly, that's certainly one of the big discussions and debates in the humanitarian sector, particularly since the Grand Bargain commitments in 2016 and the Grand Bargain is basically a compact between donors, major UN agencies and the Red Cross as well on how to basically do better humanitarian work and support the humanitarian development nexus. And so one of the big themes therein is called localization and that, another sort of big word, but meaning working more with local actors, building in the capacity of local NGOs. Oxfam has always been at the forefront of that. And I think, sadly, they recently announced even that they will be scaling down a number of their country offices, but part of the reasoning behind that is also to support, if I've understood well, to support local actors as well. So I think that's definitely one of the directions that the humanitarian sector is moving in. Again, fundamentally, the UN does support governments. So the UN agencies that I work with work through implementing partners and they might be international NGOs or national or local NGOs or civil society organizations or in the case of UNFPA where I work now, local health facilities and midwives. So we're talking really sort of grassroots level, but yes, I mean, in terms of capacity building, there's still quite a long way to go. And I think COVID, the COVID context has also shown us, for example, when we can't send in surge capacity that we're looking at sort of local and regional capacity and things like that. So it's an important theme. And in terms of linking to someone who's just starting out in the humanitarian field, again, it's just sort of, it's one of the major themes. And that's why I think being in a position where you are seeing the types of partnerships that can happen at the country level is important because you can see what that really looks like on the ground. And yeah, so it's one thing when we say we want to be more local, we wanna support organizations, but what does that concretely mean in terms of funding and training and those sorts of things? Douglas? Just say it very briefly, you can't do anything without having locals who work with you. And so in so far as that's, people who really wanna have a top-down approach to things are bound to fail because there's no way that I could ever have a contextual understanding of the countries in which I work without having somebody to either implement it because I don't speak the language or because I need somebody to actually explain things to me and make sure that I'm being appropriate in the way in which I approach them. So I think that's a good thing. I would just say, I mean, the only other part of it is sometimes it's very difficult for my national colleagues and this is not quite the same, but I think also that pertains to national NGOs is that we as internationals are transient. So we come into a place and we're there for a certain number of years, two years, three years, four years and that has its drawbacks, but it also means that we are free sometimes to go into meetings and say something that a national couldn't because she has to live there and she would then have to face the minister or whoever and that minister would look back at her and say, so there are certain sort of contexts in which I am free to say and do things that a national couldn't. So it's a double edged or it's a both and not either or I think, but in general, in implementing things and this doesn't apply to the secretariat, but I think in agencies, funds and programs, having someone on the ground who is there, who has a long-term investment in the country and being in the country is indispensable and needs to be supported more and thinking about this synergistically. Great, and our last question is, has the hierarchy bureaucracy international politics involved with working at the UN ever been frustrating for you? I think we'll have to turn off the record. Well, it's more, how do you find ways to work in a bureaucracy where things can, is it things move slowly? How are decisions made? How's the connection to what's happening on the ground reflect back to kind of the main offices, whether in Geneva or New York or wherever? I think I need a minute to think about it. Douglas wants to take a part shot. Well, I'll say that. It was a good question, Heather. Part of the frustration is also internal because I think that as Joanna said earlier, people are hierarchical within the UN too and people sort of having, who did you share a document with before it was sent to so and so? And that sometimes evolves and people have turf things. And I think that that's actually probably the most frustrating sort of politically in my context of times is I think my colleagues. I think that in general, having some humility about the work that we do and to think about, I mean, all of these systems, the places that we work in because something is not functioning quite right. And I think that, you know, looking at the US right now, looking at many places in Europe right now and despite the incredible development and institutions that have grown up coming now from the legal perspective, quite clearly things are not right here either. So I think having some humility in terms of the time frames which we approach problems in the countries in which we work, I think is important. And there's a sort of a delicate line between being sensitive to the difficulty with which things work and then also trying to draw a hard line about needing to implement things. So right now, you know, in Afghanistan, this is very public, you know, corruption is one of the major issues. I mean, it's down near the very bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Everybody knows that corruption is a big deal. The government accepts that certain people need to be arrested and to face trial for that and nobody then executes these arrest warrants. And so people are still wandering around or they're covered by it. And so that's frustrating, right? I mean, everybody feels frustrated about those things. But it's also, you know, then trying to steer or navigate the fine line between applying pressure on local counterparts and then also being sensitive to the realities within which they work in Liberia. That was also the same. You know, I worked with the special representative of the Secretary General as a special assistant and, you know, you get dispatched, you know, to go and discuss something with a minister and you sit down and you end up talking about people's families and all that sort of stuff. And you're really waiting to get to the point at hand. And that's frustrating. But at the same time, you have to, I think, also just appreciate, just as a matter, I think, a basic respect for the countries in which we work and the people that work there and the governments with which we work, that you can't just be bullheaded about it. And so in that context, I think I also understand or I'd try to be appreciative at least of the challenges that my colleagues face and sort of trying to understand my national government colleagues and to try to see the realities from which they work and to see about how hard you can push and where you can push and then also where you need to know, where you need to sort of soft pedal and be jubbler about things. Because ultimately they are the ones that have the levers of power in their country. And so that's part of it. And again, that's sort of the handcuff thing that I spoke about at the start is that working for the UN, you simply can't do certain things, right? I mean, it just doesn't work because of the nature of our relationship with our host states. And there are exceptions. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, they're all sorts of different people who do take a more, not adversarial but a more public stance about things that they disagree with. And then there are others that are very much sort of a technical approach or technical role. That's like the work that I have right now is very much technical calling up the guy works for the International Crimes Prosecutor in Afghanistan. And trying, understanding for him what the difficulties are for prosecuting Afghans, well, technically international forces, technically ISIS, technically the government and the realities within which he operates that are very different in which government officials are killed often. Understanding that he himself doesn't have police that report to him. There are a lot of different parts of this. And so that's part of the excitement too, is trying to, and the intellectual curiosity that you have about approaching problems and seeing how to actualize or to make a change in context in which change is very difficult because of the circumstances in which countries find themselves. And in many cases like Afghanistan, the wariness with which people might approach outsiders as well. And that's part of the difficulty. And that the wonders that you do have this access but the challenges that you, is that you don't have unfettered freedom to say what you want to say sometimes. So maybe what even needs to be said sometimes. Joanna? Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of sort of human politics you can find it anywhere whether it's non-profits or NGOs or academia. So it's everywhere. And I think that, and I put it in the chat box but I think the question of sort of just communications and learning how to work with people from very different backgrounds whether it's their professional background, the types of degrees that they have, the working environments that they come from. That's part of the maybe the challenge but also the really exciting part of working with the UN and such international institutions. So I think if you sort of keep your eyes on the goals and at least in my work on programming, the goal is really to support country offices as much as possible. And by that I mean supporting our clients and beneficiaries at the end of that line. So if you sort of keep that in mind and you're trying to, you might need to do a little bit of sort of side to side but you're trying to sort of keep that goal in mind. Then I think then you learn ways to maybe cut through the bureaucracy. And if I think about some of the best supervisors I've had and who've had good careers at the UN but also came from different backgrounds as well research NGOs. And I think that's kind of what they taught me that if you support your team, you support your teammates, try to take what's best about the UN that it has that sort of power in numbers, the sum of its parts and that it reports to member states but it can also sort of give feedback back to member states. So if I think about something, for example, when we talk about bureaucracy we might think there are a lot of procedures and policies and that can weigh things down and it can take a little bit longer than if you're in a kind of a startup NGO or something like that. But on the other hand, for example, the UN has made a big effort in recent years to make policies on what we call the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse within the agency and with partners. And so there's been this sort of huge concerted effort. And I mean, when I started out in 2007, 2008, I don't remember seeing those kind of codes of conduct and these kinds of procedures. So it might take a little bit of time but to have something like that at the global level and now you have to sign it no matter which agency you're working for and take an online trading no matter which agency you're working for and whether you're the truck driver or you're doing programming like I'm doing, it's the same. So in that sense, there can be also something positive about that bureaucracy that you can standardize certain things and have that kind of accountability. So I guess it depends on how you look on any given day. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you guys, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all these insights and we'll look to see you soon, hopefully. Maybe in person at some point. Yeah. We'd love to have you back up to Tufts to maybe talk and meet with the students directly once we can do that again. So. That'd be great. Yeah, good luck to everyone and they can reach out also if they have other questions. Great, great. Thank you so much. Take care. Thanks, bye. Be well. Take care. Bye, bye. Thank you. Bye.