 I wanna welcome everybody to today's webinar. Dennis has kindly joined us from Prague. So we can hear about intergovernmental organizations and specifically the OECD. So we're gonna ask him to start with his bio and kind of how he got to where he is right now. Dennis. Hey, well, hi everyone. Hi Heather, it's great to see you again. So as Heather mentioned, and maybe saw us, so I'm Dennis, Dennis Bravanets. I am originally from Prague Czech Republic. I'm half Czech. My dad's Czech. My mom's from Mongolia, but I grew up mostly in Prague. Spent a few years in Kazakhstan as well, and then went to the Tufts and graduated in May, 2018. At Tufts, I studied international relations with our concentration in international economics. And then I did a minor in entrepreneurial leadership studies, which now is just entrepreneurship, I think. So basically, I mean, I think academically and everything I've been interested in both international relations, the political science part, the economics, the anthropology courses that we had to take as well, but also sort of on the bit more business and finance side as well, which I think was covered a bit with the entrepreneurship minor. And yeah, I mean, in college, one of the first things was I had a startup with three other co-founders. We built this like mobile app and web app business. It was sort of the first introduction to the world of entrepreneurship and business, but then started diving more into my academics and international relations. And what I've realized is I'm fascinated and interested by the intersection of business and policy. And that's sort of my kind of guiding framework that has been, it's still very broad. And I think with every experience, I've been able to kind of narrow it down a little bit and it shapes it. But the intersection of business and policy is what sort of fascinates me. And so I would say one of those important moments was which I included in the sort of bio was I did an internship in Washington DC at this consultancy called the Albright Stonebridge Group, which is run and chaired by a former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who is Czech-American. So for me, it was an amazing opportunity to work in her firm and everything. And so what they do, it's a commercial diplomacy firm. I spent, I don't know, 10 weeks between my junior and senior year there. And advising Fortune 500 firms and other companies on market entry strategies, sort of advocacy with governments, including a media company who was facing political pushback in essentially European countries. So how does the board of directors react to this? And the real product there was client memos, right? And so papers and writing, doing sanctions policy analysis as well. And so that was a fascinating opportunity to see how companies navigate sort of global trade and investment and political risk as well, right? And so I realized, I mean, this was, and also we worked on tech policy sort of for a lot of the large firms. And that's, I think, a growing business for them and in general, right? And as a space. And so that was really fascinating. As I said, between my junior and senior year, and what I realized though, like you're in an advisory role, so you're neither the policymaker or advisor, nor are you on the business side, right? On the client side. But you get to see a lot of projects and a lot of things and with a lot of really, bless you, with a lot of really interesting people. And so then came back into senior year and I was scrambling like, okay, what do I do? I'm an international student. I was on an F1 visa status. So trying to figure out, okay, like what are my next steps? And I think, again, what I really, I've always been interested in not just front of a pure business role, but still deal with policy issues. I remember I was like interviewing for Uber and some sort of risk analysis job and threat and risk analysis. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, which is, that happens and you get a bunch of no's. But point being, maybe I'll try to wrap this. It was quite an interesting story because the OECD came to the Fletcher school. To Fletcher for some sort of, you know, informational session, I think early fall during my senior year, so 2017. And I'm sitting in the res. I had not heard about this event. This, I'm sitting in the res and all of a sudden a lady from career services, which I didn't really attend much. But all of a sudden the lady, you know, she sat down next to me and asked me, what do I do that it does? She just wanted to see. She said, oh, the OECD was here three days ago at the Fletcher school. And they mentioned that they have a recruitment pipeline for people with just a bachelor's degree. And that's called the Young Associates Program. And so I was like, oh, well, like super interesting. You know, I've heard about the OECD. I've cited it, you know, in a migration paper or something, but I had no idea what it really does. And no, so ended up applying to the specific recruitment program. As I mentioned, the Young Associates Program, which is a requirement, you cannot have a master's. So the OECD is the only, as far as I understand, the only intergovernmental organization today that it has a sort of a hiring scheme for individuals with only a bachelor's. And I'm sure you've heard, I mean, I remember there's some colleagues from the UN that spoke and you know, everyone has a PhD or a master's. And so this is a bit of a unique opportunity. And yeah, so honestly, I applied and somehow after, you know, three, four months of recruitment and you know, these things take long. It's a bureaucracy was able to, you know, get into, get the job. And I, at the OECD, I work in our Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, which basically helps advise as policymakers how to foster fair and efficient markets. And you know, and that's sort of, there was, you know, there were about six positions to apply for in specific directorates. And I said, this is exactly what I wanna, you know, this directorate is what I'm interested in. I applied the background fit in, and I will say, during my interview, my then, who became my manager, she asked me, have you had any experience organizing a conference? And I said, oh God, you know, the talking point about the IGL, you know, organizing Epic, moderating a panel. And she said, that's exactly, you know, it's a big part of what we do at the OECD is where, you know, we convene and we create a forum to have discussions between stakeholders. So a little bit of how I got, I think to where I am, maybe I'll stop there. Sure, great, thank you. And I'm wondering if you can, before we kind of delve into more about kind of what your job looks like and kind of the whole program, you can talk about what the OECD is and what it does, that'd be great. Definitely, definitely. So the OECD stands for the organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is a intergovernmental organization, which means it's an organization composed of sovereign states. The organization is established by a legal treaty and basically forms the basis of public international law. And the history of the OECD, it was founded in 1948 and it was founded to help administer the Marshall Plan after World War II. So I would say the OECD, as far as I understand, quite interested in diplomatic histories. I've talked with senior officials and older, you know, that have been around. What is really the history of it? And the NATO command and headquarters is about 700 was, 700 meters north of where the OECD headquarters is and it's in Paris. And so some would summarize it as NATO was the security pillar for the transatlantic relationship and the OECD was the economic sort of pillar for the transatlantic relationship. So that's a little bit of the history. And in 1961, it was changed. It was originally called the Organization for European Economic Cooperation and then it was transformed into the OECD and to extend membership outside of Europe. And so what basically the OECD is, it brings together member state countries and partners as well to work on key global policy issues at a national and local level. We basically are more or less a standard setter. We negotiate norms between these countries. As part of the OECD, there are international legal treaties that are formed as well. There are guidelines and standards that form sort of the recommendation, like what do the member states of the OECD believe in and how do we, I mean, my directorate, what are the expectations on business, on sustainable finance and responsible business conduct in global supply chains, for example, right? What is the responsibility of a multinational enterprise that comes is headquartered in the OECD which has comes with its values being from these member states that are democratic countries, democratic countries that have a market economy. There's criteria behind it, behind membership. And so what does it mean if a company is operating in a, maybe an emerging economy that's where there's maybe governance issues, a lot of corruption, there's still expectations that come from the governments where this company is headquartered, right? And so that's one area, for example, that I've worked on. So I would say to summarize briefly, it's an organization that creates a forum, forum member states like-minded, we call it like-mindedness, like-minded nation states to come together to negotiate policy, to create guidelines and recommendations. And so now we have 36 member states. The latest one is Columbia that joined from, and so the membership has expanded, right? I mean, we have our Secretary General, Angel Guria is from Mexico. He was the former foreign minister and minister of finance of Mexico. And yeah, so one other I think interesting stat is that the OECD member states, which are basically the most developed countries or industrialized countries in the world, the 37 countries represent approximately 50% of global GDP in a purchasing power period. And I would say maybe, because it's a smaller membership, which also comes with criticism, right? It's a smaller membership, that means more like-minded, it's easier to negotiate certain policies. And yeah, so if that I think summarizes, gives it a bit of a summary. Great, thank you. And then I was wondering if you can talk about exactly what the junior or the young associates program is and maybe what your day-to-day kind of responsibilities are, but also what are the, you said you chose from six options, right? What are the other options and things like that? Yeah, for sure. And so, as I mentioned, this is sort of one of the flagship pipelines of like how to get in to the OECD as a young professional or a recent graduate. So the young associates program was founded, I think maybe two, three years ago, I am part of the second batch or second class that joined the OECD. And what it is is a two-year program, so call it a graduate program, that's with the objective of giving you a hands-on experience as a policy analyst or economist. And you're basically undertake research and you do research and policy advice for your member state of countries. On different portfolios or areas of policy. And so, as I mentioned, I work in our director of financial and enterprise affairs, which works on sort of normative like expectations of business conduct, so anti-bribery issues of anti-corruption. We also work on corporate governance principles. So we have, we're the sort of home of the G20 OECD principles for corporate governance, which basically outline, what are the expectations from shareholders to the management of a company? And then also what we call the OECD guidelines for responsible business conduct or the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises, which are one of the, is sort of the premier government back standard of expectations, what does it mean to be a responsible business and actor in the global economy, right? And so that's sort of the area that I work in. The other, we have a bunch of other directorates for labor and social policy. We have our economics department, which does macroeconomic surveys. So maybe sometime if you follow the FT, there's a, I believe around, there's four economic surveys for our member states during the year, two that are interim. And so we released these, the GDP projections, macroeconomic analysis, country analysis, country surveys, right? So we have country desks that, and the IMF has this as well, the World Bank that do the research and then advise our member state countries on how to sort of foster inclusive growth and economic growth in their countries. And yes, it's always funny. You'll see our secretary general meet with the prime minister and have the reports, and he loves holding the reports. That's, so one of the, I think key things about the OECD as well, I mean, and I'm straying away, but I'll come back to the Young Associates Program as well, is that we do not extend any financing. So that's one of the big differences between, for example, the IMF or the World Bank where some would say we're more independent, but there are no real strings attached with sort of the policy advice that we give and the reforms that we're pushing for, whereas the IMF extends financing to countries and that might come with, it's a bit of a different nature of the work, but maybe to bring it back, we have a bunch of other director, we have a directorate for a science, technology, and innovation that looks at the digital economy. So how do we measure, what is the digital economy? How do you transform digital infrastructure in countries? And so we have all these different directorates. Another interesting one is, oh, center for tax policy. And so you may or may have not read about the digital tax reform that is impacting big tech that has become also quite a political and sensitive issue between our member states as well. So looking at, look, these big companies are not paying taxes. Some countries may think that's not exactly fair. They should be paying instead of if a company's headquartered in the Netherlands that has a different corporate tax rates and different maybe loopholes or whatnot, we have different tax regimes. If Amazon is selling in France, perhaps Amazon should be paying taxes where the revenue is generated. So in France and not the Netherlands, right? And so this is one other area that we work on. We then have sister agencies as well, the International Energy Agency, IEA, the Nuclear Energy Agency as well, which do their work. And so for this incoming batch in 2020, we've also had positions in those agencies too. So I mean, for the Nuclear Energy Agency, it's like you're interested in physics, nuclear and economics, it's very niche. And I would say that I would really recommend that you apply. I think it's something that with the OECD, I will say, I think at Tufts, we talk a lot about international security. And I think we push a lot of students into that field, not only of course, but I remember that was one of the big things, but what about international trade? International economics and economic cooperation. And so the young sister program sort of gives you an entry into it. So two year program with the idea that that will set you up to go to graduate school because for you to join the OECD and other international organizations through other means, through other, let's say recruitment processes, you need amount like before the young associates, the entry level official would have had to have, first, I mean, 10 years, I think five, six years ago, you need a PhD. Then they said, okay, we don't just need PhDs, let's master's level, but two years of work experience and minimum, right? So it's a bit difficult when you're a young graduate and you wanna join this world, but where do you start? I mean, does your internship experience count into the two years or is it two year full time? So this sets you up with two years of full time experience. There's potential for you to stay as well, which is my plan. I want one more year of work experience because I want to get hopefully a dual degree MBA and a master in public policy, which fits the sort of business and policy interest that I have, but generally, so I see my peers, they've done, and the cohort above me, right? So they've done two years and then they go do a like a diplomacy and governance and fill at Oxford, right? Or they go to LSE, some are looking to go into a PhD or a pre-PhD program and you know, your policy programs in the US, you know, SIPA, Columbia, et cetera. So that's a little bit of sort of the objective of the young associate program. And that's, yeah, I mean, there's some other ways also to join for your internships and becoming and consultancies. I can maybe speak to that, but yeah, I think. Do you wanna talk a little bit about kind of like the types of like the projects that you specifically work on in the kind of work that's given as a junior associate and also kind of, you know, do they have separate programming for you guys coming in? Like do you have meetings with officials in the rest of the organization and things like that? Yeah, great. No, that's a great question. So to be, I think summarize the work that I've done. I joined our within the director of financial enterprise, financial enterprise affairs. I joined our center for responsible business conduct. So I already mentioned the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises, which is a government back set of standards for what are the expectations on responsible business conduct in international trade and investment. I think the whole premise behind it is the OECD will push for open trade, liberalized capital flows and investment. So the whole idea is trade is good for the world, for the economy, foreign direct investment is also good and helps both sides, right? However, if you're investing in a country where there might be high risks of bribery, there might be lower labor standards. There might be human rights violations, even within supply chains. What are the expectations on business, right? And so we have this standard and then there's the implementation of it. So if you become a member of the OECD, you need to adhere to this, you need to commit to promoting these values and standards. Yes, it's soft normative law, right? So they are guidelines, which then some countries create domestic legal regimes using that standard, which can then sanction, you can sanction companies for violations of it. But from our point of view, this is a soft normative standard that we worked to promote. So as part of that, there's so many different parts of it. One of the things what we call is, we have a guidance on due diligence for responsible business conduct, which basically is this whole idea, just because I may be linked in my supply chain to human rights violations, I have a responsibility as a upstream business, right? And so what are the sort of tools that governments can be and recommendations that governments can give to businesses, which should basically have this framework for these expectations on identifying these risks, how do you mitigate against them? And also how do you remedy if you are connected, your business is connected to, let's say, I mean, in Brazil, there was the large dam collapse, right? That took place, I believe maybe a year or two years ago, with a large multinational enterprise affairs. What are the expectations on, well, how are you gonna remedy the people that may have suffered adverse impacts that are linked to your business, right? So that's one area of work that I worked on, and specifically also in the financial sector. So this starts to get into more of a sustainable finance angle and looking at what is actually the role of a bank if it's lending to a company that might be linked to adverse impacts. And so you see maybe the specific language is a little legalistic. We have all sorts of definitions for it, right? Because it can get very sensitive. I mean, these are, there's a lot of reputational risk for companies, especially those that care and we expect companies to care about this, right? And also looking at child labor issues, personally I didn't work on that area, but we look at that as well, within the garment supply chains that sort of came out of the Rana Plaza incident in Bangladesh that took place, right? That killed over 9,000 workers. And so that's one area. As part of the young associate program, there's a bit of a rotation and movement and I'll get to the mentorship part as well. I was asked to join our director's office within the structure, right? So here I'm a little analyst at the lowest lowest supporting my division and we have a, you could almost call it a cabinet. So a director is basically like a minister and you have like a cabinet. So there you basically, I did a three month rotation where I supported our whole directorate, feeding talking points, briefings, short policy papers to our secretary general, so secretary general is going to meet with Prime Minister X in a week and a half on a mission. He will be speaking about corporate governance and anti-bribery and responsible business conduct because the minister or the prime minister cares about that issue, draft talking points, briefing notes, et cetera, right? So that's been super interesting and so there's a movement as well within the young associate's program. You can't really move directorates. I don't think that's very common, but there's quite a bit of mobility internally. And I think a lot of that actually comes, when you join as a young associate, I think you have a bit of a platform from which you can connect with officials and they know that you work hard in school, that you can do the job, you are young. And so there's a lot of networking internally. I think in terms of programming, there have been events, but I think some of it has been more on us actually. So maybe a 20-second story, I was in our canteen, I'm having lunch, I'm talking to my mother. All of a sudden next to me sits our deputy secretary general who was the chief economist in the German Ministry of Finance and was the main guy behind Germany's, they basically, during the Eurozone crisis, he was basically the guy behind Germany's policy. So he sits next to me and I tell my mom, let me chat with, this is an opportunity for me to talk to, you know, deputy secretary of Rutger Schuchnecht. And I speak with him and I say, look, you know, with a bit of background, we're the young associates, would love to have lunch with you or some coffee. He was very happy to do that. Ended up having a meeting with him. And also we had a meeting scheduled with our secretary general with our program. So plenty of opportunity, both, you know, on your own initiative, but also, you know, kind of supported by our human resources management. Yeah. Great. And I was wondering if you can talk about, so people stay in for two to three years? Is that the limit? Yes, yes, generally, exactly. And then are there opportunities if you go to grad school to come back? Like, is that encouraged or is that? Encouraged. There's no sort of, you know, return guarantee offer. Perhaps that might take place, you know, three, five years from now, or, you know, there might be some funding associated with it, you know, going to grad school. The program's still very young, you know, so our team is working really hard to try to shape it and bring us back and everything. So, you know, but I think it's about building those relationships, you know, internally. Hey, look, you might do a one-year master's, I don't know, LSE or somewhere in Europe or back to Tufts or two-year master's. And they might say, look, sounds great. We know about the project that's gonna come up. We'll open up a position for you, so that can for sure happen. And I've seen it with the cohort above me, yeah. Great. And can you also talk about kind of the skills you put into use? At the beginning, you were talking about policy briefs and policy analysis and kind of what can, if students are interested in something like this, what are the skills that are good for them to hone both hard and soft skills? Yeah, I think the first sort of key part of this is writing. Like we're in the business of writing, you know, which is, I think, you know, I, and of course research as well, right? I mean, you're, you know, you're going to be tasked to, maybe I can tell you about a specific report. So we have a business and finance outlook for 2020 that's gonna come out later this year, but it's about 2020 and what's going on. I co-drafted a chapter looking at basically sustainability and corporate lending, so bank lending and what are, you know, what are the sort of changing expectations and legal regimes that are happening. It's part of that, you know, let's say the soft and the hard, soft side, I interviewed about, I think, 20 heads of environmental social governance at leading banks in the OECD. So, you know, being able to communicate, being able to, you know, ask the right questions, understand the topic and be able to dive very quickly into an area, read up a ton and come out with the analysis and say, what does this mean for business? What does it mean for this government? And take that and then write it, write about it. Make sure that your writing is clean, it's consistent. Your references are bulletproof because they will read it up the chain. And you do not want someone up the chain to say, well, actually I went into the report and I couldn't find the number. I need you to go back, right? And so, I mean, this has been, you know, any sort of job, right? But because we're in the business of evidence-based policy recommendations, you need to make sure that's, because it will be cited, right? It might be mentioned by the Secretary General. He might use that stat or that, that let's say a policy recommendation to tell a government what they may or may not should be doing, right? And so yeah, so I think, you know, in terms of hard scale, and I don't work as an economist, right? So there's, I am not in the business of a lot of quantitative work. I think there still is, you know, data work that you have to do, some data gathering, et cetera. But so it really depends where you are. But on my side, I will say, I mean, my boss, my first manager, she went to law school, so she's a legal expert. So even though I personally am not, you know, I work on policy, but that is of course interconnected with economics and law as well. So being able to, I think, navigate these areas. And I think on the soft side as well, especially when you're a junior, you know, do the work and be willing to recommend something to your boss and to your manager. You know, your manager might tell you to take one approach, but you're the one who's doing the research, right? And the analysis. And if you think you might be finding something that's a bit different, speak up, make the case for it, right? And I think that's when things become exciting and you can build more responsibility. So yeah, so I think, you know, being able to find the evidence, you know, scour the web and databases and being able to condense that into, you know, what's the point? What's your message? And that it's substantiated. It needs to be substantiated. And last thing I think on the soft side is, we're in the business of diplomacy as well. So sometimes you have to say something without saying it directly. And that's when you have to get crafty, you know, with the language and also not piss off government officials. Yeah. Gotcha. And as, you know, students who are current undergrads, what's the best way to kind of practice that type of writing? Cause, you know, at university, you're usually asked for something longer or a longer research paper or you're not condensed in the same way. So what are good ways to practice that? Do you think? Yeah, great question. I mean, as part of the recruitment process, you have to have a writing test. And, you know, that's when, you know, you have two hours and you're going to have to write, remember, maybe specifically with my writing test, it was something like in 500 words, you know, outline why how sustainable development goals and responsible business conduct and supply chains are interlinked or how responsible business conduct can actually contribute to sustainable, you know, countries and businesses reaching or helping reach the sustainable development goals. And, you know, you got to write that in like, you know, 45 minutes to an hour because then you have to write another piece, right? And so I would say potentially, as in terms of training is giving you self, you know, maybe ask your professor or a colleague or a friend or a student, your roommate, give me some sort of prompt and time yourself, right? In one hour, you're going to write 500, 600 words, you know, whether it's, you know, short paragraphs and essays or talking points. I think that's really, you know, under pressure, you know, being under pressure, time pressure is something that's, I think we all, you know, any young professional faces and especially, I mean, with us, you know, so you have to sometimes turn out a lot of writing very quickly. And I would say I really point to, you know, get those internships where you are doing this, right? I will, you know, I was taught how to write both at school but at the Albright Stonebridge group. You know, we had former chief speech writers like teach us how to write concisely and also follow the style guide, you know? I mean, every organization has sort of guidelines for how they want you to write and study it and learn how to do it. So, I mean, I think school, you know, gives us, and the other part I would say is, I mean, I cross-registered for a Fletcher course where we ended up doing a lot more memo style writing, maybe a thousand words, you know, on a particular issue due within, you know, five, six days. And so that also helped a lot. So, yeah, if that helps. Yeah, no, that's great. All right, one of the questions we have from Sarah is she thanks you for your time and asks when you join a directorate, let's say bribery and corruption, work with a particular region or member state or do you work with all member states equally? Yeah, no, that's a great question. It depends. So I would say sometimes we have this director called the Global Relations Secretariat, which basically leads on engagement with non-member states. So there it's like, you're gonna be doing policy analysis and report writing, but for Kazakhstan, which is not a member, right? Or you've countries within sort of Eurasia or post-Soviet. There you gotta learn, you know, you have to speak Russian, et cetera. You're an expert in the region. We also have regional projects. So for example, if we're talking about, you know, Latin America and the Caribbean, we have a specific project looking at promoting responsible business conduct in Latin America. So there, you know, when that job opening opens up, you need to speak Spanish, you know, Portuguese is, you know, welcome, et cetera. So it depends, but you will like, for example, on like, you know, an anti-Bribary. So we have the convention on anti-Bribary, which is I think one of the most sort of hard law kind of treaties that we have. And there's monitoring every year of countries, each member state, and not just member state, but adherent. So non-member states can adhere to these instruments. So I believe even Russia is an adherent to the anti-Bribary convention. So as part of that, you will go on mission to Russia. You will do fact-finding missions, you will speak with officials, you will speak with NGOs, et cetera. You're gonna have to set up those meetings. You're gonna figure out who is who, right? You're going to, it will be, you know, if you're gonna be the one doing it, you likely have to speak, you know, some of that language, right? So again, giving a vague answer, it's a big organization, right? So it really depends. And I think in the end, the advice is, you know, you'll see the job opening, and you just have to, you know, you also have to be flexible. Like personally, I never really looked too much at, you know, corporate responsibility or like sustainable finance, but I saw that opening. I said, I think I can, you know, I can do the job and I applied for it, and you just have to kind of break in, you know, in the beginning. Great. Another question from Guarav is, can you please talk about opportunities for students who are not a citizen of a member country of the OECD? Yeah, that's a great question. It's a bit tricky, especially with the OECD. To be an official, you have to be a citizen of a member state. I remember one of my friends from college, she was applying for it. He was starting to network with some alums at the OECD and then he realized Romania is not in the OECD. You know what I mean? And so that's where it gets a bit strict. But there are, so if you are a consultant, so that is a non-official status job, but you're still doing, you know, basically the same job as a policy analyst, you do know, I believe you do not have to be an official. So for example, I think I mentioned, you know, Columbia becoming a member, as part of the monitoring of Columbia and its adherence to the OECD, you know, there was a lot of work done on anti-bribery, anti-corruption. There's, I had a friend and colleague who's from Columbia who was not, you know, she was a consultant. Many times then these consultants will then become an official staff member. For example, Costa Rica right now is sort of one of the main countries that might become a member. So, you know, there's consultants internally who will likely then become officials. So that's one thing. For an internship, you do not have to be a member, you do not have to be a citizen of a member state. And then finally, the sister agencies and there's certain other parts. So for example, we have the development center, which does like a lot of development economics work and reports and advice for, you know, development strategies for countries. There you do not, I believe you do not have to be, you do not have to be a citizen of the OECD or a member of state to have an official job. But that's because for example, I believe India is a member of the development center, you know. So there's some intricacies. The International Energy Agency also has a broader membership than the OECD itself. So you can leave from a different country, not OECD members. Great, great, thank you. Then, Leif has a question. Hi, Leif. Can you elaborate on what kind of econ skills the OECD requires? Are there any tracks within the Young Associates Program for people without econ courses, such as diplomacy tracks? Yeah, yeah. No, that's, so of course, I mean, the ease and the acronym, right? So economic cooperation, but as I mentioned, I think broadly there are a lot, there are people and staff who maybe never even took an econ course, you know. And so, you know, it's not like it's a requirement. There's no requirement. You need to have had, you know, macro, et cetera, econometrics, but it depends on what you're working on. So as I mentioned, my work is more, you know, on the policy side and promoting certain normative standards and stuff. So there's, you have to understand the economic context, you know, of what you're working on, but it doesn't necessarily mean you are crunching numbers, you know, doing econometrics every day, et cetera. And I haven't had to do that, but it depends where you are. But even if you joined the economics department, for example, one of the positions was in the office of the chief economist, there you're basically taking what the, you know, PhD 20 years of experience economist is doing, what does that mean? And you put it on a slide deck, et cetera, you understand the economy. Maybe you might actually, you know, you will work on the technical stuff too. But so you don't necessarily, you know, it really depends, especially at this early stage. However, so I guess if I understand the question is, you know, correctly, do you mean, are there tracks for non-econ people? Is that, is that it? Yeah. No, that's true. And I mentioned, for example, the global relations secretariat, you know, if you're, you might work on some sort of, you know, the digital strategy for Kazakhstan, right? Something like that. So you do need to have some sort of substantive, whether it's regional or substantive area that you kind of want to hone in on and when you apply, I mean, you just, you know, you have to bring that out, right? In your cover letter, et cetera. But I think there's tons of opportunities. It's, you know, it's a large organization. We have a bunch of directorates working on various issues. So. You just maybe run through the steps of the interview process or the application process, just what that was like and how it played out. Yeah. No, definitely. One of the questions is, what titles do you look for in job openings for newer graduates? Got it. You know, if you go on the site or when you look for it, what are you looking for? Got it. So I guess, first part, just about the process. So like the portal, there's like a portal. So if you look up like Young Associates Program, you basically, sorry, I just have a cat here. Oh, cat. But I have to, it's bothering me a little bit. So basically, you know, you look up OECD Young Associates Program. We have a bit of an old school website. It makes it a little difficult to navigate, but you know, you find it, the portal opens up in like November. So let's say if you're gonna start September, 2021, you're gonna have to apply December, 2020. November, 2020 is when the portal opens up. What's happening right now is all the directorates are submitting applications to HR saying, hey, we want a Young Associate. You know, and so everyone's figuring out, you know, who's gonna, who can host whom, where, right? And so you go, so you apply. I mean, you know, as part of that, it's cover letter, your references, you have to include, you know, your CV, et cetera, you know, your classic stuff. And from that, they do a screening, a broad sort of sweep from all the applicants. And you can apply to multiple directorates, but they recommend, you know, we recommend sort of more like two, math, two, three, because you don't wanna be spreading yourself too thin, right? I mean, and then you're also applying, you know, there's three different applications and as I mentioned, you know, I'm interested in business and policy. So I saw directorate for financial and enterprise affairs. I did not wanna join the cabinet of the Secretary of General, which is a completely different line of work, right? Non-substantive, much more of like support, you know, advisory support and, you know, briefings and things like that. So point being, you know, so you apply, then, you know, maybe three weeks later, they let you know if you made the first cut. After that, you're given, it's kind of a, it's a little bit like consulting to an extent. I mean, then you have like a, some sort of cognitive test thing. I had, you know, they kind of change it every year. And so there's some sort of test. I had some like logic thing, which, you know, you can prepare to an extent and of course, happy to be in touch, right? With people as this, you know, as this kind of opens up, right? And give some advice. So then you have that step. So there's a lot of steps. It's part of that. Then they put you to the directorate. So you're like, they say, okay, you're great, you know, you're a good candidate. Now we're gonna send you to directorate for their, them to look at your profile. Then you're gonna have likely a first phone enter. Oh, you're gonna have an HR phone call with a, you know, staff from HR, more behavioral. I remember one of the questions was, for example, you corrode a report with your colleague and your colleague did not send it or didn't deliver and your manager replied to, you know, on email, like how would you deal with the situation? How would you react, you know, et cetera? So behavioral, they wanna know, are you able to work in a multicultural environment, right? Et cetera, that's very, you know, diplomatic. And so after that, you start to get into more of the substantive stuff. So then you're gonna have a likely a written test that I've already, I think, mentioned or talked about, which is particularly true policy area, right? So when I got my written test, I said, all right, I'm going to scour the website, you know, read all the reports in such a way that I even footnoted, I added footnotes to my written test to show that I know what you're talking about, that I show, you know, showing mastery, right? Of that substance, the policy area. After that, you'll have probably a final interview. Just, yeah, but likely when you're at that step, you're pretty deep in. I will say it's quite a numbers game. I will say that there's limited positions, there's a lot of applicants, you know, from 37 member countries, so, but again, I will say I literally, I was in Ginn, I submitted two minutes before the deadline, I did no networking, and it was just going through the process, I then reached out to a young associate who was already in it to just say, hey, like, what's the process like? And we're all very happy to chat, you know, we all went through the process, but yeah. Great, great, thank you. And then, is the OECD have similar programs for non-OECD nationals? Are there other programs similar to the OECD that you were thinking of during senior? Yeah, I think, you know, there's no other program like this, just for non-nationals. As I mentioned, you know, Development Center, you can look at another pipeline, you know, you might apply for an internship, then you become a consultant, you stay on with the team. That's one other way to enter the OECD as well. And other than that, you know, other international organizations, I believe that the World Bank has a program as well, maybe a year or something like that, and you know, the World Bank's membership is much broader, so there's that. But I will say it was, you know, I found out about this because of that story of being in the rest and just, you know, the OECD came too tough, which was just great, right? But I think in terms of, you know, generally this is quite limited opportunities at this stage, but even, I think the IFC now, everyone's sort of moving towards getting younger, people, you know, kind of reducing requirements on the education side, right, for masters. I think the IFC also has some, you know, jobs that you do not require a master. So you look for, you know, bachelor's degree, you know, you might see advanced degree preferred, but that apply, right? Yeah. Great, great. And then you talked about the importance of kind of that internship with the Albright Stonebridge. And how did you find that? How did you look for that? And then, and also as you build your network, how are you doing that within the OECD? And, you know, how are you looking for mentors within the OECD? Oh, thank you. That's a great question. And a little bit of a story as well with Albright Stonebridge Group. So first, I think I reached out to a Fletcher alum, Chris, who is a Hungarian American, went to Fletcher. I found him through the alumni directory. And I hope that our students know what it is because it's such a resource where you can filter by location, right, of alums, education, the firm. I think it's like force.toft something, you know, and so maybe we can find the link at some point, but I remember, you know, I found out, I sort of found out about the Albright Stonebridge Group somehow this was also late April. Honestly, this was around spring fling time and I did not have an internship secured, you know, for that, between junior and for that summer. I got rejected by something else I thought that was gonna go, you know, come through. So then I reached out to him by email and, you know, this alumni directory is amazing because you also have the Gmail of these alums, you know. I'm in there with my Gmail account. So this goes straight to the personal inbox. I set up a call with Chris and within a week I got an answer. You know, I went through the interview process as well. And so I would, you know, really use that. As I mentioned, he's a Fletcher alum. He went to Boston College for undergrad, but tapping into the Fletcher network is what I mean, especially in this field, you know, we have to use what we have, right, around on campus. Great, great. And then developing then, yeah. Yeah, right. So I think just one thing there, I spoke with Chris four weeks ago. He worked a lot on the tech practice and your practice at the Alba Stormbridge Group. I have kept in touch, even though the internship was 2017 summer. I was a public policy manager at Facebook, you know. So, you know, it's working for Mark and Cheryl, you know, on their policy work, right. So, you know, he's a mentor of mine and an advisor. I keep in touch internally at the OECD. It's all coffee chats, you know, reach out. I would say there's one individual that I would really credit with helping me when I moved to the director's office and I was doing a different line of work. I had to support with writing a speech on fintech regulation, which honestly had no idea about, you know, 700 word speech for our deputy secretary general, Kono, who would speak to a banking association. Know that this guy Rob, he, that's his policy area. He's the expert, you know, I wrote to him, hey, we have this request, we need to get this done. He said, take the first step, take the first step on drafting it. I did the, I worked hard. I did the job to make sure that it's a nice draft, that he knows that I can do the work, right. And I maintained our relationship, even after those three months. And, you know, he, for example, he went to CIS and did an MBA at Michigan and he's in America, you know, and he knows talks and everything. So he's always really, and we're in a very European setting, right. And so there's not too many people studying the US as well. So there's a bit of that too. I've networked with the, you know, the Czech community at the OECD that's important for my network in Prague, right. So developing all these relationships, having those coffee chats, which means you might have to work a little bit later, you know, because it's taking time out of your day, but all of these things and, you know, we're young, right. So it's, especially when you have your, you have secured this position, you're there to learn, right. And to ask for advice, read about their bios and the work they've done and the institutions and to just sort of foster that relationship, I think. Great. Asking for recommendations, right. Like, do you know someone who has worked on something else, you know, who are the Tufts alums who are at the OECD and other places and even for graduate school, right. So, you know, it's such an important place, you know, everyone went to graduate school. So you sort of say, okay, like who's gone where and people are willing to speak. So, and then it helped with your day-to-day work too, when you need to reach out for other things. Great, great. Well, this has been great. Thank you for spending the time. Is there anything else you wanna leave the students with or? No, a big thank you to you, Heather, huh. And the IGL, as I mentioned, it was a big talking point when I was interviewing. You know, as I said, have I had experienced running, you know, working on a conference? Yes, and hands-on and, you know, it's I think pretty crazy sometimes, the amount of responsibility that we got, you know, with Epic, with the conference and, you know, then a conference, you know, and with speakers that are even more high level than what I've seen at the OECD sometimes, you know, and so it's a great training and so, you know, again, you know, happy to connect with everyone and yeah, and keep helping out. So it'd be great to get more Tufts alums, right, and on the OECD. Great, yeah. So is it okay if people ask for your email to hand that out? Yeah, definitely. Last name, first name at gmail.com, please, if you wanna circulate it. Happy to chat to our own LinkedIn or whatnot, so. Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much again. Great, thanks so much. And if people are in Paris sometime, I mean post-COVID world, whenever that will be, you know, please come by, we can always get lunch at the OECD and everything, so. Or have an IGL alum event there too, you know, so. There you go. That's what we need. All right, we'll look forward to it. Enjoy the rest of your vacation. Thank you so much, yeah, bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.