So tell me about that process – what did you do at undergrad, and how did your job-search go?
Alanna: I graduated from Georgetown with a bachelor’s
degree in Middle East Studies, and realized there was nothing I wanted
to do that I was qualified for. I applied for a lot of administrative
assistant jobs and then found an overseas internship program at the
American University in Cairo for recently graduated seniors. I applied
and was accepted – so I went to Cairo to work for AUC there as the “head
intern” in the Office of the University President. It was for one
academic year, and I was paid $300/month and given a great apartment in
downtown Cairo.
I spent the year learning to live in the Middle East, learning about
university administration, and wondering what I would do next, since I
already knew there were no jobs I wanted that I could get with my
bachelor’s degree. I realized all the stuff I did want to do required an
MPH, so I ended up in an MPH program at Boston University. I LOVED it.
As an undergraduate I really studied and fought and bled to hold a GPA
of 3.0, and then grad school was just where my passion was – I got
straight As. I had to work, but the work was so interesting, it didn’t
feel oppressive. I took loans to get through grad school, and I am still
paying them now. My aim is to clear them by the time my 4-year-old son
goes to university!
I didn’t have the usual post-school job search. After I had finished
my coursework, while I was writing up my MPH paper, a classmate got in
touch with me. His dad worked for UNFPA (the United Nations Population
Fund), and since I was interested in reproductive and maternal health I
had been in email correspondence with his dad (he had mentored me a
little). His dad was at a reception in New York and met the Central Asia
UNFPA director and told him that he knew a girl who might want to be an
intern with UNFPA. He gave me the email address for the guy in
Tashkent, Uzbekistan. I basically just emailed a million times until he
said I could be their intern. I was an intern for a year, and then got a
job with a USAID-funded health project, since I was already there in
Tashkent and knew the situation. At this point my only previous field
experience was the year in Cairo aside from a summer in Kuwait City in
high school and some family visits to Karachi.
I didn’t have any funding for the internship – I just estimated how
much it would cost me every month to live in Tashkent, figured out how
long I wanted to stay (six months), then I got a job, saved up the
money, and got on a plane to Tashkent. There is funding for overseas
internships, but most of it seems to be for graduate students. I
actually ended staying at my internship for a full year, funding the
extra six months with a US government fellowship that no longer seems to
exist and a stipend that UNFPA found for me (they also reclassified me
as a consultant at that point). I think I was on the budget as their
English teacher! It was not a large stipend, and for six months my
little brother actually paid my student loans for me (he’s a great
guy!), but then his financial situation changed, and I deferred them.
But I got to Tashkent on my own, and I don’t think I could have gotten that fellowship if I wasn’t already there.
The internship pretty much launched my global health career – it led
to the job that led to my next job and so forth. My first real job after
the internship was as a program manager with a USAID-funded health
project. It was a great job for me at that point – I did a lot of
writing, which teaches you about the inner workings of development work
very quickly. It also had more actual work than expat jobs usually do; I
was involved in designing educational campaigns on health topics and
writing focus group guides. I even did some training.
Well, this is inspiring.
Skaityti toliau...
