Doug Lau didn’t originally plan to specialize in global public health, but opportunities led him to a specialty he now loves. He talks to us about being an Aga Khan Foundation fellow, gives us tips for making yourself valuable to a development organization, and why if you’re stood up for a meeting in Tanzania, you should head for the bar! Watch his series of videos below.

Victor Mings has worked in Austria and the Netherlands and made the switch from aerospace engineering to software development. He talks to us about switching specialties, what he did to salvage a bad interview and land his current job, and the magic of the IAESTE internship program (and why you should Google it right now). Watch his series of videos below.

Laura White got her start in television by playing dead. After offering to play a dead body for a friend’s feature, she made her first contact in the business - which quickly led to ten more. She talks to us about sending television crews around the world, gives tips on climbing the ladder in the world of unscripted television, and tells us what will get your resume sent to the bottom of the pile. Watch her series of videos below.

Michael Bouliane believes in being a life-long student, and is always learning and adapting to the new trends in his sector. He talks to us about working for corporate clients as well as NGOs, adjusting to Beer O’clock, and relishing the moments he gets to be in a “Robin Hood” role. With more than 15 years in the industry, he gives us his best advice on how to kickstart your career, and what he looks for most when hiring. Watch his series of videos below.

For more than 15 years, Rachel Faller split her time between San Francisco and Cambodia, running her no-waste ethical fashion company, tonlé. She talks to us about being a Fulbright Scholar, becoming an unintentional businesswoman, and what it takes to run a business in Cambodia. Find out how your closet and the Great Pacific garbage patch are related, listen to Rachel’s best advice for aspiring social entrepreneurs, and find out what lesson she had to learn when she first arrived in Cambodia. Watch her series of videos below.

"Things get lost in translation. For example, if a British person says 'Oh, that's really interesting', what they really mean is they absolutely hate it. But the Americans don't understand that, they think the Brits actually think that's interesting, but interesting in North America is a good thing. Interesting in Britain is not a good thing.""Do internships, try things on your own, make videos, run social media campaigns for your friends...and talk to everyone and tell everyone what you're doing. If you can't be a self-promoter, then you can't promote anyone else.""Networking 101. People will always ask you what are you up to these days, what kind of job are you doing, so you can use that to launch into either what you're doing or what you want to do. And I find it's really helpful, in any kind of context, to tell a story... It's an amazing way to kind of get on the same level as somebody.""I think the biggest mistakes I see are people not being honest when they make a mistake. You're so much better off admitting you did something wrong, than if you try to hide it, or that you pretend it never happened. Because it's amazing how those things can come back at you. But it's also amazing how often people don't really care if you make a mistake. They'd much rather know and help you fix it.""You need to know when to push and when to hold back. If you push too much, too quickly, if it's unnecessary to push, you could potentially ruin those relationships forever.""Don't be afraid of being lonely. Some of the hardest things I've found, certainly about moving to the Czech Republic, was being alone and trying to pretend that I was fine...You don't always have to be so strong with everyone all the time. It's okay to feel lonely, it's okay to feel isolated, and it's okay to talk about it."

The verdict is in: some level of post-secondary education is key to getting hired... but there is more to it than that.

The verdict is in: some level of post-secondary education is key to getting hired... but there is more to it than that.

Abilities that will help you succeed? Definitely being resilient, open to learning about new cultures; checking your own biases and making sure you’re not ethnocentric, and you’re very aware of your privilege and your background. You have to be able to laugh. There are lots of times I’m picked on for how I pronounce things, or for how little I still understand about the country even though I’ve been here for six months. Be willing to learn, willing to make friends quickly, and be open to accepting every invitation that comes around. I did a unique Masters program, that was very applied; it was almost college-like. An example of a class I took was impact evaluation, so learning how to conduct a development project and then learning how to evaluate it so it can be scaled up. So, for example, implementing a new curriculum in rural schools, in only a few areas, and then determining if it worked and you had a good result, and then seeing where it could be a province-wide or nationwide program. The Canadian government has an incredible internship program. It’s called the International Youth Internship Program, IYIP. It has internships for people under 30, and you only need a college degree or university degree and no prior experience. They will send you to a developing country for six months, and pay for your learning experience. You don’t have to study development or political science or sociology beforehand. They send people who are interested in the environment; they send people who are interested in computer science; they send mathematicians. Everybody has something to offer in development. I think that’s what so unique about the field I work in. Global Affairs Canada is our big ministry of foreign affairs, trade and development; it’s all amalgamated into one. I did work on the development side when the amalgamation was new. It had a policy section, so I was working on what Canada’s policies, what our stances on development were in international bodies, for example the G7 or the G20. The other side would be our operations and programming, so giving out grants to NGOs, and monitoring them, ensuring they had a gender component and an environmental component, and developing relationships with the NGOs that are on the ground conducting those projects. At World Vision, which is such a large NGO, there are so many different areas you can become involved in. We work in education, for example, running after school programs. We also work in health where we’re trying to improve sanitation of children in Mongolia; we work with mothers, doing pre-natal classes. We also work on disaster risk reduction, Mongolia is prone to earthquakes, so we get people ready for that, teach how to prepare for that. Or simple things like fire, how to stop, drop and roll. But that’s just programming. We also have accountants, who check all of the books and make sure we’re spending properly; we have procurement officers who find the best companies to work with. And then, we have our strange team working on building relationships with the private sector to get Mongolians helping other Mongolians. We also have communications, so if you’re interested in taking pictures and videos, we need people to capture the essence of our work, and communicate that to donors so they can understand where their money is going. So it’s quite a multifaceted field.