Roland Hoksbergen, Professor of Economics, Director of International Development Studies Program, Calvin College

By Evelyn Garland, Student Outreach Coordinator
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH)

Roland Hoksbergen earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame and since 1983 has been Professor of Economics at Calvin College where he also serves as director of the International Development Studies program. He lived for seven years in various countries of Central America and from 1986-89 was the founding director of the Latin American Studies Program of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities. His research and writing focus on development issues, including civil society, neoliberalism, NGO partnerships, the role of the private sector in development assistance strategies and transformational development. His articles have appeared in World Development, Development in Practice, the Journal of Developing Areas and Faith & Economics as well as in handbooks and encyclopedias of development. With Lowell Ewert he co-edited Local Ownership, Global Change: Will Civil Society Save the World? (World Vision/Marc 2002). He frequently consults with faith based development organizations, especially the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee and Partners Worldwide.



Getting started

Evelyn: How did you get into international development?

Roland: I can tell you my story as I understand it, and include what I think I can include and should include. But I also believe that we are all a bit self-delusional, that we tell ourselves stories that are sometimes not completely true. I think part of this is because we don’t really know completely the reasons. Still, I’ll give it a try.

When I was young, I always had a strong sense of compassion, care and concern for people who were being hurt. I don’t know why, but I did have that. I was being raised and growing up in the 60s. I remember being very interested, although not deeply involved in, the civil rights movement, and not understanding how it was that the white people would behave the way they would towards other people who were being victimized. I saw it as terribly unjust and I can’t explain that, really. That was just a part of who I was.

Then the more practical part of the story is this: I came to Calvin College to study after high school. I don’t know exactly what the reasons were for studying anthropology, but that’s what I started studying partly because it was exotic, it had to do with other people around the world; I also liked adventure, far-away places, and exciting things. After two years of that, I wasn’t sure yet where that was going. I wanted a little adventure outside of school. So for the next three years I didn’t go to school very much. What happened in those three years was very foundational to the whole story as it developed. I first just worked and bought a van and took a trip to Alaska, where I was pretty much by myself for five or six months. I read books, I played my guitar, I fished, I hiked a lot, I met people and talked – that was all sort of just growing up and learning about people and life and the United States and Canada and all those places. Then when I got back, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Somebody in my church told me that there was an earthquake in Guatemala and the church was looking for people to volunteer to work on reconstruction activities. I had learned about Guatemala in my anthropology classes a bit, and it was another country, and I had learned some Spanish and I thought it would fun to learn more Spanish, and it was a chance to care for people who needed some help. So I went to Guatemala and I ended up being there for about a year. While I was in Guatemala – this was the first time I was in a developing country – I discovered, like so many people do on their first trip to a place like this, “Wow, people really are poor here.” Then I wondered and started asking questions: Why are they poor? What are the factors that have caused this? What could I do? What could my nation do? What could my church do? What should we do? All those questions were on my mind. It was at that point that I received some clarity about what direction my studies should take.

So I came back to the United States and studied the thing that I thought was most important to study related to poverty –economics, at Calvin College. One of the economics professors at Calvin, after getting to know me, said: “Maybe you should think about getting a doctorate in economic development.” And I thought “yes, that does make a lot of sense.” So I started to explore those possibilities and I studied further. There’s always this tension in the work we do about reflection and action. There’s part of me that is a student, reader and thinker and I want to reflect on how to do it, what’s being done, and the significance of all that – that’s the academic part of who I am; but I also know how important it is to do things. So usually when I’m in an academic setting teaching I feel a little anxious because I’m not doing something practical; and then when I’m in the field actually working, it feels to me that I’m not doing as much thinking and reflecting as I would like to be doing. I’ve tried to find a balance that has allowed me to do some of both.


Career choice

Evelyn: For how many years did you work in the field?

Roland: About six years. The year in Guatemala, then two years of dedicated work in Nicaragua in the mid 90s, in the 80s for three years I lived in Central America and Costa Rica.

Evelyn: Why did you end up becoming a professor instead of a program manager?

Roland: That was that academic side of life – I have that yearning to be reflective and part of my identity and my nature was to think things through and to talk to people to just figure it all out. And, I realize how many open and interesting questions there are and I was naturally drawn to trying to answer these questions.


Secret in engaging people

Evelyn: How do you inspire and engage people who don’t yet have a strong interest in international development?

Roland: The best way to engage people – I can’t say it works every time and I don’t see well enough into the heart of anybody to understand how this works – but I know that the single event that inspires most people and most touches their heart is to connect with other people. For many students and young people, it is the simple act of going overseas and living in environments where they meet real people and see the faces of the children, the grandparents, the parents, and listen to the stories of people about their lives and about the way things are – that’s what touched me in a very particular way in Guatemala when I was twenty-two – it’s the real people. Statistics do little in touching people. Sometimes people are touched by stories, and sometimes people have a natural orientation towards compassion – like I did somewhat. Not everybody seems to have that natural orientation, but when they see people or encounter a needy person, most people are touched by that.

Oftentimes that can occur right here in the United States. For example, I took a group of students once to Chicago. We visited and talked with a number of people. We listened to their stories. They told us how their lives were and the struggles they faced in making it in Chicago in a difficult economic environment – a violence plagued area of the city. Several of these students who had not really thought much of this before had their lives changed by it. You cannot achieve that nearly as easily, readily, quickly, and transformational without having people see, and hear, and touch, and be near other people. That is the key, and that’s the biggest tip that I have. I have very few words or gimmicks or strategies for doing it other than introducing people to the world and the people.


“Is there a job for me in development?”

Evelyn: I’ve seen so many students here at Calvin College so enthusiastic about international development. That makes me wonder: are there that many jobs for everyone who would like to work in international development?

Roland: Probably yes and no. The no answer first. If you look at the people who are out in the field – practitioners, representatives of organizations who are in the different countries around the world, playing roles as expatriates in those positions – Then the answer is no. Some people think all expatriates should be working themselves out of a job, which would mean fewer and fewer such jobs for our graduates over time. But I’m not that extreme. I think we need to be in constant relationship. We will always have a need for people to be interacting and working together across organizational, cultural, language and regional lines, and in all sorts of ways. So while there are overseas jobs that need to be done and there are positions to be filled, the number of those particular types of jobs is somewhat limited. I don’t know what the limits are. Nor do I want to say that I know for sure that there are only these many jobs out there and that’s all there is – because there’s always room for creative potential and possibility.

Now let me answer the yes side. One part of the yes side is that there are places in the world for everybody who wants to make a difference. Some of those places are waiting to be created. We don’t know exactly – it’s not like we have all these predetermined niches and notches in the world that we are trying just to fill with people. The world is always changing and evolving and developing, and along with that, different jobs, different placement, a lot of globalizing, integrative work in a mission, in a business, in a political, civil society… all these different levels keep arising. Many of those positions are constantly forming and reforming, phasing out and new things are developing. A lot of that is up to our creativity.

The other part of the yes answer is that the people who study international development are in this because they care deeply about the world and want to be a constructive influence. Some of them realize that, given their own circumstances, it’s not likely that they are going to be able to spend their lives overseas. I’ve run into people who go overseas and say they really want to be involved in a global arena, BUT, they’re not cut out to live overseas; They need to be close to home. And that’s a very valid reason to stay closer to home. But that doesn’t mean that their education and the role they might play in their church, in their local business, in their local community can’t be related to international development. They can still play a very significant role – whether that be a citizen role or a volunteer role or a professional role, I don’t know. For example, a person who studies international development and then gets a job in a business here may have much greater sensitivity to some of the global business issues that that business might get involved in and play a developmental role in some significant way.

Evelyn: So international development is a very broad issue and people can contribute in many ways.

Roland: Some people work in the field, some in the home offices of organizations. There’s a significant role for people in home offices, like me – I’m teaching here at Calvin College and I manage to travel now and then and get into other places of the world. Then there are lots of people who work in just every area of life that are globally aware and then integrate that sort of thinking, that sort of life, and those sorts of values into whatever network and whatever area of life they get involved in. All of these roles are very important.


Network, network, network!

Evelyn: To follow up something you mentioned earlier – the connection between people. Speaking of connections, a lot of students now have realized how important knowing the right people is. Many students want to approach professionals and professors and learn from them. How can students approach and impress professionals?

Roland: Students and young people wanting to network and to know people in the field will do that naturally if they really care about this field. One way is to attend conferences and interact with people. For example, at a conference like this [note: referring to Faith and International Development Conference], a lot of the speakers and presenters are available at those sessions and are available after those session to talk, and they are available at topic tables too. It is extremely wise and absolutely appropriate for students in those circumstances to take advantage of the opportunities to meet people, discuss and share ideas, and ask questions.

Development professionals are a lot more impressed with young people who show a real commitment to the issues as opposed to those who seem to want to get to know you because you might be useful to them. If people see students and young folks who really care, who are really interested, who really have ideas, and who have shown that they’ve done some prior work and evidence of commitment in a variety of ways – well, that’s what’s most impressive. That’s not something that you can pretend and you shouldn’t try. But I am amazed that young people are often a little bit intimidated, they are scared, and they think we don’t have time. I suppose it is true that older people sometimes behave that way and I wish we didn’t. For my part, and I better speak only for myself, when I see young people who care and are committed, and want to know, and want to learn, I’m willing to spend time with them. Many of the people at this conference and at similar events are the same. When they see a committed young person they say: here’s a person who is worth my time.

Evelyn: Could you elaborate what you meant by “commitment”? I know a lot of young people who are not really ready to committed to anything in particular, still struggling to find out what exactly they want to do in the future – they don’t know; they’re exploring. They are committed in a sense that they really want to do something good.

Roland: When I say commitment, I mean honest questioning and caring about things that are worth caring about, in a general way. I’m not saying that somebody has to be interested in knowing how to do, say, a business partnership, because that’s a fairly detailed aspect of the a particular development strategy. Maybe they’re not ready for that yet. But if they listen to a presentation on this topic by someone who has had experience in it and then simply explore with that person some of the questions they might have – giving evidence of a true desire to learn – that shows caring about things and commitment to the exploration of what the speaker was talking about. I don’t think it has to mean a commitment to this particular strategy or this particular agency or this particular country the speaker might be working in, but a general, committed heart –a personal commitment to invest personal resources in discovering, learning, and building ourselves to care in ways that make a difference. That’s what I mean by “commitment”. Not to a particular field or line of work, but a general and honest to care about what God wants us to care about.

Evelyn: What do you think a network organization like CCIH as well as professionals can do to help students better develop their networking skills?

Roland: That’s a very good question. First, as I alluded to before, I don’t think you are going to instill that commitment. That’s something that needs to come from within. But if that commitment is there in seed form, then it can be nourished and affirmed, and it should be – I would think that professionals and an organization like CCIH might do as much as they can to let the students and young people know: one, it’s ok to interact with professionals; two, to provide opportunities for doing that; and three, to try to help build up the young person’s confidence in being able to do that in appropriate ways – that’s where I don’t want to get formulaic because that’s where you hear people say things like “well, it’ll look good on your resume” – I don’t like that language. That’s when it’s a little dangerous to say how to improve networking skills.

I want to tell students that, whenever we are talking about studies and careers and networking and such, that they should make their decisions because it’s in their heart to do it; if it’s in their heart to do it, then it will also look good on their resume because it represents them truthfully. The important thing for a resume to do is to represent the person truthfully. So for networking skills, we can help people by giving opportunities, building up confidence, letting students and young people know it’s ok to interact, and maybe providing the context within which to do that.

Now, how might that be done? Certainly a conference like this [note: referring to Faith and International Development Conference] is one way. I can imagine other ways too. Some of them might be probably virtual – a lot of web work is being done now with blogs and interactions of people. It’s less personal, you don’t know the people – I’m not sure it’s as helpful. Mentoring possibilities come to mind, too.


“What if I don’t want to look stupid?”

Evelyn: What would you say to young people who are reluctant to ask questions or approach professionals because they are afraid to appear “stupid”?

Roland: I know what you mean. And I know it’s a real issue. Let me say before I try to venture any sort an answer to that: professors and professionals are insecure too; they also are afraid of looking stupid. That has a lot to do with our human sense of insecurity and our fear that we are going to look vulnerable, that we are not going to look in control, that we are not going to portray the image that we would really like to portray – strong, knowledgeable, wise, capable people. So we have a tendency, not just students, but everyone, to keep any windows into our vulnerabilities tightly closed. We don’t want to or say something such that people are going to walk out afterwards and say “I can’t believe you said that”. So one thing to say to young people is that there’s nobody who is immune to these fears. If you are worried about looking foolish in your question, just know that most everybody else in the room feels exactly the same way about the questions they might ask.

The other thing – I recognize this, too, that we all, including professors, often take advantage of the opportunity to put someone down so that we look better. We all do this; young people do it to old people, old people do it to young people, and it comes from our own insecurity. It’s a very unfortunate part of our fallen natures. So we do laugh at people. We will say “what a dumb comment” about others. And we know full well that when professors say “there’s no such thing as a dumb question” that this is not totally true, because when a student asks a question, they will chuckle at it, or they may say something that is really harmful and hurtful to the student. We know this happens too. When it does, it tends to shut the student down, because he/she doesn’t want to encounter that again. We are all very sensitive to our self-esteem and self-respect. We really need to learn how to respond to others in love. That’s part of it.

The other part of it for students and young folks is to think carefully and to learn how to pose questions in ways that are diplomatic; we also need to learn that it’s ok to laugh at ourselves. It’s hard. I don’t know how to instill that – a sense of willingness to be vulnerable. I know how important it is – you look at the Philippians 2 passage that tells how Jesus gave up everything, like our plenary speaker said the other day, to give up everything, to be an absolute and totally vulnerable person, a human being. We need to be able to show that sort of vulnerability, too – to give up our power, to give up our need for control and esteem and images that we create for ourselves. We have to try to put that all aside and do our best and not apologize for that.

Evelyn: Being willing to be vulnerable is showing love. When you love, you become vulnerable to the people you love.

Roland: I think that’s exactly right.


More about Roland – A reader and thinker with contagious enthusiasm

You must remember moments when you were so tired and you only wished to be left alone so you could collapse in your seat, don’t you? That was exactly how I felt when I found out that Roland and I would take the same train after an exhausting all-day meeting in Washington, DC. We just met that morning and barely knew each other! I became sort of nervous since my brain had started to hibernate as I tried to figure out what to talk about with this near-stranger on the train… oh, man!

It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought. Roland was such a pleasant conversation companion – he was very eloquent in an attentive and non-boastful way. We talked on and on about books, and random passengers on the crowded train started to join our conversation! If you ever wonder what you would talk about with Roland on a trip, talk about books on international development. He’s a real reader and thinker with contagious enthusiasm in international development!

Carl Stecker, Senior Technical Advisor, Catholic Relief Services

By Evelyn Garland, Student Outreach Coordinator

Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH)

Profile

Dr. Carl Stecker has nearly 30 years of international health experience in Africa, and over 20 years of experience in international HIV and AIDS. With a BA in Nursing, a Masters in Public Health and Tropical Medicine and an EdD in Nonformal Adult Education, Stecker has been with Catholic Relief Services, Baltimore, MD, since 2002. He is a Senior Technical Advisor for HIV and AIDS helping to provide technical assistance to the agency’s 280+ HIV projects in 62 countries. In addition to promoting and helping to assure the technical excellence of these projects, the bulk of his time is spent on policy, advocacy, and resource development for faith-based organizations working in HIV and AIDS. He is also the agency’s chief spokesperson on HIV-related issues. From February 2004 through June 2006, Dr. Stecker was the initial Senior Program Director for AIDSRelief, the CRS-led consortium for the “Rapid Expansion of Antiretroviral Therapy,” a 5-year PEPFAR-supported project to deliver ART to 137,600 clients in nine PEPFAR countries through 200 local partners. As of the 31 December 2008, more than 368,000 HIV-positive individuals were enrolled in supportive care services with over 138,000 on ARVs.

Getting Started

Evelyn: I’ve read your brief bio from the CCIH Conference booklet. It talks more about your recent experience. Could you talk a little bit about how you got started right after college or graduate school?

Carl: (thinking) I started thinking about working in international health and to be overseas even before I graduated from college. After my sophomore year in college, I took a year off. I had been majoring in pre-med, pre-physical therapy, something that was going to be healthcare related. I just wasn’t sure what direction I wanted to go with it so I took a year off and traveled with a gospel singing group for fifteen months. We’ve decided as a group that each of us could spend a week apart from the group, and spend it with field service. So I spent my week in Cameroon with a Norwegian doctor and a nurse that ran a 50 bed hospital in a rural part of Cameroon. That was a critical experience for me as I then thought about what to do next. I left that experience with: I want to work in French-speaking West Africa, in healthcare.

Then I went back to school finished my degree as a registered nurse. My first job was working at a hospital in the U.S. – for six months, another six months back at the university where I graduated from in a sophomore nursing class as a clinical instructor, and then I went to Africa again with a second gospel singing group for 15 months in 1980-81. Upon completion of that tour, I went back to Africa with Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – it was 1982 when I went over.

Evelyn: How did you fund your gospel singing group trip?

Carl: That was by freewill offering. We had made about a hundred concerts before leaving the U.S. over a five-month period of time. Then we spent nine months in Africa. Then we came back and traveled for another three months going back to many of those same congregations. It was a break-even kind of engagement – when the trip was over, the funds were finished – it was not an ongoing thing. It was sort of a time when none of us were thinking of that as a professional career but all of us had either finished university or still had, like myself, a couple of years left.

Evelyn: You started working in a hospital – was that international health related? Or, was it domestic healthcare?

Carl: Well, because I knew that I wanted to go and work overseas, and at the time when I graduated there was no immediate position open within the Lutheran Church, which was where I wanted to serve. So I said: I’ll work. My first job out of college then was, rather than taking a specific position, I said I wanted to be a float nurse. As a float nurse, I could go anywhere in all of the services in the hospital and get a wide variety of experience. So when a position opened up and I could go work overseas, I already had a wider experience, even from a U.S. nursing perspective.

Evelyn: Why do you think that you, not somebody else, got the position with the Lutheran Church?

Carl: It’s another long story. I’ll try to make it short. After the first six month that I was in this hospital in the U.S., I was asked by the organization that I’d traveled with three years previously if I would lead a group to the same countries – it would be a gospel singing group, again, for 15 months. So I said yes. It was during that trip that I took my week apart from the rest of group and I spent it in Cameroon at another hospital that the Lutheran Church operated there. At that hospital was a young woman who was also a graduate from where I went to college. She went immediately from graduation to working in Cameroon. That’s why there was a position open when I graduated – because she took the open position. While we were there during that week, I asked her to marry me. She said yes. I came back and worked for another 6 months in the U.S. again in another hospital and again as a float before I went back over to Cameroon to be her spouse. That’s how I ended up getting in – still there wasn’t a position open. My wife was salaried and I was a volunteer spouse for the first three years that we served together in Cameroon.

Evelyn: Wow, three years!

Carl: Yeah. At the end of that three years they decided that we could split our call – each got half of our salary, but we were recognized as being full-time called missionaries so we could each receive salary. We continued to serve in Cameroon and Central African Republic until the end of 1997.

Evelyn: So you got your foot in the door by volunteering for years?
Carl: Right, exactly. I married into the position and I volunteered my time at the hospital as many other spouses would do. And, of course, I worked 150% of the time. (Laugh…)

Transition

Evelyn: Before you joined the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), had you always been working for the Lutheran Church?

Carl: Uh-huh. Pretty much. We came back in December of 1997 for our children’s high school and beyond education. It was very difficult re-integrating back into the U.S. for each of us individually and as a family. I held out for a public health job and after a year I was still unemployed. It was really hard. So I did consulting for about 2 years before entering into CRS.

Evelyn: When you first started working for CRS, did you have a smooth transition coming from a Lutheran background to a Catholic environment?

Carl: I didn’t find that very difficult, actually. Lutheran Church, Catholic Church, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church… there are a lot of similarities. That felt very natural. I wasn’t asked to become Catholic. Catholic Relief Services doesn’t hire based on whether you’re a Catholic or not. I knew before the interview and the interview confirmed that I as an employee of CRS as the official arm of the Catholic community in the U.S. for international aid and development I would have to be able to express and support the teachings of the Catholic Church around those sensitive issues. As long as I’m willing to express and support those values on behalf of Catholic Relief Services and able to do that in a public venues, it’s not a problem for me to be a Lutheran working in a Catholic agency.

Combating misperception and misinformation

Evelyn: Do you find that many people have misperceptions about what Catholics believe and do? If you do, what do you think students and recent graduates can do to bridge this gap and combat the misinformation?

Carl: I do believe that there are misperceptions about what the Catholic Church does or says around HIV prevention, family planning, and reproductive health services. I think the best thing that a student or a young professional could do is to go into it open-minded and realize that if they are reading this from a news article, that it has to be taken with grain of salt, and they should try and seek to talk to somebody in an organization that is in this place. For example, contact someone from Catholic Relief Services and say “I read it in an article and I’d like to know more about it.” Develop a personal relationship or at least have a personal encounter to find out the truth and allow there be a fair period of time for a fair explanation.

Networking for employment

Evelyn: As you know, CCIH is a networking organization. When a student is networking, how do you think he, without much experience, can impress a professional? Or, what kind of students would you like to network with?

Carl: I’m assuming you mean networking to look for employment, or for an internship, or for an opportunity to volunteer, or to be involved with an organization. It’s all about relationships and connections. Be assertive and introduce yourself to people, say I’m really interested in so and so. Seek out the kind of people you’re going to work for and with. Have conversations with them. It really is all about relationships.

I don’t know how many people I’ve heard from have said, “I put my resume into a number of organizations, either I don’t hear back or I don’t get a positive response or I don’t get to the interview.” My question to them becomes: What homework have you done about the organization? Yes, they have an open position, why do you want to work for them? Whom in the organization do you know? Do you know anybody? Did you go through their website? Did you look at all their web pages? Did you read some of their reports? Did you try to contact those people? Be creative! For example, Joe Smith, a physician, wrote a report about his experience and operational research he did in Mozambique, and Dr. Joe Smith works for World Vision International. If you know anybody else’s address in World Vision, contact them and ask if you could be in contact with Joe Smith about his work in Mozambique. Most of the time, the organization will send you their contact information. If you’re not getting a response then just guess – all the World Vision International emails are whatever their name is @wvi.org, so then try ten different combinations of jsmith, joesmith, j.smith, joe.smith, smith.j, … @wvi.org. You’re going to get one that doesn’t bounce back and you know that person has probably got your email. So, that’s another creative way. But why not?

Evelyn: Could you give a specific example of creative networking?

Carl: I’ll give you my story for coming to CRS. The position that I’m in, Senior Technical Advisor, is a pretty high level position within the agency. When I heard that this particular position was open, I applied. You’d expect to hear back fairly shortly if they are really looking for somebody. I waited for about 5 days, and then I followed up with an email to the recruiter and said: I’ve applied, I haven’t got any response and I’m very interested in this position, and reiterated in two sentences my qualifications – just a short note – looking to hearing from you, and asked who else I could speak to about responsibilities in this position. They actually wrote back and gave me the name of someone that currently held the position that was going to be moving. I contacted that person. We talked about the position. So then my name got to into “the system”, in a sense. I know from being now in the agency that when I get a call like that and if I know that we are looking for a position and someone gets that far, I’ll go down to HR and say: “Did you get an application from so and so? Why haven’t we seen it yet?” Because there is always an initial screening. Maybe the person making the application has nine of the ten desirable attributes that we are looking for but not all ten, so initially HR screened him/her out.

After talking with the person who currently held the position who was going to be leaving, I got a telephone interview. At the end of the interview, I said: “So what’s the next step? When can I expect to hear from you again?” They said: “Well, we want to move on this fairly quickly so you’ll probably hear back from us within a week.” I now know that it doesn’t usually happen that quickly at CRS. So… (pause & laugh…) I followed up a week later since I hadn’t heard anything. They said: “Well, it’s taking longer than we think.” And now, of course I was not Catholic, I thought it was because I was not Catholic; I thought I did a good phone interview. So I called up the person that I had originally spoken to and I said: “Well, it’s been a week. What’s the process that will happen from here? I was told that it has been taking a little bit longer than it was initially expected. Who’s involved in these kinds of decisions?” They mentioned somebody’s name, so I did exactly what I just told you – I figured out about five different permutations of their name@crs.org. And I sent an email and I said something about the telephone interview and that “I’m looking forward to hearing from you about the next step.” So I got another telephone interview follow-up with that person. Then they called me in for a face-to-face interview.

So part of it is just being really persistent, be assertive, but not in your face, assertive. That really opened the door. You’ve got to get your resume seen to get a phone interview and you hope if they don’t hire you over the phone, you’ll get a face-to-face interview. At every step, know what their delay is, know what the process is, and then if they say it’s going to be a week, don’t wait two weeks – follow up in a week, and say: “Hope that I’ll hear from you at the end of the week” – “we talked last week, just wondering how else I could be helpful to provide more information in your process?”

Evelyn: A lot of students feel intimidated being overly persistent in reaching out to potential employers, as they figure: Well, professionals are probably busy with a thousand other things… Do you think there are a lot of professionals who don’t mind students contacting them persistently?

Carl: I think that a lot of professionals hope that HR is going to filter them out and they’ll actually see and hear from candidates that have potential to meet the need of the agency for that particular job being recruited for. And they don’t always appreciate being contacted separately. But it does show a lot of initiative and sometimes it’s that! We often write qualifications in such a way that they are not absolutes. It’ll say “3-5 years of field experience preferred” – “preferred”. It doesn’t mean you have to have it. So if you’ve got 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer and you’ve made five 2-week long mission trips with your denomination to work in healthcare in Haiti or some place, you don’t have 3 years of experience – even though that was our “preference” – but you’ve got some other overseas experience and you’ve got some valid experience, even if you didn’t live there for “3-5 years”. So try to look for those keywords like “preferred”. If it says “master’s required”, usually master’s is required. If it says “master’s preferred”, you could have a BA or BS or something else.

And even that, I’ll say, is not absolute. If the job has been posted for 6 weeks and we don’t have a candidate yet that fills that, we may downgrade the job description, either in the responsibilities or in the qualifications that we are looking for. So it might have said “master’s required; 3-5 years of experience preferred”, and in the next iteration it may come out as “master’s preferred”. So keep an eye on the ones that might have been out there for a while that we haven’t found somebody for, because they may be considering reducing the requirements for them or they may downgrade the positions a little bit to provide more of an entry-level – they’d figure that they are going to get someone who has some of the qualities and they can grow the experience internally.

Entry-level positions at CRS

Evelyn: When you interview students for positions that don’t require a lot of experience, what do you look for in the students you interview?

Carl: It’s hard because there aren’t any positions that we don’t require a lot experience. In my particular department – Program Quality Support, we’re looking for people with technical background. We have program specialist, TA (Technical Advisor)-I, TA-II, Senior Technical Advisor, and Principal Technical Advisor –five levels of technical positions. Entry level is really Program Specialist and for that we have “master’s preferred”; for a TA, we’re looking for “master’s required” and 3-5 years of experience. Much of the time, we’re looking for the TA-I; that’s what we would start out with a Program Manager at a field position out in the field – so even then we’re looking for someone who’s already been in the field preferably for 3-5 years.

Evelyn: How about internships and field fellowships?

Carl: We have an International Development Fellows Program. We’re looking for qualified candidates both for a management track as well as a technical track. There are usually 20-30 accepted in a year, against an application pool of about 300. And, master’s required – they’re (the candidates) out looking for field experience and we know that they are coming in as interns. But, that being said, that year-long position often rolls over into Program Specialist or Technical Advisor. A career-change person who has done something else overseas for 3-5 years but switched into health field could get hired at a higher level technical assistance. So often that’s another route to go as to look out for those internships, even that though for us is a competitive process.

Another tactic. The positions that we put in our headquarter HR pool are international positions. If someone’s got a lot of gumption and he just want to go and hang out in Tanzania, he might be able to get a position as a “local hire”, for instance in this case in CRS at the Tanzania CRS office. It’s not an “international position”. It’s not being offered through our headquarters HR system. But it’s something that is being offered locally. The difference would be: an entry level position here (in HQ) for a Program Specialist might be $30,000-35,000 a year and whatever it takes us to support you if you are going to be overseas; that same “local hire” might only be $10,000-15,000, because of the difference in pay scales between a local professional in-country and an international professional hired and brought in for the position. I’ve seen several people go that route, and they say: I just know that God wants me to be in Tanzania and I’m going to hang out in Tanzania; if I only make $12,000 a year, God’s going to help provide for me and that’s going to be my entry.

Real job, real life

Evelyn: Do you find it difficult to separate work and life since your work requires you to keep up with the news?

Carl: It is. It’s challenging to really take a vacation, to take a 3-day weekend. It depends on your position. But when you’re in a fairly senior position, you need to check out your email every day even when you’re on vacation. It doesn’t mean you have to answer the email, except for the ones that come from your boss – he knows you’re on vacation, he only writes to you because he needs you to say something right then. The hard part is that I know I get 200 other emails today and when I go back to work a week from now I’m going to have about 2,000 emails. Oh, wow! Some of those emails have to be re-written by people who really want an answer because I’m not going to be able to look at 2,000 emails when I come back to work on Monday next week. And then, … you just learn how to do it. It’s very hard. It would be hard to be in the position and have young kids. I’ve got adult children except for one that’s still at home that’s in senior high school. The seven years I’ve been with CRS takes a toll on the family. Sometimes the job takes precedence over family, which it shouldn’t have to. Our agency is very family-friendly and would say: “Your family comes first.” It’s still hard.

Evelyn: What do you like the best about your job?

Carl: I really like my job for the variety. It has the right mix for me: issues that are very technical in content, within HIV, I need to keep myself abreast of new and innovative things coming up, so I like that piece of what I do; the advocacy piece, it’s all about people, it’s about who you know and being able to have contact with important people when other people may not have that same level of availability or ability to connect, so that our issues get heard, putting them in a way that is very concise so that we maintain the relationship and the availability, so there’s people skills involved. It involves, right now, the right amount of traveling, which is about 30% of the time that I’m gone and usually fairly well spaced out, a week to two weeks at a time every six to eight weeks or so. I haven’t traveled for eight weeks and I certainly feel the itch right now – to go somewhere.

And the people that I work with are great. We have a very collegial environment, respectful of each other’s expertise and very affirming of each other. Other than my very first job in the hospital, I’ve only ever worked in faith-based organizations; people for the most part are very affirmative of each other. I love that kind of environment.

Evelyn: What do you like the least?

Carl: (Pause) There’s so much good work that can be done, and there are constraints, most often financial. It’s hard to make decisions on work to prioritize your time. Having to decide what’s priority when everything around HIV should be a priority it seems like we could do more if we had more money but we don’t have enough money to do that.


Part of the financial constraints impacts the number of people that you can have as employees to help provide that technical assistance to the fields, and when you don’t have enough people you can’t provide the services that need to be provided – that’s hard. Getting invited to a workshop and saying: “No, we can’t do that. We don’t have enough funds. Can we do this through teleconference?” – It is not always the best but it’s another way – you have to look for alternatives.

More about Carl: I loaned him my USB disk; he returned it with job-hunting tips

The first time I met Carl was three years ago at CCIH Annual Conference. It was completely random. I overheard Carl asking somebody else whether he could borrow a USB disk for a few minutes. That person did not have one. So I offered to loan mine to Carl. Soon after, he found me in a workshop, sat next to me, and we started to chat. He said he worked for CRS – quite a big name for me, who was a nervous novice in international health looking for a job. After learning that, Carl encouragingly shared with me some very useful job-hunting tips. “Wow, isn’t that nice?” I thought to myself. Later, I got to know Carl better through word of mouth. Many people I know are impressed with Carl’s warm and honest personality and value him as a trusted friend.

So, Carl’s name naturally came into my mind when I was planning for the “In Touch” interview series. Not surprisingly, he was very supportive of the interview series and immediately agreed to be interviewed. Here, he shares with all students and recent graduates even more job-hunting tips than he told me about the first time – hope you, too, will find the information helpful.

Linda Bales, Director, United Methodist Church Louise and Hugh Moore Population Project

By Evelyn Garland, Student Outreach Coordinator
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH)

Profile

Linda lived in the Dayton, Ohio region all her life before coming to Washington in 2001 – 5 days after September 11th. She directs the Louise and Hugh Moore Population Project for the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, an advocacy project focusing primarily on women and children’s issues namely HIV & AIDS, family planning, domestic violence, human sexuality, human trafficking and the empowerment of women and girls. From 1996-2001, she served as the Director of the Shared Mission Focus on Young People, a General Conference initiative formerly based at the General Council on Ministries. Working on issues at the root cause level has been a theme in Linda’s career under-girded by a strong belief that the Kingdom of God can be realized on earth with hard work, strong, committed hearts, perseverance and vision. A life-long United Methodist, Linda served at local and national levels of the United Methodist Women’s organization, and from 1992-1996 served as a director of the Women’s Division. Linda has a Bachelor’s Degree in Socio-Economics and a Masters Degree in Public Administration. When not working, Linda enjoys visiting her three grandchildren, photography and gardening. She currently resides in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project

Linda: Mr. Hugh Moore invented Dixie cups a long time ago – that’s how he made his money. He also had a real interest in world peace and population issues back in the 60s. In the 60’s and 70’s, there was a real concern about a population explosion and having too many people on the earth. Mr. Moore became acquainted with our agency and its staff. When he died, he left some money to our board to work on population issues. So that’s what I do. I deal with issues related to population, but mostly related to women and children. I’ve had to narrow it down because, as you can imagine, almost any issue you can name relates in some way to population.

Evelyn: How do you approach the population issue?

Linda: The main things I work on are HIV and AIDS, and other issues that relate such as: domestic violence, gender-based violence, family planning and reproductive health, child marriage, obstetric fistula, and human trafficking.

Evelyn: So you collaborate a lot with other people and organizations?

Linda: Yes. And this is why I got involved with Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) because it was a whole other group of people with whom I hadn’t ordinarily interfaced.

Getting started, getting to know people

Evelyn: How did you get started? How did you start making connections and getting your foot in the door right after college?

Linda: I could say that even my upbringing as a child and youth had a big influence on me. My parents were very much involved in the United Methodist Church – at that time it was just the Methodist Church. They took me and my sisters to church every Sunday and on Sunday evenings we had “Methodist Youth Fellowship”. That was where all the young people got together every Sunday night and we had snacks and we had educational activities. People would come in and talk to us about various and sundry issues, we visited colleges together, and all of this kind of stuff. So it was really then that I started forming a social conscience.

Then I went off to college. After I graduated from college, I was married right at the end of my junior year of college. I worked as a school social worker for three years before I had my first son. Then I took ten years off to raise my kids – I have two boys. During this time, after my first-born came, along, I became very involved with United Methodist Women as a volunteer. The reason I became involved with them was because they took very seriously concerns about women, children and youth, and they were very socially active, in terms of advocating for justice. I just really jumped in, feet first, with United Methodist Women and held various offices in the organization. In the late 1980’s, I obtained a graduate degree in public administration.

After that I worked for a while as a human services planner – this was all in Ohio. I had made connections by that time with people in the State of Ohio through the United Methodist Church, but also had made connections around the country through my work and travels with United Methodist Women. It was all volunteer, but they paid all of our travel expenses. I also served in Ohio, as the chair of the Board of Church and Society (of United Methodist Church), in Ohio, and I worked closely with people who worked here at this agency in Washington, DC. It was through my involvement with the women’s organization and then also chairing the annual conference of the Board of Church and Society in Ohio that hooked me in with people here and around the country. So I worked professionally for eight years as a human services planner in Ohio, on issues such as homelessness and housing, girls and teen pregnancy, school dropouts, and drug abuse of young people.

I left my job as a human services planner in the mid 90s and became the director a United Methodist Shared Mission Focus on Young People – a global initiative in the United Methodist Church to help the church as an institution take young people more seriously, give them leadership positions, and take a look at how church is relevant or not relevant to young people. This initiative is still exists and was relocated from Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee, and I decided not to relocate with it. Then this job came open, I applied for it. I knew so many people already here, my interview was with two people that I had already known for years, and was offered the position.

I think it’s just so important, especially for people in their twenties, to start building those connections and to get involved with something other than themselves, where they feel they are contributing to society, making a difference, making the world a better place. All those connections really have paid off for me in the long run.

Evelyn: Before you got your first job right after college, had you already known people you would be working for?

Linda: Actually, no. I’m trying to think how I got my first job. (Thinking…) Maybe it was a friend of mine back in Dayton that connected me to Family and Children Service Association, and they were looking for school social workers. Yeah, I’m trying to think of how I learned of the position… but anyhow! I got it through networking with someone but I don’t remember who.

I had never had a day of practicum… and here I was, hired on to do school social work working with children and their families. I even got into marriage counseling with families… I had NO experience… I just can’t believe that I did it! It was very difficult. Luckily I had supervisors who worked with me and helped me if I had questions. I was just newly married, but I had a sense of relationships and had a minor in psychology.

Evelyn: Why do you think it was you who got the job, not someone else who already had had experience?

Linda: I have a lot of confidence and I am somewhat of an extrovert – I’m kind of on the border of extrovert and introvert. I’m able to communicate and do well in terms of sitting and talking with people. That helps. I probably had some very good references… Who knows who they were!

Where do you see yourself professionally in 5-10 years? – What a typical interview question!

Evelyn: One question that employers often ask job candidates is: Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years? Did you know where you would be in five or ten years when you were fresh out of college?

Linda: Maybe not ten years. I certainly knew that my former husband and I did want children. I knew that in three to four years or so we would want to start a family, and that would be a big life change in itself. But beyond that, really, Evelyn, I didn’t. A lot of my life has just kind of opened up. I had worked for part of one summer at a job that I hated. So I knew I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want to a certain extent – you just have to listen to yourself and also not stay in a place that is negative for you, if you have options. But I can’t say that I knew… You could ask me that question now – I’d have no idea.

Networking

Evelyn: You mentioned that your work required a lot of interaction with people and also networking. How do you make people remember you?

Linda: That’s a very interesting question. I don’t know if anyone has ever asked me that question before. Well, I would say probably the older I’ve become, the more authentic I’ve tried to be. In other words, there are some people who feel like they have to impress other people with their knowledge, with their manner, with the way they dress or whatever it might be. I probably have done my share of that over the years. But as I’ve aged, I just don’t feel like that’s important. So I guess I’m authentic with people. I think I’ve got a little braver over time. You’ve heard people say no question is a silly question – I don’t think everybody believes that. I think people have these standards for ourselves that we have to know everything and if we ask a question it must be really important. I try not to do that because there are certain questions that I’ll be thinking of asking, but might be a little scared to ask them; but then I go ahead and ask them and find that, yes, other people were thinking of the same thing but they didn’t say anything. I think just by putting yourself out there, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and of course trying to be kind to people and respectful and considerate. People like that.

Evelyn: When you were less-experienced, were you as bold as you are?

Linda: Oh, no. No no no. That’s a kind of confidence – I don’t know if it’s confidence or just a place of being that I think we learn over a lifetime.

Evelyn: How do you think people with less experience can impress people with more experience?

Linda: I think that’s a trap, right there, “impressing”. If you goal is to impress someone, you’re in trouble. Just be yourself. Just say: I don’t need to know it all; I can ask questions; I have studied certain issues, am confident with my knowledge and understand issues… and not to be arrogant, but to contribute certain things – because you know certain things from your own life experience. For example, I went through a divorce ten years ago, so I can speak to that because I’ve gone through it. I have two children, and now grandchildren, so I can speak to those things because I’ve gone through it. So again, you just gain your own internal self respect. But not flaunt it.

Evelyn: What advice would you give to students and recent graduates on networking with professionals?

Linda: Well, I would say: appreciate and honor those experiences and forge as many relationships as you are comfortable with. Networks are good. They can help us achieve our dreams. So I would just say: honor all of them and take them for what they are, what pieces of wisdom and gifts they bring to your life; and then, you know, they may come in handy down the road some place. I think it’d be very hard to achieve certain things in our lives if we didn’t network with other people. Unless you’re a complete solitary person who believes he/she can achieve their goal in solitude.

Evelyn: So networking shouldn’t be a purpose. It is a means to achieve your purpose.

Linda: It is. It’s a means to an end. But it also gives us life because there’s too much on this earth to do just by yourself. I always tell groups I work in coalition with other people because I know we’re stronger when we’re unified in solidarity.

Real job, real life - advocacy

Evelyn: You do a lot of advocacy. In advocacy, you almost always have different opinions and extreme opinions from different people. How do you deal with that? How do you communicate with people with very different opinions?

Linda: This is one of my most difficult challenges. The most difficult issue I deal with in my portfolio is the abortion issue. It’s very polarized. There are people who believe that abortion should never happen, ever, under any circumstances. And there are those who believe that yes, it should be safe and legal and girls and women should have a choice depending on their circumstances and beliefs. Everything I do has to be consistent with what we call our “social principles”, which are the positions the church takes on issues. Our position on abortion is a mixed one. We believe it should be safe and legal, but then we have some conditions, under which that could or should happen. So I get people, not quite daily, but almost, who really disagree with me, or disagree with the church’s position, and just let me have it, or just let whoever’s reading the email have it. It might not be directed at me personally, but… I have to deal with people who disagree with me or the church’s position a lot. I used to lose sleep over it. It was horrible. People can get hateful around some of these things, calling you all sorts of names. I have a file in my email folder called “scary people” – some of them are scary, saying “you’re going to hell” “you’re going to burn in hell” …

So anyhow, some people I choose not to deal with because it’s a lose-lose proposition, no matter what I would say to them it wouldn’t satisfy them. But other people, I try to craft responses that reflect the position of the church. Homosexuality is another issue that’s in my portfolio.

Evelyn: So over the years you must have learned to either forget about nasty comments or not to let them influence you. How do you do it?

Linda: I don’t do a good job at it, frankly. It’s very troubling to get an email that attacks you. Nobody likes to be attacked. So when that happens, it takes a day or so for me to move my way through it. Some people have good points and some are more thoughtful than others in expressing themselves. I think sometimes it’s easier for me to just dismiss some of the people who are so hateful because they are so over the top.

But it’s the people who are more thoughtful and who are making really good points that cause me to think and may cause me to change my position, which I have. On one occasion recently, I pulled our support from a certain bill on abortion because we received a couple of emails about it and I had to look at the bill again and I said: You know, they’re right; we just shouldn’t be there. So you have to say that some people are here to “teach” us, and we can’t learn from that.

Evelyn: Do you need to watch or listen to the news a lot for your work?

Linda: Yes. The whole time I’m riding the metro and the bus into work I’m reading the Washington Post. I read it cover to cover. Then listen to the news. And it’s not a good time to live through right now. All of that can be stressful.

Evelyn: Do you find it hard to separate life and career? Since you get news from all sorts of media here and there all the time, does that constantly remind you of your work?

Linda: During the election, it was bad. It was horrible. My colleagues and I and then when I was with Dick (Linda’s fiancé), we’d always be talking about politics – politics constantly. Finally, Dick and I just had to say: “We can’t do this anymore. We’ve got to stop talking now.” There are other things – I play the piano, I listen to music, I’m starting a quilt, plus I’m going to get married in April so I’m planning a wedding – all of that takes me away from the news, which is a good thing. But it is important.

Evelyn: How do you manage your stress from work? Is there anything in particular you do in your spare time that helps relieve your stress?

Linda: There are several things, but I could do a much better job. I used to meditate a lot. And every now and then I do that. I now have a partner in my life. He’s a God-send because for me being an extrovert in part I get energy and healing through talking about things. So I would talk to Dick about issues that have bothered me or are pressing on me. He’s a great listener, and I find great relief in that. I go for walks and have to get lots of rest. Those are probably the primary things. I do read and pray, and that gives me some strength. But I need to do better at the stress management.

Motherhood vs. Career

Evelyn: You mentioned that you took ten years off to raise your children. When you did that, were you worried about your future career? Did you think the years you took off might be a disadvantage when you would start looking for a job again?

Linda: No. I worked part-time when Josh, my second born, went to kindergarten. I was an administrative assistant to a youth drop-out prevention program. Also I decided to go to graduate school. Then when the kids where getting out on their own, I began little by little creeping back into the world of paid work. But I know now women will say “It’ll put me behind…” But for me, it was worth it, totally worth it. I would have never done it differently. I was fortunate to have a spouse who made enough money for me to have that kind of flexibility. I’m grateful to have had that. I didn’t worry about getting behind or anything like that.

Evelyn: Had you planned to start working again when your children grew up? Or were you not sure?

Linda: No. I was sure. I really wanted to work. This was in the late 1970’s. That was when the whole women’s liberation movement was really getting going a lot. Women were going to work. They were working either part-time or full-time. Society was having to deal with that. I was really torn. I loved motherhood and homemaking – I still do. But I love my career, too. So I found myself wrestling between two different worlds, wanting both of them. I have the luxury of being in both worlds but there’s always that tension – am I spending too much time on my work and not having enough time at home?

More about Linda: Once a curious serious teen carrying a big black camera

After the interview in Linda’s office, she showed me the pictures on her bookshelf. One of them was an old picture of two families from Ohio taken in front of the White House. “Guess which one is me?” Linda smiled as she asked. Among the ten or so people, all looked so typically touristy except for one teenage girl, who looked serious but yet curious, wearing a pair of big, thick, black-rimmed eye-glasses, carrying a black camera which looked really big against her slim figure, and ready to explore the world, seriously. “This one.” I said as I pointed to the girl on the picture. Linda was kind of surprised that I got it right, since her appearance had changed a lot since then. Well, some things never change.