By Cathy Healy, Chair, Int’l Board’s Partners Member Community and a Colorado Partners member. [Long story 😉]
You are facing a devastating professional reality. Trump 2.0 has mostly erased international development. You’ve spent years developing skills and throwing yourself into making the world better—and now you’re wondering will you ever again get to work with your expertise again.
I have experienced some of the pain of losing your professional identity, even though I didn’t lose my job. Maybe my solution will help you.
When the National Geographic Society called asking me to bring their staff magazine “up to Geographic standards,” I was the editor of Américas magazine at the OAS. National Geographic?! ME?! I joked that the Mountain had come to Mohammad. Geographic had been my Mecca ever since I was a little kid who opened the magazine’s pages and couldn’t wait to grow up and explore the world.
As promised, I was the one-person editor/writer of their staff newsletter, but I was shocked how national Geographic was. Almost everyone had routine jobs, which didn’t surprise me, but many didn’t seem curious beyond our borders. I felt like I was trapped back home, surrounded by people who weren’t interested in what was on the other side of the mountains, and I’d worked so hard to be international.
Volunteering pulled me out of my deep funk. I joined DC-Brasilia Partners and when Geographic organized its DC Alliance of Geography teachers, I got involved with them too [See the PS].
Let’s go back to you in this shaky time. You know your global expertise is valuable. You know you have the heart and mind to again open opportunities for others. I trust, and you must trust that you will figure out how to find work so you can pay your bills. And then, when you’ve edged into the next chapter of your life, or perhaps now while you are healing and looking, Partners chapters might be your bridge while you navigate this difficult transition.
Good luck to you. If you need someone to listen, let me know if you want to talk about career transitions or volunteer opportunities. Cathy — Cathy@cathyhealy.org
PS — Who’d Have Guessed the Consequences
- Extremely wrong first impression, thank God. Geographic staff were proud they worked there from the women (yeah) who opened the envelopes with membership checks to the world-famous photographers. Everyone cared deeply that we were “increasing and defusing knowledge about the world and all that is in it.” Really — people actually spoke the mission statement out loud, and fairly often. Best, it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who thought Geographic was too national. I had the fun of reporting on changes in Geographic as we turned international with local-language editions and international television channels.
- Tax-Breaks. Expenses for volunteering on projects with NGOs are tax-deductible. Members don’t always need travel grants to afford to travel and help pay to do worthwhile activities.
- The Very Biggest, Long-Lasting, Consequential Project: A DC Geographic Alliance middle school teacher joined DC Partners. We supported her dream to take some of her at-risk eighth graders to Brazil. She insisted they earn their way with community service; they took Portuguese from volunteer grad students at Georgetown (of one of our members). We required many enrichment activities; Brasilia did likewise, only with English. In total, the two capital cities exchanged four groups each.
Our model inspired the US State Department to organize a Youth Ambassadors program, which is active in 28 countries, at least as of today. Two former Youth Ambassadors are on Partners’ International Board, and a man in the original group, the Mid-Atlantic’s 2024 Sailor of the Year, still calls me “Mom.”
- I became known at Geographic as an expert on Brazil. Because of my pre-Geographic contacts in Brazil, I got to interview Jaime Lerner, the imaginative mayor of Curitiba, who had created what was the most environmental city in the world. The piece ran in National Geographic magazine, circulation 11 million then. Even more thrilling: I spent a couple of hours interviewing Architect Lucio Costa, 92, about the reality of Brasília in the 1990s, after he designed the new capital in the 1950s. Geographic’s news service sent my article out worldwide.
- Finally, imagine! When I retired from National Geographic after 17 years, I was one of 13 from hundreds of applicants who won a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship @ Stanford University. There I was, a 64-year-old “college student.” My project involved DC-Brasília teachers and virtual exchanges. Speaking of Partners: I heard about the fellowship from a Patagonian partner, a virtual-project pioneer teacher that I’d met online in 1992. She and I are still close friends.
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