The world of international development permanently changed this year.

Maybe your contract wasn’t renewed, or you saw your organization’s funding disappear seemingly overnight.

Or maybe you’re still employed but you can feel it coming and you’d rather figure this out now than worry later.

Whatever brought you here, I’m glad you’re here: welcome!

I’m Andrea, and this is personal for me. I didn’t build this newsletter because I read about career transitions in a book somewhere. I built it because I’ve been through this myself — a few times— and every time, the advice I found didn’t work for someone with my background.

I spent over a decade in the UN system, until family issues forced me to leave. But I’m still very connected to what’s happening. I’m an executive coach across agencies and have close friends inside the system, so I see and feel what’s happening — the massive restructures, the funding cuts, and most of all, the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what’s next.

My own path was messy in ways I didn’t plan for. Caregiving issues forced me to end my contract. Then, just when I’d finally gotten back on my feet, unexpected health issues derailed me again. After that, COVID reset everything again. And before the UN, I’d moved to cities and countries where nobody knew me or my work. Now, AI is changing everything again.

The point of telling you all this isn’t to make it about me. It’s to let you know that the career advice out there wasn’t built for people who’ve done what we’ve done — so I built what I wished I’d had. Honest, sometimes uncomfortable thinking for a world changing so fast, the next step isn’t obvious.

None of this is going away or slowing down, so let’s get started!

Here’s what I wish someone had told me years ago: the skills we built inside these systems — UN, global health, international development, government — are incredibly valuable, just not how you’re describing it. You’re using language that only makes sense to people who’ve lived inside your world.

You’ve navigated large bureaucracies, managed across cultures and conflicting mandates, kept operations running under pressure that nobody saw and most people can’t comprehend. Those are very rare, important capabilities. But you’re almost certainly not sharing them in a way anyone outside our world can understand.

This is because in the outside world, hiring managers use a very different language. They want people who “take ownership,” who make judgment calls when there isn’t clear guidance. They care about outcomes; not processes the systems we worked in love so much. Hiring managers generally prefer to skip the how and want the what.

This leaves you having to prove your value in ways you weren’t taught — which can feel like you’re starting over when you know you shouldn’t have to. Nobody talks about this honestly enough. So, let’s do that now.

When someone says, “my experience doesn’t translate,” what’s happening is simpler than it may seem: the words you’re using don’t match the ones they’re looking for.

You have great experience. That’s not the issue. The issue is the gap between how you describe it and how they need to hear it — or more importantly these days, how AI screens it. Hiring managers are getting hundreds, often thousands of applications, and they’re actively looking for ways to make the pile smaller. The way you say things matters more than you can imagine.

The good news is it’s easily fixable using the same tools that are blocking you. This isn’t about lying or dumbing down what you’ve done. It’s about translating what it so that people who’ve never been to a duty station, never sat through a multi-stakeholder meeting where nothing gets decided (I know, how to imagine ), and who have no idea what “programme implementation” actually means — can understand the value you bring.

The tricky part is that you only have about six seconds to demonstrate it. That’s approximately how long a hiring manager spends on your CV before deciding whether to keep reading, if it even gets to them. If they can’t immediately understand what you owned, and delivered, they’re going to assume you didn’t do it.

The first sounds like yet another useless meeting. The second shows you made decisions when nobody agreed.

Same experience, but the second tells them how you handled things under pressure, that honestly few can comprehend — and it’s also the kind of thing that starts a conversation rather than ending up in a pile. Your ability to translate isn’t optional, but it does require a different mindset.

Here’s what I’d like you to try this week. Pick three bullets from your CV and paste them into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude with this basic prompt (we’ll be discussing and using AI throughout):

Stuck on what you get back? Reply and show me. I’ll help you see it differently.

Next issue, we’re going to talk about something a little uncomfortable. If you’re only applying to the same increasingly shrinking pool of UN and NGO roles, then competing with hundreds, likely thousands of similar profiles… it’s time for a different strategy conversation.

Ok, that's it for Issue 1.

For now, try the prompt exercise. The people who are succeeding right now aren’t the ones with perfect resumes, they’re the ones who’ve figured out how to describe their experience in ways the market actually wants.

Hope this was helpful!

Andrea

P.S. If you’re wondering how to make your experience make sense to anyone outside your world, I work with people on exactly this and more. We figure out what you’ve been doing, how to talk about it so it connects, and where to look when the obvious paths aren’t working. Want support? Reply. Let’s talk.

I’m also planning to build a course that goes deeper — strategy, job search tools, AI, alternative careers, the identity stuff nobody addresses, and more. If that interests you, tell me. I’m deciding whether to build it based on what people need.