I received several comments on Instagram asking me about by day job. I am lucky to have the best job in the world. You heard the saying: find a job you love and you won’t work a day in your life. That is where I am right now and I know I am very lucky. Things didn’t happen completely by chance, though. I followed my instinct, made some bold choices, and I was guided by wise advisors. Let me tell you more.

A bit of background

After graduating in mathematics, I worked in academia for few years, doing research. I had spent my university years studying theoretical maths. Over the years my wish of doing something impactful had grown. I had a chance to shift towards applied mathematics, in a field with potential biomedical applications. I was excited: would my research advance the field of health?

Unfortunately I found research not fit for my ways of working and my hopes for impactful applications not realistic in my field. Academia was also incompatible with my family life, so I chose to pivot to somewhere else: the IT field. I worked for a few years in a dynamic environment where I learned a lot. There I found out I was a natural at project management and I loved my role, a good balance of coding and customer relations. I quickly climbed the ladder and got to lead a small team. I love taking care of a team and I hope I’ll have the chance to do it again.

Yet something wasn’t right for me. While I loved my colleagues and many aspects of my job and workplace, I didn’t feel I was spending my time making a dent in anything important.

Around this period, we finalised our son’s international adoption. Adoption is deeply rooted in injustice, on many levels, at the very least the unfair separation of a child from his family. The idea that I was spending my days solving customer issues that had zero importance in the grand scheme of things started bugging me. All while really important things were happening all the time elsewhere. From big world issues to the small immense instants when life truly happens – those moments of brief human connections that spark unexpectedly. I had volunteered for many causes for almost 20 years (yes, started young). I already deeply cared for those causes. Yet my experience with adoption somehow allowed me to connect with those issues on a whole different level. In a way I could not turn off anymore.

A new beginning

I started looking for jobs in social businesses, nonprofits, and NGOs. I knew I had plenty to give, but I also had much to learn. No experience in the field and not the typical background. After some time, I saw the posting of my current job and I couldn’t believe it. The NGO advertising the position worked in the space of girls’ rights and valued IT background for the job. Luckily my interview went well and I landed the position. The best job in the world.

In the first year alone, I got to travel to Africa and South America, among other destinations. I met colleagues from countries I had never heard before, doing amazing and impactful work. At my first training, the instructor asked the class “who knows what to do when you get hit with tear gas?” and half the group raised their hands – like whaaat. At an office party we played a game exchanging the weirdest personal experiences and a couple of colleagues had kidnapping stories to share or ‘that time I ran from the police and a car of the UN dragged me in to save me’ (good luck beating that). I dare to joke on these because they do, by the way. When I say I have the best job in the world, it’s because I get to spend day after day working together with these people.

Learning new things

This workplace and role are teaching me plenty. I am learning tons about gender equality and its relation with technology. How technology is shaping our world and if we’re not careful, it will exacerbate inequalities and cut vulnerable people off the world. How women and girls are systematically left behind in technology, education, and any form of power. I have learned about the “do no harm” principle in the humanitarian field: I would formulate it as “good intentions are not enough and can do huge damages”. This should be taught in schools. It has quickly refactored how I see the world and the things I do. I have always been the kind of person that could not sit with injustice and would run, chin up and sword out, to slash it. This job is teaching me that long-term and large-scale change is slow and requires strategy, orchestration, patience, and hope. I am learning how “cool tech” is a privilege that requires infrastructures, digital literacy, actual literacy, access to internet, social norms, and much more to reach many parts of the world.
I am also learning that the humanitarian sector is not immune from racism, sexism, and white saviour complex. What is different from past workplaces is that there’s a constant focus on these issues, accountability, a sincere intention to do better, and plenty of time is actively dedicated to improve both in our delivery and in our working culture.

My area of work

I am working in the field of advancing girls’ rights by using technology as well as in the space of technology. The first bit means using all kinds of technologies – from radio, which is still a highly popular media in several countries, to emerging tech like AI – to create large-scale social impact. A concrete example could be a smartbot that teaches sex ed and women’s rights to girls that struggle to have access to these information.

When it comes to advancing women’s rights in the tech space, there are several threads of work I follow: from empowering women to access tech jobs (the jobs of the future and the best paid = economic empowerment) to calling out tech companies to be accountable for biased design (for example sexist voice assistants or sexist predictive keyboards). Having studied and worked in male-dominated fields for years I wasn’t new to sexism and power dynamics in certain fields, but this job has slammed a door open and I realised that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Bam.

Break the bubble

I am really grateful for everything I am learning in this new role and workplace. I have always been a curious and open person, I have travelled a lot, and volunteered for a long time… but this past year and a half has proved I knew nothing of the world and that I was living in a bubble. Not that I know much now, but the contrast with the before is just massive. My conclusion for this post is an invitation to break bubbles. I covered a lot in this article and yet I feel I haven’t written much. I want to live you with few awesome links and resources to try and break your own bubble:

• power dynamics govern our world – why this is never mentioned in school? This short video will introduce you to the concept;
• we live in a world designed for (white) men. You wouldn’t believe how deep this runs: we are taking everyday medication that wasn’t tested on women, driving cars that weren’t build for us (with deadly consequences), and even our shoes are designed for men feet with long-term health consequences. Read Caroline Criado Perez’s book (it was translated in many languages) if you want to learn more and make sure you subscribe to her super-fun newsletter;
• access to internet should be a right – from governments cutting access to prevent activists to speak out to corporates trying to do unspeakable things to unaware users’ data, Access Now does amazing advocacy work in this space. Make sure you subscribe to their newsletter and it will rock your world as a digital users and global citizen.

I hope this gave you a better idea of how I spend my days. Let me know in the comments what field you work in and what is your dream job.

Featured photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash