Experiences From an Ex-UN Official in an Oil Company in Rio

By Tania Ortiz de Zuniga
MIA 2009

I got to Rio de Janeiro 3 days ago, on a pouring Sunday that prevented me from seeing a single thing on my way to the house from the airport. I guessed the beach, bits and pieces of Ipanema and Copacabana and some streets of Leblon, the neighborhood where I have set my headquarters. It was cold and humid, the kind that gets into your bones and only leaves you when under a hot shower or a pile of blankets. Not the best day to get here I must say... and yet, I was as happy as a 6 year-old girl with new pink shoes.

I have been working for the UN and various organizations for the past 7 years of my life—NGOs, government agencies, UN agencies—as a development officer. I have worked in human rights, governance, humanitarian relief, micro-projects coordination, preparing and managing projects, in principle aiming at developing those particular communities. Frustration drove me back to school. I’m now trying to figure out the mysteries of development and cooperation through a Master’s at Columbia University.