Policy in Practice with Isabelle Kim

In our second episode, of “From Campus to Career: Development Practitioners in Action,” we are in conversation with Isabelle Kim. 

Isabelle is a Senior Policy Advisor of Grants & Contributions Policy and Training at Global Affairs Canada. Over her career, she has worked in Canada, China, and Peru in various civil society organizations, hospitals and universities. 

Since joining Global Affairs Canada’s strategic policy branch in 2021, she has worked on issues including climate finance, disability-inclusive development and locally led development and Indigenous approaches to development. She was also the focal point for strategic foresight on development matters and led the 2023 AI/Development Futures initiative. She now leads on training initiatives related to the financial policies and management of grants and contributions at GAC. 

Along with being an IDS co-op alumni, she holds an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto Ontario Studies in Education. Join us as we delve into Isabelle’s path through global policy and community practice, the choices that shaped her journey, the insights she’s gathered along the way, and the principles that continue to guide her work.

The Knowledge Equity Lab's Season 4, podcast series, "From Campus to Career" features conversations with some of the stellar alumni from University of Toronto’s International Development Studies Co-op program, uncovering the stories behind their careers in global development. From the classroom to the field, these conversations trace the choices, pivots, and passions that shaped their journeys and continue to inspire new ways of thinking about global and local development.

Transcript

Malika Daya: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Knowledge Equity Lab’s podcast, “From Campus to Career, Development Practitioners in Action.” In this series, we're speaking to some of the stellar alumni from University of Toronto's International Development Studies Co-op program, learning about their time in the program and beyond, exploring the diverse choices, pathways and experiences that shaped their careers in global development.

I'm Malika Daya, your host for the season. I'm also a graduate of the IDS Co-op program at UTSC, now working in the intersections of theater, global and local development. On today's episode, we'll be speaking with Isabelle Kim. Isabelle has been working in international development for over 25 years. She has worked in Canada, China and Peru in various civil society organizations, hospitals and universities.

Isabelle joined Global Affairs Canada's Strategic Policy Branch in 2021. She has worked on issues including climate finance, disability inclusive development, and locally led development and Indigenous approaches to development. She was the focal point for strategic foresight on development matters and led the 2023 AI Development Futures Initiative. Isabelle joined GAC's Corporate Branch in August 2024, where she leads on training initiatives related to the financial policies and management of grants and contributions. Along with being an IDS Co-op alumni, Isabelle also holds an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto Ontario Studies in Education, OISE, where she taught 30 graduate courses in cooperation and research methods. 

We are so excited to welcome to our podcast, Isabelle Kim.

So thanks, thanks so much for joining us. I'm really excited. I've heard so much about you and your journey in bits and pieces from Leslie, so I can't wait to hear more. We wanted to start with just kind of going back to what initially inspired you to go into international development.

Isabelle Kim: Hi thank you so much for having me Malika. So a couple of different strands. So I was trying to think about if there was one single moment, but I think it was more a constellation of different things. My father was born in North Korea and he moved to Canada, obviously after the war and so on. But his experience and his stories made me alive to this idea of other countries and issues that come up in development and conflict and the mass starvation that's happening there since quite a while now. So from a sort of family perspective, I was aware of a lot of these issues from a young age. 

And when I was in high school, there was a documentary about the killing fields and what was going on in Cambodia. And that sort of left a—not sure why that in particular—but it just left a really strong impression in my mind. And at the time, I thought I would go into physiotherapy and medicine and pursue development through that kind of door.

And hearing about all the landmines and people losing limbs in Cambodia made me think I would pursue a career in that sort of field, either physiotherapy or medicine. And then I changed my mind, obviously, as I ended up in the IDS co-op program, but that spurred me to pursue that route.

Malika Daya :Thank you. Yeah. And so you went to the IDS Co-op program. Can you tell us a little bit about your path from university to where you are now?

Isabelle Kim: So I really appreciated my time at UTSC and the program. I wasn't necessarily super keen at the time we had to do courses like soil science and hydrology and sort of areas that I wasn't necessarily that particularly interested in. But what I got from that multidisciplinary program was that all these issues were interrelated. I went into the program very much singularly focused on one issue, health, as I've mentioned earlier, and conflict.

And realizing that so many things are interconnected between education, health, politics, etc. So that really gave me a well-rounded education. But at the same time, I felt as a generalist I wasn't sure how I could contribute or what I could do with that. So following my undergrad, I was also coming back from placement and travels feeling a little bit, well, cynical slash critical. 

A great anthropology professor at the time, Janice Boddy, I'm not sure if she's still there, but she kept telling us, don't get cynical, get critical and do something about it. So inspired by that, I thought, okay, well, what could I, what could I do next? And so I decided to take a bit of a break from international development to focus on community development issues. And I find so many of the community development principles are quite similar, even though the context changes a lot, there's ideas around consultation, participation, all these interesting ideas that are similar no matter where you are. 

And so I worked for a little bit on local community health development initiatives, local community arts initiatives, and wondering what I would do next after my undergrad degree. Because I knew I wanted to study something, but I wasn't sure what. By then I decided it would not be medicine or physiotherapy, but I wasn't too sure. More I thought about it, so many things came back to education and that seemed to be a common thread throughout a lot of the work I did. And so I decided to pursue a Master's and then a PhD in education at the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education at the University of Toronto. 

And then as I was learning more and more developing expertise, I did miss international development work and the opportunity came up after my PhD to work at an organization where I would be playing a public engagement, public education and advocacy role to help educate Canadians about international development issues. And this seemed so interesting and critical to me, to bring these two pieces of the puzzle together because so many of the problems with international development, the root causes are the actions we take in the global north. 

And so I spent nearly eight years at Development and Peace in that role and then worked in a couple of other civil society organizations in Canada after that and in a more programming international capacity. So my career kind of bounced around between local perspectives, international perspectives. And all that while I kept a foot in the academic world and a foot in the development world. And so I was teaching about 30 courses at the University of Toronto at OISE, all the while working full time. I was kind of working part time lecturing and getting really interested in community based participatory action research.

And then more recently, three kids later, I decided to kind of just, I thought, okay, I need to sort of choose one thing for a while. So I gave up university teaching, still involved in the Knowledge for Change Hub as a volunteer, but no longer actively teaching or researching. And I've been working since 2021 at Global Affairs Canada in a policy analyst role. And I started actually in the strategic policy branch in a research shop there. And that also helped to marry my interest in research and also international development issues. So I've been doing that for the past four years now.

Malika Daya: That's an incredible journey. I also love what you said or what you quoted in terms of don't be cynical, be critical. So cool to see you take a path into education and find a way to weave all of these things you care about so deeply together. Were there in this journey, any unexpected turns or challenges or key learnings that came up when you were in the workforce or when you were actively in the field?

Isabelle Kim: So many. I think as you can see from my path, it had a lot of twists and turns.

I think we work in organizations and sometimes we share some values or some paths forward and sometimes we don't. And so sometimes it's important to take a step back and consider, okay, can I do the work that I want to do here? Is it better to work at it from another angle or another perspective or another location? And so perhaps when I started out in international development, if you had asked me at 18 or even at 24, you know, where do you think it'll be in the next five, 10 years? What does the job of an international development practitioner look like? In my mind, I had maybe this more romantic notion. I don't want to call it romantic, but some notion of somebody who was quote unquote, and I'm embarrassed to say, but these were the words that were floating around at that time “in the field” or “working internationally,” being myself involved in actual programming in other countries.

I think what I've learnt over time is that there's less and less need for, I think, expats to be out there and doing the work and that the work of development can look quite different. So sometimes that could be, you in the case of one of the organizations I worked with, ensuring that Canadians understand what international development is. And so they are more keen or more educated on whether or not public money should go towards international development or not. I think that in certain policies that we have vis-a-vis Canada's role internationally can have maybe more impact in the sort of big development goals that we might have in mind. So I've learned, yeah, I've learned in terms of the work, it can look different and where you do it from matters and who needs to be involved in that work. 

The work of the Knowledge for Change is so interesting that Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon started at the United Nations in UNESCO to really kind of bring these forces of academic-based and community-based researchers together to address sustainable development goals, but do it from where they are. And there are centers all around the world. So the most interesting work I've seen has not been those big projects. It's been very local initiatives led by local actors that aren't always on the radar, but are able to achieve outsized results based on their location and their approach and so on.

And the other was maybe kind of the work can look and feel quite similar, like I said before, you know, whether you're doing community development in Toronto versus somewhere else, a lot of the principles and ideas and the processes are quite similar, even though the context, you know, obviously needs to be considered and adapted, but there's a lot of similar impulses and kind of processes and sort of things that would go through my mind in both of those different contexts. So some of these, you know, these ideas of transferable skills and sort of capacities that we can use and share with one another.

And then the other thing that maybe the third big, big thing that I thought of or that sort of surprised me is often we think we need to address a problem directly. So an international development problem, I would look at solutions from the international development space and that toolbox. In my role now, I'm realizing that so much of things can be addressed from the outside as well. You know, making trade more fair, for example, or, you know, looking at solutions from different kinds of spaces that are not grounded within development. And so the causes of the problems should help to identify where the solutions come from. So development has a really important role to play, but really thinking outside the sector and really outside the traditional disciplines of where we thought some of the solutions might come from.

Malika Daya: Yeah, thank you. And so when you talk about where you are now in your development career, what does work look like for you now? And yeah, what is a typical day or what do you feel the most inspired by in this moment with the work that you're currently doing with GAC?

Isabelle Kim: So my typical day is actually not that exciting. Lots of meetings, reading documents, analyzing documents, writing documents. very, know, very as a job, I'm a senior policy advisor. So a lot of it feels actually quite grad school-like in that sense of researching, writing, editing, writing with other people, consulting people, conducting a, we don't call it conducting interviews in the workplace, but we call it maybe consultation or connecting with internal or outside experts on different issues. 

You know, a typical day is probably 50 to 60 % writing, reading, analyzing, and then maybe anywhere from 25 to 35 up to 40 % meetings, but usually more on the lower side. So that's how you're finding yourself in a development role at GAC, probably a lot of the work you would do is similar to what I've just described. Every so often there is some travel, you know, to conferences or to meetings with joint partners and that sort of thing.

But as a policy advisor, policy analyst, my past four years have been very much focused on a number of different issues. I've had the pleasure of working on quite a lot ranging from locally led development to indigenous approaches to development, to climate finance, disability inclusive development, oh, and strategic foresight, which I find very interesting, which is to look at future thinking approaches to consider what future opportunities and challenges might lie ahead and help to plan for that today and anticipate different scenarios. 

So that involved a lot of research, writing, consulting with, you know, CSOs, other government colleagues, people all around the global south, think tanks, and beyond the private sector. That was one of the most exciting things I've done lately. 

Most recently, you were asking me what motivates me or what I found particularly enjoyable.

So right now I'm at the corporate branch of GAC and I'm working on grants and contributions, financial policies and training issues. And that might sound very dry and not that exciting, but the kinds of things I'm working on are, I hope, what will have the greatest impact to facilitate the work of local partner organizations and partner organizations that are doing the work. So much of what makes things difficult in development has to do with sometimes the heavy bureaucratic nature of managing grants and contributions. So partner organizations are needing to spend a lot of time on reporting and on dealing with their donors and having worked on the other side and work from the point of view of small, medium and large Canadian CSOs and other organizations, that was such a big challenge. And so now where I am situated, I have the opportunity to look at things like clauses and contracts to allow for greater flexibility and make their work easier. 

So for example, I worked on an immediate crisis response clause, so that to allow organizations to pivot more quickly in times of crisis. Whereas documents used to be very heavy and any kind of big change took a long time for people to implement and to get approvals to make changes to their initial project proposal, which they of course hadn't foreseen this crisis that came up unexpectedly later on. So it's at this sort of very minute level within the grants and contributions policies and little clauses and aspects of how they program, you know, making their work easier. That's motivating me a lot because I know from working on the other side, what the challenges are and so from this side, I'm able to work on the policies, keeping that perspective in mind of the work itself and the programs and so that's very interesting. 

And the other aspect of what I'm working on has to do with training. So it's kind of related to my education background. I'm applying those good curricular pedagogical sort of theories to try to make the training programs that we offer on these financial policies, which frankly for me as a non-financial analyst -- I'm not an accountant, I don't have a finance training background -- So sometimes some of these policies or these procedures can seem quite difficult to understand even for other colleagues who don't have that finance background, but also for our organizations who, you know, not not every organization has the capacity to have a professional accountant on staff. So I'm working right now on looking at the training we have and trying to simplify it using myself as a guinea pig. If I can understand it, I can put myself in the mind of a program manager receiving this and needing to use these tools. So I'm trying to come up with some creative ways that work for people's schedules. Gone are the days people can go attend, you know, eight hour workshops or, know, and just completely disconnect from work. So how can we bring in some of these more modern ways of educating people on issues that they may not have formal training in. And so we need to bring them up to speed, but just enough so that they can understand and work more efficiently and quickly. 

I just came back from a trip to one of our embassies in Cote d'Ivoire and had interesting conversations with colleagues there and organizations about what they'd like to see and what training initiatives would be helpful for them. That was really inspiring. Hearing their stories, their challenges, working to make their work easier, that really inspires me and keeps me going.

Malika Daya: Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot on your plate, but a lot of really important pieces that kind of fit together. You were talking about strategic planning for the future, how has your perspective on development changed over the years? How do you see the future of international development evolving as you're thinking about strategy that is possibly to come in the future as well?

Isabelle Kim: Yeah, strategic foresight and futures thinking has really taken off. There's all these conferences on the future of international development and future of this, future of that. So that's bringing a lot of traction, especially during the pandemic, people thought, should we or could we have seen this coming iff we had been more futures, future ready, would we have had a couple of options in our back pocket to be able to pivot quickly when a big crisis like that hit. 

So yeah, that work I find is very important. And we can see what happens but you know, international development can change very quickly, you know, in some contexts, in this case, USAID completely changing their mandate and with huge cuts. And so how do we pivot quickly? What does the future look like in this day and age? And I'm just mentioning one example, but other donors, there's also cuts elsewhere in the sector. USAID is not alone. And so there's a lot of thinking about the future of the UN, you know, if there's less funding or the future of organizations that may no longer be able to survive.

I think the ways that international development will look different. I think we're hearing a lot from the Global South about wanting instead of development per se, you know, moving away from this charitable approach, that sometimes has dominated the sector and moving towards a more thorough set of solutions, which would go beyond development approaches to reassess things like interest rates and make that fair for countries to be able to borrow and rethinking illicit financial flows, imbalances in sort of global finance, and how can we restructure the whole system of global development cooperation so that it's more equitable and fair and centers the voice of the Global South. So I think there's all these really deep criticisms around the need to decolonize development itself as a business, as a system, but also look at sort of wider financial, global financial unfair practices that perpetuate problems of development.

We're hearing a lot about that. A lot of leaders in the Global South have, really, if you look at some of the priorities that they've put forward, things like job creation for youth, youth employment, sorts of things that will require, I think, a whole suite of responses and looking at it from a from a much more holistic perspective. So that might be one. I don't know how things will work out, but there's definitely that need to rethink things completely, the system as a whole. 

What will emerge in that place though is harder to say. I'm now speaking by the way, just completely personally and not at all from my perspective of my job. I think we're going to come to a place where we have a system now with SDGs with, you know, 17 goals, very wide ranging, including all kinds of issues, including social issues. I have a feeling that post 2030, there's going to be a narrower set of things that all countries can agree to because we're having a lot of polarization and the multilateral system is fracturing, geopolitical tensions. And so I think this space for common ground of what different kinds of countries can come together on and agree on will be a bit more limited than the current framework that we have of the UN SDGs. I'm not saying that's a better thing or a good thing or bad thing. I'm just saying, I think that's that we might see a narrowing of common goals different states can agree on. And I think those will have less social goals.So that's one thing.

I think we're going to see a shift towards humanitarianism. And so, you know, there's always been this continuum of the need for humanitarian response, but also continuing long-term development, which addresses the root causes of development, whereas humanitarian often addressing the unexpected crises and the symptoms. Because of there being so many more and more humanitarian crises and climate change, and because of what we see, what donors are more willing to fund because they see as maybe less controversial, socially, we might see a push towards development looking more humanitarian than long-term development. That's another trend I see.

We have normally thought of development, you know, when you think of bilateral donors and even private sector or sort of, you know, charitable organizations, certain foundations that contribute funds for international development, the ways have not changed for a long time, right? It's been grants, it's been contributions, it's been donations, you know, it's usually the exchange of money to organizations and then, them and their implementing partners then roll out the programming. That, and there's been loans. I think in the future, we're gonna see more cash transfers and individual approaches to development. So donors’ help might start to favor sort of more individual approaches, kind of like cash transfer programming in humanitarian situations where people receive literally cash, either hard cash or directly in their bank accounts through electronic transfers, money. The idea is that people are individually the best place to know what to spend on and what they need at that time and it's the fastest way to deliver aid. 

Whether or not that's proven to be more efficient or effective, or regardless of what the research says on all that, because politically seen as more apolitical, and it's kind of more in line with this neoliberal idea and sort of, of letting people, individual people decide what to do, and might create favor for political reasons. And so I have a feeling that cash transfer and individual approaches to development might start to take hold. And so we might see less, whereas now, you know, projects can be quite far ranging and have more communal approaches. So for example, helping to strengthen government or gender equality, that's less of a, you know, one person at a time sort of approach and more looking at sort of sociological and societal approaches to changing those things. So if we go to a cash transfer, kind of more humanitarian framework, we're gonna see maybe less of the kinds of programming that relate to those more qualitative and long-term, more difficult to pin down goals like governance and gender equality and all that stuff. 

The other thing is we might see more private sector engagement and what that might look like might take on different forms. And so will they be more involved in the business of development or are they simply going to be engaged to help contribute financially? I think we might see a bit of both. It could be that maybe governments start to offload some of the functions of bilateral donor agencies, let's say to third party private sector organizations that are quote unquote seen as being more efficient or effective. You know, this kind of stereotype that governments are not good at being efficient and so if we gave this to a private company, they might be faster and more efficient and effective at doing the work. That kind of thinking might take hold if the current trends continue.

And the last thing, sorry, and I don't mean to be all depressing doom and gloom. I think it could be that things need also to get to a very, very bad point that everybody feels engaged by development problems like the climate crisis we're having, that once donors start to see in their backyard the effects of climate change, or if there's another global health pandemic like the COVID one, but it's even more dire, it might sort of trigger and force greater global development cooperation. So now we're seeing it being splintered, fractured, less funded, a huge crisis could force nations to sort of swing back. And I think that could happen and there could be a swing back, but it might be on a narrow set of things related to those crises rather than a bigger development program aimed at long term development as we had with the UN agenda 2030. 

So sorry if I'm being really dour, but this is again, this is just Isabelle Kim speculating from all the stuff I'm reading from all kinds of sources. I'm not saying this will happen. I'm just saying this is what, if you asked me to think about the future trends, these are some of the things that, and I'm not the only one, you know, this is also coming from a variety of sources that I'm reading on. So it's not just purely all my own personal thoughts, but some of the work from strategic foresight and futures thinking.

Malika Daya: Well, I appreciate you being honest with us about that. And I think that the current global state that we're in is a dire one. And so I really appreciate your honesty and the real perspective that you're offering.

Isabelle Kim: Sorry, maybe just one last thing that was probably the most important point. It was so obvious in my mind is probably why I forgot it. I think the players that we think of now as being the dominant players are who we think of now as high-income country, middle-income country, low-income country, all these kinds of euphemisms that we use and terminologies and how we categorize things, that will look different. A lot of the major donors right now are dominated by the US and China, EU and so on. We're in a situation where the balance of power and geopolitics is changing. And a lot of countries like India, like China, Brazil, a lot of countries are growing and changing and, and we're going to see the shift of the balance of power changing. And there's going to be more what used to be called quote unquote developing countries as donors and having more influence. And we're going to get sort of regional groupings and alliances that might not have being seen as possible in the past, you know, maybe alliances between different countries or sort of constellations and regional groups who will band together on certain common causes and their power may grow. And so that might diminish in some ways, some of the power that tends to be held by a couple of really powerful donors in the past. 

So the players are gonna change a little bit. The Africa Union, when you think of the AU and yes, there are lots of challenges, but they may also become more of an influential player in the future. So I think we're gonna see the balance of power changing and who was traditionally thought of as donor, all these languages, all these terms and lists that we have now, the lists might look a little bit different over the next five to 10 years.

Malika Daya: Yeah, I mean, that in a way feels like a source of hope. 

Isabelle Kim: Yes, yes. Although you know, they may not, you know, they may come together for economic reasons. But like I said, the issue is that, the common issue is that the more fractured, regionalized international community might make it harder to agree on common things that the entire community can work, can agree with if, there's more regional groupings and some groupings and things splinter. So that might make universal or international agreements a little bit harder to reach, but there might be stronger regional forces and amongst themselves, they might have certain agreements or be strong as a kind of pod or as a grouping of countries.

Yeah, some hope in some ways and change of relations of power somewhat. Yeah. 

Malika Daya: Yeah, it sounds like lots of shifting terrains in the years to come potentially and I guess my question for you is how do you stay motivated and focused working in a sector that is constantly grappling with complex and urgent crises and also these deep rooted inequities, like going back to those feelings of cynicism, like how do you stay motivated and work past them to continue the work, the really important work that you are currently doing right now?

Isabelle Kim: Keeping the long view. You know, looking at the end game, even though we don't know what that looks like. But this is not a field where at the end of the week, can check off, you know, great gender equality achieved, done, next. There's no, there's no, there's no immediate satisfaction. Very rarely, there's no sense of closure or accomplishment that the big goals that you might have had or sort of, you know, the work that you're aspiring to, won't reach its ultimate goal. We use the results based management language, not in our lifetime and maybe not ever, right? So it can be quite depressing. I think just accepting that sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back. 

You know, I worked on projects in Afghanistan, girls education and women's health. So you can imagine how that kind of two steps forward, 10 steps back, and sometimes it can feel like that. So does that mean that work was all for nothing? It's easy to spiral downwards and to start wondering whether any of it makes a difference. But I think holding on to those, what is your sphere of influence? And it could be quite small. You know, in my case, looking at grants and contributions, financial policies, and how we can do that in a way that facilitates the work of people doing the work.

So looking at you know, what are your immediate goals? What's your sphere of influence and choosing where and with who and how to do that work that works with you, that suits you and, you know, aligned with what you believe in and where you can feel good doing that work. And then just doing the best at that and celebrating the little wins along the way. Sometimes, you know, every so often you'll get little drips and drabs of something positive that happened and really taking a moment to celebrate that and taking the long view and staying very humble. I talked about earlier about “don't get cynical, get critical,” I would say, get humble as well. 

You know, I think with the, I don't know, my, my naivety as a high school student, starting IDS and then at the end, realizing, you know, just how insignificant each one of us really is, you know, we're specks of sand in a huge beach and, it's, really appreciating what we can do. And sometimes there's things that it shouldn't be us that does the doing, it should be other people and really staying humble at what are you best suited for? How can you best contribute? Being honest with yourself about your limits and your sphere of influence and whatever that is, or big, maximizing that and doing the best job you can.

Malika Daya: Yeah, that's really powerful. Thank you. I mean, you kind of answered my last question there, because that's really good advice. I was going to ask, what advice would you give to students or young professionals? And I think you said it perfectly in terms of staying humble and being grounded and thinking through your spheres of influence. But before we wrap, is there anything else that you wanted to add or share?

Isabelle Kim: I think sometimes development, just being aware that development can take many different shapes and forms and paths to get there. So yes, you can study in a program called international development and then work for an organization that has the word development in it or does development work. And it could be very direct, but it can also come in different forms. And I just give them an example of my aunt who was working at the city of Montreal her whole career in HR and industrial relations. And later in life, she ended up, you know, there was a partnership between - at the time, things are a little bit more rocky now - but between the city of Pahopais and the city of Montreal, sort of initiative to support kind of the development of the public function and the city of Pahopais and their bureaucratic work and HR and all that sort of stuff. And so she spent quite a bit of time working with a team there and she traveled a couple of times and they worked together on several initiatives. If you asked her if she did development, she would probably be surprised. In her mind, she was just working with other peers, doing government work in another city, in another country.

You can go study, go do other things and then end up doing it in different ways later in life. And it can take different shapes and forms. Leslie asked in the chat, you know where I did my placement. I did it in China, which sounds strange now because China's one of the biggest donors and I think the top lender around the world. But at the time in 1998, I guess it was still considered a developing country. Anyway, that's where I wound up doing my placement in Tianjin, China. And it was a CIDA funded project, Canada International Development Agency, which then ended up being rolled into Global Affairs Canada. But at the time it was called CIDA and it was a bilateral project between China and Canada, a partnership between two Canadian universities and two Chinese universities, School of Nursing on a distance health education project for nurses. So that was the co-op placement and it was in Tianjin, which is a big city two hours south of Beijing.

And the first time I met the project director, there was one based in China and one based at Ottawa U. And she asked me, you I had practiced Mandarin and I was learning, so I was, you know, I tried to learn enough to have a small conversation with her during my first meeting. And she asked me, what degree are you studying? And I said, guaji kai fa xue. And she just looked at me with these huge eyes like, what? Guaji kai fa xue?

This is China, you're talking about a 5,000 year old civilization. We are not a developing country. She’s this very quiet, sweet, she looked like she was probably in her sixties, mid sixties maybe, she was close to retirement. And she was just so flabbergasted that I had studied that and hence that's why I was doing my placement there rather than I'm a nurse or I'm a project manager with an MBA, so I've been sent because I have that particular expertise to contribute to the project. She was just, you know, she was just besides herself. And it just, it, that was my, know, it just, it just made me realize that we - sorry, I'm not, don't mean to be the story to be depressing for students in development - but to me, it was a really good wake up call as to what we call things, where we do the work with who and how and maybe, you know, the work can look very different and people, you know, can come at it from different perspectives. She in her mind was not working on a development project, even if half of it was funded by CIDA. She would never have used that term. My aunt would never have used the term for her work with Haiti. My father probably wouldn't use the term to describe North Korea, you know, so it's good to kind of really keep that curious mindset, humble mindset, and just being open to work on whatever is needed at the time, from whatever place that you can best do that work. And everybody will have a different answer to that. And I think all IDS co-op students are really well placed to make an excellent contribution from wherever they'll be.

You know, some IDS co-op students, one person I know ended up doing a dance degree, but I'm sure is contributing somehow to those greater goals through that sphere of influence through that kind of work. The work might change and evolve and your career might change and evolve, but you can still contribute from wherever you are in different ways.

Malika Daya: Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for all the knowledge and time and wisdom you shared with us during this podcast. Yeah, it means a lot to us and I'm sure it'll mean a lot to the students and early career practitioners listening in. So thanks, Isabelle.

That's a wrap on today's episode from campus to career. Thank you listeners for joining us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow the Knowledge Equity Lab on LinkedIn and Instagram for updates on our upcoming episodes. Hope you'll tune in for our future episodes with some incredible development practitioners. See you soon.