Life’s A Spiral: On Feeling You Failed
*This post is inspired by current *life* events and my incredible best friend, miss Sara Taaffe*
I remember driving back home to New Brunswick after completing my Master’s in Global Affairs at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, the top school in the field in the country, and feeling I had failed. How could a Masters in Global Affairs see me returning to my home town of 12,000 people. A largely affluent community with very little cultural diversity and “global affairs”. After all, I had set out to find my way to working for the United Nations or organizations that I deeply admired like CARE, Oxfam, WUSC, and Aga Khan Foundation, among others. That didn’t happen.
Rent in Toronto was astronomical and I wasn’t prepared to wait it out. So I moved home. Little did I know that this move, at this time, provided me with more than a job in development ever could. I learned a hard but important and true lesson that I ended up being exactly where I needed to be. Hard to see at first but pretty clear now.
Not only was the world on the verge of a global pandemic that grounded us all, but many people close to me during those three years at home died. I lost two close friends, my grandmother, two of my parents’ dear friends, and a neighbour, all in the span of 16 months. I could not have imagined being half away across the world and navigating this scale of loss. My people needed me and I desperately needed them.
Coming back and what felt like foregoing the linear path, in fact, laid the groundwork that allowed me, eventually, to spiral, expand out.
My time at home allowed me to be close to those I love, while also developing a deeper understanding for my community and the unique opportunities and challenges that laid ahead for the province of New Brunswick. I was fortunate to join the first of its kind Human Centered (HCD) and Design Thinking team with the Government of New Brunswick (GNB), the iTeam. This team was tasked with supporting the public service to imagine, test, and scale news ways of working with each other and the public. The goal was to place citizens at the centre of defining problems and solutions to address pressing policy, programmatic, social, and economic challenges. This is where my journey in HCD began. A mind and skill-set that has added value in every challenge, opportunity, and role since.
The iTeam doing Yoga with the Premiere on the front lawn of the NB Parliament Building.
Human Centered Design is an approach to problem solving and social innovation that places the people you are designing for at the heart of the process. It actively works to shift power dynamics by redefining who gets to be the expert, where the professional designer or “expert” shifts from having authority to occupying a position where they work alongside community members as a facilitator and a thought partner.
At the end of the day, we are all designers and carriers of our unique lived experience, HCD works to harness this collective intelligence to craft meaningful and sustainable solutions.
Through my formal training in HCD via the iTeam, I was able to support a new and innovative program, Future NB, led by the Department of Post-Secondary, Education, Training and Labour. Future NB worked to address student workforce readiness, while tackling labour market challenges. In no other province were employers, students, and universities collaborating like they were through Future NB. We had set a national example for how a problem can be solved by ensuring that all voices are not only at the table but are active participants and designers of the solution.
My work at GNB allowed me to establish roots in my community, build a network, and add value to the place I had called home for some many years. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the iTeam and GNB, my itch to formally work in international development had yet to be scratched.
I found a unique opportunity with an organization called Venture 2 Impact, an NGO based in Eastern Canada that was working to tackle complex challenges by leveraging HCD and DT through linking skill-based volunteers to global communities. V2I enabled me to re-enter the development space, while applying my skill-set in Human Centered Design with a new team and context. As their Program Manager, I was able to work with organizations in the Philippines, the Gambia, Ecuador, and Uganda. I spent a good portion of my day connecting with and learning from leaders of these organizations to unearth their needs and understand how we could craft innovative solutions to those pressing challenges by leveraging employees from organizations, such as Salesforce, Google, and JP Morgan, among others. Together, we designed training curricula for youth in West Africa, we launched a data collection tool for 30,000 children in a child sponsorship program, we supported survivors of human trafficking through a new e-commerce platform, etc. To learn more about one of my favorite projects we worked on, check out the link here.
Gradually as the world started re-opening, I was presented with an opportunity to fulfill a way of working that had intrigued me for quite some time, Digital Nomading. Through V2I, a job that was already remote, I decided to move out of my apartment, sell my car and my belongings, move my stuff back into my parents place (thanks M&D!), and set sail for South America. I had no plan. But I knew I wanted to see if I could do this “digital nomad thing”. Work full-time from anywhere in the world. On November 7th, I landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A starting point for an equally disruptive and centering experience. I moved 42 times in six months. That’s your teaser, more on my Digital Nomad chapter to come.
From Buenos Aires, and the places I would visit, my spiral kept expanding. I learned a new language, met so many incredible locals and fellow digital nomads, ran and biked, got a concussion, thought I broke my nose (I didn’t, pewph!), but most importantly, I felt so alive. Then in March, while I was in this incredible town called Punta Del Este in Uruguay, I got an email from the Aga Khan Foundation. Two years prior, I was accepted into their Fellowship program and had intended to move to Nairobi, then COVID struck. I was devastated, I thought I had done it, finally making it into the development space with not just any organization but the largest development network in the world. But the timing wasn’t right. So I put my head down and got to work. Then the opportunity arose again and that pull I felt to fulfill my dream to return to Africa in a skilled capacity led me to reapply with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF). In April, I found out I was successful, and I had a really hard decision to make. At this point I was in Ecuador with an unclear timeline as to when I was going to return home. V2I provided me with an incredible amount of flexibility on the periphery of the development sector, and yet, my goal of formally working in Africa was not fulfilled.
So I chose to honour what I had been pursuing for the better part of my academic training and career. I accepted the role as Social Change and Behaviour Fellow with the AKF and would move to Kampala, Uganda, two months later (more on the beginnings of my work with AKF to come).
In this sense, my choice to work for the Aga Khan Foundation saw me touching back into the spark from Malawi 8 years ago. The spiral was turning in again, I was grounding (spiritually, emotionally, cognitively, and physically), I was foregoing flexibility, a good salary, to pursue what I felt to be my path to add value and find self-fulfillment. For some, going from a Program Manager to a Fellow may appear as a “step back” in my career, or the “non-linear” option, but how could I consciously work on development, without first working in development. To me, this was and is providing me with a huge push around the bend. Around the bend of actually executing on my passion, purpose, and potential. And that is scary as hell. But at the same time, I feel like I've been freed. In my experience, the spiral always keeps opening if you work hard, are kind to people (and yourself), and you don’t lose sight of your North Star. One. Bend. At. A. Time.
Don’t be afraid to turn back, to create untraditional but meaningful touch points, to lay your foundation so you can navigate this world with authenticity and competent support, friends.
Failure is inevitable. But so is hope. Lean into both.
