As part of their ACIAR-supported NextGen project in their suite of NextGen activities, The Crawford Fund is bringing you a series on career pathways to ag for development.
Working in ag for development has amazing global, national, professional and very personal impacts. You don’t necessarily have to have an ag background to find yourself working in a field in a developing country, helping farmers to better feed their families and earn an income from their small plots of land.
For the young people you’re going to meet the podcast series, intelligence, passion, resilience, ingenuity and luck made working in ag for development a reality – even though none of them started out studying agriculture.
You’ll hear that there is a broad range of pathways to rewarding and exciting careers in international agriculture, not necessarily limited to agriculture.
In the first episode you’ll hear from Kayla Lochner, whose blog is here and who has had an ‘anthropology/people pathway to ag research for development’ and is now involved with Researchers in Agriculture for International Development Network.
In Episode 2 you’ll hear from Anneliese Austin, who has had an ‘environmental science pathway to ag research for development’ and a passion for bees and a special connection to PNG. Read her Crawfod Fund blog here.
Episode 3 features Zoie Jones, a journalist who got her start at ABC’s triple J but had no idea that her career path would lead her to villages in Darfur, the desert border crossing between Egypt and Sudan, Nepal after the 2015 earthquake, Rome, and many places in between. These days, Zoie works in communications for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In Episode 4 you’ll meet Maree Bouterakos, a Dietitian from Melbourne, Australia with eight years’ experience in international development, academic and clinical settings across the Asia-Pacific region. Currently, Maree is the Head of Nutrition for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Laos. Read her Crawford Fund blog here.
Episode 5 introduces Kirt Hainzer. Kirt completed a Bachelor of Finance degree and worked for one of the big four as a management consultant. Less than 5 years later, Kirt was working with farming entrepreneurs in Laos and Nepal.
