Marie Wilson

Gonzaga MA in Organizational Leadership 2009 Graduate

Her bio/resumé:

For the past 17 years, she has served as a Protection and Resettlement Officer with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. She now works in the UNHCR Regional Office for Central Europe in Budapest, Hungary. Visit her page here.

She is a native of Czech Republic (was Czechoslovakia when she was growing up; hence, her early language training in Russian. She has relatives in former Yugoslavia that she used to visit during the summers; hence, her familiarity with Serbian language which she studied in a formal way in Czech Republic in the 1990s.

She started an NGO to help refuges from Bosnia-Herzegovina who fled to Czech Republic in 1994. She worked to help stop the Czech government from deporting them back to Sarajevo.

As a volunteer, she got a stipend of $2000/month (more than the average wage) to live in Bosnia. She admitted that she was often in dangerous situations in Bosnia and stressed the need to be absolutely committed to the project of protecting and helping refugees.

After 7 years, she got a job with the UN Resettlement in Moscow.

She speaks several languages fluently, several in the Slavic language group (Czech, Serbian, Russian, Polish) and English.

Career advice and resources:

She recommended getting hands-on experience as a volunteer or intern.

You can find jobs and volunteer experience working with refugees at reliefweb.int’s job board See also reliefweb’s training site.

Look for positions with UNHCR NGOs that are “implementing partners” in specific refugee situations.

For those interested in exploring working with refugees as a career, consider the UN Junior Professional Officer Program or an Internship with UNHCR.

She said a MA degree and linguistic skills are required for work with the UN.

She also stressed the need for hard skills in engineering, public health, computer science.

She recommends those interested in career with UN to study one (or more!) of the UN’s working languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.

For work with the UNHCR, visit: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c491.html