How Pasteur’s “Chance favors the prepared mind” enables career transitions
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
Louis Pasteur applied “Chance favors the prepared mind” to scientific observations, but I’ve found it apt for career transitions too. It definitely served me well in my own career.
The following story of how I ended up in Vietnam — at a time when that country was undergoing a rapid economic transformation — is an example of that. It started in the early 1990’s when I was working in the technology sector near Washington, D.C. I’d spent most of my vacations in the preceding decade travelling through urban and remote corners of Southeast Asia. I felt an instinctual connection to places where the less advantaged population was striving hard to improve their lot in life. At some point, I tired of my technology-centered lifestyle and pursuit of first world material comforts. I wanted to reverse a pattern of waiting for vacations to really enjoy my life. What I wanted was to immerse myself in another culture for an extended period of time, to apply technology to solving a needy community’s problems, and to challenge myself at the same time. I could have pursued an overseas corporate job or taken a year off to travel, but that wasn’t the life framing that I was seeking. I wanted to dive into some faraway place and positively impact it.
I decided to become a United Nations Volunteer (UNV); in Vietnam, specifically. Defining my geographical target this narrowly definitely made it more challenging than being open to whatever UNV post opened up first, but it was a destination that I was passionate about.
Why Vietnam? As an information technology focused UNV, I knew it was likely that I’d be placed in an urban environment. Vietnam had been relatively insulated from free market economics for several decades, and was just opening up to the West at the time. The United States had also just lifted its trade embargo against Vietnam earlier that year, and diplomatic relations between the two nations hadn’t yet been reestablished (since they were disrupted at the end of the Vietnam War). I wasn’t making a political statement; I was seeking out a relatively isolated country that I expected would give me a more immersive experience than an international city that was awash with western culture.
I hadn’t been to Vietnam yet, but was somewhat familiar with Vietnamese people through the volunteer work I’d done with the Vietnamese refugee community in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Their stories of grit and determination had a powerful, positive impact on my own outlook at the time, and served as a stark contrast to my own quibbles with everyday life as a software engineer earning a comfortable living in an affluent community.
I submitted my application to become a Peace Corps co-sponsored UNV. Both organizations informed me that the regular process to obtain a post was to submit the application and then patiently wait to be selected by one of the United Nations agencies in one of the countries where UNV operated around the world. They acknowledged my Vietnam interest, but made no promises. I was repeatedly rebuffed when I reached out directly to the UNV headquarters office in Geneva and the UNV field office in Vietnam.
A few impatient months later, it dawned on me that I should take the matter into my own hands; to metaphorically swim out to the opportunity rather than wait for it to come to me. So, I asked the UNV representative in Hanoi if he’d be willing to meet with me if I happened to be travelling in Vietnam. He said of course. So, I immediately booked a trip to meet up with him and push my case. The primary purpose of this trip was to get a UNV post, but it was definitely going to be fun there anyway.
I flew about 20 hours from Washington, DC to Hanoi, Vietnam. It was another few hours by the time I cleared immigration and checked into my hotel near the UNV office. I dropped my bags and immediately walked over. After a short greeting, the UNV representative reiterated what he’d told me on the telephone. Sorry, I can’t help you get a role here. I walked back to my hotel, feeling dejected as I’d been in the city less than an hour and had already failed. No way was I giving up that fast. It was nearing midday, so I walked back and asked if he’d at least have lunch with me. We had a nice lunch and I left his office a few hours later with a handful of business cards he’d shared. Polite persistence had paid off. I spent the remainder of my trip making cold calls to people in various Vietnamese organizations to solicit their interest in having a technology focused UNV support them. By the time I flew home, I was feeling optimistic about a UNV post in Ho Chi Minh City.
For the next several months, I exchanged correspondence with the UNV office in Hanoi and the prospective institute in Ho Chi Minh City. My application progressed through the approval chain in Vietnam. It was rejected at the final stage. I was absolutely crushed, but it taught me an invaluable lesson about approvals in large organizations: Partial approval is encouraging but ultimately meaningless. It’s not decided until it’s decided.
The rest of that year played out with me still longing for the overseas immersive experience, but an unexpected opportunity did surface in January the following year. It was with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Liberia, West Africa. UNICEF was a leader there in the UN’s humanitarian response to the conditions resulting from the ongoing civil war. Geographically it would move me further away from Vietnam, but of all international development organizations I knew anything about at that time, UNICEF was the one I most understood and appreciated. They focused on directly helping children and families in difficult circumstances. The Africa post offered me a way to plug myself into the international aid professional circles that I thought might later help me get a position in Asia. Plus, it enabled me to begin my extended international adventure sooner than later. I ultimately chose to go rather than keep waiting.
I spent most of a year at the UNICEF Liberia national office in Monrovia, and frequently travelled to the UNICEF West and Central Africa regional office in Abidjan. It was tremendously interesting work. I was the UNICEF Information Resource Management Project Officer, with responsibility for all issues related to information systems capacity at the UNICEF Liberia office. I organized a maintenance shop to support repairs of information technology equipment, trained administrative staff to support fundamental computer needs for 100 local and international staff, laid the foundation for an office data network, and collaborated with my UNICEF peers from about 20 neighboring countries. It was impactful work for UNICEF, and in turn helped UNICEF program staff stay focused on delivering their aid services to Liberians rather than getting blocked by information technology challenges.
Opportunity knocked again later that year when the UNV organization surprisingly contacted me in Monrovia with an offer to work in Vietnam. The letter tersely described a role in which I’d work on a project jointly funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Vietnamese government’s Ministry of Water Resources. It was to develop information systems capacity and a public information office for the government of Vietnam to better mitigate the adverse impact that natural disasters had on their population.
A year earlier I would have jumped at such an opportunity in Vietnam, but at the time I received this the UNICEF work was immensely satisfying; even as we worked very hard in a stressful situation with heartbreaking humanitarian crises all around us. I was committed to helping my UNICEF colleagues build better information systems capacity for the organization and had made good friends in the Monrovia aid community. My mindset was to renew the UNV contract for at least another six months, if not longer if the conditions on the ground made that viable.
I also didn’t know much about the position offered in Vietnam. Before coming to Africa I’d had a long term goal of getting to Vietnam afterwards, but I hadn’t thought about it again since arriving. The Vietnam position gnawed at me for a while, though, since I knew how elusive impactful positions were in Vietnam without connections or a physical presence in the country.
It was a tough call. The real choice at hand was to either renew my Liberia contract so I could complete the two year information systems program I’d planned, or to just briefly extend my contract so I could transition the program to a coworker before I left the country. I also believed that if I put in several years there then afterwards I’d have a decent shot at a fulltime UNICEF position since I’d established good relations with the UNICEF New York headquarters staff. After careful deliberation and more than a few conversations with trusted friends, I chose the brief extension.
I worked myself to near exhaustion in the final weeks at UNICEF and then flew from Monrovia to Hanoi, with resting stopovers in London and Washington, DC. At Noi Bai Airport on the outskirts of Hanoi, a young engineer from my new office handed me a thick stack of documents to read for an imminent meeting of international and local disaster management experts. He politely but firmly stated that I was to participate in that meeting the following day. I soon found myself immersed in discussions about the new strategy and action plan for mitigating water disasters in Vietnam. The Vietnam Disaster Management Unit (DMU) office that I was hired to help setup was at the center of many conversations, and I was asked probing questions about my plans at that gathering of experts. I knew information systems, but needless to say it was premature for me to advocate any particular approach for disaster mitigation in Vietnam.
I’d become the first American Peace Corps volunteer to serve in Vietnam. I worked under the authority of the United Nations Volunteers organization, and acted on behalf of the UNDP, the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Vietnamese government’s Ministry of Water Resources, and the Vietnam Central Committee for Flood and Storm Control.
The DMU project focused on the information side of disaster mitigation, such as better information exchange, public awareness, and coordination between organizations (at national, provincial, and district levels). Over the next several years, I had the opportunity to travel throughout the country as a representative of the DMU. The DMU’s impact led it to becoming a very successful project for Vietnam and the UNDP in the region.
Chance intervened in my career two more times near the end of my one year UNV contract. I’d hoped to stay in Vietnam longer, but had no clear path to do so. Through the DMU and on its behalf, I met and worked with the community affairs representative of an oil industry organization that was looking to fund a humanitarian program. Separately, a local friend introduced me to the Vietnam Country Representative of an American computer company that was looking for someone to manage large information infrastructure projects. I pursued both opportunities simultaneously because they were longshots. I ultimately landed both, and attribute this largely to being in the right place at the right time with the right skills.
I had worked hard and Pasteur’s chance helped me experience an awesome opportunity in Vietnam, but I absolutely believe that this wasn’t all my doing. I was blessed with the absence of bad luck (as world famous microbiologist Peter Piot points out is impactful in life) and I was born into an environment that gave me the wherewithal to take these risks (to paraphrase Warren Buffet’s “Ovarian Lottery” remarks).
Other interpretations of the career coaching lessons I’ve taken away from this experience are:
- “Do the thing you’re hungry for and that gets you closer to the thing you’re aiming for.”
- “Take a step towards your goal today, even if the full path isn’t yet clear.”
- “Head in the right direction and trust that you’ll figure it out along the way.”
The common thread is to not dismiss action now that prepares you or gets you closer to the career transition you want, even if it’s not exactly the step you’re aiming for.
The motto that I’ve used the longest, though, is this one: Encourage serendipity through widespread exposure to diverse people and places. My personal challenge today — in the midst of this global Covid19 pandemic — is to figure out if that’s still relevant and if so how to apply it going forward.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.