During the past year, as the recession has taken hold, Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, which advocates for children’s rights, launched Neti – the New and Emerging Talent Initiative – to try to attract external professionals such as MBAs to its organisation. Last year, it received more than 3,000 applications spanning 19 functional areas for the 2009 Neti programme. My application was amongst them.

Child’s play: the Saadal childcare centre, West Azerbaijan

Before studying at Insead – the Fontainebleau, France and Singapore business school – I had been working with a disaster-response non-government organisation and was keen to continue in this field. When Unicef came to Insead as part of a careers service event and spoke of the imminent launch of Neti, I decided to apply. The process from application to offer was less than three months and of the 22 successful participants within this second cohort, six have an MBA and three have PhDs.