From Geneva to Tunis: Building a Career in Policy

AUC student Alaa Sliti spent her summer researching local economic programs with the International Labour Organization in Tunisia and attending a youth democracy conference in Switzerland.

“Having the chance to meet active young citizens of the world — people from Kosovo, Colombia, Canada and Ukraine—  gave me a new perspective on what democracy is and how we perceive it.”

Sliti, an economics senior minoring in international relations, participated in Reimagining Democracies, a weeklong conference gathering young people from around the globe in Geneva, Switzerland to explore solutions to global challenges and discuss developments in democracy.

Sliti, who hopes to work in development policy in her home country of Tunisia, said participating in the program broadened her perspective on global narratives about democracy. “Having the chance to meet active young citizens of the world — people from Kosovo, Colombia, Canada and Ukraine—  gave me a new perspective on what democracy is and how we perceive it,” Sliti said.

“Having all of the theory, principles and economic language from the classroom helped me a lot."

Sliti also participated in the Caux Democracy Forum, where she attended speeches by civil society leaders, scholars and government officials, including former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and former two-time president of the Swiss Confederation Pascal Couchepin.

After the program, Sliti put theory from her AUC policy classes into practice as an intern at the International Labour Organization’s office in Tunisia. Her research focused on public employment programs, social security and applying the ILO’s high-employment intensity approach to social projects.

“Having all of the theory, principles and economic language from the classroom helped me a lot. I knew what I wanted to do, the research I wanted to pursue and the keywords to use. That helped me a lot during the first month of my internship at the ILO,” Sliti said.

“The people I got to know, the conversations I had, the locals I met who are from my country — it was something very humbling, but at the same time hopeful."

Employment-intensive initiatives create jobs by training and employing people from the area to work on specific projects, providing them with new skills and certifications. Sliti researched the social impact of an ongoing construction project, writing comprehensive reports in both English and French.

“It’s called chantier école in French, which is a worksite school. It trains workers on real sites, so they leave qualified,” Sliti explained. “This approach integrates vulnerable people through work of high social value, giving them certificates and more credibility.”

Sliti said the experience helped her find fulfillment not only in working on policy, but in directly interviewing and speaking with the people impacted by it: “The people I got to know, the conversations I had, the locals I met who are from my country — it was something very humbling, but at the same time hopeful. It gave me a lot of insights that I did not have before pursuing this internship.”