Not everyone would say that they take pleasure in doing math, but from the time I was young I have loved what it can do. I’ve always enjoyed working with numbers and found that it came fairly easy to me. Math in its purest form makes work in so many other sectors possible, from finance to fashion, and I found it empowering to study a field that was relevant in countless spheres.

I had a university instructor who worked as a contractor for the United Nations in Africa. His stories intensified my curiosity about the Organization. I was inspired by the efforts made at the United Nations to coordinate international dialogue and to find a more equitable development model. To pursue this dream, I found that having a Master’s Degree was beneficial in acquiring a position, so I travelled to the United Kingdom for further studies. During my graduate studies, I focused all of my school work on the United Nations. After graduation, I took the National Competitive Recruitment Exam (now the Young Professionals Programme) in statistics and one year later, I was working as an Associate Statistician on demographic statistics in the United Nations headquarters in New York. After three years, I moved to Santiago through the Managed Reassignment Programme, where I currently work as a Population Affairs Officer. 

There are two sub-areas in my department at the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean (ECLAC). The first does basic number-crunching, producing population, immigration, and birth and death statistics. The second area analyses the raw data from the first sub-area to tell a fuller story. My job is in the first sub-area.

Currently, I am working on a project that deals with maternal mortality. My work is linked to the eight Millennium Development Goals set by Member States and international organizations. Goal number five concerns maternal mortality and progress on this goal lags the furthest behind the seven others. The major issue that we face is that the underlying data is untimely or it doesn’t exist. For instance, some countries can bury their dead without a death certificate, and even when we do have the proper documents, it is sometimes hard to tell if the woman’s death was linked to pregnancy or childbirth. 

I enjoy being able to work around these challenges. When most countries’ data significantly differs from what the United Nations has gathered, my department compares the figures and identifies where the differences come from. We then raise the issues with the local governments and make recommendations on how to better measure these types of statistics. That’s the beauty of my job – I get to combine my love of numbers with policies that make improvements possible. 

Along with doing work that I love, this job has allowed me to move both geographically and thematically. My United Nations career has taken me to places like Cairo and Blantyre to conduct workshops on civil registration and vital statistics; to Aguascalientes, in the framework of statistics on violence against women; to Rio de Janeiro to exchange experiences on population estimations and projections methodologies; and to Busan and Bangkok to present work and discuss maternal mortality statistics.

In this job, I have often been taken out of my comfort zone, and I discovered that this is when I learn and thrive best. I believe that the key to success in this Organization is to keep one’s mind open. Opportunities come in different forms and it’s necessary to embrace them. The work of the United Nations reaches every corner of the world, and I’m glad that I’ve been given the opportunity to pursue something I am passionate about with this Organization.