Is Hospitality a good starting point for a career in peacebuilding?

50 Shades of Hospitality

Vanessa Kellerhals currently works in Iraq for the UNDP (United Nation Development Programme) but little in her career path would hint at her one day working in peacebuilding and development.

In this podcast, Vanessa explains how she went from working at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich, winning the AICR world’s best receptionist in 2010 and then onto Lebanon to learn Arabic. From there, she moved back to Switzerland to pursue her studies in Social Sciences. After finishing her Master’s degree and trying to gain a foothold in peacebuilding and development during the pandemic, she was thrilled to learn that she was chosen to work for the UNDP in Iraq.

Vanessa’s credo of “embrace the chaos” has been useful while working in the hospitality field and most certainly in her current position as the Programme Officer of the UNDP Social Cohesion Team in Baghdad. Iraq’s recent history has been marked by many devastating conflicts and much of the UNDP’s work revolves around working with international partners as well as the government of Iraq to rebuild destroyed infrastructure, bring back displaced people to their homes, and support in laying the foundation for development in the country. “Social Cohesion work” includes all projects aiming to support people from different backgrounds to live together peacefully and to be accepting of each other.

Vanessa describes how her hospitality career prepared her for her current profession. She describes some of the hospitality transferable skills such as customer care and service, interpersonal communication, teamwork, decision making and crisis management that are skills she can use in her daily development and peacebuilding work.