PlaNet Resource Guide

Fellowships and Grants for International Study and Travel

Working Abroad: A Letter from Rob Guptill

Here are some thoughts that I have on working abroad.

I have spent the past six months working on two different assignments on two different continents. I worked with an office of the World Bank called the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP – www.wsp.org) in New Delhi, India for three months and with an NGO called the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP – www.itdp.org) in Dakar, Senegal for another three months. Both of these jobs were three-month contracts.

While having a masters degree in urban planning was certainly important towards getting these jobs, they never would have happened without contacts. That is, in both cases, I was introduced to a senior person within the organization by a mutual acquaintance. It is more so the case in international jobs than anywhere else, I’m afraid, that it’s less about what you know and more about who you know that gets you in the door. If there is one piece of advice I can offer to planners looking to work abroad, it is to try and make contacts... through your friends, professors, co-workers, etc.

To illustrate the randomness of how these things can happen... I never would have gotten the internship at WSP had I not met and had a conversation with a former member of that organization. How did I meet him?... Well, I was in DC for the Annual TRB conference and was staying with a friend who was dating the niece of this man. We all had dinner together one night and we got to talking about urban planning... et voila! He pulled some strings and I ended up in Delhi for three months. So it’s a combination of luck and knowing people, but there are plenty of people associated with Berkeley that have worked in the international arena. Conversations in the most random places could send you to some pretty random places! I wouldn’t have ended up in Dakar had I not met to discuss a project with a professor and ended up talking about my interest in international planning.

So hopefully that helps. And I’m willing to help out in any way that I can, as well. While my situation with WSP was pretty unique, I might imagine that ITDP would be interested in doing with others what they’ve done with me; that is, hire a recent graduate (cheaply) for a couple months. This gives you the chance to try and figure out if this whole international planning thing is really what you want. Meanwhile, ITDP gets some cheap, quality work, so everybody wins.

Best of luck!

Rob Guptill
rguptill2000@yahoo.com