Kathleen DeBoer is the deputy head of center and sales/marketing manager at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Washington. She has worked at the OECD for the past eight and a half years. DeBoer founded the OECD Student Ambassador Program, which acts as an on-campus internship opportunity for eight to 12 students selected from North American universities. The program allows students to get a first look at the OECD’s work in international development and economics.
DeBoer also teaches librarians, faculty, and students how to navigate the OECD iLibrary, a database of international economic data to which the University of Toronto subscribes. She shares the OECD’s findings on Canadian education with the Canadian government.
The Varsity sat down with DeBoer to discuss the OECD’s work, student careers in international affairs, and the important of learning new languages.
The Varsity: How did you get involved with the OECD?
Kathleen DeBoer: I’ve been working there for eight and a half years. I have an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard, and I worked for several major publishers including Oxford University Press and Workman Publishing earlier in my career. I joined the OECD when I had come back from — I had been teaching in China from 2001–2005 and they had an opening up in the Washington office, which is responsible for dissemination of OECD work in the United States and Canada, so I applied for that job.
TV: Can you tell me about the work you do with the University of Toronto specifically?
KB: The University of Toronto subscribes to our OECD iLibrary, so I provide them training because we’re always updating. We just recently launched a new data portal that has some interesting functionalities so I would train the librarians and any students, graduate students, and faculty who are interested. And then I also field research requests. Sometimes a scholar will be doing research and there’ll be some internal document, what we call grey literature, from the OECD that’s not an official publication but they want to cite it in their research or they want to look at it, so I’ll help them find that, go into the archives.
TV: Does the OECD promote education in Canada, whether post-secondary, primary, or secondary?
KB: The OECD work on education that Canada is very involved in is something called the PISA, the Program of International Student Assessment, and that tests 15-year-olds in a bunch of different countries on science, reading, and math. We also have some testing on skills that we published last year — adult skills. We publish the information and share it with, obviously, the Canadian government, so we want to bring numbers to the policy debate. That’s really our role. We will say, “This is what the numbers are telling us.” We can’t dictate to a country if they should take our advice or not, but we can also look at which countries are doing well in certain areas and see if there’s any lessons that can be learned from those countries that could be applied to a different country.
TV: How do you work with developing countries, in terms of education?
KB: Our mandate is to help our member countries develop and prosper economically, but also to engage with other countries. We have something called the Development Assistance Committee, the DAC, that looks at how the money that OECD countries are giving to other countries is being spent, and how effective it is. The OECD as an organization does not give money. We’re not like the World Bank or the IMF, but we monitor aid and report on it so people can see, and we also look at gender equity in that area. Is the money that’s going to a specific country in Africa for education? What percentage of it is going for women’s education? What percentage of it is going for women’s healthcare? So by monitoring and publishing the results, we try to urge our member countries to pay attention to how they’re giving money.
TV: How can U of T students participate in this program, in the Student Ambassador Program, or in the OECD in general, if they’re interested?
KB: Working with the current student ambassador, Hayden [Rodenkirchen], he is going to be organizing events, so to the extent that they want to come and hear OECD speakers, and ask questions. [Students] can also apply for internships either in the Washington office or in the Paris office. And then I’m going to be doing another talk on October 22 at the Munk School, at the graduate career fair, and they’re talking about how to actually apply for a job at the OECD. There are jobs for people with just an undergraduate qualification. The economist jobs and the policy analyst jobs, they’re normally looking for a Master’s or even a Ph.D., but certainly like in my area, in publishing, people who are bilingual in French and English and have good drafting skills, and have some facility with numbers and economics, would be well qualified to work in the publications area. We have all kinds of other jobs … but language skills are a huge benefit.
TV: Would you have any advice for students who are studying a language now or who want to be bilingual in the future?
KB: When I was in college, I really just studied French, Spanish, and Italian, but I’m a great believer in immersion. I went to France when I was 16-years-old and lived with a French family and worked for them, and I think if you find a language that you really like, the sooner you can put yourself in an immersion situation, even if it’s a volunteer job or going to study, at the younger age, the more hardwired that language will be. But I didn’t start learning Chinese until I was 38-years-old, but then I did live and work in China, and it’s amazing. I was just back there this summer and stuff comes back to me, so I think here in Toronto, it’s a very international city, there’s lots of opportunities to speak lots of languages but there’s very little substitute for the 24/7 immersion experience… Once you get a certain level of mastery, try to put yourself in situations where you’ll be forced to use the language.
TV: Many U of T students want to pursue careers in international development. What advice would you give to those who want to pursue this career path?
KB: One of the first things that I think is really important to remember is that economic development is local. If you got experience doing any kind of business here in Canada, whatever skills you would learn would be somewhat transferrable to another situation… I think that the idea that you’re going to just go to another country and help people start a business is, you know, it’s noble, but it shouldn’t be naive. It’s good if you have some expertise, something that you can share with them… And then, the other thing you have to be realistic about is that the culture may be completely different, the way of doing business in that country may be very different from the way that is in Canada, so you have to be very open-minded about that. I also say to people, don’t always assume that the job that you really want to have is going to be the first job. You might need to have five jobs before you get to that job, but you should be trying to work in a certain direction. So figuring out what part of the world you want to work in, figuring out how you’re going to acquire some language and culture skills around that, figuring out what other kinds of opportunities there are for you to go there.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
