What is your experience with sustainable solutions?

What professional skills and experience are needed to effectively assess needs and deliver solutions in developing communities?

• That's my long term goal—to be able to assess needs and implement or create effective, appropriate solutions to issues facing developing, low-income and underserved communities. I have a lot of skills that I think would apply—empathy, design thinking, systems thinking, respect and humility, communication, desire, etc—but no direct experience in development work, yet.  What I want to know is what professional skills and experience do I need to build so I can get to that point?  What kinds of jobs and positions should I target now to get there eventually?

• Answer:

  It all depends on what "needs" and "solutions" you're referring to. If you're talking about needs related to agriculture, you should have some expertise in that field. If you're talking about about needs related to transparency in the political process, you're talking about a totally different set of skills. It would be worthwhile to a) develop hard skills in an area that you're interested in so that you can make a contribution to development programming in that area or b) join a development organization as an entry level generalist and learn more about the industry while finding an area that is particularly compelling to you.