I am a globetrotter at the service of health

IN HER WORK ALUMNA MARZIA CALVI HAS MANAGED TO COMBINE HER PASSIONS: TRAVELING, STUDIES AND THE DESIRE TO INFLUENCE THE WORLD. SHE IS NOW AT THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

The family imprint of Marzia Calvi is common to many like her: her dad a professor of English, her mother a passionate traveler, both public employees. The aspiration of an international career was born right there, merging an interest in the world with the desire to work in a public institution, possibly in the field of health. "Right after graduation my career ideas were still a bit cloudy," says Marzia, from Tortona, in north-western Italy. She has become a young WHO manager today. "A part of me wanted to study medicine, but I chose economics at at the last minute, convinced by an English-language program, the Bocconi Bachelor of International Economics, Management and Finance (BIEMF). For me that I came from a relatively small town was it was like discovering a new world, because suddenly I was thrown into a classroom with various kinds of curious people, economists, children of diplomats, all speaking and debating in English. I tried from the start to alternate as much as possible periods of study in Itay with internships abroad." She thus started trotting across the globe, from the Toronto Chamber of Commerce to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where she studied the microcredit model.
 
"The latter was very intense experience, even from a personal point of view because I was alone, in a country not easy to live in, first in Dhaka and then at the northern border with Nepal, in a rural area. I got enriched but also disillusioned towards economic models approached from a purely theoretical point of view. People die because of pure theory. So, upon returning, I applied to a CLAPI Master of Science, hoping to get a better sense of the public sector." After completing her two-year graduate degree, and experiences between the European Commission in Brussels and the KPMG consultancy in Milan, she finally found her career opportunity: a contract in the San Donato hospital group as a junior manager and assistant to the CEO. "But at 26 years of age, I still wanted to try new professional experiences and then, after just two years, I decided to start again with a United Nations scholarsphip, this time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia", Marzia explains. The next career step was her current job at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, chosen among the 20 top candidates after a competition that saw more than 2,000 participating. "The job is very much sought after and this in itself makes me proud," says the young official. "I work on a program to prevent tuberculosis, part of a department that also deals with malaria and HIV. So I finally managed to combine everything I wanted: travel, economics, international organizations, and health. However, my current position still
does not solve my eternal ambivalence about whether to work in strategic roles or out in the field”.

Read other articles on the topic:
The civil servants with the World as their office. Article by Valentina Mele
Washington was in my destiny. The tale of Andrea Salerno
I discovered I was hungry at EXPO2015. The tale of Tatiana Tallarico
As a child my dream was to be an ambassador. And today my suitcases are always ready. The tale of Aurora Russi
 

by Lorenzo Martini