The moment I knew I wanted to work in development cooperation was when I met the first family living in a house that was about to collapse after a terrible earthquake in Peru – and supported them to rebuild their home into a clean, thriving environment. At that time, I wasn’t quite sure, how exactly this path would look like, but this initial drive led me to specialize in Food Security and Malnutrition in my Bachelor and spontaneously move to Cambodia to support families first-hand to improve their nutrition, food production and livelihoods. From the first day on, I’ve loved the dynamic pace of development projects: identifying needs on the ground, planning and implementing initiatives and seeing the impact that these initiatives create for the families that need it most. And while I love being directly “in the field”, I realized quickly that my structured, big-picture mind felt most at home in the management and coordination of such initiatives. That’s why 2020 is the year that I feel most proud of professionally: while it’s been the most challenging with spontaneously managing 2 running projects (and closing one of them) with a team of 30+ members and 5 locations while successfully developing a new project under huge time pressure amongst the insecurities of COVID, it’s also the year where I learned the most and grown into a stronger leader. To keep learning and growing, I’m currently doing my Master in International Development while looking for a new professional challenge where I can give my best again to make the lives of families around the world better than before.