Victoria Seekman is the Senior Associate of Resilience and Net Zero at iDE. She is excited about working on climate adaptation, measuring nebulous terms like resilience, and translating data into action. She is also passionate about food system transformation and sustainable agriculture. She has an M.A. in International Development Studies From George Washington University and a B.A. in Global Studies with a focus on East Asia from St. Edward’s University. When she isn’t working, she enjoys making art, biking, cooking, and live music.
What is your current position? What are your favorite and/or challenging responsibilities?
I’m currently the Senior Associate of Resilience and Net Zero at iDE. So I manage our net zero initiative and I also am building up our climate resilience profile.
My favorite responsibility is building up our Net Zero program, it was an infant stage when I started so it’s been a fun challenge to get this off the ground and I’ve had a lot of creative and decision-making power around this as there were no guidelines to go off of. That can be intimidating but also fun and rewarding. In addition, I love working with project teams on descriptive statistics to encourage adaptive management from our assessments. It’s interesting and I feel it helps translate data into meaningful impact.
How does your current position compare to what you thought you would be doing when you first started your degree at the Elliott School?
I didn’t think I would be running an organization’s net zero portfolio at all but it’s been a welcome surprise! I’ve learned a lot and it’s something I’m passionate about. I guess I assumed I would start as a program coordinator or something along those lines. This is more of a niche position within the development world.
What part of your career do you find most rewarding and why?
I think some of my most rewarding moments are when I can see tangible results from things I have been working on. An example of this includes completing our annual GHG inventory and getting to discuss results with teams and hearing their perspectives and questions around that.
I also love that my career allows me to work on so many different kinds of projects – I’ve had a hand in data analysis, workshop facilitation, ghg accounting, building indexes, overseeing interns, etc. all in just a year and 3 months. I’m never bored at iDE and I think that’s perfect for someone like me who can get bored quite easily and feel burned out.
How has your Elliott School graduate degree been valuable?
Besides the technical things my degree taught me like how to structure a TOC, Logframe, conduct a lit review, etc. (which have all been useful at some point), I think I gained so many soft skills from my degree. I learned how to approach complex problems with a nuanced perspective, how to feel confident doing something I’m not 100% sure how to do, and how to work within power dynamics that are very common in this sector.
I like that our program taught us a lot about what not to do in development and how to learn from past mistakes. I’ve seen these things play out in real life and it’s been really valuable to have the awareness that the International Development Studies program gave me.
What was the most rewarding aspect of your time at the Elliott School?
My capstone project was definitely the most rewarding event from my time at the Elliott School. We traveled to Kenya to conduct interviews and focus groups with mango farmers for two weeks. I had never done anything like that before. We trained enumerators, designed the survey instruments, and I think we completed over 100 interviews when it was all said and done. It was a huge amount of work on our part but I learned so much in those two weeks. It was truly invaluable to my understanding of this line of work. I think those two weeks helped prepare me for my job just as much as the rest of my education combined.
What is your favorite place you have ever travelled?
This is a hard one! As somewhere I went for vacation I loved my time in Taiwan. There is great food, it’s easy to get around, and there is a good mix of natural beauty and urban site seeing to do.
More recently, and more specifically, I traveled to Nanatha Bay in Mozambique for work and I was awe-struck at the beauty there. The coastline and the wildlife are stunning. I don’t think it’s a place I would have ever been to had it not been for my job so I’m very grateful for that.
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The #WeAreElliott profile series is managed by the Elliott School Office of Graduate Admissions and highlights current students to answer common questions posed by prospective, incoming, and current students. For more information on this series or to submit questions, e-mail the Office of Graduate Admissions at esiagrad@gwu.edu.
The views expressed by students profiled do not necessarily represent those of organizations they work for, are affiliated with, or the Elliott School of International Affairs.
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