Career
After graduating with first-class honours in geography from Birmingham University in 1998, Wellington travelled the world for two years, which she described as opening her eyes to the "many problems that exist in the world, but also to the opportunity for positive change." In 2000, she enrolled in an MA course in development studies at the University of Manchester. Graduating with a Distinction in October 2001, she joined the UK government agency DEFRA in London to work on international development policy. At DEFRA, she was part of the team that negotiated for the UK at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and became involved in following up the UK government's commitments on water and sanitation. She also worked on post-conflict environmental reconstruction policy.
Disillusioned with "bureaucracy and paper pushing", in September 2004 Wellington took sabbatical leave from DEFRA to work in Nepal for Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN), a Nepalese development NGO. Based in the capital, Kathmandu, she managed a community-led total sanitation scheme in Salyan, a conflict-affected district in the west of the country. She also performed many other tasks for RRN, including preparing project proposals, editing books and writing papers.
On leaving Nepal at the end of 2005, she travelled to New Zealand, Tasmania and Argentina before returning to her old job at DEFRA in May 2006. She left this job in February 2007 in order to become a professional triathlete.
Read more about this topic: Chrissie Wellington
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)