Let's Change the World - by Emiliana Vegas (Hardcover)

About the Book

So many people receive a great education and try to affect change. Yet they often find the field difficult to understand, hard to get into, and even harder to navigate to truly make a difference. Enter Let's Change the World, an informative guide to building and navigating a career in international development for current and aspiring changemakers.

Book Synopsis

A how-to and inspirational guide for everyone, no matter their age, who wants to make a difference in the world through their professional life - from ensuring access to quality schools and clean water to healthcare and safer communities.
So many talented young people receive a great education and set out to make a difference in the world. Yet, they often find the global institutions on that path difficult to understand, hard to get into, and even harder to navigate. Emiliana Vegas provides a deeply personal and informative guide to building a career in international development for current and aspiring changemakers.
This book dives into the key lessons and specific takeaways the author has learned throughout her twenty years working in international development organizations. Vegas's passion for the power of education comes through on every page of this book and now she is sharing what she has learned to help others achieve the same success. Through insider tips, best practices, and targeted advice, readers will come away with a clear picture of how these organizations really work, how you can get in and thrive, and how to make a real difference from the inside out.

Review Quotes

"Having spent most of my professional life in an international organization, I wish I had the vision to write the book that Emiliana has written. In this book, she draws from decades of firsthand engagement with policymakers in developing countries and from rigorous research on those countries. There is much to learn from it, including reasons for genuine optimism about our capacity to help the world for the better." --Elizabeth King, non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former Director for Education of the World Bank

"Emiliana Vegas is a Latin American trailblazer with profound knowledge and experience of the education sector. This inspiring book describes her successful career while navigating the complex world of international development. More inspiring, she provides life-long lessons and advice that anyone can apply to excel at what they do best." --Luis Alberto Moreno, former president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

"Emiliana Vegas has provided young professionals in the field of international education with a hugely valuable guide to managing their careers. Using touching and highly specific examples from her own background, she poses the main problems young professionals, particularly women and those from the developing world, are likely to encounter in large organizations. Her personal examples ring true, and I have heard the same from many other young or mid-career women. As an older male, who has been an official in such institutions, I wish I had had this guide myself, as a way of making such institutions more capable of using talented young women from the developing world." --Luis Crouch, Emeritus Senior Economist at the International Development Group (IDG) of RTI International (RTI)

"The global organizations created in the wake of World War II to support educational development have contributed to considerable expansion and improvement. New challenges facing education systems call for even more effective, competent, and ethical global governance, and this will require attracting talented professionals to the field. Drawing on two decades of experience working for international development organizations, in many different countries and regions, Emiliana Vegas's Let's Change the World offers an engaging professional memoir and a roadmap abundant in professional reflections to a career in international education and development that will help those entering the field prepare for the technical, organizational, political, and ethical challenges ahead." --Fernando M. Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative; Harvard Graduate School of Education

"I wish this book had existed when I began my career in international development! Vegas demystifies the range of international development organizations (from big employers like the World Bank to smaller, non-government organizations implementing programs). She provides detailed advice on how to get into international development work and--once there--how to thrive! She backs it all up with rich personal experiences. Vegas has worked in many of these organizations and advised many others. I'd recommend this volume to anyone seeking to enter the field." --David Evans, Inter-American Development Bank

"Many of the recommendations and suggestions would apply to ongoing career work in any business environment...[Vegas's] commentaries on toxic supervisors and 'The Power of a People Person' are applicable to many, many workplaces." --Infodad blog

About the Author

Emiliana Vegas (EdD) has been highly recognized for her career working to inform education policy in the so-called Global South, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has been a leading economist at the World Bank, before joining the Inter-American Bank as the division chief of education and, more recently, serving as co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Vegas has served on numerous leading international education boards, including currently on the Governing Board for UNESCO International Institute for Education Planning and the Board of Directors for the Jacobs Foundation in Switzerland. In addition, she has served on numerous high-impact global councils and programs, including the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Education and Skills, the WISE Prize, the Future Global Leaders Fellowship, and Teach for All's Global Advisory Council. Since 2019, Vegas has also served as a member of the Global Advisory Council for the Organization of Ibero-American States. She is currently a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and lives in Cambridge Massachusetts.