The international NGO I was last working for informed me 2.5 months before my contract end date (with renewal that was almost but guaranteed, so much so that I booked tickets and all for my upcoming RnR) that due to budget constraints my position was not able to be funded by the organization in 2025, at least as per the financial visibility scenario at the time (even though I was the only international staff in the entire country office). While I was glad for the heads up from my HQ, it meant potentially months of unemployment (with zero pay and zero social benefits) for me. Also, this news could not have come at a worse possible time for me, what with my family having moved recently from one continent to another and having to start all over again there (typical story for many immigrant families from Global South) and the combined household expenses increasing exponentially for all of us. In addition, a chunk of my savings had been spent on purchasing a small flat in my home city (Dhaka) which I wouldn’t even be getting handover of prior to early 2027 (as best case scenario). So in addition to losing a job which I was so sure of having for at least another year (and with that the financial security and mental peace that comes with it), I had suddenly also become displaced, what with having no home of my own to go back to in my city anymore. And for people such as myself (with our undesirable passports) the world is not really our oyster (my passport is one of the worst five in the world… basically every country I visit feels like a major accomplishment, and need to be planned for months in advance). To cut a long story short, I really could not afford to be without work for very long.  

So after sending the email to my team with this big news, it seemed that several of my national staff were more upset at news of my contract non – extension than their own, what with most staff of the office themselves being downsized from 2025 onwards due to budget cuts (and as their boss, this was gutting for me to do, because I knew how difficult it would be for them to find jobs, given the context of their country). Apparently we aid workers could scream at the top of our lungs all we wanted and write endless proposals and concept notes for certain institutional Western donor countries begging them to support one big humanitarian crisis or the other, however, we would be turned back a lot of the times with a long list of geopolitical reasons which took precedence for them over actual humanitarian needs. When they do that, it means less jobs for us and less assistance to communities affected by conflict, wars, disasters, and climate change.

Few hours after getting this news of my contract non-extension, I returned home, and jumped on Relief Web (one of the key websites for job search for aid workers), and started applying at any and every job that I was suitable for, anywhere and everywhere. In addition to applying for a bunch of jobs, I also reached out to an international NGO I had worked for previously a bunch of times in a bunch of countries in a bunch of roles. Out of respect for all my ex colleagues and friends who still work for this organization, I will not name and shame them, so we can instead address them as INGO “A” for the purpose of this post. INGO A had contacted me earlier several times for a job in Country “A” where I had already worked (for INGO A itself) a couple of times over past several years, including even in the exact role that I had recently re-applied for. When their HQ HR person had contacted me previously asking me about my availability, I had told them that I was not available as my current organization was extending my contract (little did I know, never say never unless you have actually signed something). In any case, I reached out to INGO A and told them I was now available and still interested in the role. I would have had to take a small pay cut from what I was earning at the time but I was ok with that, if it meant going back to Country A, which I loved with all my heart and soul and I once again wanted to see all my friends there and also return to a role I knew so well.

During this time, two other INGOs – let’s call them B and C – also reached out to me, for working in Country B and C respectively, both of which I had also previously worked in (Country B was my first international job in the aid sector, and Country C is where I had lived the longest outside of my own country, Bangladesh). I was happy to go back to either. While I had worked for INGO B many years ago, INGO C was an organization I had never worked with before, and nobody there knew me and I also didn’t know anybody there.

This post is about what went down in the month following these applications.  

To my utter bafflement (and somewhat, amusement), INGO A informed me that I had to sit for a written test (I had to remind them that I was already validated by this organization for the role that I was applying for and had been since 5 years, and that I had done this exact same job at this exact same country with this exact same organization just few years ago). They replied that I still needed to sit for the written test, because of the specificity of the context (which even so a Bangladeshi woman from the same region as Country A is expected to know better than white European people responding to me and another who was planning to interview me). To avoid any more discussions, as it was beginning to get on my nerves, I just sat for the written test. Yeah, so that was a mistake. I should have just pushed back.

INGO B and INGO C on the other hand never asked me to sit for a written test. Apparently, my prior experience in senior leadership was enough.

INGO A then scheduled an interview for me with the hiring manager. The interviewer, an elderly white man from a country in Europe (a country where the people generally have a reputation for suffering gravely from superiority complex, and this is not just coming from Global Southerners but mostly from their fellow Europeans themselves). This man proceeded to conduct the interview where he somehow assumed the role of a school teacher and relegated me to role of a school child throughout the process. He kept telling me to answer to only the question that he was asking (you know, like our school teachers used to ?!) and then he asked why I was giving examples from my past experience in Country A (I was quite taken aback by this, because giving examples of a country that you have already worked in and that you are intending to work for again, is usually a good thing!). I got the sense that he also didn’t like the fact that I knew Country A and INGO A’s work in Country A as well as I did (but then that begets the question, why the hell did he then want to interview me in first place and waste my bloody time?). And if the interview was already not awkward enough for me, he then started making personal remarks such as calling me ‘dynamic’ and saying that ‘I  think too fast’ and ‘I talk too fast’, not in a nice way (this is a term I have often heard old white men use when referring to women of color with strong personalities…), and then the man actually asked me if I knew how to say sorry, and to listen properly. Oh and he said that he was concerned about my written test (apparently I had given too many examples from my past experience in country A!). And that I had not read one of the questions properly. To this I replied that I admit that my written test could have been better but given that I hadn’t needed to take one for a long time now (what with leading Senior Management Teams comprising of people from all over the world, in various INGOs in various continents for several years now!), I was not prepared to answer such basic questions of varying kinds in just 2 hours’ time! And, then, the grand finale was this man asking me who was my line manager in INGO X (the only time I had ever resigned in my life due to a line manager and their team was from INGO X and that too after making official complaints (most of the people with the racist sociopath as the cult leader are still very much employed). The people in the HQ team that we were working with in INGO X were so racist towards my national staff and expats of color (excluding the one who they could got to spy for them) that for the first time in my life I actually got a preview of what my parents and grandparents and their parents must have been subjected to under colonization by white folks. And these INGO X racists not only didn’t think that they are racist, but that they were all cool and woke and liberal and sh*t (latter are the worst kind of racists in reality). In addition, this INGO does not even know the definition of workplace harassment as they have zero policy on this. So you can imagine my facial expression the moment the interviewer of INGO A told me that he is super close pals with my racist ex-boss in INGO X (who is also from his own country), I knew instinctively that I had lost the job. Because this white person was going to go to this other white person and conduct an informal reference check (many of the people of this country working in the aid sector have a huge tendency to do that, because they think only they know what is right and what is best and who they want to lord over), and in a world full of endless uncertainties the one thing I am always certain of is the capacity of my ex-boss to throw me under the bus (and most likely would not mention the reasons why I had resigned from the organization in the first place and what their and their team’s role had been).

So I was not in the least surprised when a few days later I got the email from HR of INGO A telling me that given the context of Country A at present, they thought some other profile would suit them better and that I should be ok as I had apparently other offers lined up. I replied to them that I didn’t have any offers from anywhere else, and that I am not surprised with the results because I would not have worked well with that man who had interviewed me, and also given that he is close friends with the person for whom I had resigned from an entire organization earlier (leaving behind a national team that I had the best time working with, due to their incredibility high capacity, which filled me with incredible joy each day, and yet who still got racially profiled by the HQ team routinely), I am not surprised with the outcome, and that I  would prefer to work for an INGO that actually knew how to respect field staff and their prior experience. With this, I said a silent goodbye to INGO A (probably for life …). Also, I pride myself in holding back from mentioning this in my reply email to her: “you guys actually think a person from outside of my region (country A is in my region!) would know the context of this region and this country better than me? Oh and I worked in Country A twice already before, with you guys, including one time in deep field, for months ! And it is a country where girls and women are being subjected to some of the worst human rights violations on the planet … maybe a female leader who is actually from the region would know the context better and do a better job than whoever the hell you guys have in mind!” I didn’t say this. Mentally I just told them to go ‘F’ themselves. I heard later that the job had been given to a white woman from the same region as the white man who had interviewed me.

Oh, and by the way, the compensation package of INGO A is actually lower than that of INGOs B and C (with INGO X being the lowest of the low). However, the level of arrogance of many of the senior staff at HQs and country offices of INGOs A and X exceeds that of INGOs B and C combined.

On a side note, in case anyone is not aware of this already, please be aware of this now: for a lot of jobs, at least in the aid sector (because that is what I know), the recruiter already knows who they want to hire (at times, the HR person is not in on it, though most of the times, they are). They will call you and ask you to apply (without indicating that you have zero chance) so that the recruitment process can look fair during audits. In my view, wasting a person’s time with tests and interviews (none of which you get paid for, and cumulatively they can take up to half a day to even a full day of a person’s time) when you were never going to get the job, is downright unprofessional and unethical, and I sincerely hope that someday there will be a reckoning in aid sector (but generally across industries) for organizations who practice this exceedingly. That day isn’t here yet. Someday.

On that line, let me tell you about another recent recruitment experience. Not so long ago, I had applied for a job for an INGO for Country C, and they had not even screened me at HR stage! This one time I was very curious to know why, so I wrote to the HQ HR person asking them what more could I have possibly done to make them screen me, given that I had already worked in that role in Country C for several years (and was widely known to have done quite a good job)? They replied that they had filled the position with an internal candidate, however, they will be screening me for the job for another country office. I waited. They never got back to me. Then a few weeks later I saw on LinkedIn that the position was filled by a white European woman (who I knew well) who is a very nice lady and very good at her job but she doesn’t even have one third of the senior leadership experience that I had. Another time, a certain INGO had sent me an offer (which made me reject an offer from another INGO) and then told me only afterwards that one more formality remained before they would send me the contract (and this step was only applicable for people applying for senior leadership role), the formality being that I needed to talk to the head of recruitment. I thought it was a no biggie. Except it turned to be one of the worst conversations I ever had in my entire life. The white European man probably has very little experience talking to people from Global South in the first place. And I should have known better, given that 90% of this organization’s senior leaders in their country offices across the whole world are all white Europeans (most of them a good few years younger than me). When I got a bogus email from their end giving me a bunch of bullet points (areas of improvement for me and how I didn’t know this or that, and how I had a negative perception of HQ and blabla), I sent back a scathing reply telling them how a professional organization is actually supposed to conduct a recruitment process and detailed for them all the steps where they had failed at that. I also told them they should never have made me an offer if some rude racist man with little to no field experience was going to decide ultimately whether I got the job or not (and basically that this jerk who cannot even talk properly has the final say). Basically the person who was going to be my boss (who interviewed me prior to this moron) was so eager to have me onboard that he made their HR send me an offer, and then this recruitment person decided I did not get their organization ‘culture’ (apparently a big part of which is to be white and European).

Anyways, coming back to more recent events, while I was going through this fiasco with INGO A, the INGOs B and C were also conducting interviews with me. Guess what? During the interviews with these much-higher-paying organizations, I was treated with the utmost respect. The interviews were each conducted by a panel (unlike INGO A where it was just one person, and since it was not even recorded, whatever that person becomes a case of their word against mine, latter not even currently employed at that place so no way for me to defend myself or give explanations). INGO B and C interviewers asked me questions that one would ask someone in a leadership role, rather encouraging me to give examples from my past experience, all the more appreciating it whenever I gave them examples of Countries B and C (for which they were interviewing me respectively). They did not interrupt me, they did not police me, they did not censor me. They just let me express myself in the way I felt I was most comfortable. Basically they let me be an individual, they let me be myself, rather than an idea of who they expected me to be (apparently they didn’t need me to be white!), or for me to give them scripted answers. With INGO B and C, the interviews were more of a conversation between fellow aid workers rather than an interrogation at a police station in a Third World country. INGO C had even gone one step further, and when the first interview was scheduled, the HR person had actually listed a few topics that I could prepare some examples for, on the email invite for the interview itself (basically, this INGO actually wants candidates to know a little bit in advance what questions will be asked, which I thought was super considerate). They weren’t trying to set you up to fail.

Within less than a week of interview with INGO C, they invited me to another interview (calling it the final one) and asked for my professional references. They said they would like to get started on the reference check sooner so that they could make me an offer right after the final interview (if latter went well). Final interview took place. It again felt like I was having a conversation and an exchange of lessons and experiences and work-related memories. The interviewers were not some cocky know-it-all self-proclaimed experts (as many Westerners claim to know Global South more than people of Global South do). INGO C made me an offer the very next day telling me I was their preferred candidate and that the interview had gone very well. INGO C also confirmed that the procedure was concluded from their end, and that they were just waiting for me to accept the offer. Whole process took less than a month, from start to end.

INGO B meanwhile was taking more time to schedule the final interview (this is a much bigger INGO than INGO A or C), however, by the time they did, I had already decided to accept the job with INGO C. I thanked INGO B for the opportunity, for taking me to the final round, and for being so highly professional and respectful throughout the recruitment process, and that I hoped to work with them again in future. They replied wishing me best of luck.

While the compensation package from INGO B would have been better, I realized that I wanted to return to Country C more. In hindsight, I was glad that INGO A had actually treated me like garbage, because if they hadn’t, I would have still held on to some misguided sense of loyalty towards them (which they don’t deserve), and that I would not have been pushed towards INGO C, a new organization, and one where they clearly acknowledged their gaps to me, then advised on the way they planned to mitigate them, and looked forward to recommendations from my side. The head of the organization even conveyed a message through a senior HQ staff member to me that they were looking forward to having me onboard. Moreover, INGO C did not expect me to prove myself to the ends of the earth, or make me try very hard to convince them that I was good for the job, rather they expended efforts from their end to convince me that they were the kind of organization I would enjoy working at. And what a refreshing (and unfamiliar) feeling that was. Unfamiliar because for many female leaders from Global South, we have to prove ourselves over and over again before we are even given a sneak peek through the window, let alone being allowed to step inside the door.

Having been a team leader / manager for several years now, I have considerable experience with conducting recruitments, starting from identifying need for a position, opening the position, designing the job description, allocation of budget, to placing the ad, to longlisting, shortlisting, designing / conducting / checking written tests, conducting interviews (in some countries, Governments are involved in every step of the way, so I have had to work with them), and then even conducting the reference checks myself (even designing the template!). So I know the whole round, therefore, after years of being subjected to some disastrous and downright unprofessional and unethical (and many a times, blatantly racist) recruitment processes, I had decided early on that when I myself became a recruiter and / or hiring manager, I would do things differently. I would treat the candidates the way I would have liked to be treated. And I tried my best to do so most of the times, and eventually I will get to doing it all of the times (that is a personal and professional goal). And this is what I can tell you: few years ago when I was re-establishing the INGO I was working for at the time in Sudan and I was recruiting people left right and center (in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic, and remotely for first few months, for a country I had never even been to in my whole life!), guess what most candidates told me after getting rejection emails from my end (following final interview) ? They thanked me for even writing back to them, for being transparent, and for not wasting their time by dragging along the recruitment process over several months as some other organizations were apparently doing.  It didn’t cost me massive amounts of time or energy or resources to write back a couple of lines to a person who was waiting eagerly to hear back about their job prospects. All I had to do was place myself in their shoes.

Most people anywhere and everywhere just want a fair shot. That is all. And unfortunately, most are denied even that. I remember international staff being heavily involved in recruitment process of all mid-level to senior level national staff positions for the INGO I was working for in Afghanistan a few years ago (this was pre-Taliban takeover, the recent one). It took up a huge amount of our time and then we had to make up the time for all the non – recruitment related work by working long after office hours (often until even after midnight) and during weekends. One of the key reasons why international staff were involved was because we were considered by many colleagues to be ‘neutral’ or rather ‘unbiased’ and less likely to discriminate any candidate based on any man-made divisive factor (such as ethnicity or religious denomination or geographical preferences, and such). When I was head of a field office in Afghanistan few years earlier, I recall my office being visited by at least a few candidates on any given week, demanding to know why they were not offered the job that they had applied for (job situation was bad in Afghanistan then, and it is worse now, not just for women, and in certain underserved and highly remote and insecure provinces, they are all the more difficult, and I used to work in one of them). The moment they heard fro me that either I or my other international staff was involved in the selection process, they would be satisfied and thank us and leave. All the candidates wanted was just confirmation that they had been given a fair shot or not. That was literally all. Ironically, even after almost 18 years in the aid sector (13 of them international), I still wonder the same at times, during job applications : was I even given a fair shot ? or was the process just rigged all along? Often, we never know. 

I would think back to my starting days in the aid sector, as we welcomed intern after intern or fresh graduates or volunteers from Western countries who were sent to communities in Global South without any prior work experience, and somehow the highly experienced national staff teams that the young foreigners were suddenly managers of were expected to magically respect and obey them. Trust me, the fact never escaped or still escapes anyone that HQs would invest in potential of people from their part of the world, while those of us who weren’t had to prove ourselves over and over again. I have seen INGO HQs invest in capacity building and training of international staff (from their own country usually) after they were offered promotions directly (in the field) through non – competitive process (which they would claim was competitive, yeah right…). At times HQ would even send experts to train them on all the ‘gaps’ they had. However, the same people often rejected people from my part of the world for the same roles (in the same country) even though they all had more experience than the people who were interns not so long ago. There have been instances when I pointed out this obvious discrimination to relevant people, including in writing, and the consequence was that I was labelled ‘burnt out’ and my contract was not extended. You are not allowed to call racists “racists”, but they will continue to be racists still.

I also recall telling a European female colleague of mine during a smoke break (while we were working somewhere in Africa) that all the time and resources and expertise that HQ was investing in her (she was in a senior leadership role for the umpteenth time and yet she still had big gaps in communication and operations management and just lacking general experience in staff safety security management (despite being in field for years and years…) and that how even years later, HQ was devoting time to her for her capacity building, and I did not shy away from pointing out to her that that same HQ would never do all of these things for me (and neither did I expect them to or even want them to), and that I was expected to be a work horse while being ‘pleasant’ and ‘amicable’ and ‘non threatening’ and still have to hear myself being called a ‘diversity hire’ from some corners (at times, hushed, other times, loudly). Hiring me would check off quite a few boxes: woman, brown, third world country, and Muslim. So more congrats to them for hiring me, I guess.

Viola Davis had made this (now famous) remark during her acceptance speech at some award show : ‘the difference between white women and women of color is opportunity’. And ain’t that the truth. And the people who would lecture you the most on these issues are white men, while never ever announcing any plans to leave their position of power and making room for someone else.

This ‘othering’ especially of woman of colour, does not just come from recruiters and HQ teams, but at times even from your own country-folks. Years ago, while I was at my duty station in Afghanistan (in a very remote part of the country), a Bangladeshi man was asking my Bangladeshi colleague over the phone ‘what’ and ‘who’ I had to ‘do’ to get the job of a Field Coordinator (and be his boss) even though I was the same age as these men. I could hear it all because my colleague was sitting right next to me and the call came while we were working during the weekend. While it was utterly disappointing that a man from my own country would speculate such things without even knowing me rather than being appreciative of my leadership journey, I remember thinking to myself, ‘Brother, you just wait, someday you will come to me looking for a job, and I will gladly just show you the door.’ Years later, I don’t even remember that man’s name, or which organization he had even worked for, and honestly, if he does come to me for work, I would give him a chance if he is good. Most of us deserve second chances, and honestly, you cannot let bitterness and resentment live rent free in your mind and heart and soul.

Micro aggressions such as these and others – starting from home, then community, then school, then work, then public places, then the world – are like small needle pricks which become a large painful invisible tattoo over the years. And if you are not careful, it can start eating away at your sense of identity and self worth. For me, it would have been a similar path, especially in professional life, if it hadn’t been for a handful of individuals. It took me a while to realize that some highly experienced and competent leaders (they are from Global North by default … seeing Global Southerners in these roles even a few years ago would have been equivalent of seeing white tigers, these days thankfully the trend is shifting, though painfully slowly) had actually handpicked me time and again to lead in some very challenging contexts (at times having to do some serious convincing to their HQs, where almost all the people look more like them than they do me). Confirmation that I was not an imposter playing the role of the leader came through in small doses as months and years went by, and it would have been more difficult to achieve if these individuals had not had my back.  And then, several years ago, one of my male staff (someone I had butted heads with on several occasions) emailed me the day after my departure from Somali Region saying he wished Allah would grant me only good things in life because of my relentless efforts in serving his people and for not leaving them when things got rough.

That was all the validation I wanted.

I thought to myself, if he (someone on the actual ground) thought I was a decent leader, maybe I was. I realized that I was capable of making hard choices and had gained a good balance between being empathetic and pragmatic. This helped me tremendously when I had to assume senior leadership role for a country where I had to revive a sinking ship. By the time I left, I had managed to secure enough funding to keep the mission afloat for the foreseeable future and implemented several strategic priorities which were long overdue (this was Country A by the way, folks, literally the same job for which I was rejected years later).

For us, the scary lack of representation can often make it painfully lonely in most rooms. Most likely you had to work twice as hard and be twice as good, and yet you may find yourself reporting to people who make you wonder how they have come this far. The lack of representation is felt painfully when you realize you are one of the handful of senior female leaders while HQs in Western capitals of most organizations in international aid and social sectors are mostly white women, and at times it feels there is an unbridgeable gap between our and their lives, lived – in experiences, privilege, rights, our access to those rights, even our job contracts, and there is only so much of a positive spin you can put into ‘diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI)’ (which are now taboo terms in the Trump and Musk world …) and only for so long, before the cracks appear on the surface. While we are lectured on our ‘communication’ style and approach, the same person lecturing you at times about your own region / country and your own communities, may go on to become the organization CEO even!

So while so much is beyond your control, a lot still is within your control, and that is what matters.

The ones who matter will see you, get you, and show up. The rest only have a transient presence in your journey.

If you feel strongly about something that needs to be changed, trust your instincts and express the need, no matter who is made uncomfortable by it. At times, just our mere presence in a room (and then when we speak up) is an act of revolution in itself. And that’s not our problem. Rather, it is the solution to problems. Our identity cannot be commodified and used when it serves the purpose for someone else, and be silenced when we are ‘just too much’.  Being asked to be treated with fairness and equality and equitably, is a basic right.  If we feel these are high unreachable mountains to be climbed, then our ask needs to be more.

Your values, your purpose, your principles, cannot be determined by others for you. If you speaking up or being critical about something with the right intent (especially for a wrong to be righted) in a foreign accent and using references to a place of your experience and values, is not understood or welcomed by those around or above you, it is more their problem rather than yours. They are not ready yet, so do your part, give feedback to someone higher up (use those hotline emails which organizations hang posters of everywhere), and move on, and think of returning someday once they have shown with evidence that they are not afraid to hear from people like you.

It is more important not to just look at words, but rather at actions. All changes require acknowledgement, dialogue and self-reflection between the parties. If people and the place that you are working in / for, find these things a waste of time, maybe it is best to move on. They aren’t planning on changing anytime soon, they probably don’t even want to (we often use the world ‘culture’ when we don’t want something to change, or think it can. Clearly my almost-boss at INGO A falls into this category, as did my ex boss from INGO X, and the horrible recruitment guy who had done my final interview (and ordered for rescinding of my job offer) in the other one. These mediocre racist individuals will get their due some day, and I will watch and mildly celebrate from far. For now, I will move on to secure my own future and forge my own path, while telling people who ask to stay away from these places and people because almost anybody deserves better than to be treated like this.

Despite what we hear (like a broken record) from all around, very few – be it individuals with privilege or organizations – are actually comfortable with disruptions in the status quo.

I look forward to the day when people such as myself are no longer considered exceptions but the norm when it comes to occupying seats as leaders. I will keep waiting for it. I will also do my part in increasing the number of seats, or maybe making the table bigger to fit more seats around it, and if none of these work, hell, we should just get our own room and bring our own table and chairs and even build the damn doors, doors through which we will welcome presence as bold as the sun, and voices which can be as loud as they want, and one where we are all equals. That is what my vision board looks like.

Pay it forward. If someone took a chance on you, do it for others. Do it still even if nobody had done so for you. When you can, create opportunities for those who systemically face inequalities and inequities.

As Walt Whitman coined: ‘That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’

XX PS: I had most of the draft for this post written since last few months and had been meaning to post this for a while, but then got delayed, what with inter-continental move at short notice, new place, new organization, and to top it all off, the one of the biggest shocks to the aid sector and the affected communities and staff and all that come with it, thanks to Trump and Musk, and then one after another country in West announcing cuts to foreign aid budget. And before I know it, half a year had passed me by. Life.