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Development Practice Q&A: Lakshmi Balachandran MPA-DP ’13

Posted Jun 04 2014

Originally from a computer engineering and finance background in India and Singapore, Lakshmi Balachandran MPA-DP ’13 was proactive in shaping her unique SIPA experience. Bringing personal initiative to school, extracurricular activities, and her current work at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), she proves that willing involvement in areas outside of your comfort zone can only make you stronger.

Balachandran spoke with current student Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15 about her impressive array of active learning experiences at SIPA, and how she stayed balanced through them all.

In a nutshell, what professional fields have you worked in?

I worked at Citibank for a couple of years. Before [SIPA], my experience in development was mostly teaching and education, and then I started getting involved in health-related stuff and nutrition. At SIPA, my [sustainable development] capstone was on nutrition for UNICEF, and I also worked on a research project on food security in Liberia.

At the Clinton Health Access Initiative, you seem to be blending many fields into one.

I work as an associate on technology solutions. It’s a very new team, so on a day-to-day basis it’s just me and my boss, and I travel about 50 percent of the time. What I work on now is mostly increasing the access and use of medicines and commodities around neonatal and maternal health. I work in Nigeria, where there is a high burden of these deaths, combining my experience in tech and healthcare. I like that CHAI is really fast-paced, people are really smart, very on top of current thinking.

I think a lot of us were going crazy after we graduated—we hadn’t put a lot of effort into finding a job until after we graduated! I knew I wanted to do healthcare, something that would allow me to work on India at least part time. CHAI was perfect because they specifically look for private-sector background in people that they hire. Also, Maria Wang MPA-DP ’12 had just joined CHAI, and she loved the organization… there was a position I was interested in, she helped me connect to someone on the team.

As a student at SIPA, you were involved with the New Media Task Force, Public Policy Challenges, two internships, and more, plus you were a teaching assistant in economics. What can you say about engaging with SIPA outside of class?

For me, extracurriculars offered exposure to various organizations, how they function, what kind of work there was for me to do once I graduate—they gave me the connections that helped me get a job. When you come into SIPA, different people are trying to get different things out of it. The skills that you get out of class are obviously really important as well. But, given my background, I felt it important to proactively seek out exposure to areas of special interest to me.

I’m working regularly with technology now, so the work I did with the New Media Task Force with mobile data collection and M&E is really helpful. Not just in what I learned then, but in the networks I formed. From my UNICEF capstone, which was not compulsory, our faculty advisor ended up writing a great recommendation for the CHAI job and other jobs.

Tell me about the Liberia project you worked on.

There were four of us MPA-DPs who got together and applied for funding to look at the effects of palm oil plantations in Liberia on food security and the livelihoods of those from whom land had been taken. It took us the whole two years. We spent about two weeks in Liberia doing the surveys. Over the summer, we were doing all the data entry and data cleaning and analysis, and then we spent the next year writing a paper that could be useful to policy folks in Liberia, as well as academically useful for people who want to study the impact of land appropriation and food security.

We’ve passed this paper on to several organizations as well as the government in Liberia. We’ve had a number of queries where they ask us either for permission to use it in conferences and workshops or just more details on what we did. We also adapted this research as a teaching case that Glenn [Denning] has used in his food systems class for the past three years.

Your summer field placement was in Senegal. What would you share about your experience with others now embarking on their summer placements?

I was in the Millennium Villages in Senegal working on water sanitation and infrastructure mapping, and I was working very closely with another MPA-DP, Caitlin Rackish. We had similar interests but different strengths, which worked well for us. I specifically expressed interest in going to a French-speaking country and working on infrastructure. I took New Media and Development, the technology elective at SIPA. I hadn’t actually taken an infrastructure course yet, but I was very interested in it. The first year you really don’t get to take a lot of electives, so I was looking forward to doing that in my second year.

With summer placement itself: be comfortable with change and things not working out how you expect them to. Work with the situation and make sure you get the best out of it, whatever it is. In our case, our projects changed, and I know for some people their placements changed in the last minute. You may not be able to achieve what you thought or as much as what you thought in the beginning. Be comfortable with that, enjoy the experience.

How did you stay sane during two busy and productive years at SIPA?

One thing I loved about living right across from SIPA was I’d just go home and nap for an hour between classes. When I was staying in Harlem, the walk from the apartment to SIPA was a very nice introspective walk. You’re usually doing ten different things at the same time so taking that half an hour to clear my head was great.

What life lessons have you learned about teamwork?

Get people who have different strengths from what you have. Also, at the beginning, sit down and make sure everyone knows what everyone’s expectations are. You want to be able to understand and reach that good medium.

Your eventual goal is to go back to working on India’s development. How is the transition going?

It’s an ongoing process. I want to get enough exposure outside of India to be able to take those experiences back and, within CHAI, I’m also working on India-related projects, to slowly start shifting gears there. In Nigeria, I’ve been working very closely with the ministries of health and that’s going to be helpful if and when I start working with the ministries in India. The environments culturally and socioeconomically may be different, but they function very similarly. First year international students should also try that, explore new countries and regions. You’ll have time.

Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15

Learn more about Columbia SIPA’s MPA in Development Practice.