JPO Stories
The scenic route to HQ:
Marta Ruedas joins the Regional Bureau for Eastern Europe and the CIS
Published in UNDP Bulletin, June 2003
"Maybe it's appropriate that I'm starting on Bastille Day," muses Marta Ruedas, the new Deputy Director of RBEC who joins the Bureau on 14 July. "After all these years of working in the field, it does sort of feel like I'm storming the palace gates."
She's joking, of course. But as she embarks on her new HQ position, Ruedas, 38, confesses to a trace of ambivalence amidst her excitement about the post.
"My philosophy in the field was to avoid contact with HQ as much as possible," she says. "For years the perception was of a rigid, centralised bureaucracy. But it's also been my experience that so much has changed for the better, and it'll be interesting to be part of it. Streamlining of business processes, measuring results - now is a good time to join HQ."
A self-described "UN brat," Ruedas spent her early years on the road with her family, as her father worked in the UN administration. Their travels took her far from her native Spain to stints in Thailand, Switzerland and New York. After college, she dabbled briefly in the private sector before being selected one of Spain's first five Junior Professional Officers. "And I've never looked back since," she adds.
The route from her first JPO assignment in Mexico to RBEC in New York has been as challenging as it has been scenic. After Mexico she moved on to Mongolia, a country she says bore little in common with her prior assignment "other than that they both started with 'M'!" A year in New York followed, then it was back to the field to serve as UNDP Representative in an experimental "integrated UN office" in Georgia.
She then served as Interim Deputy Resident Representative in Kyrgyzstan and as Deputy Resident Representative in Bolivia. After completing her RR/RC Competency Assessment, she became Resident Representative in Sao Tome and Principe and later in Bulgaria.
"I've been fortunate throughout my career to work in offices where supervisors loved to teach and the projects were stimulating," she observes. "You can never get bored in the field."
RBEC Director Kalman Mizsei notes the wealth of UNDP and development experience Ruedas brings to the Bureau.
"She's already worked in three of UNDP's five regions, which is quite extraordinary," he points out. "She speaks fluent Russian as well as other languages; she's smart as a whip and has energy to spare. She'll be a welcome addition to our team."
Ruedas likens her work in development to the crossword puzzles she enjoys in her free time. "Sometimes you have to make connections between some seemingly unrelated bits of information," she says. "You come into a country and see what UNDP can do there, how we can help. What resources can we mobilise, how can we structure our services? The answers are always different. And as with crossword puzzles, you get real satisfaction when you see it all come together - when people take hold of a solution themselves and get development results. It's a nice payoff."
"Flexibility and innovation are among the field-honed skills Ruedas intends to apply at RBEC. "It's a very dynamic bureau," she says. "Whenever we get the Res Reps together, we find they're all trying new things. There's a great deal of creative energy among us, and I'll enjoy playing a part in shaping UNDP policy from a regional perspective."
As for specific day-to-day activities, Ruedas says she's keeping an open mind. "When I get there, I'll see how best I fit," she says. "It'll be a new arena for me and I'm looking forward to it."
