Richmond, VA (April 16, 2019) – The need for active involvement in humanitarian assistance efforts around the world is abundantly present at this time. This is the message that students and members of the community recently heard from speaker Doug Mercado, visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Mercado presented an overview of his longstanding career in international disaster assistance and post-conflict recovery, a career spanning more than 28 years. He detailed his work in humanitarian assistance from his first assignment after a stint in the Navy, through his employment with the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Organization of American States (OAS) and various non-governmental organizations.

“My job is to go to countries and try to save lives and bring some sort of relief to people whose lives have really been turned upside down," Mercado  explained, describing his involvement with crises throughout his career such as natural disasters, wars and pandemic disease outbreaks, and conflicts.

While working at the Organization of American States, a chance assignment led Mercado to Nicaragua, where he was asked to help with a major peace process the organization was attempting to support. Part of that process involved helping refugees who had fled the country return home, as Nicaragua was about to go to war.

This assignment was the beginning of his career and fueled his desire to work in humanitarian assistance. “Just seeing the real needs of people whose lives were affected by this horrible war in Nicaragua, and helping them go back and bring some normalcy into their lives again; I felt it was something really worth doing,” he said.

Outlining time spent in these organizations over the years with personal anecdotes such as this, Mercado offered four main tips for embarking upon the field as valuable takeaways.

Takeaway 1: Submit multiple applications during a job search

Mercado encouraged students to conduct a wide-ranging job search when applying for positions in the industry.

‘When you're applying for jobs, don't just focus on one job and put all of your efforts into that one,” he said. He feels the “shotgun approach” is most effective, allowing one to send out as many resumes as possible. Referencing his own job search, he said, “My logic was to send out thousands of resumes and at least one might hit the target.”

Takeaway 2: Get outside your comfort zone

Another takeaway that Mercado offered to the students was to “get outside your comfort zone.” He recounted how after having earned undergraduate and graduate degrees specializing in Latin American studies, when the opportunity arose to go to Sudan, Africa, he took the job.  

“I think my comfort zone would have been to focus on jobs just in Latin America where Spanish is the language, but by taking this opportunity to go to Sudan, where I did speak Arabic and I had a familiarity with the area, I learned a lot,” he said.

“And it was a great opportunity. Because I'd been waiting for a job in Latin America, and I could have been sitting around for three months, six months, or maybe a year. But by expanding my search to the whole world, that gave me a great opportunity.”

Takeaway 3: Networking can lead to new positions

Mercado’s next takeaway was the importance of networking. In the early nineties, Mercado was asked to join an operation for fifteen months in war-torn Bosnia that he deems was a “life-changing experience.”

“The takeaway from that is once you get into the business and people get to know you, then they're going to start calling you," Mercado said. "I didn't look for that job. They just called me because they knew me from my experience working in Sudan.”

“It's all about networking," he explained. "Networking is a big part of any job search, and you can apply for any number of jobs.”

“Also, try to build up a network of people you know. It's a little difficult when you're just starting out, but you’ll build up a network from job experiences throughout your life and professional associations, but a lot of jobs you can get just based on who you know.”

Takeaway 4: Learn many foreign languages

The final takeaway that Mercado shared is the necessity of knowing other languages, which he stated can “make or break a job application.”

He relayed how he was encouraged to apply for a senior governmental position as a Portuguese speaker and that he knew some Portuguese but perhaps was not the most fluent in the language. He was offered the job, certain it was just because he knew the language.

“So another key takeaway from this talk is languages, languages, languages,” he said. “Learn as many as you can. It can really make people’s careers.”

Mercado culminated the lecture by encouraging the students to seek a career in the field if they are led to regardless if they hold skills they might perceive to be strong for the field.

“The reality is if you want to work in humanitarian affairs, you don't have to have one particular specialty to get involved with assistance; you can come in with a lot of different skills,” he said. “There are a whole array of skills and abilities needed to make a humanitarian operation work,” he said."

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Doug Mercado is currently a visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has worked in the field of international disaster assistance and post-conflict recovery over the past 28 years on assignments with the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Organization of American States and various non-governmental organizations. He has managed humanitarian relief operations, refugee assistance programs and disaster recovery efforts in more than a dozen countries including Nicaragua, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, Angola, and Eritrea.