SIT Study Abroad

• A pioneer in experiential, field-based study abroad providing academically engaging semester and summer programs with a focus on critical global issues.
• More than 2,000 undergraduates from 200-plus colleges and universities study in over 40 countries each year.

Angela Mazer

Angela Mazer has come full circle in her career and has been supported and inspired by a network of SIT faculty and alumni all along the way.

Her career path led Mazer from being an SIT Study Abroad student learning about the United Nations in Switzerland and studying peace and conflict in the Balkans to her current position as Programme Analyst for the United Nations Development Program in Kosovo and a member of NATO's Next Generation Advisory Panel.

As a Swiss-American with dual citizenship growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah and "not quite fitting in," she volunteered for six summers as a camp counselor working with war-affected children in the Balkans. These experiences and a convergence of circumstances led her to take part in back-to-back SIT Study Abroad programs in Switzerland and the Balkans during her junior year of college at UCLA.

The two programs complimented each other – and Mazer’s interests – perfectly. Mazer remembers the SIT program in Switzerland as "very high level." It gave her an overview of international development and humanitarian assistance - a good map of the field, the language, and culture of the UN and the big international agencies. Mazer said, "I was so excited about the UN."

The next semester, SIT offered its first Balkans program in spring of 2003. Mazer remembers the program as a smaller, more intimate experience focused on local women’s organizations. She was exposed to those working on the front line. "It was much more of an intellectual, emotional challenge, diving into what happened in the Balkans through the eyes of these activists," Mazer said. "I came to understand the problems with international intervention and assistance. It kind of burst my UN bubble, but the SIT group nurtured me. It was fantastic."

Mazer says that her experiences with SIT were "so unexpectedly interwoven. There was a web that began to grow from that time" that led her through several fellowships, graduate school, and to her current job with the UNDP.

Mazer saw a poster at the International Peace Bureau during her research project in SIT’s Switzerland program which led to her next SIT research project at the Education for Peace Institute of the Balkans. In her senior year, she was awarded a Human Rights Fellowship to return to the Balkans to support expansion of a teacher-training program throughout Bosnia with the same institute. A fellow SIT Study Abroad alumnus whom she met at a conference on peace education connected her to an internship that developed into a full-time job as trainer with Global Kids in New York. When she decided to get a master’s degree to build her professional credentials in the field of post-conflict reconstruction, SIT Study Abroad Academic Director (now Assistant Dean) Jill Benderly helped her with the admissions process for Johns Hopkins’ prestigious School of Advanced International Studies.

Upon completing her master’s, which included an internship at Oxford University, Mazer worked briefly for a private consulting firm concerned with global security and development issues. There she met a five-star general who had worked with NATO in the Balkans and was impressed with her background and abilities. He nominated her to be a member on NATO’s Next Generation Advisory Panel.

When she was selected by the Swiss government for her current UNDP position, Mazer realized that it brought together everything she had learned through SIT.

She explains, "I’m in the Social Inclusion Cluster, working with vulnerable and minority communities – strengthening the capacities of civil society, training women and youth in entrepreneurship and collaborating with other UN agencies in the field." The combination of the UN perspective from SIT Switzerland and the women’s NGO perspective from SIT Balkans has been invaluable. In addition, Mazer notes, "SIT taught me to ask the right questions, to look at things from different angles" in order to make these programs more effective.

In fact, Mazer credits SIT with giving her the tools and networks that made her impressive career path possible. "[SIT Study Abroad] really developed me at an early age; the Independent Study Project was so empowering, and the homestay really matures you," Mazer said. SIT language instruction laid the groundwork for her to become competent in French as well as Serbo-Croatian, preparing her for subsequent graduate and professional work.  That was only the beginning.

Mazer concludes, "SIT prepares you for the world. I meet SIT people everywhere who I can connect with and learn from. It’s a unique bond."

Written by Susal Stebbins

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