“Annabelle Fowler  is a senior working towards a double major in Mathematics and Economics. This past summer, she interned with Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C. which was funded by Ronald H. Brown.”

The time I spent at the IDB was really meaningful to me. I felt welcome from the first day and felt certain that my work was worthwhile. I understood that it was a necessary part of a bigger puzzle. I had my own computer, desk and cubicle and attended staff meetings, videoconferences and lectures. Because I had access to all the information at the IDB and was welcomed as part of the team, I took true ownership of my projects. I felt most proud of gaining the trust of my supervisors. I was asked to analyze a dataset to write a report about Early Childhood Services in Haiti. Nobody at the IDB looked at the dataset other than myself, and my work was trusted in its entirety.

I interned for the Education Division of the IDB’s Social Sector. There were about 25 people in the Division – 15 at the headquarters in DC and 10 others in regional offices around Latin America. My task as an intern was to focus on Early Childhood Education, which is the first of the Education Division’s three flagship priorities. During my internship I worked on a wide array of projects.  The most significant ones I worked on were the evaluation of just under 50 Early Childhood Development projects that the IDB has designed and financed to see which investments worked and which ones did not, the analysis of very recent datasets about the demand and supply of Early Childhood services in Haiti to write a report about the current situation in the country, and the identification of possible impact evaluations that can be incorporated into new IDB projects to measure the effectiveness of Early Childhood initiatives. On a day-to-day basis I alternated between working on different projects and meeting with supervisors to present my results. I also attended larger meetings like videoconferences or lectures on Education by world class Economists from the IDB, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.  I spent lunches with a wide array of interesting people, ranging from my coworkers and other interns to my supervisors and new people I had met. I also really enjoyed getting involved in IDB life outside the office. I ran a race with the IDB Runner’s Club and worked out in IDB dance classes with two of my co-workers.

As an IDB intern, I realized the great practical value of a Middlebury education. On a day-to-day basis, I used knowledge from a wide array of academic areas, as well as non-academic skills I’ve learned at college such as time management and effective communication. To give you a few examples, a course I took on Latin American Development put many IDB projects in context and clarified a significant amount of the jargon I heard at work. My French courses throughout my first and second years at Middlebury allowed me to work with datasets and reports in French, and my time spent at the Portuguese Summer Language School paid off in a similar manner. Courses I have taken in statistics and probability helped me analyze trends and prepare presentations, and training I received in STATA, a statistical software package, led me to new challenges and opened the door to new and interesting projects.  My background and education made me a competent and productive member of the Bank, and I was confident and proud about quality of my work.

In terms of my future career, I would love to end up in development in the long term, preferably working for a big multilateral organization like the IDB.  This type of work is a good fit for me.  It goes well with my interests and education, and I find it fulfilling to have my work benefit others.  Overall, my two months at the IDB were incredible. I learned a significant amount about the industry I’m interested in, about the work atmosphere at the Bank, and about the practical side of development in Latin America. On an even more general level, the internship gave me a taste of what life after Middlebury may be like, and now I’m less nervous and more excited than ever about the future.