{"id":3898,"date":"2026-01-22T13:21:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/?post_type=cu_story&p=3898"},"modified":"2026-03-09T10:58:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T14:58:36","slug":"holly-laurenzio-building-a-career-through-global-experience","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/story\/holly-laurenzio-building-a-career-through-global-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Holly Laurenzio: Building a Career Through Global Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Holly Laurenzio: Building a Career Through Global Experience\n <\/h1>\n \n \n\n

Program Management Officer in the Climate Resilient Food Systems division of the International Development Research Center (IDRC)
Bachelor of Global and International Studies (’19)<\/p>\n\n\n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Holly Laurenzio remembers her first major challenge as a Global and International Studies (BGInS) student: spending the summer of her third year in Lima, Peru, working in the office of a small nongovernmental organization (NGO) that supported women entrepreneurs in the settlements outside the city. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was an amazing opportunity for my own personal development and growth, but it was also really, really hard. That was the first time I worked in a place where I didn’t speak the language and had to figure out transportation, food, and accommodations all on my own.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holly describes her BGInS international experience as the beginning of a \u201cbutterfly effect\u201d in her life.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Portrait
Holly Laurenzio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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\u201cThat was my first exposure to speaking Spanish and working in a Latin American context, which led to my next summer job at Canada World Youth, a small NGO in Ottawa that provided international experiences for young people. In this case, Indigenous youth from Canada were going to Peru to do short term, volunteer work and it helped that I had experience living and working in Peru.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Another door opened for Holly when Canada World Youth offered her another short-term position in Bolivia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following this, she was preparing to do her master\u2019s degree at Queen’s University in Global Development Studies. She heard from a professor in the program who invited Holly to collaborate on their research on Latin American agriculture and farming. Holly ended up writing a thesis on small-scale agriculture and cocoa farming in Peru and Ecuador. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause of that, I now have this regional expertise, but also an expertise in food systems, value chains and small-scale agriculture, which led to my current position as a Program Management Officer in the Climate Resilient Food Systems division at IDRC\u2014 my dream job,\u201d Holly explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these experiences, Holly says, were the accumulative result of her butterfly effect, and lead back to that first summer experience in Peru, which broadened her understanding of the world and future in it.  <\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIt just reiterated for me that whatever I do for the rest of my life, I need to make sure I go about it with care and empathy, to contribute as a global citizen to something important.\u201d  <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holly Laurenzio’s internship in Peru sparked a chain of experiences that led to her dream job in climate-resilient food systems at IDRC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":4381,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[208],"cu_story_tag":[217],"class_list":["post-3898","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-alumni-stories","cu_story_tag-bgins"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4382,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/3898\/revisions\/4382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=3898"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fpga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=3898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}