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Model UN: The Best Career Training I Ever Had

The following is the content of the opening ceremony speech by Fiona Alexander.

Thank you, Professor Karp, for that introduction and for the invitation to speak at the opening ceremony for this 47th ODU Model UN Conference.����

ODU Model UN Society President Brandon Fischer, Secretary-General J Belin, other members of the ODU Model UN team, delegates, and faculty advisors, it is a great honor for me to be standing before you this morning.�� As has been mentioned, not that long ago, or at least I like to think it wasn’t that long ago, I was sitting in this very room as a delegate.

I honestly can’t recall what drew me to Model UN as a freshman while at Norview High School.�� Maybe it was because friends signed up, or the encouragement of a teacher, or maybe I genuinely had an interest in international affairs; but showing up to this very ballroom proved to quite a fateful choice for me, one that I didn’t truly recognize until many years later.

Fast forward through the rest of high school, college, and graduate school, and I found myself once again in a conference room, very similar to this room in fact.�� This time however I was in Marrakesh, Morocco.�� The committee chair, an amazing ��ֱ���� from South Africa who had in a previous life been an apartheid freedom fighter, called out “United States, you have the floor”, and my boss at the time looked at me with no advance notice and said, “go ahead kid”.�� And with that, I made the first of what would be countless interventions over nearly 20 years in the global international system on behalf the of the United States of America.

So how did I get from Model UN, this exact room in Norfolk, to representing the United States in the UN system?����

Looking back, it all makes perfect sense and seems calculated and planned.�� The reality though was anything but.�� I started at ODU with an undeclared major and while I explored medical sciences, and engineering, I always came back to history.�� Perhaps it was my continued engagement in Model UN over those 9 years – yes for those of you keeping score I did an extra year of college because I couldn’t decide what to do – but eventually after some careful parental prodding to make a choice, I settled on international studies.��������

I went on to graduate school where I paired my interest in all things international with a growing curiosity of and interest in technology.�� And from there I landed a summer internship in an office in the federal government with a long name and where people used a lot of acronyms.�� I would eventually join the staff and be promoted to run the team where I was the principal official responsible for the analysis, development, and execution of international Internet, cyber and communications policy within the Executive Branch of the United States government (USG).

And for all those amazing experiences and achievements – those were just a few highlights - I always say that Model UN, specifically ODU Model UN, was the best career training I ever had.

Why is that?

Well, here in these meetings while I of course began to learn the finer points of the UN system, I also picked up some key skills.�� Skills that are useful for international negotiations of course, but skills that turned out to be useful in everyday life.

Learn to communicate and listen:�� Being able to clearly express yourself and your ideas as well as listen without judgement to other perspectives leads to better outcomes and makes you a strong team player and leader.��

Follow your interests: Being genuinely curious or passionate about something will get you through the challenging times.�� And every job or situation has tough moments, believe me.

Be creative:�� It can be easy to just re-use old approaches, but fresh perspectives lead to innovation and an opportunity for others to buy in to a solution.

Develop and maintain friendships:�� Friends provide support in both good times and bad and those bonds build trust which are critical when trying to negotiate solutions on the global stage or just in your neighborhood.

Good luck over the next few days and remember to have fun.�� I hope that your experience here at the 47th ODU Model UN leads you to consider a career in public service, because the world needs creative and diverse voices to meet our shared global challenges.�� If any of the experiences I have shared sound intriguing – remember it could be you giving this talk later in your life, because I was you.

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Fiona Alexander's Biography

The ODUMUNC 47 guest speaker knows something about Model United Nations. Fiona Alexander was introduced to ODUMUNC in 1987-91 as a Norview High School student. At ODU she was part of the MUN Society, represented ODU at intercollegiate conferences, staffed ODUMUN conferences and served as Secretary-General of the ODUMUN College Conference in 1995.

Today, Fiona is a former government executive with global experience in international Internet, telecommunications and emerging technology policy. Fiona served for close to 20 years at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce where she was Associate Administrator for International Affairs.

She managed the U.S. government’s relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and is NTIA’s sole Presidential Rank Award winner for her leadership in the privatization of the Internet’s domain name system.

Fiona represented the United States at the UN World Summit on the Information Society, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and ICANN.�� During her tenure, the U.S. led the development of Internet policy making principles and joined the only international agreement on Artificial Intelligence at the OECD, won the election of the first ��ֱ���� in the 153-year history of the ITU, and managed the collaborative implementation of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) at the authoritative root of the Internet domain name system.

Fiona is co-founder of Salt Point Strategies, a strategic consulting firm that provides advice to clients navigating the emerging high-tech economy, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. She also is Distinguished Policy Strategist in Residence in the School of International Service and a Strategic Advisor for the Khan Cyber and Economic Security Institute at American University, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, and a member of the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network.