Stefan Emblad, Director, International and Multilateral Affairs at the World Bank

 

 Stefan Emblad 

 La Châtaigneraie, 1985

 Director, International and Multilateral Affairs at the World Bank

 USA

 Learn more about me :

• Company website

 

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Following an international life that saw me study in my native Sweden, work for the Swedish Government and International Organisations in Europe, East Asia, Africa, the US and indeed, even for a few great years in Geneva, I am now based in Washington, D.C. There, I work for the World Bank where I am currently working on the Bank’s work in fragile and conflict-affected states as well as working on the Bank’s response to the COVID Pandemic, notably in ensuring emerging and developing countries have better access to vaccines. In that regard, I engage with donor governments as well as the G7 and G20 groups of countries where the World Bank has a seat at the table. 

I was in the class of 1985. I spent most of my time at La Châtaigneraie, but I started in Year 1 at what was then called the United Nations School (or “La Fenêtre”), but what is now Pregny. As it happens, my daughter’s first day of school was in that same building in 2009, which I would never have guessed given my itinerant life. It was a very special feeling and a cherished memory holding her five-year-old hand as she nervously entered the building! 

It is impossible to pick a single Ecolint memory, there are so many! As I look back now, I realise how incredibly fortunate I was to have gone to a school that focused so strongly on the academic, extracurricular and social dimensions of their students’ lives. Perhaps one feature of La Châtaigneraie that encapsulates all of those dimensions were the field weeks at the beginning of the school year. We were taken off to places from Provence to Alsace, where teachers used local geography, monuments, towns, factories and culture to cover all our classes – PE, maths, art, languages and the humanities – culminating in a long written report (the only part we cursed). All this while we got to know and integrate the slew of new students beginning that fall – often as many as a third of the class were new to the school when the year began. So while I cannot choose one year or place we visited over another, I do want to thank the teachers and classmates who made each one of them special. 

My time at Ecolint gave me so much but perhaps the most important things have been:

1. The power to evaluate information / think critically

2. The ability to put things into a bigger international context 

3. The opportunity to master several languages (We all know kids learn languages a lot easier than adults). 

At almost every important juncture in my life, one or all of these things has set me apart from other candidates or the competition, helped me anticipate events and plan accordingly (in both my personal or professional life) or was just generally helpful in my day-to-day life and on holidays in different places. 

With regards to my education and my career path afterwards, I am in an extremely fortunate position to not have any major regrets or wishes for a do-over. Much of that has to do with my parents’ choice to enroll me at Ecolint and luck. I wish we could all acknowledge to a much greater degree the role of luck and happenstance in our lives. Looking backwards at someone else’s journey, things often seem logical and even the result of some great foresight and plan. However, as that person was living the experience a lot of it was likely much more random. If you’re lucky, opportunities arise and you choose to grasp some and perhaps let others pass but again, not everything in life can or should be planned. Hopefully, that can be some solace to young people who aren’t sure of what they want to do and wondering what they will become. 

All that said, and like any adult looking back on their youth and perhaps particularly their teenage years, there are a number of things I cringe at – most of them to do my typically adolescent way of masking or making up for insecurities and longing to be “normal”, or even “cool”. The remaining ones have to do with my younger self’s legendary ability to procrastinate! 

My words of wisdom for Ecolint students: “Words of wisdom” is far too high a bar and today’s youth in many ways seem much more together and with sounder values than I remember my generation had so it is presumptuous to offer wisdom. After all, we knew about climate change and did little if anything at all as a generation, but let me give one piece of advice and express one wish.

• The advice: In today’s fragmented media landscape, the rise of fake news and extremely divisive political & social discourse in many Western countries, students are – quite rightly – told to be extremely mindful of sources and not believe everything they read on the internet and see on TV. This is absolutely healthy and something at which Ecolint and the IB excel. However, this should not be taken as a reason to stop listening to others who think or believe different things than you do. I am deeply concerned about this trend where people want to shut down others who believe things we know to be false/ hateful/ divisive/ painful/ aggravating/ etc. When discourse and debate stop and people stew in their own echo chambers, awful things happen. Take the time to listen to people who are different from you and/or believe different things and have faith in their humanity. Most people – whether well informed or not – tend to want to help others if given a chance – don’t deprive them of it for your own and their and ultimately all of ours sake.

• The wish: I am probably wasting my breath – like millions of old people before me – when I wish today’s youth could avoid getting caught up in those foibles and fears of adolescence that often seem to get magnified by my biggest pet peeve, social media. Still, I cannot prevent myself, so: please don’t focus on your perceived flaws or worry about whether you’re normal. Most everyone around you is struggling with something – such is the human condition – and none of them is judging you as harshly as you judge yourself. Don’t get down on yourself and don’t think poorly of others since, for the most part, no one truly knows what anyone else is dealing with. Be kind to everyone around you but most of all to yourself.