Scarlett Kao, Senior Associate, Strategy & Development at Clean Cooking Alliance, La Châtaigneraie, 2012

Scarlett Kao

La Châtaigneraie, 2012

Senior Associate, Strategy & Development at Clearn Cooking Alliance

USA

Find out more about me:

- Company website

- Podcast on growing up as a Third Culture Kid

Since finishing my graduate studies in international affairs (which brought me to Bologna, Italy for a year of food, wine, and more food), I have been based in the United States. I am currently part of a non-profit organisation that works to increase universal access to clean cooking solutions, which encompasses issues of environment, energy access, health, gender, and more. We work with colleagues and partners from around the world, and I am grateful for the opportunity to play a small part in tackling climate change. 

My best Ecolint memory: I remember learning to play the ocarina in music class. I had never seen one before going to Ecolint, so learning it throughout the year and performing for our parents was a lot of fun. Escalade celebrations at school were also great, because I can never say no to chocolate. Sadly, those marmites are hard to find outside of Geneva.    

My Ecolint experience taught me that there is no universal definition of what is “normal”, and to always be humble in learning about other people’s life experiences and how that shapes their worldviews. I’d like to think that this attitude has helped me with transitioning to my current work in international development, where the problems we encounter are so region- and culture-specific. 

Looking back, I wish I had made a greater effort to get to know my classmates in the French-dominant programme. I had just started learning French then and wasn’t confident enough in my language skills to chat with native speakers. As a result, I kept mostly to my classmates in my English-dominant homeroom and probably missed out on a lot of meaningful friendships and conversations. 

My words of wisdom for Ecolint students: You have the privilege of being exposed to a diversity of experiences and viewpoints in a way that many others don’t. Use the cross-cultural skills you develop at Ecolint to do good in the world, no matter what that looks like. Our world is too interconnected at this point for us to hide in our bubbles, and global challenges like Covid-19 and climate change - among many others - have proven that we cannot solve these problems alone.