Name: Katherine Lange
Year: 3rd Year
Degree: IR and Management
Star Sign: Capricorn
Hometown: New York
Katherine in a third year IR and Management student (apparently IR is insistent on its precedence) passionately committed to humanitarian work. This girl is going to save the world. No jokes. This is evident in various aspects of her time commitments – from her management module choices, to her involvement in UNICEF St Andrews to her summer plans. Katherine credits Alasdair Gordon-Gibson as a principal inspiration for her commitment to this field; she vividly describes the experience of his talk at an IR careers pathway event. Having been a little lost about which pathway she wanted to take, Katherine was incredibly impressed by Gordon-Gibson’s ‘satisfaction and happiness’ about what he had achieved in his career. This has motivated her to make a positive different to other people and to be content with her career choices. Impressive.
Having committed to humanitarian work – despite admitting the varied scope of the career – Katherine is particularly interested in crisis and development work. She exudes enthusiasm when explaining the importance of development – not just hand-outs of ‘here’s food and water’, but wants to help evolve to create a more productive society to help those in crisis thrive. She cites a ‘very admirable’ organisation at which she is interning in London over the summer which is committed not only wildlife conservation in Kenya, but also the people who live in the area. Its primary focus is protecting rhinos, but it also committed to hiring Kenyans and investing in the community and education through a variety of different programmes. Additionally, Katherine is also lucky enough (I’m not jealous) of interning in Thailand this summer. The organisation she is planning to work for attempts to empower hospitalized youths and to change the identity of sick children – teaching them new skills to identify as a singer, dancer or footballer. Katherine exuded excitement and anticipation when explaining this to me, and is obviously looking forward to a summer of travel, work and learning more about the practice of charitable organisations!
Katherine studies IR and management, and finds her International Relations modules ‘so interesting’ and enjoys how management feeds into the theory associated with International Relations. This includes management modules in international business and modules concerning NGOs. Despite the fact that this class is enlightening on the complications of working in the third sector, she remains committed to working in that sector.
Her extra-curricular activities also expand to supporting UNICEF, a society that Katherine has joined this year. Intending on joining the Red Cross, a charity that she has always admired and even been ‘fascinated by’, Katherine was nonetheless distracted by the charismatic and ‘passionate’ member of the UNICEF stall encouraging people to sign up. Katherine then became addicted, becoming involved as the head of the successful event, St Andrews got Talent as well as the enlightening UNICEF symposium. This is the event that Katherine cites as her most successful and enjoyable event with the committee – and especially enjoying the sociability of the event and the chance to interact with interesting and inspiring people. In particular, her favourite speaker was Emmanuel Jal because of what he had been through, as a child soldier from South Sudan. Katherine describes being further inspired by Panos Vostanis’ talk – ‘promoting Child Mental Health in the Most Challenging Situations’ as ‘fascinating’; a child phycologist who Katherine found as more relatable.
A cutie comparable with the contestants of Miss Congeniality, this all-American girl is also committed to World Peace!
Quick Fire questions:
Most embarrassing song on your iTunes: Eye of the Tiger – whenever it comes on I act really embarrassingly, the moves come out as I walk down the street!
The KK or The Other Guys: The Other Guys. Definitely.
Last book that you have read: I’m in the process of reading War Child, by Emmanuel Jal.
Favourite place in St Andrews: I love St Mary’s Quad. I especially love the tree, and I always recommend it to visitors of the town – it’s the hidden gem of St Andrews.
Dream dinner party guest(s): Probably be Henri Dunant. He founded the Red Cross and catapulted humanitarian work into the organisational form that it is today.
Little known fact about yourself: I have five siblings and my parents are 20 years apart.
Favourite TV to binge watch: There are so many. One of my favourite TV shows is Sandal – I watch it with friends, drinking wine and eating lots of food. NSIC is my favourite to watch by myself. And Secrets and Lies is also really good – my sisters and I have a whole message thread based it!
Dream travel destination: It’s hard to come up with one place that I want to go, I would like to travel all over the world. Having said that, I’m really looking forward to visiting Thailand.