Aisling McCaffrey - The forks in the road that shaped her career

It sounds like the type of role that if you knew you could jot down on paper what you wanted to do, it would be the type of role that you would write for yourself.

But having said that, it is absolutely pushing you out of your comfort zone.

I mean, as you said, you were in Ethiopia with the UN.

I mean, you're dealing with big stakeholders here.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's a real, like, every day is different in terms of those conversations.

Like, as I said, I was in Ethiopia and down in, like, Melkidita, which is right down near the Somali border.

And I was down there with UNHCR and UNDP just trying to understand,

you

know, what is needed in this region.

And again, I'm obviously coming at it from a very, different perspective I don't have expertise in terms of the work that they're doing on the ground or operations but it's really trying to kind of listen hear all the different perspectives and then understand how do we start to translate some of that in terms of like private capital and and the people that we interact with and what conversations can I have with them to get they kind of challenged some of these assumptions.

Um, so it was amazing.

So that was like one week.

And then the next week I'd come back and had a conversation with, um, people that were over from the development bank of Japan that wanted to learn about what was going on in the UK.

Um, so, and then the other work I've done in the last year is looking at the textile apparel sector in India.

Um, and what do we need to do to drive more, um, investor action there for just transition.

So I'd be, I was over in India a few times and, it's just been, yeah, as I said, it's been incredible.

I get to speak to like a large range of different types of amazing people, but also have the tough conversations about like, you know, all of this sounds great, but like the reality is there isn't money flowing here.

And like, how do we solve for that? And that's not always an easy, it's not an easy fix.

If it was, we wouldn't be having the conversation.

So it can be difficult in that sense where you're like, I've been exposed to all these great things that are happening and yet the money still isn't moving.

And there's so much systemic change that needs to happen.

So just really trying to like, yeah, keep pushing for that and bring as many people around the table as possible to try and enact that change, I think.

But yeah, so it's been, yeah, it's been incredible.

A lot of learning.