Laurent De Ruyt – Concern Worldwide

The Career Guide

Welcome to The Career Guide Podcast!

The Career Guide Podcast is a behind-the-scenes conversation with professionals who have managed to develop long-term careers overseas with organizations like the United Nations, EU, NATO, and OSCE. The goal of this interview series is not to provide technical details and advice already covered in this course but to hear from career professionals about the experiences, challenges, and life as an international professional.

Today we’re talking with Laurent De Ruyt. Laurent is a humanitarian aid worker who has spent the last 12 years living abroad. He is currently employed as a country director by the international NGO Concern Worldwide in Chad, and from 2017 to 2019 he was Head of Mission for an international NGO based in Pyongyang, DPRK. Before this, Laurent worked from 2011 to 2016 for the Belgian Red Cross, first as a delegate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then as a Country Representative in Burundi. In 2010, he was employed as a Diplomatic Attache for the Permanent Mission of Belgium to the United Nations in New York. And in 2009, he worked as a Project Assistant for the National Democratic Institute in Washington, D.C.

Laurent's book "Lifting Another Curtain: My Life in North Korea" was published in 2021. This book is the account of the two years he spent living as a humanitarian aid worker in Pyongyang, from 2017 to 2019. It attempts to be an honest and objective account of how everyday life is for a foreigner, the debates and situations you are confronted with, the joys and pains you go through.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifting-Another-Curtain-North-Korea-ebook/dp/B09CMPL37B

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