Young UN Futures Stories is an evolving foresight storytelling experiment launched on the 75th Anniversary of the UN’s formation and looking at how we reimagine and shape our UN institutions over the next 25 years as we approach 100! Read more about Young UN Futures Stories project here.

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The Future UN Employee

This story was brought to life by Young UN with mentoring from SOIF.
It has been co-written by
Luisa Karst, Michaela Markova, Martin Ostermeier, Emily Roberts, Johanna Jochim, Ruth Blackshaw.
Design by Gabriela Heermans, Pepa Majkic with support from YUN Branding Team.
Website support from People Activation and Break Creative Partners.

This story describes the interaction between a prospective employee of the UN Agency on Misinformation and their future team during the application process.

Incoming hologram message to the UN Agency on Misinformation, 24 October 2045

Hello, my name is Zelina Jalal, and I am interested in the position of ideation coordinator with the UN Agency on Misinformation at the UN headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The participation of the UN Secretary-General, Ms Mandania, in virtual marches against male discrimination motivated me to take part in an international VR career event, having the chance to visit some of the major international organisations. I was truly inspired by the young international civil servant who addressed me (in his early 30s!), a team head for the Department of Ethics of AI. He spoke warmly about the UN as one of the leading organisations driving innovation globally through its effective multilateral cooperation among all stakeholders, and how the organisation is promoting self-managing teams, mobility and flexible working arrangements. I learnt that the UN supports its employees in their career paths and is a place where  employees can try out new ideas, having both the freedom to fail and the accountability to deliver. This is what brought me to apply for this position.

I am from Fiji and I have a master’s degree in creative optimisation and systems thinking at the online University of Tallinn. Given the university’s student-centric approach, where AI teachers created a personalised learning journey for each student, I was able to graduate top of my class with an honours in strategic foresight. My education allowed me to develop innovation and co-creation skills; through virtual labs I studied real-world problems and learned about foresighting methods to create probable futures. In my Master’s thesis, I studied the challenges of unequal access to new technologies within countries, in which I co-created an innovative solution to develop affordable study bots for and together with indigenous students in Brazil.

Alongside my studies, I volunteered online for a grassroots organisation in France fighting the spread of misinformation. With a strong public stand of the UN against such behaviour, I used social media to engage with a range of stakeholders to develop innovative solutions to counter the misinformation campaign. In doing so, I deepened my skills in virtual citizens engagement and activism, which I believe will be an asset to the UN. My volunteer experience and innovative use of social media activism has given me a social engagement score of 9.5, far exceeding the 7.2 average of most young professionals my age. 

Lastly, while most young professionals are fluent in AI programming, I wish to highlight my minor in quantum computing. It has strengthened my advanced diplomacy skills in human robot-negotiations, which can be an asset for the upcoming Information for Good Summit which your team is organising early next year. 

Given that society is plagued by constant misinformation and facts have lost their value, I am committed to countering this trend through innovative tools and mechanisms to fact-check information in real-time. I believe that my innovation and co-creation skills along with my advanced diplomacy and stakeholder engagement expertise can be an asset to the UN Agency on Misinformation and I would love to be part of your team. 

Looking forward to your holo-reply! Bye.

 

Outgoing hologram message from the Chief of Innovation, UN Agency on Misinformation, 25 October 2045:

Hi Zelina, 

Carolina Lopez here, Chief of Innovation in the current job rotation interval. 

Thank you for your application for the ideation coordinator position which we received yesterday. I truly appreciated your interactive hologram, it reminds me of the early days when I was co-creating the “Verified Project” which started in 2020 to combat misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, we were still struggling with hierarchies and bureaucracy, and working in self-managing teams was considered a wild dream for most UN employees. 

The UN has come a long way since, yet we need people with your futures literacy and innovation skills – a systems-thinker that can tactfully engage with a range of stakeholders, ready to find solutions to new problems that the UN is facing, including how to make use of misinformation to avoid nuclear escalation. My AI assistant has run through your online profile and verified your credentials stored in the UN blockchain. Based on our merit assessment, I would be delighted to offer you the position in my team. 

Our HR onboarding bot has been activated for you and is available to give you a virtual tour through the building, channel your documents through our blockchain validation system and recommend training courses which are tailored to your needs in order to ensure you a smooth start at our agency. 

Of course you can also contact me for any questions and I am looking forward to personally introducing you to the team. Despite all technology, here at the UN we continue valuing the human-centred approach. 

Let’s talk further next week Tuesday 10.30am. Ciao.

***

 

This story is part of the Young UN Futures Stories collection. They should not be utilized in real-world analytic products as they are merely fictional pieces. The views, assumptions and opinions expressed in this story are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect an official policy or position of the Young UN, the United Nations, and neither of any of its institutions.