Student Profile: Lijie Shen, MA Class of 2025, Policy Analytics Credential ’24

Lijie Shen, MA Class of 2025, recalls how a volunteer experience sparked her passion for international development. "While serving as a volunteer teacher in Indonesia several years ago, I spoke with many teenage girls who shared dreams of their futures—becoming doctors or engineers, living in big houses—but when I talked to their teacher, they said that for most of those girls, their best option would be finishing their primary study and finding work in a local hotel or restaurant, because Indonesia is a good place for tourism. I recognized choice was a privilege many people do not have, and this inspired me to pursue international development."

Shen graduated with distinction from the University of International Business and Economics in China, where she majored in Translation with a minor in Finance and Economy. During her time there, she began volunteering with the United Nations (UN), where she now serves as the National Specialist in the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme based out of Beijing.

Shen’s work with the UN reflects her experience in Indonesia: she strives to provide less privileged people with more choices. "In 2023, I launched a partnership with UNDP-China called HER Digital Future, an online volunteering initiative to help teenage girls from rural areas in China learn about STEM technology issues."

She explained that the program addresses a confluence of challenges facing these girls. “In Chinese high schools, many students will be divided into arts workers or scientific workers. Arts workers do not learn much about subjects like physics, math, or chemistry, and because culturally girls are not considered to be good at these subjects, many of them will choose arts. And in some rural areas, when girls do choose the scientific workers trajectory, they will be shifted back into arts workers. So the HER Digital Future initiative is very valuable. But there is still more to do, and more to learn.”

“A lot of my job involves coordinating or “pitching” a concept, or a program design to other national agencies. We need to convince them that volunteering is a valuable driver of citizen engagement and service.” This work led Shen to the Harris School of Public Policy MA in Public Policy program. "HER Digital Future needs the data and evidence to show why volunteering matters, so I wanted to pursue graduate study to develop my quantitative skills. As I developed my plan to go to graduate school, many people told me that Harris was the choice to make."

A TC Young Scholar, Shen enrolled in both the Harris Policy Analytics Credential (PAC) and the MA in Public Policy program, with plans to develop quantitative skills and study international development, while also exploring other electives. After graduation, she plans to return to the UN and continue her work on global issues.

In the long term, Shen plans to travel, and eventually compose an account of the experiences of people she encounters. “I want to visit as many countries as I can—not to sightsee, but to get to know the local people, exchange knowledge, and learn about their challenges to improve my work in international development. Before I become a great story-teller, I want to be a great story-listener… Global changes are always related to the individual, and they make up the big picture. I want to relate the stories they tell to the seventeen sustainable development goals of the UN.”