Dina Khassenova
| Every Day Brings Something New for Muskie Grad | ||
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ppp | Job
Title: Program/Budget Specialist Organization: Graduate: Home
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| What do you enjoy about your job? What aspects of your job are the most exciting or interesting? | ||
| My
position of program/budget specialist is located in the
Office of Democracy and Conflict Mitigation (DM), one of
eight offices in the USAID Regional Mission for Central
Asia. Under the general supervision of the DM Director,
I serve as a Cognizant Technical Officer (CTO) and
professional specialist for USAID/Central Asia democracy
programs, and I also serve as a senior budgetary analyst
with primary responsibility for all facets of the DM
budget process (including budget planning and
execution). Work involves the full range of
consultative, advisory, monitoring, management, data
collection, analysis and evaluative services in
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and
Turkmenistan. I enjoy my job being so challenging. It
requires advanced management and financial skills. I
also like that every day I learn something new about
economic, political, social, and cultural
characteristics of the Central Asian Republics. We have
got a great team of professionals here, and I am lucky
to work in such an environment. |
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| Why did you choose to pursue an MPA/MPP degree? | ||
| I
decided to choose an MPA degree because it combines both
technical and humanitarian aspects. The first year at
UMASS we had mainly technical subjects like econ,
finance, statistics, etc. and then the following year we
had more policy-related subjects. Thanks to that, I can
apply my skills in different fields including business,
non-profit and government. |
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| How did you select your graduate school? | ||
| I
did not select the school; they selected me. I won the
Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program providing
opportunities for outstanding young professionals to
study at the master's degree level in the United States. |
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| How do you feel your MPA/MPP is helping you to make a difference? | ||
| While
at UMASS, some professors were telling me that it may be
hard for me to apply the skills I learned since most of
the subjects were mainly about the American experience.
I am no longer in the US, but the knowledge I gained in
classes at UMASS is still with me. I am working for
USAID in Kazakhstan now and the American experience
happens to be useful for my work in Kazakhstan. I am not
sure if I can call this an accomplishment but last year
I applied for 2 competitive training programs (one in
Hungary on conflict management and another in Sweden on
human rights) and got accepted to both of them. When I
completed the second program I passed the on-line
examination and obtained a diploma from the Raoul
Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian
Law, University of Lund, Sweden. In 2006 I represented
Kazakhstan at the Regional Muskie Alumni Conference
(Building Democratic Societies and Market Economies in
Eurasia) in Georgia. |
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| How would you characterize your personality? | ||
| *Good
under pressure * Creative * Organized * Committed *
Analytical * |
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| Contact Dina Khassenova with questions regarding her graduate experience: | ||
| Email Dina | ||