Tun Lin Htet (’05) has a knack for making things look easy: he started college when he was 16 years old, graduated at 19, and while pursuing his “day job,” turned a portrait photography hobby into fashion photography assignments. These days the economics graduate is adroitly navigating a career at the United Nations.
Born in Pakistan and schooled in Switzerland and Myanmar, Htet, the son of a Myanmar diplomat and a teacher, seems well suited for his career by inclination as well as by peripatetic childhood. “I was really a cross-cultural kid,” he recalls. “I immersed myself in each culture, trying to understand the life stories, experiences, and different ways of looking at the world of the people I met.” At Baruch, Htet felt at home, meeting many other students whose lives were largely defined by multiculturalism.
Since joining the UN six years ago, Htet has worked for a number of departments. So far, he says, his post at the Central Emergency Response Fund, which provides humanitarian assistance to those affected by natural disasters and armed conflicts, has been the most rewarding.
Htet is well prepared for his latest assignment, part of a UN-wide effort to implement International Public Sector Accounting Standards to increase transparency and accountability—qualities whose virtues he internalized during his Zicklin corporate accounting courses.
When he’s not at his Midtown office or in a photo studio, Htet is likely spending a long weekend in a city he has never visited before. “Travel helps me achieve work-life balance,” says Htet, who has flown over 70,000 miles in the past two years. “And it’s the best book I know for multiculturalism.”
—Brian Kell