Anyone thinking of swapping a comfortable job in a corporate IT department for a role in an UN ICT team could learn a thing or two from Torbjorn Soderberg. Part of the WFP's Fast Information Technology and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team (Fittest), Soderberg's specialist team is deployed with little notice wherever a communications network is required.
A former production engineer for Ericsson, based in Sweden, Soderberg found himself seconded to the handset manufacturer's emergency response arm, Ericsson Response, which works with UN agencies to provide communications expertise in crisis areas. From there, he eventually joined the WFP ICT team and has worked on projects in Sri Lanka (following the tsunami), Syria, Afghanistan and South Africa.
"I spent 11 years at Ericsson so it was good to have a change of environment," he says.
This new environment included seeing his landlord executed outside his window while serving in a project in the Middle East, and also receiving frantic calls to turn around a convoy headed to the UN building in Beirut in 2006, which was attacked by around 2,000 protestors. There are risks, Soderberg admits, but for him the rewards outweigh them.
