{"id":28489,"date":"2025-11-21T15:36:02","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=28489"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:02:28","slug":"work-wisdom-yeukai-mudzi-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2025\/11\/work-wisdom-yeukai-mudzi-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Work Wisdom: Yeukai Mudzi \u201912"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Yeukai Mudzi \u201912 graduated from Macalester, she quickly identified a dream employer: the World Bank Group. An economics major, Mudzi entered the job market with a passion for driving sustainable and inclusive economic development around the world. Attracted to the World Bank Group\u2019s mission to inspire economic growth in more than one hundred countries, the possible pairing seemed like an obvious fit. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But snagging a full-time staff job at the World Bank Group\u2014where she now serves as an operations advisor to the director for Central Africa and Anglophone West Africa \u2014hardly happened overnight. In fact, it took more than a decade and plenty of resilience. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI used to have this five-year plan, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that, wanting things to go a particular way,\u201d Mudzi says. \u201cBut you can\u2019t anticipate everything, and you can always figure it out on the way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mudzi refers to much of her career journey as strategic meandering, trusting God while pursuing positions that aligned with her professional interests\u2014internationalism, strategic thinking, and strengthening innovation ecosystems. That triple threat of true norths guided her to projects and roles in more than a dozen countries. Along the way, she earned an MBA from the University of Oxford and a master\u2019s in public policy from the University of Maryland.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome people follow a straight line, but often you are meandering,\u201d she says. \u201cI learned to seek advice, make the most of each moment, trust in the Lord, and make the best decisions I could based on my true norths and the opportunities before me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the World Bank Group, Mudzi now advises on a variety of economic development opportunities across Africa and works to solve critical economic development challenges. Here, she shares some of what she\u2019s learned in her career journey.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Build resilience.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are so many lessons that I\u2019ve learned through the meandering between roles, navigating contracts that you may or may not know if they are going to be renewed, and moving between countries. But I\u2019ve learned to be resilient through each moment, embrace a willingness to learn from each experience, and through it all, be true to what you want to do with your life. There are many times I could have given up. And that\u2019s where the growth happens. It happens in the lessons learned and the openness to learning those lessons along the journey.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always deliver with excellence.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whether it\u2019s a highly visible task or a seemingly insignificant one, always turn in quality work. Building this track record will allow people to remember you over the years. And, at the same time, it\u2019s OK to pivot if you\u2019re in a space in which you are persevering but not finding yourself learning and thriving.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember that you work with people.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Relationships and people are so important. As much as tasks need to get done, we work with people. You need people to do things, so consider people and your relationship, not just the task. And don\u2019t forget that your own ability to influence others or even advance in your own career relies on others feeling respected by you. It\u2019s not enough for others to think you\u2019re smart or that you have the right answers; they must respect you. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Track your outreach.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Create your own client relationship management tool. It could be a Google sheet or an Excel sheet, but it doesn\u2019t have to be anything sophisticated\u2014just enough to track the name and how you\u2019ve connected with someone. What was the last thing you spoke about and when? So when you\u2019re job hunting, you can ask yourself, \u201cDo I have a connection there?\u201d Whatever it is, embrace the notion of being structured in your networking.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t let the pebbles get in your shoes.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are some things in life that really are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But you could make these smaller issues a bigger issue, and along the way, you may ruin relationships or just get yourself frustrated over something you don\u2019t need to. Learning how to identify what\u2019s a pebble versus what\u2019s actually important to flag can help you in so many situations.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seek advice.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Really. Seek out advice. That sounds so basic, but I\u2019ve met people who don\u2019t necessarily seek advice, and I think it\u2019s such a disadvantage. If you\u2019re not actively seeking advice, then you\u2019re not leveraging what other people know, and people know quite a lot that you don\u2019t. Seek that knowledge. Seek advice. <\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Bank Group operations adviser shares what she’s learned in her career journey.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":28491,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-28489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-economics","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29151,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28489\/revisions\/29151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}