Arora Akanksha, Candidate for United Nations Secretary-General 2021

Exclusive Interview by Krithiga Narayanan

Arora Akanksha is a United Nations financial auditor who ran for Secretary-General of the U.N., a role no woman has ever held before. She is also the youngest candidate in history.

Three Pieces of Advice:

- Have an entrepreneurial spirit. Lean in on your entrepreneurial skills to start doing whatever you want to do, right now. If you have this fire to do great work don't wait for a job to do it. Just start doing it right now. For example, you get a job at the UN but the UN is not doing great things and so your job ends up becoming writing a report or not doing work you signed up to do. It's important at that time to remember that it's not the job that was your goal but the objective, which can be achieved anytime without a job.

- Collaboration is critical. No one can do anything alone so it's important to collaborate. What that collaboration looks like is not a collaboration of networking together but more like collaboration for problem-solving. For example, if you are passionate about women empowerment, in the world there is already someone out there doing great things and I think it is important to reach out to them and tell them how you can be part of it or how you can build or expand on it through collaboration.

- Young girls and women should support each other. It's so critical that women support each other. In this campaign, I realized this ugly truth that women don't support women, and we have to confront this ugly truth. We should encourage young women to make it a goal to help other women and they would get things done faster if they support each other.

EDUCATION: MPA, Master of Public Administration, Columbia University (USA), BA, Bachelor of Administrative Studies (Graduated Summa Cum Laude), York University (Canada)

CAREER SO FAR:

United Nations (UN) - UNDP (Internal audit and investigation activities and activities of the Ethics Office, Joint Paper on Cost Recovery Report, Proposed Amendments to the Financial Regulations of the United Nations, Report on the implementation of the recommendations of the United Nations Board of Auditors)

Principal, Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada)

Manager, PwC

Lecturer for Advanced Auditing, Univerity of Toronto

Associate, EY

AUTHOR: Krithiga Narayanan

Interview Date: 21 May, 2021

In what I consider a bold move, you announced your candidacy for the next UN Chief. As the youngest candidate in history, what are the three key driving factors behind your decision to announce your candidacy?

The three key factors that affected me are first of all I believe in the UN. I know that the UN is capable of doing great things. But it is not doing so today. I will give you a few examples. Today we have the highest number of refugees displaced and stateless people globally, and these are not voters in any country. They do not have social media to tell their stories. UN is the only one who can take care of them and they are failing to do their job, which leaves these people to have to fend for themselves. For every dollar, the UN receives, 30 cents is used for the cause and the rest goes for bureaucracy. When it comes to climate which is an existential threat, for every dollar 15 cents is used for the cause. So the UN of today is not doing the work it is supposed to do.

Secondly, for far too long we have given the position of Secretary-General to one type of people. We have given it to all men, all older and all with one experience profile, a politician. Which means they see the job as serving politicians and not serving people. Representation needs to be there at the leadership level of the Secretary-General. Half of the world is women, the majority is youth yet we don't have a seat at the table. So that is why it is really important for a new generation and a new gender to take a seat.

Thirdly, the UN of today is not really fit for its purpose. We haven't really had innovative solutions, technology, and everything that the youth represents which are optimism, new ideas, and fresh perspective. That is absolutely missing at the UN. In fact, I am confident that we are the missing link to why the UN is not serving people the way it's supposed to serve. In whichever profession we have been given a chance we have disrupted the profession. We have made it better. In the UN we are not given a chance beyond donation and advocacy. Those are the reasons why I am running for this position, to fulfill the UN's promise to the world. To give gender and a generation a seat at the table and to bring technology and innovation to the forefront.

Your candidacy is sending a clear signal of inclusivity. How important is it to have a more diverse and inclusive workplace, especially in organizations such as the UN?

I think inclusivity and diversity are the ingredients that would allow different ideas and perspectives to come to the table. It would make sure that solutions that could not have been considered previously are part of our toolkit now. The UN of today does not honor representation in its true form. We have tokenism representation, a lone person from one country or one gender. I think inclusivity means having actual representation inadequate manner and not just tokenism. My candidacy is sending a clear signal that why can't millennials apply for this job. The old guard just pretends that this role and this job belong to them and not to our generation. Inclusivity should be practiced at every level and not just in jobs where we have the ability to apply for and be considered.

You are currently an audit coordinator with the UN. How did you end up working at the UN in New York?

I studied at York University in Toronto, Canada, where I received a bachelor’s degree in administrative studies. I have worked as an Associate at Ernst & Young, taught a graduate-level course on Advanced Auditing at the University of Toronto, where I was the youngest person to teach a graduate-level course. I later worked as a Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), followed by a stint at the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada). I have written guidance on auditing standards that were published nationally at CPA Canada and internationally at the International Federation of Accountants. I was recruited by the UN to help with the financial reforms of the organization. The year was 2016 and the context was Donald Trump had been elected as President of the United States of America and so was the current Secretary-General. Financial reform was a huge portfolio and it included updating financial regulations and rules of the UN, implementing a statement on internal controls, revising finance policies and procedures. My other projects at the UN include Cost Recovery and managing the internal and external audits at UNDP. In 2019, I also obtained a Master’s in Public Administration from Columbia University in New York.

What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

In terms of my campaign, the biggest challenge so far has been the discrimination that I have faced from the Member States within the UN. These Member States pride themselves as supporters and drivers of public participation, States that honor democracy, women inclusivity, and youth empowerment. But so far, the behavior the Member States have exhibited is clearly discriminatory. The definition of discrimination is unjust behavior towards someone on factors that they cannot control. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister was himself a change candidate elected at a young age but when it comes to supporting the candidacy of someone like him in the UN context, he hasn't really been supportive. I would also say that countries that have women leaders haven't also been supportive and I have actively reached out to them I think that is the part that is so surprising to me because in all the speeches these people say the right things. But then when it comes to action, it's not really the case. I am now hoping that the Biden Administration which is all about inclusivity and diversity will at least end up saying that the UN is not honoring the democratic election process. I think this is something the world should take note that the UN is an institution that preaches democracy but does not practice it. These are Member States that domestically promote free and fair elections, but they want to bypass the process internationally. I think this is the most challenging aspect of the campaign for me.

You recently released your vision statement as part of your campaign. Can you tell us more about it?

My vision statement was produced after consultations with 200 experts and 300 volunteers from all over the world who are part of the movement for a new UN. What I am really proud of is how action-oriented it is. The vision for the UN was set up in 1945, to promote peace of security, rule of law, human rights, and development. The vision hasn't really changed and we haven't really realized that vision. That is why this is an action statement. The key elements in it that I would like to highlight are member states. The UN of today is not serving all governments properly. The only service we offer is conference management and a platform for them to come and discuss. But what I am saying is that let's help them with digitization. A lot of developing countries don't need conferences.

The refugee crisis is something that has always been important to me. Nearly 85 Million people need support and these are people who are displaced people who can work. Hence we must allow them to work in refugee camps and not just have international organizations come and serve them. We need to provide them with tools to succeed like the internet and education.

The other thing I would like to highlight is conflict resolution. When it comes to conflict resolution we only rely on political mediation. Only politicians go talk with each other. What we need is to have negotiators, trained psychologists, and other experts to understand the psyche of the person engaging in breaking the rule of law or abusing human rights. I think we need to capitalize on that. I will give an example. In a society where there is a crime or a serial killer on the loose, the entire police department engages with experts like psychologists, criminologists, to understand what that person is thinking and what they can do to understand them. But when it comes to conflicts, we only have just politicians going at each other and saying, "You have killed enough. Stop now." I think we really need to understand the psyche of the person and then diffuse the situation.

Do you have a role model and if so who and why?

I do not have a specific role model, like someone who has inspired me so much. But there are few people whose qualities I definitely admire. Steve Jobs is one of them. Going back to 1984 when Macintosh was created, computers for personal consumption was not even on the radar but he challenged that. He said that people were smart and if you give them a tool like a computer they will do great things. A forward visionary thinker like Steve Jobs realized that technology is the tool for the advancement of people. That became the whole era of personal computers and look where we are today. He believed in people and challenged the status quo. He is someone that I admire. My favorite quote of his is, “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up of people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”