AIESEC is the largest youth-run organization in the world: founded in 1948, run entirely by young people, present in more than a hundred countries, with consultative status at the UN. Its main product is exchange: sending and hosting volunteers and interns. At ITAM the local committee lives in a small office across from the campus bookshop at Río Hondo, and in 2024 I spent a year there in two roles that have little in common.
January to June: hosting volunteers (iGV)
In Incoming Global Volunteer the committee is the host entity: it sets up projects with local NGOs and institutions, aligns them with a UN Sustainable Development Goal, publishes them on the global platform, interviews the foreign volunteers who apply and, once they land, is responsible for them.
That term I accompanied eight international volunteers from before they landed until the end of their project: the English calls with the committee sending them, the arrival paperwork, the pick-up, the preparation seminar where you explain how the city works and what the safety rules are, the weekly follow-up and the coordination with the organization where they worked. The committee’s long-running project is anchored in education with children from Tizapán, the neighbourhood next to campus, and seeing it work with people from three continents was my first experience of working with real stakeholders: people with different interests who depend on you delivering.
What served me most afterwards was not the logistics but the intercultural communication: explaining the same thing five times, in English, to people from different contexts, and confirming it was understood.
July to December: leading the team that sends (oGV)
In the second term I switched sides of the counter and roles. Outgoing Global Volunteer is the area that attracts ITAM students and accompanies them until they complete a volunteer project in another country. And now I was Team Leader of three people.
AIESEC measures everything with a funnel: sign-up, application, approval, realization. Every stage has a conversion rate and a duration. My job was to design attraction campaigns on campus, assign sign-ups to my team, review the funnel every week, hold English calls with committees in other countries to unblock applications, and walk every person through to realization. We closed the term with nine realizations: nine students who actually travelled and completed their project.
But the part that changed me was leading. AIESEC has team standards: define the purpose and rules, write each member’s job description, hold recurring 1:1s with a development plan, give feedback and close with an evaluation. Doing that with three peers my own age, with no formal authority, only the kind you earn, was the best school of leadership I have had. I learned that a 1:1 is not a status meeting but a conversation about the person, and that a small team performs when everyone knows exactly what is theirs and why it matters.
What I take with me
Three things I use today on a data team. First: measure the funnel. Any process with stages can be instrumented, and what is not measured stalls without anyone noticing. Second: working English. Not exam English, but the English of solving a problem on a video call with someone in another time zone. Third: responsibility for others. When a volunteer lands at eleven at night and you are the contact, you understand what being responsible means.
AIESEC sums it up in a leadership model with four qualities: self-aware, solution-oriented, empowering others, world citizen. A year later, it seems to me a reasonable list of what I try to be.