Dear Familia,I get a lot of questions about what Zane does for a living so I thought I would take the time to give you all an answer. These days you can find this amazing man lending his numerous talents to the Overseas Programming and Training Support (OPATS) division of the Peace Corps headquarters in DC. The office has three main units: the Program Support Unit, the Training & Evaluation Unit, and the Knowledge Exchange Unit. They are in charge of pretty much anything and everything having to do with training in Peace Corps. 50% of his job is being the HR Rep for his office. When someone in OPATS has an HR issue he deals with the HR department for them.
The other 50% is being is the "Administrative Specialist" to the three unit managers, the Chief of Operations, and the Director of the Office. One of the very cool things he does in this role is attend the weekly Directors meetings where he gets to hear from development professionals with decades of experience under their belts. He mainly works with the Director of the Office but occasionally something will come up with one of the other four. This week the Chief of Operations had him help out on a new initiative USAID is rolling out called Feed the Future. The program is a government wide effort to increase investment in the agriculture sector and Zane was very excited that OPATS would be the lead Peace Corps agency on this initiative.
Right now he has a 2.5 year assignment and after that he might stay with OPATS or move within Peace Corps for another 2.5 year assignment or move on to another organization (kinda strange but you can only work for Peace Corps for a total of 5 years consecutively, then you have to wait 5 years before you can work for them again). Considering we can't even give you a 100% on a wedding date and location, giving you a 3 year plan is a stretch ;)
Paz,
Jem
PS The picture is from Peace Corps Guatemala...a tradition they started in his site of signing an American flag at Close of Service (COS). He was the first, but there will be 4 before the end of the year!
