Alexandra Kinigopoulos

What brought you to a career in technology at the United Nations?

I am thriving in what can be described as a non-traditional ﾓtechﾔ career at the United Nations: I specialize in digital publishing for print and electronic distribution. I came to this career by dovetailing two areas of specialization, (1) more traditional ﾓtechﾔ experience as customer-facing technical support and computer repair, which I pursued because of my interest in technology, from programming languages to video games, and my tendency toward focused and methodical problem-solving; and (2) a bilingual background with formal native-level education in two United Nations languages, reinforced by a college degree in linguistics and certifications in publishing and editing. My comfort level with learning and exploring new technologies, specifically the desktop publishing technologies that have evolved since the start of this millennium, have given me the opportunity to lead my unit, offering training and support, exploring new ways of doing things, designing and demonstrating new templates, and introducing automation processes. I am surrounded in my chosen career by successful women, be it language professionals or our management staff, who support the exploration of new technology, and are constantly challenging themselves and each other to keep up with the technological opportunities available to us.

What has been your favorite technology project or initiative at the United Nations and why? What was your contribution?

My favorite IT project at the United Nations has been my design of the Disarmament Yearbook template in Russian, which was also adapted into the other languages. This template has been going strong for over a decade now, which to me is a testament to its robustness. The project allowed me to use the full capabilities of the desktop publishing software at the time, introducing macros and automation so that rather than manually placing and coding elements at every stage every year, the production editor could click a button and have an element fly to its appropriate place, complete with styles. It also automatically scrubbed the text for key words and elements (for example, Latin text in a Cyrillic or Arabic context) and used a different font style for these. Using technology rather than a human production editor or graphic designer to implement these routine modifications manually dramatically cuts down on time and fatigue. This allows our team to spend more energy on proofreading, a task that remains outside the realm of machine capabilities.

What advice would you give women interested in pursuing a field in technology?

Seek out a woman who knows what you want to know, establish a mentorship. Take every opportunity for new projects, even if youﾒre nervous. Ask questions and ask for help: training, of performance feedback, or watching someone do something new to you. Take notes, Google everything. And when itﾒs your turn to help someone younger, give her everything youﾒve got.