Alumni Spotlight

Stephanie Bratnick, Student & Senior Protection Assistant at UNHCR in Tel Aviv

Before beginning the International MA in Crisis and Trauma at Tel Aviv, I was working internationally in Mexico and China where I was focused on education and conflict resolution. In China, I helped to build and implement a western-style theater education program throughout the country. In Mexico, I first ran a summer camp for ex-pat children and local Mexican children to help bridge the cultural divide. The camp used theater activities to discuss environmental and cultural differences, as well as ways forward. In Mexico, I was hired full-time to teach non-violent communication and leadership skills in a local school. I also worked on a sustainable, off-grid ranch, learning natural building techniques, goat farming, and teaching yoga.

I chose to go back to school in order to be able to compete on the broader international humanitarian job market. I also wanted to study trauma and crisis in a region that was currently battling both issues. I felt that my learning would not only happen inside the classroom but all around me. At the same time, Israel, unlike other countries in the Middle East, has a very child-friendly reputation. It was also a region of the world I had never visited, so I was curious about what life was like here. 

In the Crisis and Trauma program, I love the guest lectures, with speakers on a range of subjects from rape crisis interventions to what it was like to lead a group of men into battle to hostage negotiation to humanitarian interventions. The hands-on workshop, at the end of the year, offered an important place to practice the skills we learned along the way. And the social policy class was vital in understanding the intersection between psychosocial intervention and public/social policy.

From my experiences in the Crisis and Trauma program, I am developing a stronger understanding of the wide-ranging effects of trauma beyond the individual. Trauma acts as a stone dropped into a pond with rings rippling out that impact family, community, and the broader social context. If anything, I have learned how imperative it is for psychosocial support services and trauma informed practices to be implemented into the fabric of our governmental and humanitarian policies. In order to achieve this, I now have the knowledge base to actively drive this engine of change so we might lessen the traumatic burden of vulnerable populations.

Currently, I am contracted at UNHCR in Tel Aviv, where I serve as a Senior Protection Assistant and the Sexual Gender-Based Violence focal point. I work on behalf of the asylum-seekers in Israel, and specifically handle cases of sexual violence, as well as strategic program planning to fill in the service gaps. After this, I am not sure, but I am looking at moving to Germany to continue honing my expertise in refugee crisis and issues of forced migration.