Meet the UNICEF Chair
Bios
,
Chair
,
UNICEF
,
Yale Secretariat
Charlotte Finegold is the UNICEF chair for YMUN Korea
2014. A native of Southern California, Charlotte is a prospective Political
Science major in Berkeley College at Yale University.
Besides chairing UNICEF, Charlotte also serves
in the secretariat as the Under Secretary-General of Services. “This conference
is my biggest YIRA commitment,” she said. “But at YMUN next January, I’m
chairing Churchill’s War Cabinet: The Battle of Britain”. She has stuck with
Model UN for quite sometime, having started her MUN career when she was 13.
When she was in the 8th Grade, she did a very small conference and
loved it, deciding after that she wanted to try out for her high school team.
‘My brother was, at the time, a sophomore in high school, and he had loved the
team,’ she recalled. ‘So those were all the advantages! I tried out, got on the
team, and loved it from the start.’
Charlotte doesn’t
remember much of her first conference, except that it was “a bit of a blur,
partly because I was terrified the entire time.” She was representing Peru in
the World Trade Organization together with her friend as part of a dual
delegation. "We were both freshman, 4’ 11’, and our fake award at the end
of the conference was ‘Most Likely to be Mistaken for Middle Schoolers,” she recalled.
“So it would be an understatement to say that we were not confident – but I got
over my Model UN stage fright eventually!”
She remembered her most
embarrassing Model UN fondly. “My most embarrassing moment was probably when I
was representing Governor Kathleen Blanco in a historic response to Hurricane
Katrina,” she laughed. ‘I accidentally let in aid workers who spread cholera.
Then I wrote a ludicrously polite letter asking them to leave our state, but
neglected to tell them that they had cholera…’ Besides enlightening us on
things not to do, she also had some advice to dish out to future chairs; she
feels that chairing is all about the educational experience of Model UN. “If
you care about winning and speaking the greatest number of times, you might not
be best suited to be a chair,” she mused. “So just enjoy meeting and talking
with new people from all over the world!”
She is very much looking
forward to having her first experience in Korea with Korean high school
students.
by Yoonjie Park & Michael James Anthony
