February 8–9, 2019 · Barnard College / Columbia University
In February 2019, while I was a student at Columbia, I served on the conference support team for The International Conference on Protection and Accountability in Burma, a two-day event at Barnard College organized in collaboration with the Free Rohingya Coalition and co-sponsored by Columbia and Barnard programs including the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Global Cultural Studies, the South Asia Institute, and the Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies.
The conference brought together Rohingya advocates, genocide scholars, international-law practitioners, UN officials, activists, and researchers to address protection and accountability for the Rohingya and other persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar. Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak delivered welcoming remarks and the closing keynote; the program also included contributions from UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, Angela Davis, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Gregory Stanton, Alex Hinton, Michael Charney, Rohingya campaigners, and other international speakers.
Conference operations in practice
My assigned role was floater on the student event-support team: a deliberately flexible position for the things that do not fit neatly into a single station. The advance instructions placed me between registration and the James Room, relaying guest information for approval, running materials, covering other volunteers, supporting speakers, and responding to issues as they surfaced.
The work started before the doors opened. Two weeks before the event, the organizing team reported more than 110 registrations and was planning for roughly 160 guests and 40 speakers. I reviewed speaker materials, supported last-minute logistics, independently located a rush order of 35 poster tubes for speakers and coordinated their pickup and staging, and volunteered additional photography support when the team was trying to fill that need. During the conference, the role required judgment, responsiveness, and close coordination across a large two-day program.
The post-event record is unusually specific about what mattered: the administrative coordinator thanked the student team for taking initiative and fixing problems as they arose, noting that the conference had received many compliments. I include that detail because it captures the operational skill more accurately than a generic line about “event support.” The work was to notice what could break, solve what could be solved, and keep the public-facing program moving.
What I remember most clearly is how much invisible work sits underneath a complex public program. A conference can look seamless from the audience because a team is constantly solving small problems before they become visible ones: moving materials, relaying information, accommodating speakers, managing registration, checking rooms, filling gaps, and adjusting plans in real time.
A high-stakes international program
The public conference program shows the scale of the event: two days of panels, keynote addresses, Rohingya voices, comparative genocide scholarship, international legal analysis, and discussion of global responses to persecution in Myanmar. Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights continues to list the conference in its genocide-prevention programming and links to the archived recording.
Conference program exhibit. The public conference program documents the two-day agenda, speakers, institutional partners, and Columbia/Barnard venue.
What this work developed
This was an early example of a kind of work that has continued throughout my career: translating complex plans into an experience that works for the people in the room. It strengthened my event operations, stakeholder coordination, contingency planning, and problem-solving skills, but it also reinforced something broader: good program design includes everything participants should never have to think about.
View Columbia ISHR’s conference record and recording link
View the full conference program · See additional conferences and events · Explore my portfolio