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Writing from 25 Years In, a series on leadership, institutions, and what the work costs the people who carry it.

25 Years In | No. 1, Why I Am Writing This

I have spent 25 years inside some of the most complex institutional environments on the planet. Tribunals. Post-conflict systems. Governance reform across regions where the stakes were never abstract: people's lives, institutions, the possibility of just…

25 Years In | No. 2, What This Work Actually Is

I was at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.

My bag had just been stolen. Passport. Cards. Everything. I was supposed to be on a flight home for two weeks of leave. Instead, I was making a list of everything to cancel, replace, and rebook.

I was frustr…

25 Years In | No. 3, Running on Empty

I was based in Bangkok.

Seven countries. Two years of flying between Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Manila, Jakarta, Vientiane, and occasionally Hanoi and Yangon. Repeat. A project that demanded everything and then asked for more.

By year two, I was completely r…

25 Years In | No. 4, They Weren't Expecting Me

A senior judicial official looked up and said, with undisguised surprise: "Oh. You're Black."

I said: "Yes. Every day. All day."

He explained. When he saw my CV, my name, Krystal Thompson, he expected a white woman. In his experience, my organization h…

25 Years In | No. 5, Identity Placement Intelligence™ - What the Room Decides Before You Speak

They could not bring themselves to say the word. Chief. Not to me.

I had just been promoted to lead my section at an international court in West Africa. Word reached me through the grapevine: some of the men could not see themselves calling a woman Chie…