Testimonial by Sinéad Thielen, Trainee from March to July 2025.
My traineeship at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue office was a professionally enriching and personally rewarding experience for me thanks to the great team and the dynamic working environment.
What I appreciated most was the opportunity to contribute across all five thematic programs, allowing me to work not only on my focus areas but also on topics I had less exposure to before. Also, while the Foundation's work is closely aligned with current political debates and the institutional policy procedures, it maintains flexible to shed light on less prominent issues and think ahead – a combination that I found particularly important and inspiring.
My daily tasks were very diverse and included writing briefings, completing research tasks, creating stakeholder mappings, drafting event invitations and helping to organise them – from small discussion rounds to large-scale panel debates. A highlight was organizing and accompanying a multi-day delegation visit of experts from the Global South on the topic Global Power Shifts to make their perspectives heard in the EU.
Throughout the traineeship, I got in contact with many think tanks and policy experts, making it a good opportunity to expand my professional network in Brussels, gain insight into a wide range of policy debates and understand how a foundation operates!