Watching a mother learn to care for her paraplegic child who was hit by stray bullets in a war-torn village without clean water and proper hygiene – that was one of the hardest things that Delphine Barringer-Mills witnessed as a staff member of the nongovernmental organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Big doses of brutal reality were common for Barringer-Mills who traveled from Sudanese orphanages to Haitian trauma centers from 2004 to 2006. She got involved with MSF because of a desire to live a purposeful life. It helps that she speaks French, has a keen understanding of human resources management, including how to recruit the right help for this nongovernmental organization. She’s courted a long-term interest in international humanitarian work.

So how did Barringer-Mills arrive at the Carlson School of Management? She believes that having the human resources program nested within a business school adds rigor to the experience and will better prepare her to meet her goals. Now that she has completed that core coursework and is moving into the human resources focus, she is confident that she made the right decision to matriculate at the Carlson School. Barringer-Mills plans to take her skills back to MSF and be a source of continuous improvement in their human resources management efforts.

Although she is a full-time HRIR student, Barringer-Mills maintains her connection to MSF. At the end of September, she participated in an MSF exhibit at Minneapolis’ Loring Park. The staged refugee camp exhibit was designed to reflect the realities that 33 million people around the world face in their daily lives. She greeted visitors, explained the difference between internally displaced people and refugees, talked about the refugee diet, average water and sanitation conditions, what kind of living and sleeping conditions they faced, how MSF organizes vaccination campaigns and nutritional programs, and how an isolated cholera tent works to contain disease. She gave witness to the lives of these 33 million people.

Barringer-Mills will complete her master’s program in the spring of 2008.