Tormod Lund

Tormod Lund grew up in a small village in Norway. He didn’t see the point of learning English as a child and thought he would probably end up working in the little village shop 200 meters from his parents’ house. Instead, Thor is now a successful Technology Trainer and Product Specialist at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and although it crept up on him somehow, he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. “I really feel at home in this team, in WHO and in the UN system,” he says. 

His job is to enable staff to make the most of the technology that is available at WHO. This can be by providing user adoption or training, but it can also mean adapting tools to fit the specific needs of WHO’s staff and programmes. Most of Thor’s military service was spent at the Norwegian Defence Education Centre supporting and coaching officers on technology. This taught him very early on to be mindful and tactful about how to get a message across. Later, working at Apple as a tech trainer really showed him what “user focus” and “service minded” meant. Thor has always had a genuine curiosity about technology and enjoys digging into a new tool, understanding how it works and discovering its possibilities and limitations. He also has the ability to quickly assess a person’s needs and their technical understanding. Without judgment, he adapts his language and explanations to their point of view and level of understanding. “I know when to simplify with analogies and when to talk tech,” he says. “I learned that even if I already know the answer to their question, my job is to help the person formulate their need and work their way to understanding so they learn and gain confidence for the next time.” The people that Thor supports do what he calls “the real work”, and this makes him feel connected to WHO’s mission. “I see myself as empowering the people that make a difference in people’s lives.”

He remembers the day that his connection to this work solidified. For many years Thor trained and provided expertise on an in-house tool used for surveys. The WHO Regulatory Systems Strengthening unit was using it to improve a vaccine trial review process, which is usually run country by country and has many stakeholders, from ministries to regulatory bodies. Then the emergencies programme recorded a serious Ebola outbreak, which became a pivotal point in Thor’s career. The teams managing the Ebola vaccine trials needed his skills and knowledge on the ground in the countries where the trials were happening to help speed things up. Thor was asked to develop and adapt the tool so the specialists could work with several countries simultaneously to coordinate dozens of stakeholders while ensuring complete transparency. “It was an amazing experience working with my WHO regional and country office colleagues, the regulatory bodies, vaccine manufacturers and ministries, and to see how they worked together to finish the trial reviews and sequentially provide a vaccine in such a short time without compromising any of the processes. I was proud to be a part of that.” 

On other days Thor might be creating training programs or e-learnings, or delivering workshops, presentations, video recordings or screen recordings on a wide variety of IT products. He also works to develop user presentation skills, build custom technical solutions and manages a recording studio for public health training.