Opportunity to work in S.America - Research and analytic company

I have recently started at a real estate market research and analytics company. The position is entry-level associate stuff, but I enjoy working in the industry, looking at the market, and seeing what is driving it/what is happening, why prices are where they are, where money is moving to, etc. The company is pretty big and has a branch that focuses on corporate real estate investment, consulting, and advisory; they forecast trends, offer analytics, stuff like that. If I stay, I hope to get a spot working in this part of the business. The company is also rapidly expanding into Canada and Europe. My thoughts now are to leverage working in a medium sized company and being part of the projects involved with expanding into different markets/countries and hopefully get into a decent mba program, and then break into consulting. My dream job is probably to work in the space of international business advisory.. helping companies grow and expand into developing countries, ideally s. America, and helping get these poor countries get some good ol fashion private sector growth and economic success.

My cousin however has just offered me a position working under her in the capital city of one of the poorest countries in s. America. She works for the city's mayor's office. She is running a project that focuses on establishing community and business development initiatives around a big central park.

After speaking with her I have derived this info: I would work on developing project measurement indexes, helping develop communication strategies with donors and NGOs, helping develop plans and proposals in english to deliver to the donors and NGOs, and other support functions. Basically she said I would work under her, and we could create plans for me that I think would be give me good experience and be interesting. But there is no pay. Its not in the budget and its kind of hard to get a work permit I guess.

I'm asking this here because I feel like this forum is full of really smart people with tons of experience in a variety of fields I find very interesting. Pretty much, if the goal is to a) get into an mba program in order to b) work and learn within a big consulting firm to c) work towards helping businesses succeed and grow in s. America, what are your opinions on dropping what I'm doing now and going to work for free for 3mo-1yr (I'm pretty sure the time commitment is up to me as well). I just got off Skype with her, so I'm weighing the options in my head, but would love some feedback from you guys with experience in the industry.

I think the experience would be amazing, but economically I would be giving up a lot (current experience at a real job in a market with tons of $.. money I would be making.. student loan debt that would not be paid off as efficiently as it could be if I were to stay here). How valuable do you think it is to get hands on project coordination/management exp. in a foreign country VS remaining in a career and learning different aspects of business the more traditional way, in order to get into an mba program which would lead to consulting? Any perspective, thoughts, advice, wisdom, etc from you guys is appreciated.

 

No real wisdom here and no experience in that arena but my .02 would be to take advantage of the opportunity in S. America. Assuming you're young and don't have major limitations (wife, kids, mortgage, etc), now is the time to take risks and try something unconventional. Best case, you have a great time and experience. Worst case, move back home and go back to work.

 
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