A New Beginning

Anna Eckhoff is a mother of six and the grandmother of thirteen. At the age of fifty-six, she swapped her career as an IT project manager to work as the head of administration in the world’s hotspots, holding jobs at NGOs, the EU and the UN, where she worked within accounting, personnel, procurement, logistics and IT. She returned to Denmark at the age of seventy-one, but dreams of going out into the world again to work.

From early childhood, Anna Eckhoff dreamed of excitement. She secretly ran around the local inner fjord to train for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. But it was not until forty years later that she was able to live out her childhood dream of combining excitement with travel. Before then, she managed to fulfill another dream: Getting married and having a lot of children. At the age of fifty-six, Anna Eckhoff replaced her secure life in a Danish suburb with the demanding duties of war zones, where she was stationed for the first time. And despite the many challenges that come with new beginnings so late in life, Anna Eckhoff was never in doubt — she belonged in the world’s hotspots. Over the next fifteen years, Anna Eckhoff was on secondment ten times, including in Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Russia and Libya. Here she met a host of international employees and locals and led a life of both rewarding and exhausting relationships that sometimes made her feel like she was a participant on the TV show Survivor. Working under the auspices of NGOs, the EU and the UN enabled Anna Eckhoff to experience up close the vastly different interests that govern the course of the world.

At the age of seventy-one, she returned home to her children and grandchildren in Denmark but discovered that she still wanted to work. And that part of her is still longing for more adventures.

A NEW BEGINNING: LIFE ON THE FRONTLINES is Anna Eckhoff’s personal account of daring to go after your dreams, despite those around you shaking their heads in disapproval, and about the inner development she experienced living and working on the frontlines.