How Ella Magnussen landed a UN internship in New York
The story about a Norwegian college swimmer and how she turned her dream into reality
Ella Magnussen grew up watching David Attenborough documentaries and spending weekends at the Natural History Museum in New York. Now, she’s heading back to that same city, but this time for an internship at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations in New York.
For any young athlete dreaming of combining swimming with a university education abroad and even a UN internship, her story is exactly the kind of proof that it’s possible.
A Norwegian girl with an American soul
Ella Magnussen isn’t your typical Norwegian. Raised just outside Oslo, she moved to New York City at age three when her father took a job there. That early experience of being dropped into a new country, a new language, and a new life shaped everything that followed.
“I’ve always been put in these new environments where I just have to make friends,” she says. “And I’ve always loved doing it.”
Swimming came into her life in those same New York years. Her parents enrolled her in lessons at age three – partly for safety, partly because she was already the kind of child who spent more time underwater than above it. “I was just diving and doing handstands in the pool and everything.” The US swim system took her quickly from splashing around to learning real technique, and the sport never really let go.
Why Canada became the dream destination
If you’re a young swimmer in Norway with ambitions to compete at a high level while earning a university degree, the options at home are limited. Ella is direct about this: “In Norway, it’s not really possible to swim and study at that level. Your schedule isn’t designed around swimming.”
She’d watched older swimmers from her club head to North America through Keystone Sports Nordics (then operating as CSUSA), and had seen her neighbor use the same pathway for soccer. The lifestyle she saw them living on Instagram looked extraordinary. The plan was always to go but the destination took her by surprise.
“I really wanted somewhere warm where we could swim outside and get tanned. That was like my top priority,” she admits. Canada, to put it mildly, was not the first place she imagined ending up.
But then she got in contact with Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, had a few conversations with the coaching staff and the team, and something clicked. “I connected a lot better and could see myself spending four years there. Canada is a beautiful place. They share a lot of the same values as Europeans.”
For any young athlete considering Canada as a study destination, Ella’s experience is a strong case. Simon Fraser competes in the NCAA, which meant Ella’s team travelled to the US for competitions. Thay gave her the North American experience she’d wanted.
Vancouver itself delivered on nature in ways that rivalled home: mountains, ocean, forests, a proper downtown skyline. And despite its famous reputation for rain (“everyone told me you need to bring your umbrella”), her first year was nice and sunny. She adds: “In the summer it’s really warm in Vancouver.”
Beyond the weather, Canada offered something harder to quantify. As a European student, she found the country’s values familiar: the healthcare system, the safety, the general culture – while still offering the energy and scale of North America. “I felt very safe and people are super nice. I know that people always say Canadians are super nice, and they really are.”
Simon Fraser University was chosen partly for its academic reputation. Ella highlights that the university is known as a good school academically, which was one of her priorities. Canada’s university system, with its NCAA-affiliated programs, offers a legitimate alternative to the US for athletes who want to compete and graduate at the same level.
The reality of the first year (it's harder than it looks)
Social media has a way of showing the highlights of the student-athlete life: travel, competitions, friends, and the campuses. What it doesn’t show is the first semester, when everything hits at once.
Ella took five courses in her first term – a heavy load by anyone’s standards, let alone someone also training twice a day and building a social life from scratch in a foreign country. She ran into trouble in an unexpected place: math. Not because she couldn’t do it, but because she’d never done it in English before.
“I could actually do the math, but I just didn’t understand certain terms they were asking for because I just didn’t know what they were in English.” With 50-minute tests, a lot of questions, and terminology she didn’t recognize, the pressure mounted fast.
“It was just kind of a lot,” she says. “Morning practices, then sitting up until midnight submitting assignments.” She was also thousands of kilometers from home, without the comfort of going back for long weekends or holidays the way her Canadian teammates could.
The second semester was better. The second year, she’d found her rhythm, and the grades followed. From her second year onward, Ella made the Dean’s Honour Roll every semester (a GPA of 3.5 or higher), and landed on the President’s Honour Roll twice in a row for achieving a perfect 4.0. She graduated with distinction. “Hard work really does pay off,” Ella says.
The lesson she’d give other students heading into their first year? Don’t take five courses. And don’t underestimate how different everything will feel, even if you already speak the language.
What student-athletes carry with them
When asking Ella what skills being a student-athlete builds, she pauses before she continues:
“It’s this attitude of ‘it just has to be done.’” She thinks about it more. “I’ve always found celebrating my achievements really hard, because to me it’s just something that had to be done.” She mentions her grandparents complimenting her and her tendency to brush it off. “But I think that’s something student-athletes always carry with them, and into the classroom as well.”
The result is a particular kind of reliability: submissions on time, structured days, the discipline to show up even when you’d rather not.
For parents considering this path for their children, Ella is honest about what it costs and what it builds. “I’m a very different person now than what I was when I left.” By the time she arrived in Canada, she was managing her own health insurance, her own phone bill, her own everything. “You grow a lot from living alone.” The independence curve, she says, is steep, and in her experience, healthy: “I’ve grown a lot from it, and I think it’s been for the better.”
From Marine Biology to Resource & Environmental Management
Ella arrived at Simon Fraser University intending to become a marine biologist. She’d grown up near the Natural History Museum in New York, had watched every David Attenborough series she could find, and felt certain that the ocean was where she was headed.
One year in, she changed her mind. Not because the subject wasn’t interesting, but because she realized the part that interested her most wasn’t cells and biology at the granular level – it was the bigger picture. What happens to our oceans if we keep doing what we’re doing? What are the economic, political, and energy dimensions of environmental collapse?
She found a degree program called Resource & Environmental Management, which let her pull together ecology, ecological economics, sustainable energy, and environmental policy into a coherent picture. “You can take so many different classes and you kind of understand the whole environment issue we’re having right now from different perspectives,” she says. “It was perfect.”
One surprise along the way: Norway kept coming up in class as a model. A former Norwegian Prime Minister is credited with one of the foundational definitions of sustainable development, and from her very first semester, Ella found her home country being held up as an example of how to do things right.
The UN internship she almost didn't apply for
Throughout her fourth year, Ella spent months applying for jobs and getting rejections. This is, she’s quick to point out, completely normal, but it doesn’t make the pile of “we’re sorry, so many people applied” emails any easier to absorb.
Then her parents pointed her toward a Norwegian government internship program placing graduates in consulates and missions around the world. There were positions in several European cities. There was also one in New York, specifically at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations, focused on sustainable development.
“I’m not getting the Norwegian mission to the UN job,” she thought. Her parents told her she had nothing to lose and she applied.
Out of many applicants, she was one of the few invited to an interview. After the interviews came another test as part of the hiring process. Then she moved out of her Canadian apartment, flew home via Munich and boarded the connection to Oslo. As the plane sat on the runway, her phone buzzed.
“I had to read it like five times because I thought it was another denial.” She called her dad from the plane before takeoff and told him she’d got the job.
What got her the UN internship in New York
When asked what she thinks helped her stand out as a candidate for the UN internship, Ella points to a few things – none of them luck.
Her degree program, Resource & Environmental Management, was directly relevant to sustainable development work in a way that most Norwegian degrees aren’t. Her application letter highlighted the specific coursework she’d done and why it applied to the role. She also mentioned being a student-athlete: discipline, time management, work ethic. She wrote about her confidence in both English and Norwegian, and her familiarity with North American life.
“I think it was the student-athlete experience and the type of education I’ve had. I’ve already been abroad, I’m familiar with North American lifestyles, plus confident in English and Norwegian.” She pauses. “I think that was probably what stood out the most.”
She’ll be in New York from mid-August for four months for her internship at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN. For someone who has spent the last four years learning about Resource & Environmental Management, it’s a remarkable first step after graduation.
Do you also want to swim and study in Canada as a student-athlete, just like Ella? Get a free evaluation by our college swimming experts. Fill out the assessment now!
Share this article:
About the author
Paulina Romo
Paulina Romo, Communications Manager at Keystone Sports, holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and has a background in equestrian sports, specializing in dressage. Shaped by international experience gained from work and studies in Sweden, South Korea, Germany, and Spain, Paulina brings a diverse blend of marketing skills and perspectives to her role.
More related articles
Lene Mary Bolkesjø Hovda, new champion of the Norwegian national tennis championship
Lene Mary Bolkesjø Hovda, currently a student-athlete on a tennis scholarship, is the new champion of the Norwegian Tennis Championship!
My Experience in Women’s College Soccer in the United States
Discover how women’s college soccer scholarships in the United States offer unique resources, opportunities, and support. Student-athlete Lorena Montañés shares her firsthand experience and compares women’s soccer in the US and Spain.
College Golf Spring Break: Exploring Kiawah Island and Hawaiian fairways
Women’s golf is one of the most popular sports at universities in the US. But what is it like to be a college golf student-athlete? You get to travel and compete in incredible locations – like Kiawah Island and Hawaii!
