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Read criticisms on international aid and development now or in college. There have been very many good ones written in the past 15 years or so about aid effectiveness, programming, results monitoring, and philosophy. The industry for the past couple of years has been undergoing some soul-searching as it struggles to quantify its positive impact and worth, and those pressures will only increase with the prevailing atmosphere of world politics.

The approaches I'm familiar with are the "Politics Matters" crowd which is trying to approach development with a greater focus on the politics of the countries they are working in and how to deal with that. There's some background context here involving the Washington Consensus and its failure, and a long-running development industry focus on technical assistance, financial support, and conditional loans, which is shifting. Some good reading that may be a little early for you as a junior in high school but you could maybe glean some insights from it:

Adrian Leftwich on Thinking and Working Politically

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by AO Hirschmann

Overseas Development Institute's Thinking and Working Politically Reading Pack

Doing Development Differently community's book they're centered around Harvard I believe, it's free

As others have said a technical focus will help you get an initial job (and one that might even actually pay well), but you can enter as a generalist it's just harder. I kind of half-heartedly studied economics as an undergrad and that was my only higher education but I managed to find a niche in development for many years (and may return to it in a few years). Development agencies and international NGOs fetishize advanced degrees, almost everyone else I met in the industry who was at a program management level and above had at least a master's and many had a Ph.D, except for me. I never felt hamstrung in actual work terms by my lack of an advanced degree, but it is hard to get your foot in the door without one. I just luckily stumbled upon a boss and mentor who didn't really care about those unwritten rules who gave me my start and then helped me lift myself up continuously throughout my career.

I would also highly recommend learning a language, and like u/travelingag recommended study a lot of history, especially focusing on modern history of the last ~150 or so years. I can't say whether going deep is better than going broad, but definitely (obviously) focus on undeveloped areas of the world where int. development organizations work. It would be a big waste of time to study a bunch of European history if you want to work on development.

My first piece of advice is to spend time narrowing your focus. I recommend this book to help you out.

Also, this blog post is particularly relevant for you.

That's a decent article that begins to shed light on this problem. Here's a really good book I read about what Kenyans at least in one village think of white people, among other things.


The Kochia Chronicles