From Teaching to Leading Diplomacy: A Conversation with Nancy Jo Powell

From teaching high school social studies in the Midwest to leading several U.S. diplomatic missions, Nancy Jo Powell shares her experiences and lessons learned over a distinguished career of 37 years in the U.S. Foreign Service. As former U.S. Ambassador to India, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana, and Uganda as well as Director General of the Foreign Service, she shares her observations and thoughts regarding management, leadership, and public service. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello, welcome to another edition of the Brungart Law Podcast. The purpose of the podcast is to explore what makes for effective practices, policies, and laws, which ultimately enable effective decision making and leadership, the interplay among all of the above. And today's guest we have here former Ambassador Nancy Joe Powell. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Well, it's definitely a treat and a privilege for me hosting you, someone who's not only been an ambassador, but an ambassador to India, a country with a major population, but also an ambassador five times, having served in Uganda, Ghana, Nepal, Pakistan, and then India. And but I mean, tell us a little bit how all this started, going from being a social studies high school teacher in Iowa to being an ambassador of India.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

It was quite a journey and a very uh rewarding one for me. I did not anticipate that when I joined the Foreign Service, but I came from a town of 900 called Dayton, Iowa, not Dayton, Ohio. Quite a difference. No, no, you got it right. Um, and was teaching social studies, made a trip to Pakistan as part of a government program to improve the teaching about the third world during the summer of 1975, so 50 years ago, and was then acquainted with the Foreign Service for the first time. And uh took the exam and was lucky enough to pass both the written and the oral exam. And I joined in 19 January of 1977.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

And that must have been an interesting experience because from what I understand, when you initially joined the Foreign Service, it was approximately a class of about 37, 40 individuals, but there were only five women, and out of those women, only two of you remained.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

That's right, and but uh it was also an interesting time just in general. It was uh two weeks before the transition from President Ford to President Carter. It was the post-Vietnam era where the State Department was adjusting to not having the huge mission in in Vietnam. And also there had been a major class action suit filed by women in the Foreign Service at that time, which found uh a number of areas where there was practices that were against the law. And uh so it was starting to have some cracks in the glass ceiling. Uh the Foreign Service had been traditionally in the 1950s, 40s, 1950s, what was uh on the shorthand called pale male yale. And certainly a social studies, a female social studies teacher from Iowa didn't quite fit that mold. Um, but they there were three others, there were three of us from the Midwest, everybody else was from one of the coasts. Um it was uh quite a challenge to to meet these people and to feel like I was going to be part of a group with them.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

But did you feel initially welcomed by your male cohorts that were in your uh candidate class overall?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Overall, they were, and uh I will tell you the very first meeting that we had, we were welcomed by a senior official uh from the State Department who told an incredibly sexist joke.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

And the five ladies uh during the break retreated as you're wont to do to the restroom, the ladies' room, and said, What in the world was that all about? We didn't encounter that in our teaching in our universities. Um and uh you know that was sort of the welcome to the State Department, and there were certainly examples of sexism, and but I I found overall I benefited and uh the state from the changes that were being made in the people I was lucky enough to work with people who were making the changes.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Speaking as a woman and from your initial career assignments and then throughout the progression of your career, did you find whether you were correct in your observations or not, but did you find or believe you had to work harder than your male counterparts?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Um I had gone to New York uh City for a program while I was teaching, and one of the things I bought was a poster that said um something about women have to work twice as hard, twice as long uh as their male colleagues, and then there was an asterisk on it, and when you looked below it said, actually that's not very hard. And I had kept that poster there was another one that I bought at the same time that said a woman's place is in the house, another asterisk, and it said and in the Senate.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Did you ever uh hang up that poster in any of your offices?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

No, it was at home, though. I saw it at home.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Interesting. Well, tell us a little bit about um your initial training in the Foreign Service. Did you find that at that time uh it adequately prepared you for your career?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Um I don't think it was it was an introduction to the State Department, to its roles, uh, its organization. It's a very hierarchical organization, so that learning that piece of it. It was, as I say, during the five weeks that this training existed, we went through the transition from Secretary Kissinger to Secretary Vance. It was obvious that things were going to change, that while we were learning the basic structures and the basic functions, um, it was a time of change for the State Department for America in general. That was followed by language training. I had, I was going to Ottawa. I joined the Foreign Service and went all the way to Ottawa, which actually turned out to be a very good assignment for me. I I got over the culture shock of being in the State Department and then went off to Nepal where I had real could have had real culture shock, but um the language, I uh studied French, got and then we had uh five weeks of what I thought was some of the best training I had in the Foreign Service to to help people get ready to be visa officers. Almost all of the junior people still today will do at least one tour as a consular officer where you're handling the visa services, uh services to American citizens. And uh so that was it was really excellent, hands-on training with people that knew what they were, had been through it, knew what they were doing, and transferred those skills. So I was when I got to the consular section in Ottawa, which was a fairly easy one to to work in, um, I knew what I was doing with that. There may have been other parts of the State Department that I the five weeks didn't prepare me for, but uh the consort training really was among the best that I had in my entire career.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

For the benefits of our audience, um give them, although it's been some time, but give them some insight as to what it's like to be on that visa line interacting with locally uh with the local population uh and knowing that you have only a few minutes to really make a decision.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

The uh the interesting and unique thing about Ottawa is that you don't deal with the local population because they don't need visas to come to America. So at that time Canada had a rule that any Commonwealth citizen could come to Canada without a visa. So there were a lot of Commonwealth countries, um, particularly where perhaps the visa application process was lengthy, there were long lines. They would come to Canada and see if they could get a visa in Canada. Um didn't always work out, and you had I had to learn a lot about you know what was going on in Nigeria, what was going on in Haiti, was this a good case, was this not a good case? I spent a lot of time on American citizen services. There are American citizens that live, obviously, American citizens that travel to Canada, they get into all kinds of trouble. They they uh get arrested, they die, they get in the hospital, and so Canada was a fairly easy place to do that compared to Nepal, where I did the same work. Um, the infrastructure in Canada, obviously, and you're only I was only 60 miles from the border, so getting them home was not a big deal. But um during the time I was in Canada, the mid the movie Midnight Express came out, and this was the story of a consular officer who failed to provide the adequate services to a person arrested, I believe in Turkey. Um and it prompted an outcry from Congress that all American citizens in jail had to be visited once a month by a consular officer. Um my clientele was very different from that in Turkey. I had primarily people that were felons, they were there for murder, they were there for breaking and entering, but I had to go once a month down to, it was on the St. Lawrence River. They had five prisons and male prisons and one women's prison. And then I had one in Quebec that I went to. But this was an introduction, and I was for the most part the only visitor they had. Their family, it was hard for their family to get to them, so there was an appreciation. Uh, we also created a program that allowed them to transfer to an American prison, and there was a real push to get this done, and my prisoners looked at me and said, Are you kidding me? We'll stay in Canada, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Well, speaking of that experience as a uh consular officer, when you were ambassador and in the different uh missions, um share with us how you would rely on the consular section to inform some of your decision making, considering they basically have their finger on the pulse due to their constant interactions with local populations.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

A couple things. Part of it is just the management depending, particularly in South Asia, the crowds were fairly large, and we developed appointment systems and at people that didn't have to get up at four o'clock in the morning or pay somebody to stand in line for them, which was one of the practices in India, both India and Pakistan. Um it was also one of the things you learn in ambassador school is that the ambassador does not have the right to tell a consular officer what decision to make. They can make a recommendation that this is a senior official, this is someone that is known to me, or but you that's the end of it. Uh you can ask for a review of a decision, but you cannot interfere in the decision. And um sometimes that's hard for ambassadors to learn because there are so many other things you can control, but that's one of them that you cannot. Um the the decisions are uh you learn techniques and you watch your colleagues, and um one of my colleagues had a technique of asking for car keys, and it turned out in Pakistan that they were renting car keys down the line so that everybody had a set of car keys, even though it was the same set of car keys. So you have to be careful about not getting into too big a pattern, but um particularly you could see you know where students were going, um, the desire to go to America. I think the student population, the foreign student population is one of our silent weapons. Um could you expand upon that? Sure. They they come to America, they live here for four years, they're with uh Americans constantly in their classroom, in their dorm or apartment, wherever they live. Um they are influenced by their professors, they learn a certain method of thinking about the world that I would call a more American way, a pragmatic way. Um and that for the most part, I mean, you know, obviously there are people who have a sour experience for one reason or another. But they if they stay in the United States, they brought us talent and they're incredible, particularly in the IT field from South Asia. We have benefited enormously. But if they go home, they go home with a positive attitude toward America, they can deal with some of the misperceptions and say, no, no, it's not like that. That's not what the you know the people that invited me for Christmas were like. Um the other thing that I found, particularly for India and Pakistan, that the Indians and Pakistani students would get together. They were looking for the aunt who had the best cooking. And they would go on Sunday night to have supper, and they continued to have some of those. It was difficult in the early years now with the social media, they can do it. They can keep in touch, they go to each other's weddings, they follow each other's careers, and they again they're dealing. No, that wasn't like how the Indian that I met in my university class was. That's not how the Pakistani was. Um there's no dollar value for that, but it is an enormous benefit, I think, to the United States. When I was in Pakistan, we'd had a program for about 20 years where we sent mid-level Pakistani bureaucrats to get a master's in public administration. As I sat with senior officials in Pakistan trying to design a new aid program and other things, I could tell who had been in the American universities just in the way they thought, uh, thought, and were plan making the plans. And uh so it's a huge benefit to us. And I'm very sorry to see what's happening right now.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

What would be some of those characteristics that would immediately stand out to you that you'd recognize this person obviously at some point studied in the States?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Um, it was uh a can-do attitude of we can do this, uh, let's get it organized, uh, of a plan rather than just having uh ideas out in the atmosphere and uh trying, but the planning, the organization, and the you know, have we have we got a goal here? Is this the right goal? Um, and much more goal-oriented than uh would might be normal in the with the regular civil service.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

So, from your opinion, there are much greater benefits to having uh, for lack of a better expression, a liberal immigration policy uh accepting uh students from overseas uh than there are the potential risk associated with those.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Obviously, you have to take a look at our there are um occasional scams where somebody creates a university and it's just an employment agency, and you know, ICE and others are pretty good about finding those. Um you take a look if they've not succeeded in their own um pre-university education, it's like, well, how are they going to make it in America in a new language? And uh, but by and large, you're getting very, very talented students, and it's a huge opportunity for them. There are better schools now, particularly in India, that are along the American model. And in fact, they have one of them that I visited was connected to Wharton, another one to other schools, and so you know they're looking at trying to strengthen their senior uh university education as well. But um, you know, you would look and see whether someone else in the family had overstayed.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah, it's the validation studies.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

The validation studies. Um we didn't have social media when I was doing it, so we didn't have to worry about looking at their social media, but um these are students who are coming at a time when there are lots of issues to protest about, and I have no problem with that as they're not as long as they're not violent, uh, other people do.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

But okay. Um returning back with a focus on sort of the foreign service and preparation and training and through your career progression, where have you seen the improvements in how the Foreign Service prepares uh its personnel uh at the entry level and mid-level?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Um I think starting with the the big one was the Foreign Service Act of 1980, which made huge changes in particularly the system for promotion and within the Foreign Service. It became similar to the military where you have an up and out system, uh, the colonel to brigadier level, you lose a lot of people at that level in the military. It's the 01 to the senior Foreign Service, but it's the equivalent of a colonel to a brigadier. That was a huge change. Um you'd had a bit of stagnation at the top until people reached retirement age, even though if they were not really progressing in their own leadership skills, their own assignments. And so that was a major change. Um the recruitment of women, um I would say even geographically, there are a lot more people from other parts of the United States now, the more of the University of Northern Iowa, and probably less of the Harvard and Yale, Princeton, Stanford. Um you had the glass ceilings being broken by women as they entered into being deputy chiefs of mission, the number two at an embassy, more Americ uh more women ambassadors. It took a long time, but eventually there was an assistant secretary that was a woman in the regional bureau for uh the European Bureau was the first one. Uh those were all first while I was in the Foreign Service. It would uh seem strange, but it took a long time to have that happen. Um the training, the big uh change in the training was under Secretary Powell, who had come out of the military obviously, and was used to a very rigorous and a very uh well-developed training program that developed not only the military skills but the leadership skills for the people that were going to be general officers. And he he was just aghast when he came and didn't find a counterpart to that at the State Department. There was training if you were going to be a deputy chief of mission, there was training if you're going to be an ambassador, but there was nothing for those people that were gonna head up an office or uh a small consulate. And so he worked very seriously with the Foreign Service Institute, which is the school that's part of the State Department, to develop a leadership training program. And every officer that crosses what we call the senior threshold from being the colonel to the brigadier, but whether Foreign Service or Civil Service, there, because they're both in the State Department, has to take this course. There have been additions to it. There are uh all kinds of things about um you know, managing the budget, managing the social media, managing um people. Um but the key one was the leadership skills, and that came that dates from Secretary Powell in 2001.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

What are some things that you find really haven't changed over the years that make for effective decision making and leadership?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Um I'm not sure that I I fully endorse it uh making better decisions, but it the the State Department remains very hierarchical compared to to Google or to you know the the IT field in particular. Um it's a bit of a transition for young people coming into the Foreign Service now to realize that it's there's still this hierarchy. Yes. Um and so that but it also when you're in a crisis means that when the ambassador says move, people move. And you might have a a discussion, a debate about which options are best, but once the decision is made, that's the ambassador's decision and it goes forward. And I think given the the state of the security challenges in embassies, um, that's important and it it works out primarily in that. I noticed yesterday I was listening to CNN on my my way into Washington, and uh the the embassy in Bahrain, uh where the Fifth Fleet is, um was under duck and cover. Yes. Um so they they clearly had had an emergency action committee meeting and they'd made decisions about they didn't have time to go home, they they would have to stay in place and and do the shelter in place and do the best they could. It turned out not to be an attack on Bahrain, but they must have had some information.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Speaking of the organizational hierarchical structure of the State Department, um within the State Department, also outside many state that it doesn't have effective leadership because it operates through consensus. Um comment on that, please.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Um I I would say a couple things about it. Um number one is it's one of the changes in that people have become more willing to have a discussion. What are the options, what are the pluses and minuses of these options? Excuse me. And they it used to be the ambassador maybe would consult with two or three people, make a decision, and that was the end of it. Whether it was something to do with the lunchroom or something to do with foreign policy, that was sort of the way it went. It's changed. Obviously, there's there's more interaction, more willingness to take other ideas, and I think that's a good change. Um, one of the things that happened with the the State Department, particularly in the the exam process, has changed for uh onboarding people, with much more emphasis on interpersonal skills that then develop into leadership skills. Um, when I joined, the focus was on your intellectual skills. Um how smart were you, how how articulate were you, and in defending a position, what area expertise did you have, what language expertise did you have? And then without any Training, you expected people who had perhaps a just an encyclopedic knowledge of a particular area and a particular language to all of a sudden become the leader of an embassy and manage a community. And it didn't frankly work all. Sometimes it worked. You learned by example, you watched a good ambassador, which is what I did. You watched perhaps some that were not quite so good, and you said, I'm not going to do that if I ever get a chance to be an ambassador. But that, you know, it wasn't a formal structure. Yes. And so the much more emphasis, about probably about five or six years after I joined, they started doing group exercises as part of the oral exam. How do people relate? If they have their elbows out, are they consensus builders? Are they team builders? And that became a part of the Foreign Service exam. The promotion system looked at people, if they were leading a section, how well did they lead it? Did they take care of their people? Did they mentor them? Was it organized in a reasonable way? And so the leadership skills became more important as part of promotion. And when you were put up to be a deputy chief of mission, a consul general, or an ambassador, that was the skill that was looked at. It was very nice if you spoke the language and very nice if you had some knowledge of it, but it was more can you run the embassy?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Did you find um let me rephrase this? What did you change over time in your leadership style in your decision-making practices through your five ambassadorial positions?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

One of the things to keep in mind is that my five embassies were quite different. Uganda was a relative and Nepal, Uganda were relatively small, Ghana was a medium-sized one. Pakistan, we were uh unaccompanied in Pakistan, so it was a hundred some people, 125 people, but everybody working, you didn't have a community for that one. The embassy and consulates in India are among the top five in terms of size around the world. So you had different challenges in in each one of those. Um I think by and large, particularly Pakistan was probably the most challenging because we were on one-year tours. Most people were on one-year tours. I don't think that I ever had the same people on my senior staff meeting from one week to the other. Somebody was on vacation, somebody was on R and R, and they um there was a new person that had just come in. It was a constant turn, and that makes it more difficult to do some of the you you don't have the same feeling if you've worked with somebody for two years and they give you an idea and you're used to getting really good ideas, you say, Oh, let's this one I need to think about. Um, but you would you had to make those decisions quickly. This person knows what they're talking about, or they're they're over here crazy less inland. Um so you know, it again it depended. Um in India, you had the four consulates, and so working with them, one of them was bigger than my embassy in in Nepal had been, and and did not have the the infrastructure, the personal, personnel infrastructure to run that big a mission. They were still thinking it was sometime some kind of a little consulate. It's like, wait a minute, I had all this help in in Nepal with administrative and other things. We got to to replicate that to have the the support that they needed in Mumbai. Um, so you know the challenge is that way. Um I would say the other one of the other things we were talking about, what had changed is what I call the CNN effect.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Um when I first went to Nepal, there were no uh international phone system. So we did everything by cable. Communication with home was by letter that took two weeks to get there via the diplomatic pouch. Um now not only do the people inside the countries, in very large percentages in South Asia at least, have cell phones. But uh the operations center at the State Department has a direct link to CNN International. And when I was in India the first time in the 90s, um we were being scooped by the operations center. They call and say, What's going on in this town in India? And we're like, we don't know, because we didn't have televisions in the embassy. And uh so CNN has brought the world much closer. Obviously, there are more than CNN, the social media um exchanges now, but so that's a big change, and managing that um has its challenges too.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Well, information today obviously is uh much more readily accessible and available, and there's a plethora of it, and some of it's good and some of it's not. Exactly. Um speaking to that, do you find that perhaps earlier in your career uh government personnel were perhaps more self-reliant and independent thinkers compared to today when there's still that desire to have that one extra bit of information?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Um, I think there's that. There's also a much more um when when I was in Nepal and we were depending on cables, something happened in Depal, we made a decision at that level and we sort of took care of it. Now, if Washington has seen it on CNN, they want to play and and perhaps make the decision, and not necessarily based on on what what the embassy is seeing, it's it's much more of a tug of war as a result of maybe CNN is only reporting that there are demonstrations, and then you say, but you know, it's like Los Angeles last week, it was a very, very small piece, but what you saw on TV made it look like the whole city was on fire. Well, if you're looking in the op center, maybe it's time to evacuate, and you're the ambassador going, wait a minute. Um so Washington is much more involved, I think, in the decision making than you know, and even compared to the 17 and 1800s, where you had to rely on a boat to take your your um information back. So probably much more of a Washington and much more of an NSA or NSC involvement in it, the White House being involved in in it more than they used to be. And that's been a trend was a trend over my career.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Do you find that perhaps sometimes overseas in some of our diplomatic missions uh we may have a tendency to sort of normalize deviance, uh, and then that ends up leaving folks sort of blind to what would normally be a red flag?

SPEAKER_00 29:10

It can happen. Um we call it George Schultz, when he was secretary, had a big globe in his office, and he would receive each ambassador that was going out to represent the United States, and he would say to them, So which country do you represent? And about nine out of ten, until the the rumor went around the building, uh, would point to the country they were going to. And Secretary Schultz would sort of say, No, that's actually not. Let me show you, and he'd point to the United States. And so there's also a you can get used to things that in America would seem very, very strange. Um there's a certain amount of I can make I can work with this person, and perhaps the person is an autocrat, perhaps the person is doing human rights violations, and you have to have be able to separate and say these are the things that are happening, but at the same time we can get X, Y, and Z done in this country, and making that balance work. Um the annual reporting on human rights, on trafficking, those kinds of things help to document that and help keep the embassy, you know, making sure that they're not just whitewashing everything.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Going back to earlier, uh, which was an example of a law that sort of enables for uh leadership, you know, the Foreign Service Act of 1980, you mentioned how that had an impact, uh it sort of opened doors, uh, enabled uh women to more effectively break through the last ceiling. If you wouldn't mind sharing uh briefly, you know, how can we how do you end up communicating diversity where people are confident that folks aren't being tapped for positions or hired simply because they meet a certain gender or racial or ethnic profile? How do we how do we get past that?

SPEAKER_00 31:11

I I think there's a couple ways, and we were when I was the director general, which is the equivalent of head of personnel, um, we were trying to work on on that, obviously trying to make the Foreign Service look more like America. There were programs that were helping young people, particularly from um econom lower economic strata or um minority groups by getting them at the education they needed to pass the test. Um I had the experience of sitting in on the sit at being part of the senior staff meeting when Secretary Powell first came on. And uh he would, if the meeting was had gone quickly, he would try to use the the meeting to get a sense of the building of the culture of the State Department, vice what he was used to at the Pentagon and in the military. And one morning he said, you know, people are telling me it takes way too long to get people into the Foreign Service who are losing good candidates. Why don't we just do resumes? And there was sort of a the room sort of split in half, with some people almost applauding and saying, you know, this it's the 21st century, this is the way to go. And one man looked at me, looked at a couple other people, and he said, sir, with all due respect, there are a number of people in this room who wouldn't be here if you did that. Um we got here because we passed the exam, but I couldn't be an unpaid intern when I was in college. I had to work, I had to pay help, pay my tuition. And Secretary Powell nodded his head and said, Got it. Um but the the exam is taking more interest in languages. There it's not just the exam now, there are other factors that are considered. It's a concern to me that we not go back to Pale Mail Yale by using that system. Um, but the we all came in knowing we had passed the exam. And I think that was a benefit for those of us that came from uh perhaps uh lower income brackets, and the University of Northern Iowa is not exactly on the list of the top ten universities, although I got a very good education there. Um so you know, helping people prepare to take the test to get into the Foreign Service to have the experience. There's mentoring of those students by Foreign Service officers or retired Foreign Service officers. They're named after Representative Wrangell and uh Ambassador Pickering, so they're Wrangle-Pickering fellows. Um there are efforts to, within the State Department, uh, various groups. Uh Ambassador Ruth Davis just passed away, but she had founded one for black student, black members of the Foreign Service, and worked very hard to promote, you know, to know what the issues were, to see if they could be addressed through leadership practices, whether the laws needed to be changes, the foreign affairs regulations needed to be changed. So that has been a part of it. Um they also formalized the mentoring. I was lucky enough to, particularly my second tour, which in Nepal, to have a wonderful deputy chief of mission who mentored me and became a mentor for my entire career. Similarly in Pakistan, the Deputy Chief of Mission, I wasn't a junior officer, but I was getting ready to be a DCM, a deputy chief of mission, and she helped me a lot with that. It has now been formalized for the Deputy Chief of Mission to have the mentoring responsibility and to see, you know, in a big embassy like Delhi to make sure that other people are doing it. He could he or she could not do it all. But that has helped. Um they are evaluated as part of their personal uh performance evaluation as to whether they have carried out their mentoring responsibilities or not. And uh I worked for an ambassador who, Ambassador Rafel, who for whom an award has been made uh for mentoring every year of the person selected by and usually nominated by by their officers that they they have mentored. And uh so the mentoring is incredibly important. And then in the selection process, um people can bid on being a deputy chief of mission, they can bid on being an ambassador, the regional bureaus will then put together lists, the personnel system will vet those people, do they have outstanding um civil rights uh challenges? Do they have anything in their background, ethics issues, or that kind of thing that might be a question mark as that maybe they got over it, they had a problem as a junior officer, they've moved on. But to give that, and then there is a committee chaired by the Deputy Secretary of State and made up of the under-secretaries, the Director General, that makes the nominations to the White House for the career people. I would tell you that there are no nominations pending right now for career people. All of the ambassadors that have been appointed in this administration are political appointees. There are career people serving overseas now, but I think that system is probably um on hold.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Speaking to the mentor that you had early on in your career, what exactly has remained with you uh from this mentor? What did this mentor do that you felt and over time has been corroborated from your experiences made you an effective leader or decision maker or both?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

One was the example. Um he he worked for two different ambassadors in Nepal. They were extraordinarily different, almost at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of one was a political, one was a career person, one was a mountain climber, one was a bookworm. Their leadership styles were very, very different. Watching him adapt and help us adapt to the the two was was very important. Um he was very good at explaining this is the Foreign Service way. Uh maybe that's not how you did it in your schoolroom, but you know, these are some things that work better than what you're doing. Um, you know, uh very informative. The State Department performance evaluation includes an area for improvement, and he worked with me on those areas. Um, but also very important, introduced me to people that um got me my next job, and that got me my next job, and so um it would just that knowledge of how it works and and saying they needed a Nepal desk officer all of a sudden he's like, here's Nancy.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Okay. So it's sort of networking in a way.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Yeah, networking, absolutely. That's the word I was looking for. Um, and that's very important in the Foreign Service. Um and uh the the job that I got, I actually got the consular job in Nepal as a result of a malpractice on the State Department's part. It was found as part of a class action suit that those of us, those women who were um identified as political and economic officers were assigned a second consular duty, consular tour. So uh the normal one is one to two years, then we were getting an additional two years before we were allowed to go off to be political or economic officers.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

This wasn't happening with the male counterpart.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

No, and it was in the hope that we would quit.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

And I took the settlement, it was five thousand dollars. I felt a little guilty about it because I even at the time I recognized that that tour as a consular officer had helped me so much. I met my mentor. I sat in on the senior staff meeting every week. I watched leadership, I watched how things worked or didn't work under the two ambassadors. I met a lot of, I networked, I met a lot of people that were important to me in that position. But it it was an example of what was happening at the State Department in terms of how attitudes toward women.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

So a particular practice that was inhibiting others.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yet you still benefited and you were able to recognize how you benefited despite the bad practice from a second consular tour.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Yeah, I think the women that succeeded, you know, we all poured coffee, we all were the note-takers. But if you were the note-taker, then you wrote up the notes. You went into the boss, they could see how well you could or not, how well you could write, you got a little more attention. Maybe the next time they had some kind of an extra project, it would go your way rather than to the person that didn't take the notes.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Interesting. Um so shifting somewhat, having had the benefits of a mentor, what did you do as a mentor?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Um, my formal mentoring was uh at my two DCM ships, and uh I'm very proud to say that the several of the officers that I mentored are are either former or current ambassadors, um, and I'm very proud of that. But we uh we had um monthly meetings. Um I also in Pakistan, despite the fact that I was very busy, had a monthly meeting with all of the junior officers as the ambassador, not the ment, the mentor-in-chief as deputy chief of mission to make sure that um they were doing well and got some attention. Um I I networked for on their behalf. I helped introduce them to people that were going to be important in the next assignment. Um spend a lot of time listening. Also trying to set a good example of what leadership looks like in the State Department. I think that's that's a critical role that people don't realize that people are watching.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

And for you, what would be the definition of good leadership?

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Um taking care of your people. This was um Secretary Powell's uh big addition to our list of things that we do, uh, making sound decisions, having um excellent reporting that accurately reflected what was happening in the country. Uh looking at uh I was very big on setting goals. We worked together to have embassy goals, and then I would take them and have a quarterly set that was my goals. What was I going to do during the quarter to support that? Encouraging each of the sections of the embassy to do the same thing. You know, they it they it would get down into the micro level at their level that um maybe and and also being aware that, for example, the traffic trafficking report was due, so that was part of a court of that quarter's requirements and being aware of what was coming down the pike of not getting uh sideswiped by things that you'd forgotten. I put a big emphasis on being organized and not not being late.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

With the advantage of hindsight, what would you think are mistakes people have made when they are in positions of responsibility?

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Part of my role as DG was helping to look at ambassadors that were out of line in various ways. And um it it came down to two or three things. Um one of the biggest issues and it would was on ethics. Um State Department has a the US government in general has a very strong ethics code. And for some some reason, particularly for people come from coming from the outside, our political ambassadors, they weren't used to that. So the idea, for just as an example, the first week I was in India, I was invited to a wedding. I did not know the people. The invitation included a sorry, a beautiful silk sorry. I had it evaluated, it was worth$400. My gift limit was$25. There are lots of people who would have said, oh, that will look very nice on my wall or on my wife or whatever. Yes. Um we sent it, we started sending them back. And it was a real kind of revelation to the Indians for whom this is usual practice. That we we would put a note in saying that US government regulations required that I return this. Um, but people had. Real problems with the ethics rules. And it was over, you know, maybe over$50. It wasn't over$50,000. It was small stuff, but it set a bad example in the embassy. It encouraged other people to sort of move. The other one, and this is the really big one, when you're ambassador, it's one of the few places I think left, other than maybe being a king in a country where it matters that you're the king, not a constitutional monarch. Where you have enormous authority and you have enormous support. You have a beautiful house for the most part. You have a car and driver, you have a secretary, you have all of this support system. And it leads to people, some people not being able to say, I'm still me. There's an arrogance, and it then it that arrogance turns into abusive behavior. And this is a big problem, I think, particularly for the ambassadorial corps, of just not letting this go to your head, of remembering that as one of my one of the best pieces of advice I got was when I came back to the department after my first ambassadorship. And we had our senior staff meeting in the office I was in, and one of the gentlemen came up to me and he said, Can I offer you a piece of advice? And I said, Sure, I need all the advice I can get at this point. He said, When you go down to the parking garage tonight, don't forget to get in the front seat. And you know, people didn't have that sense of. He had apparently watched an ambassador get in the back seat of his own car, sit there for 30 seconds and realize there was no driver anymore, and have to get out and get in the front seat. But it it was symbolic of knowing that this is a time-limited appointment, that you are going to go back to to the real life at some point, in the real world at some point. And uh, but also of keeping in mind that um, you know, the taking care of your people includes being considerate of them, of of a of following the rules on equal opportunity issues, and uh, but it it was a it it remains an issue for some people of just how you adjust to this new status, and you've worked your entire career to get it, and an expectation that people are gonna snap to it, and then it doesn't happen, and you lose your your cool, and you you gotta get over that.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Well, I kind I guess it goes to the the cliché, the quote, you know, uh power uh crops, right? Yeah absolute power crops, absolutely. Um speaking again to your position as an ambassador in India and to Pakistan, the two countries that are at odds with one another over the years, and in light of the recent conflict in the Middle East, um you know should this conflict escalate? What are the impacts based on your experiences having served ambassador to both those countries, if any, uh on India, on Pakistan?

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Um let me start with the uh impact on the embassy. Okay. Embassies. Um I noticed uh in on Sunday that, for example, the dependence in the M of the embassy in Beirut, uh the family members, were removed from Lebanon. So what tends to happen, for example, in Pakistan, I was there during the Second Gulf War, the Iraq War. Um we had a plan in place to say, we're not sure what's going to happen in Pakistan. There could be a real bad reaction to our going in. We knew that, you know, you could see the signs that it was coming. So we developed a plan that that would allow us to evacuate with people knowing they were either going to stay or they were going to go, what they were going to do when they left. And so that planning aspect, it it tones down the emotion of it. Sometimes there's an emergency and you have absolutely no uh alternative. Um when I was DCM in Togo, I was the chargé. Um there was a coup attempt against the president on Thanksgiving Day, American Thanksgiving Day. And the the city of the capital city of Lomay shares the international border with Ghana. So I called my colleague in Ghana and asked if he could arrange for us for me to send the family members out of the city and over to Ghana. And the answer was it's Thanksgiving talk to me tomorrow. That's not the answer you should get. So the planning right now, for example, I I am quite sure that in both India and Pakistan. Um when I arrived in Pakistan in 2002, um, India and Pakistan were very close to war. There was some intelligence, some speculation that that it might there might be an outbreak. They had soldiers up against the the border and it was 117 degrees outside. Um, the role that the United States can play in this is the Deputy Secretary of State at that time, Richard Armitage, uh, came out to both capitals, made a proposal which was accepted. They were able to disengage. That quite often is a role America can play to set up a reasonable option. They also can say, well, the Americans helped us with this. In this last one between India and Pakistan, um the Indians are very sensitive about not having America tell them what to do. They will accept an American proposal, but they don't want to be told what to do. And they're also very, very sensitive about the idea that America will mediate. The Pakistanis would welcome that, the Indians reject it. Um that was not coming out of the American system. There was a push to be the mediators, and it went over very poorly in India. Um you have to know those kinds of things that the embassy, the State Department people would have been aware of this, trying to get it up the chain to make sure that public statements uh reflect that. I'm sure that I don't know the Middle East well enough, but I'm sure there's some things about Qatar's feelings and Iran's feelings and Israel's feelings that you have to take into mind when you're making a mediation effort. But America can still play that role. It's a very important role. Um, usually it's done much more behind the scenes. Mr. Armitage came, had private meetings in India and and Pakistan. Umcial media has taken away some of that. A lot of it seems to be done now with a tweet, um, or whatever you call a tweet now. But um, though that's still a role we can play. The UN sometimes can play that role if we encourage it. But um it will have a major impact. I'm quite sure that the embassy in Israel, you know, has all of their people trained how to get into the shelters. We don't have any uh people in Iran, so less concern about that. But as I said, they you know they were sheltering in place yesterday in Bahrain. I assume in some of the other Gulf places they've been looking at whether they need to evacuate or not.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Do you see any concerns for Pakistan or India taking sides or perhaps with you know both countries are nuclear uh that they have nuclear weapons? Do you see a possibility of Israel uh looking at Pakistan as a potential threat because it is a Muslim country with nuclear weapons?

SPEAKER_00 51:51

Um Pakistan has not ever been a real outspoken uh country on the Israel, Palestinian, Israel, Middle East. Uh they will tend to support Saudi Arabia in particular, um, but it it it doesn't take a stand, and I don't I don't see any reason for Israel to to target Pakistan at this point that um the Indians have um had a long relationship with Israel. They've used a lot of their uh dry agriculture technology, there's been an arms relationship, um so but they have their sort of their hands full trying to to manage India, and I I think they primarily stayed out at this.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

Returning to easier topics, so to say, um there anything you took with you from your experience as a high school social studies teacher uh throughout your career as a Foreign Service officer.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

I I I will say that when I arrived as a high school social studies teacher in the first morning of the beginning class of the State Department, I I felt very inadequate and unprepared, and I'm I now understand that even people with much more experience than I did had the same feeling, but I didn't know that at the time. Um in retrospect, and even as I was doing it, I I found that there were certain skills that that really did help. I had five preparations every single day. I had to be organized. I learned very quickly that you can't give written tests or written papers all on the same day because you never get them corrected. I um, you know, and and that helped, the balancing things of sequencing things of of that practice was very helpful. If you can command the attention of 35 eighth graders at 8.15 in the morning to teach them American history, you can do almost anything. There's you know, that presence. Um, you know, you don't have to be arrogant about it, you don't have to be draconian about it, but there is a presence that a teacher has to have in order to get the attention of the students and to to make her points, his points. Um I think those two things were were extraordinarily helpful. Um just the teachings, the mentoring skills come pretty natural to a teacher, um, and I think that was was very helpful. Um you learn with kids uh and particularly as ambassadors. I grew up in a family that was always kidding with each other and making jokes, and that was a sign that they loved you. But if you do that as an ambassador, it doesn't work that way. Um, and it doesn't work that way in the classroom. So that was an easy lesson to transfer. You learn to make jokes about yourself, and you can take things down by being self-deprecating, but uh you can't do it with somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Obviously, you can only prepare people so much. Um, you know, there comes a time where people have to learn through experience on the job, so to say. However, in my time as a diplomatic security special agent in the State Department, uh, you know, at C posted in some of the different areas where we train, uh, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of preparation, right? With that in mind, what are challenges unique to leading a diplomatic mission and what can be better done to prepare folks who are going to lead those missions?

SPEAKER_00 55:27

I I think there's a couple things that are unique to the State Department situation, particularly if you're in the smaller countries and in the third world. Um, you know, if you're in Ottawa, there's all kinds of support systems, there's hospitals, there's but the the thing you have to keep in mind is that you're I was once told the comparison is to being a small town mayor. Um you're dealing with the policies, you've got to keep the the city running. At the same time, you've got these citizens that have to be taken care of. What what what's the situation at the school? If the school is not working well, you have a lot of unhappy people in your embassy. Um if the commissary shipments aren't coming in on time for with American food, again, you have very unhappy people. Um if there's a sense that um there's danger coming and you're not being um honest about it, you're not being informative about it, um, again, you have a lot of unhappy people. And that gets reflected in the work. If if people are unhappy at home, they bring some of that to the job. And so that community piece is very different. If you're here in Washington, you may know that your coworker has a a sick child or a, but maybe not in the embassy, you know. And that community having lived in a town of 900 people, there were certain benefits of that. Um you learned that if if people didn't know something, they just made it up, and there's a certain amount of having to deal with that or just ignore it and making that decision of when do you have to take it on, um, and when do you just say that's part of the job. Um, but the the community piece is very different than if you're an executive, and it's one of the pieces that our political ambassadors we particularly when I was helping with the training for ambassadors, it was one of the things we really emphasized is you it's not just making the foreign policy, you've got this bigger group out there that you've got to think about. Um, people got making career decisions. The other thing about the State Department is that um at best you have one-year tours in very dangerous places, you have two-year tours in places where there's hardship as a result of health or distance or whatever, and then three-year tours in the the first world. But there is a constant churn. Um, as I said, in Pakistan, I didn't have the same senior staff two weeks in a row. In other places, every summer maybe you learn lose a third of your embassy, a half a year embassy if it's a two-year tour. So that churn is very different than um and the recruitment, the uh onboarding uh of how do you get these people to meet their contacts, how do you get them to to get up to speed, particularly if there's a some kind of a danger, but um, you know, or some kind of a major policy issue. Um you've got to be able to do that very quickly. How do you say farewell? You know, I never got very good at saying farewell to people.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

As you peer in the rearview mirror, anything you would have done differently?

SPEAKER_00 58:50

Well, I think if you talk to the people that I worked with, they probably have all kinds of things. I I think um, you know, not making the change into social media very successfully would be one of them. My last few months in India were very difficult ones. We had an incident involving an Indian diplomat here in the States that resulted in in really some very tough times. And you know, as I look back, I would have done some things differently, but you you have to do it at the time, and you also have to move on. I can't go back and change that. And you know, my you do the best of um helping your successors if they reach out, say, this is what I um, for example, I met with the the former, now former ambassador to India the last time I was visiting, and he was facing the the possibility of again a downturn in relationships over the um intelligence that we had that an Indian diplomat was um targeting a Sikh dissident here in the states, Canada had one killed, and he you know he was trying to learn from me what happened, how did you do it, what would you do different, and so you know you're available for those kinds of discussions, and that's one of the ways you can have your do over, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

On a final note, uh I've always found if you really want to get to know people, you eat what they eat, you read what they read. So, any recommendations you have for folks out there, a favorite dish that you experienced over your time, and a a preferred book that may come to mind?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:34

Um I think one of the the joys of the Foreign Service is that no date, no two days are the same. And I went from learning to eat uh South Asian food, and I'm I'm very fond of tandoori uh chicken or tandoouri lamb, um, all of the trimmings that go with it. I love the non-bread. I totally completely um amaze my um South Asian friends by eating peanut butter on my naan for breakfast. They can't quite believe that. But um I would agree it's very important. When I went to Togo, here was a whole new menu when I went to I had it the experience of sitting down with fairly early on in my tour with in Uganda with President Wusevani. And uh he offered me lunch, and I'm very I'm a picky eater, which is a problem in the Foreign Service. And I must and I also should not play poker, so I looked at my food wondering what in the world is this? And he looked at me and he said, We don't eat brains here, this is from my cows. Interesting. The fact that we could laugh about it, you know, and I I completely cleaned my plate, uh, took care of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

But it's funny you mention Uganda because also sometimes you experience commonalities. Me be from I'm I'm originally from New Orleans, and I remember uh in the cafeteria at the embassy there, uh having served in Uganda, uh they had two types of dishes, one styled more from an American diet, and then one representative of the Ugandan cuisine. And I would typically eat from the Ugandan side, and red beans and rice was a part of that, but that's also part of a New Orleans diet. And I remember someone commenting to me, You're you're eating that. It's like this is what we eat in New Orleans, so it's nothing different.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

Yeah, I mean Thomas Greenfield has made a uh you know a statement out of talking about gumbo diplomacy from Lewis. But also in her, you know, uh, I got so particularly in India, this was a major problem because you had people that the Hindus didn't eat beef, the Muslims didn't eat pork, the vegetarians didn't eat any of the above. And try trying to have a menu, uh, it it was a major effort. But in terms of books, um I I've read an enormous number of books over the years. It's again one of the pleasures of the Foreign Service and Nepal, we had no television, so between bridge and reading, I did an enormous amount. But um, you know, I I think Colin Powell's book, his autobiography is one that influenced me. I learned a great deal from it, and uh the uh his leadership style comes through very and you know being a Powell, it was uh we had our moments of confusion. I was known as the other Powell. Well, in conclusion, any final thoughts you'd like to share with our No, just to thank you, and I hope that the people that are listening uh benefit from thinking about leadership, but sometimes you're so busy doing it that you don't have time to think about it. And so the these are I think helpful to people that are that are practicing it and good luck.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

I appreciate that. Uh they appreciate that as well. And again, thank you for this opportunity. Um and maybe we can do this again in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:01

I look forward to thank you.