[Darren, Foreign Service Officer] [Economic Career Track] DARREN: I’m Darren.
I’m a Foreign Service Officer
in the economic career track.
I’m relatively new to the Foreign Service. I’ve been in the Foreign Service about four years
and before starting the process of joining, about six years ago,
I had frankly never heard of the Foreign Service.
I had worked in the private sector about 20 years.
Most recently as a director of corporate strategy
and my job was to recommend to our senior management
where the company should make the next big investment internationally.
And when I learned about the Foreign Service
and the fact that all of those things which really interested me
were things that here in the Foreign Service we impact;
we help make that policy as a Foreign Service Officer
and then we execute that foreign policy.
And for me, coming from the private sector background
where I was dealing with all of those issues and trying to understand them,
it was really intriguing to me to move from understanding them
to helping to impact them and improve them in working for U.S. interests.
So professionally, it was very interesting for me
and it was - the more I learned about being a Foreign Service Officer,
the more I became interested.
Personally it was intriguing because I’m married,
I have two kids. One is a teenager,
and I really thought that it would be a great opportunity
to expose my family and me to new cultures, to learn about new people,
to learn foreign languages, to learn that where we lived
in America wasn’t the center of the universe
but to really broaden our perspectives
and the Foreign Service has definitely done that so far.
When I was in Madrid, Spain I was in the economic section.
I was the Environment, Science and Technology Officer
and so my portfolio included things like energy,
renewable energy, things like wind and solar and hydropower.
It also included any sorts of science and technology
like space cooperation, which the United States does a lot of with Spain
and so it encompassed lots of different areas.
I would say that the areas that took up most of my time
as an Economic Officer in Spain were energy and climate change.
Part of what my job was to form relationships
with those companies, to understand the market in Spain
and how U.S. companies could participate and compete
in the local Spanish market.
It also involved working with the Spanish companies
to identify potential for investment in the United States, which they had.
They’ve made significant investments in the United States
and so a lot of our work was bringing together policy makers
on the Spanish side and the American side
to talk about how you create financial incentives,
how you work through policy to really encourage
and get the renewable energy going.
If I do my job really well, and help the U.S. government
to learn new things, to create more effective policies,
to help around the world to increase security through economic prosperity
and helping other countries to integrate with the global economy,
you really are making a huge difference.
Part of what attracted me to the public sector was being able to serve the greater good.
I have an undergraduate degree in business and I also have an MBA
and I can remember telling people that I was about to join the Foreign Service,
I was leaving my job and when I told people I was leaving the private sector
as a director of corporate strategy to become a diplomat,
people could not make that connection.
Any part of a business doing business internationally with any other country
involves a part of our Bureau and the Department of State
so we really do important things and it is - there is a broad array of work
going on in the Department of State on economic issues
and so I think that an MBA is great preparation for being
a Foreign Service Officer in the economic career track.