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MALE NARRATOR: Foreign Service Officers and Specialists represent America abroad.
They are a diverse group of men and women
from across the United States who travel to every corner of the globe
to promote America's values, interests, and security.
As we know all too well, America's diplomats sometimes work
in dangerous circumstances but they accept these risks
in the service of our country and our values
because they know the United States
must continue to be a force for peace and progress in the world.
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AMBASSADOR KRISTIE KENNEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THAILAND:
A day in the life of an Ambassador is hard to tell you
because there are 200 of us around the world,
and it might be very different
depending on the country you're in,
the issues in focus at the moment.
Let's see, you wear jeans on the bottom, huh?
(laughter)
FEMALE ANCHOR: Sawadikap.
AMBASSADOR KENNEY: Thailand suffered devastating floods.
Our Embassy team got together very quickly and said,
“What do we need to do?”
“How do we need to help the government of Thailand
"and the people of Thailand,
and how do we need to protect our Embassy staff?”
"You look like Andy Murray's mom."
(laughter)
MALE SPEAKER: Who is Andy Murray?
AARON JACKSON, POLITICAL OFFICER, HAITI: We just got our new Ambassador.
She got in last week.
She's hit the ground running.
AMBASSADOR PAMELA A. WHITE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO HAITI: I've just been in the country for one week.
I don't like staying in the office.
I'm gonna get out of the office as much as I can
and actually see if what the United States government
is doing is actually making a difference.
And you'll do this whole thing... 750 houses in seven months?
MALE PARTICIPANT: Yup.
AMBASSADOR WHITE: Some of the things that we're doing here
and the Haitians are doing here are this short of a miracle.
What do you think?
REGINE RENE-LABROUSEE, CULTURAL AFFAIRS OFFICER, HAITI: I think...
AMBASSADOR WHITE: Is this exciting?
MS. RENE-LABROUSSE: Yes, this is amazing.
We're out in the field, we're not just writing papers, we're in there!
AMBASSADOR WHITE: Exactly.
Make sure that they see you...there you go.
(laughter)
AMBASSADOR WHITE: Right on her. She's the first tour Officer.
MS. RENE-LABROUSSE: After the earthquake
– the January 12th earthquake –
I immediately applied, and thank God I got it
cause it is truly my dream job.
This is why I joined the Foreign Service.
Pretty much I bring together Haitians and Americans,
whether it's through educational programs,
cultural programs, professional development.
Haiti is very important to the U.S. government right now
during this reconstruction phase so we're pushed and pushed
to get outside of our big Embassy wall.
This one's going on the Embassy's website.
Say, "Cheese!"
GROUP: "Cheese."
MARY BETH GOODMAN, DIRECTOR FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC AFFAIRS:
The single most important thing that I put in my Go Bag
are the instant packets, the single individual instant packets
of Starbucks coffee because there is nothing worse
than getting Nescafé served to you when you need that caffeine jolt.
My name is Mary Beth Goodman.
I'm a Foreign Service Officer
currently serving at the White House as part of the National Security Council.
It's very intimidating as you can well imagine.
Going into the Oval Office and having that be when you're on.
There's nothing like going into a meeting representing the United States
and having the backing of the United States government,
you know, as you're sitting there trying to negotiate or discuss issues.
PACO PEREZ, OPERATIONS CENTER WATCH OFFICER:
Right now we're in one of the task force rooms at the Operations Center.
At the Operations Center
there are 40 different Watch Officers.
We respond to crises immediately,
like an earthquake, or a bomb threat, or a political coup.
At the same time, what we're constantly doing
is connecting senior leadership of the State Department with other world leaders.
In 1961, when then President Kennedy was dealing with the Bay of Pigs crisis,
he realized that he needed somebody with round the clock monitoring
of the current situation, and a gentleman came up
to the Operations Center, set up a bunk-bed,
and began monitoring it 24/7, and since then it's been continuously running.
The craziest thing about the office is that we always have to be there, right?
And so, if someone were to go to the bathroom,
they have to announce it.
So, when you stand up you say, “I'm going blue,"
and you have to flip that blue light on.
So that blue light right now means that someone's in the rest room.
ANA DUQUE-HIGGINS, PRESS OFFICER, ARGENTINA: I'm a Press Officer here at the U.S. Embassy
in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I am responsible for speaking to the press.
I'm the spokesperson for the Embassy.
I'm here to communicate messaging
about what the United States does here in Argentina and around the world.
Today we have our Political Counselor here.
He's gonna talk to this group of students and professors from the University Di Tella
about the elections that are coming up in the U.S.
Getting Officers out of the Embassy and out into the universities,
and talking to people is really one of my favorite parts.
CURTIS RIED, POLITICAL ADVISOR, USUN:
I'm one of the Political Advisors here at the U.S. mission.
I cover mostly countries that have been affected by the Arab Spring.
So, I've worked on Libya and Syria…
been here for about two years now.
Overseas, you know, you're focusing on one culture, one government.
The big difference in New York is that you're dealing with 193 Member States,
and all the different cultural issues that come up there,
different ways of working,
and also we work in a very intense sort of environment on the Security Council,
so sometimes those cultural differences sort of come through.
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MS. DUQUE-HIGGINS: Before joining the Foreign Service
I was the director of communications for Liz Claiborne.
After September 11th, I was reading the paper
in New York City, sitting in a café,
and saw the letter from Colin Powell
asking people to consider the Foreign Service,
and so I decided to look into it.
Studying for the written test was kind of a hard thing to do
because you don't really know what to study,
so I read “A Short History of Our World,” I studied geography for a little bit,
and then I just kind of went in cold and took the test.
MR. PEREZ: When I was finishing college,
I was finally able to take the test.
I sat down and I gave it my best effort, and I didn't pass.
MR. RIED: I thought I was just gonna take it as a practice test
to see if I could maybe get in at some point in the future.
I ended up passing, and took the oral exam
a few months later and passed that as well.
MR. PEREZ: I knew I wanted to join the Foreign Service,
took the test again, didn't pass that time either.
AMBASSADOR KENNEY: And I was totally shocked when they called
and said, “You passed the exam.”
MR. PEREZ: If you don't pass the first time
don't feel bad, it took me three tries.
AMBASSADOR KENNEY: The people in the room are looking at,
“Is this somebody we can work with?”
Not, “Is this a know-it-all, is she pompous, is she so full of herself?”
MS. RENE-LABROUSEE: Cause you go in with a certain expectation, etc.,
and then you get there, and it's like,
"Oh, OK, it wasn't that bad."
And then you realize this is for real. My life is about to change!
And because the Foreign Service is not just the job, and it's not just the career,
it’s a lifestyle – your entire life changes.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So, for all of the successful Foreign Service applicants,
we all attend the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, for about 18 months.
And there you learn anything you can possibly imagine you'd need to know
to be a member of the State Department.
You learn career development, country and region specific studies,
and there's even an on-sight fake jail for us to test out those real life situations.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh, my gosh!
WAYNE OSHIMA, FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE: Probably most of our people
who come in as Foreign Service Officers have not been in a jail before, hopefully.
So, one will play the American in distress,
someone will play the Consular Officer visiting from the post,
another person may play a foreign official.
This is a visa simulation training room
to give our students a real life experience
as they prepare to go off and do consular work overseas.
MARJORIE CHRISTIAN, VICE CONSUL, HAITI: I'm a first tour Officer.
Haiti is my first post.
I've done roughly 10,000 interviews.
I've seen it all.
You start to become a human lie detector.
MR. RIED: I think the language instruction at the State Department
is probably one of the best kept secrets.
My first assignment was in Indonesia, and I got assigned to learn Indonesian for a year
and I left after 11 months being able to speak Indonesian
well enough to have a meeting, to make friends.
So, I think that that fear is one that the Department
really helps you overcome.
AMBASSADOR KENNEY: Since I've been in the Foreign Service,
I've learned Spanish, I've learned French, and I'm now studying Thai.
(speaking in Thai)
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MR. JACKSON: The requirement of the Foreign Service
is that you be worldwide available.
And so what's going through your head is,
“If I get sent to the one place I don't wanna go,
am I comfortable being there?”
So, you just really get kind of humbled and quiet...waiting.
We have what are called Career Development Officers.
They are your kind of Foreign Service guidance counselors more or less.
They huddle together once everybody has submitted their preferences
and they just kinda hash it out.
And then, in a big ceremony toward the very end of the orientation,
everybody comes in, sits you down, and they give you your assignments.
So, you have no clue where you're going.
Coming into it you submitted your preferences
and it's kind of you're walking on eggshells until you figure out what happens.
It's called Flag Day.
MS. DUQUE-HIGGINS: Initially, I was a little bit bummed out
because it was Mexico City,
and Mexico City felt so close to the United States.
But once I got to Mexico, I looked back on that moment
and laughed at how naive I was because everything about our relationship
with Mexico is so fascinating.
It's probably one of the most important relationships we have in this world.
MR. PEREZ: I got sent to Matamoros, Mexico,
which is right on the border with Texas.
And when I arrived, Matamoros was in the middle
of a very deadly drug cartel war.
There'd be tanks coming down the street
and there'd be guys pointing guns right at you,
and those were the good guys.
MS. GOODMAN: I wanted to go somewhere
where I knew that I would be able to roll up my sleeves
and get a lot of work done, and where you could have some serious impact
on a lot of the policy as it's being developed on the ground.
So, I've done tours in Mali, I've served a lot of time in Pakistan,
and I've also spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan.
MR. JACKSON: The Haitian government is really engaged.
They're committed to stability;
they're committed to making sure people have the opportunity
to emerge from poverty.
The working relationships that we've developed are really taking off now.
MR. PEREZ: If you take a chance to look at
the State Department Mission Statement, it's pretty neat.
It says the State Department's objectives are to promote
democracy, prosperity, and security,
not just in places where we have American interests but in the entire world.
MS. CHRISTIAN: So, I'm wrapping up a lot of my projects here
because I'm moving to Vatican City.
And, that's one of the biggest perks about being in the Foreign Service,
is that every couple of years, you get to reinvent yourself,
you get to start in a new job in a new country.
MS. DUQUE-HIGGINS: I'm part of a tandem couple.
My husband is also in the Foreign Service and we have two kids, seven-year-old twins
who were born in Mexico City, lived in Zimbabwe, lived in Bogota, Colombia,
and now they live here in Buenos Aires, where they're in the first grade.
State Department does a good job of creating a family no matter where you go.
Other Foreign Service Officers we all kind of take care of each other.
We form relationships that feel like family.
MR. PEREZ: If you're interested in adventure,
in a career that's gonna be ever-changing,
and one in which you'll get to represent your country,
serve your fellow countrymen, then the Foreign Service is probably right for you.
AMBASSADOR KENNEY: One of the things that I think is so amazing
about the Foreign Service is that it attracts people
who are active and pro-active, and who want to make a difference.
You can't change the world every day, but I go to sleep a lot of times
feeling like I've done something special.
MALE NARRATOR: The challenges of the 21st century
offer something for everyone in the Foreign Service,
and they also demand a wide range of skills and experience.
We need experts in public diplomacy, and crisis response, and public health,
and food security, and arms control, and police training,
and operations and management, and IT security, and medical services,
and we need you now.
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Visit careers.state.gov to learn more.
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