Diplomat in Residence – Allegheny
(OH, PA, WV)
Tours: Lagos, Nigeria (Consular – American Citizens Services); Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (General Services Officer); Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Regional Human Resources Officer covering Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia); Durban, South Africa (Managment Officer); Scientific Affairs Officer in Bureau of Oceans, and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs; Maputo, Mozambique (Management Counselor); Una Chapman Cox Sabbatical Fellow based at Yale University; OES Office of Conservation and Water (Deputy Director); Durban, South Africa (Principal Officer); Office of Global Talent Management (GTM) Senior Level Career Development Officer; Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (Senior Advisor on Africa); OES Office of Environmental Quality (Director);
Career Track: Management
Years of Service: 23
Prior Experience: USAID Tanzania – Private Sector Development Team Lead; Executive Director of a Community Development Corporation in Northern California; Director of STEM Education programs in Northen California; Director of municipal housing programs and worker and leader in regional affordable and fair housing initiatives; trained community organizer and mediator; served on many non-profit boards including a San Francisco Bay Area regional leadership program.
Languages: Kiswahili and Portuguese
Education: MPA from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government; Bachelor’s degrees in African and Afro-American Studies and International Relations- from Stanford University; High School studies concentrating in radio, television and film from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago, IL.
Interesting Experience: While I have many stories I could tell from my many years assisting American citizens in distress, including during the recent COVID pandemic, as well as from all the terrific ways I have been able to significantly enhance the well-being of our thousands of employees at our Embassies overseas, my most intense and exciting experience was as a mid-level officer in 2010. I led the USG’s international campaign to respond to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The spill occurred only in US waters, and while our domestic response was massive, it was insufficient to the task. To protect beaches, wetlands and estuaries from the spreading oil utilizing skimmer ships, floating booms, controlled burns and 1,840,000 US gal (7,000 m 3) of oil dispersant, we needed international support. As the Department of State representative on the National Response Team – the USG-wide body charged with managing all man-made disasters hosted by the Environmental Protection Agency – it was my job to elicit and coordinate the needed international resources to address the spill and keep the White House, the Coast Guard-led Task Force and senior Department Officials and spokesperson fully briefed so they could in turn keep the American people informed. The Department did not yet recognize this domestic disaster as an international affairs matter, so did not stand up a normal Operations Center Task Force. Instead, I had to assemble an ad hoc team on my own to work nearly around the clock for 87 days to find solutions to urgent and unprecedented problems occurring at the bottom of the sea, on its surface, and as each day progressed, increasingly on shore. The international spill response community was challenged by this tragic event and sparked a need for advances in policy and science to help us prepare for future oil spills. My team and I spent the entire year following the spill engaging in the development of needed policies such as a policy for arctic oil spill cooperation, a policy for the Department’s response to domestic disasters, and undertaking an oil spill exercise in the Puget Sound with our Canadian counterparts and observers from all over the world to discuss and engage with the lessons America learned from Deepwater Horizon.
Last Post: OES – Director of the Office of Environmental Quality
Why I Chose a Foreign Service Career: I decided to join the Foreign Service because I wanted to give myself and my family the opportunity to work and live overseas within an organization where I could build a career and my family would be provided with good housing and educational opportunities. I had worked overseas as an independent contractor and loved the work, but I did not enjoy the difficulties of setting up house and home including locating (and paying for) the right schools for my kids. (I had three ages 5, 11 and 13 when I first moved overseas.) I initially took a pay cut, but the housing and educational costs were so much lower, it made up for it, and soon enough, I was better off financially than I might have been continuing to contract abroad. I immediately found the opportunities afforded by working with the Department of State as a generalist to be exactly what I wanted: intellectual stimulation; the chance to develop and contribute to goals I wanted to achieve; and good living and educational conditions for my family.