March 30th, 2022
I virtually attended the Women at State: Lawyer to Diplomat webinar hosted by the Department of State. It was a panel moderated by our Diplomat in Residence Shannon Ferrell, and it included four other women in the Foreign Service that had previous careers as lawyers: Alexia Vranch, Danielle Harms, Heather Thompson, and Denise Timmermans.
Each of them talked about the moment that drew them to Foreign Service. Ferrell talked about how she lived with a Paraguay host family when she was 15, and when she was at the embassy for an event in the food line she started talking with a Foreign Service officer and knew she wanted that job. Branch did an exchange program in high school in south Germany at 15 and realized she was the first American that people had probably met and realized they shaped how they thought about America based on how they thought about her. Thompson did the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso and ended up having a blind meeting with the current ambassador to Ethiopia and the woman who said she should consider a career in diplomacy.
All of them at some point in their career had gone to law school and become a lawyer. From working at a law firm in the Bay Area to the prosecutor’s office in Wyoming, they talked about how their time in the law field impacted their foreign service. They said that law school fundamentally changed the way they looked at everything in the world, and those critical thinking and judgment skills have significantly impacted the work she does for the State Department. One of the panelists says the intellectual stimulation at the State Department is unlike anything else, as she has met the smartest, most academically accomplished, and intellectually curious people at the Department of State. This event relates to IA as well as my career goals as the Foreign Service is always an international career I have thought about pursuing.
One of the standout parts of this webinar for me was the very end of the discussion when they were talking about their favorite story while being in the Foreign Service. One woman explained that when she was the head Cairo press officer she had to organize an event for the US Secretary of State, Foreign Minister of Egypt, President of the Arab League, and the UN Secretary-General. Another woman explained how at the private dinner in the Argentine ambassador’s residence, she was seated next to Sandra Day O’Connor. The story that stood out to me the most was one of the panelists who met this man through his job, and he invited her to come to his wife’s grandfather’s birthday party and said it would be a small affair because it was his 90th birthday. When she showed up, it was Nelson Mandel’s birthday party – how incredible!