60 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LIFE AFTER THE FOREIGN SERVICE When I joined the Foreign Service in 2007, I joined a small family. A speaker told our training class that our family of Foreign Service officers (FSOs) was so small, we were outnumbered by the Department of Defense’s uniformed musicians. To succeed, we would need to depend on each other. Over 11 years of service, I learned how important the Foreign Service family bond can be. It enabled teams I worked with to help save the lives of American citizens in Sudan, defend independent media in Tajikistan, counter extremism in Afghanistan, and Discovering Extended Family at Spirit of America Thousands of Afghan refugees poured into Tajikistan and found safety in the town of Vahdat, where they used a dilapidated building as a makeshift community center and English language school. Tajikistan’s only Dari language school, serving 500 Afghan girls and boys, announced it would shut down within days because it depended on funding from the now-fallen Afghan government. The school needed only $2,500 per month to make rent—a rounding error for most U.S. assistance programs—but for technical reasons, the embassy was unable to identify a funding stream to cover it. That’s when I discovered Spirit of America, a nonprofit organization that directs private American funding to help U.S. troops and diplomats succeed in their missions—a sort of “extended family” for the Foreign Service. e Spirit of America’s model is to channel private donations and independent capabilities to meet needs identified by servicemembers and diplomats, thanks to a Memorandum of Understanding with the This former Foreign Service officer found a way to take his development expertise into the nonprofit world. BY CHAZ MARTIN Chaz Martin is director of international communications at Spirit of America. As a Foreign Service officer from 2007 to 2018, he served in Sudan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. He was named the department’s 2016 Linguist of the Year for his work countering Russian disinformation. The author can be reached at chaz@spiritofamerica.org. build partnerships with dynamic young leaders in Kazakhstan. I left the Foreign Service in 2018 to join a London-based strategic communications agency and quickly discovered that the private sector had tools and technical capabilities that I never had at an embassy. It was illuminating to gain new skills outside the department, but I missed the sense of mission and family I experienced working with Foreign Service colleagues every day. e The Foreign Service has a funny way of pulling you back. Five years after I left the department, my wife joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Tajikistan, where we had been posted a decade before. This time, I was proud to take my turn as a Foreign Service spouse. As an eligible family member (EFM) working in the public affairs section, I wondered what impact I could make as a now literal member of the Foreign Service family. I found out on Aug. 15, 2021, when the Afghan government collapsed, triggering a mass exodus from the country.
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