The Foreign Service Journal, May 2016

the Foreign Service journal | may 2016 39 at the highest levels of State, and was able to put my children through university debt-free and meet all the other financial goals I had set. I eventually sold my practice and retired debt- and mortgage-free to a lovely home on the Fall River in Oregon. I truly enjoyed my Foreign Service career and my law prac- tice. In full retirement, I now enjoy fly fishing, club chess and learning to fly on my highly sophisticated flight simulator. My wife approves of the latter activity in lieu of real flying because the worst that can happen to me would be to fall out of my chair! To consular officers, I say: there is a use for your skills in retirement if you are willing to make the effort. It is the visa func- tion, in particular, that offers opportunities in retirement either as a legal assistant or as an attorney. To those of you who play the “I’m too old” card, I assure you that you are not. Law school was time-consuming but not dif- ficult. I treated the experience as a full-time, eight-hour-a-day job, complete with coffee and lunch breaks. When not in class, I was in the library. As a result, I was able to spend evenings and weekends with my family. I am proud of my “second effort,” and I tell you this—if I could do it, so can you. Best regards to my retired Foreign Service friends. Russ Winge, a retired consular officer, was posted to Maracaibo, Havana (twice), Panama, Frankfurt, Manila, Ciudad Juarez, Madrid, Barcelona, Wellington, Mexico City, Washington, D.C., and Vancouver. Network and Cultivate Mentors By Cameron Munter J ust as it’s important to have mentors during your Foreign Service career, it’s important to have them for the afterlife. I noted that many colleagues in the retirement course seemed oddly puzzled, kind of bereft, when they realized they were leav- ing a system in which, for decades, they’d known to whom they should turn. Don’t fall into this trap. You’re still part of a network if you choose to be. Who did you admire when you were an officer? That consul general or deputy chief of mission is probably working out in the real world somewhere and can give you good advice. In my case, I went to a venerable Foreign Service legend who lives in New York. He said: You have three choices. You can get a job somewhere in business. With any luck you’ll make good money, work very hard. Option two: You can buy white shoes and move to Florida and learn to golf. Option three (clearly the right answer, as far as he was con- cerned; don’t forget, we’ve all written action memos presenting a principal three options): You can build a “portfolio retirement,” in which you have a base and can expand your work from there as you wish. In this third option, for example, you can be an adjunct profes- sor or a leader of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) or do some other job that probably won’t make you enormously wealthy but will bring satisfaction and an office where you can display your tokens of appreciation from the Karachi Chamber of Commerce. These jobs, he said, are easier to swing the farther you are from Washington, D.C. Then consult based on your Foreign Service expertise, spending as much time consulting as you wish based on your need for money or the time available. That means your public life need not end suddenly but can continue as long as you want it to. I took adjunct professor jobs (actually, “professor of practice” positions), first at Columbia Law School and then at Pomona College; I joined the Washington consulting firm Albright Stone- bridge, as well as a couple of London-based investment firms. And I had the pleasure of working on such projects as polio eradi- cation in Pakistan (with the Gates Foundation), private telecom- munications development in the Balkans (with KKR), and even various attempts to settle the longstanding Budweiser trademark dispute (between the government of the Czech Republic and InBev, the owner of Anheuser-Busch). After doing this for a couple of years, I ended up taking the position of president and CEO of the East West Institute in New York, going back to a single job, but one engaging diplomatic skills in international conflict prevention. As for what I wish I had known before I joined the Foreign Service: I wish I’d studied dramatic arts. Sure, it’s nice to be conversant with international relations, history, literature and economics. But it’s even more important to learn, as early as pos- sible, about how to play your part, demonstrate sincerity on stage and understand the roles that others play. Cameron Munter joined the Foreign Service in 1985. He served in Warsaw, Prague, Bonn and Washington, D.C., including at the Na- tional Security Council. After 9/11, he served in Mosul, Baghdad and, ultimately, as ambassador in Belgrade and then Islamabad before retiring in 2012.