The Foreign Service Journal, June 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2022 41 in Washington preparing to come to post, he told me, the area director had called him aside and told him very clearly that there was no place in the Foreign Service for a blind officer. High on his list of priorities, she told him, was to drumme out of the Foreign Service! I will never forget that. And I will never forget what he told me next. Remember, he was describing what had happened before he knewme, at a time when he was simply my future boss and reviewing officer. He said he had listened to his “orders” and decided he would wait until he observed me on the job. Based on that experience, he would decide whether he would do what his superior had told him to do. He followed through on that. And when he wrote my employee evaluation report, he recommended me for promotion! In other words, he put his career on the line to go on the record in support of my competence. I call that integrity. That experience gained my supervisor my utmost respect. It also haunted me for the remainder of my career. What if some- thing like that had happened on my other overseas assignment? What other hidden traps might be waiting for me, or for any officer in a similar situation? A Sense of Accomplishment I never did have full confidence in the evaluation and promo- tion process. While I was on a domestic assignment in Washing- ton, one of my colleagues suggested a trusted strategy for increas- ing the chances of a promotion. I bid on an assignment to the PAO position in Kabul in response to the call for a major increase in our presence in Afghanistan after 9/11. I was an FS-2 by that time and was well qualified for the position. I got it. The experience in Kabul was unlike any other assignment in my career. It was in many ways primarily an administrative challenge. When I arrived, I was the only American officer in the public affairs section. In the course of my one-year assignment, a new ambassador arrived with a new Afghanistan Reconstruction Group made up of noncareer officers, including a three-member public affairs teamwith no diplomatic experience. The embassy team grew so rapidly that a new housing complex was added across the street from the main embassy compound. My performance in Kabul did not lead to a promotion, but it did set me up for my final assignment as public affairs officer in our embassy in Wellington, New Zealand. I can’t imagine any change as dramatic as the one from the shipping container I lived in as PAO Kabul to my very comfortable PAO residence in suburban Wellington. The promotion I sought didn’t happen, but I felt a real sense of accomplishment and fulfillment at the end of my 25-year career. n T he Disability Action Group is a Department of State employee organization that strives to promote full and equal participation of people with disabilities department- wide, offer a forum for information exchange and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. DAG hosts two or three Coffee Chats every other month. These informal conversations about disability offer the opportunity to share whatever is on your mind with the DAG Council. We also host events with State Department leaders, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CDIO Ambas- sador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley and Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Brian McKeon. We bring issues such as hoteling (a method of office man- agement) in domestic offices to the Office of Accessibility and Accommodation to remind bureaus to include accommoda- tions in these new arrangements, and we work with the Office of Buildings Overseas to create the Accessible-Adaptable Housing Acquisition Program and increase housing options overseas. We encourage you to join DAG by visiting our SharePoint site and submitting your name. The group is open to every- one. Your membership costs nothing and requires no action, but ensures you get messages about disability-focused topics. You may also join the DAG Microsoft Teams channel by entering code 0p7xfcw at the bottom of your Teams list. Requesting reasonable accommodations. Please use the online GTM Next Employee Portal to request a reasonable accommodation from the Disability and Reasonable Accom- modations Division. Click on “Service Catalog” at the top left, then click “Accessibility & Accommodations” on the left, and choose an accommodation. Employees unable to access the GTM Next Employee Portal should contact GTM/OAA at OAA@state.gov. DAG SharePoint: https://usdos.sharepoint.com/sites/ DAG/SitePages/Home.aspx DAG email: DAGCouncil@state.gov Office of Accessibility and Accommodation: OAA@state.gov CDIO: diversity@state.gov Heather M. Pishko, chair of the Disability Action Group, is an office management specialist currently serving at the Foreign Service Institute. Disability Resources at State BY HEATHER P I SHKO