The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2021

46 JULY-AUGUST 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL multibureau working group to discuss structural interventions, policy reform and ways to bring about sustainable culture change. For me, this series presented a useful model that could be piloted and potentially applied to other underrepresented groups, par- ticularly those with high attrition. Leveraging a Digital Transformation to Democratize Access to Knowledge Over the last year, FSI rapidly transitioned almost entirely to virtual offerings. FSI/TC, particularly the Life Skills Unit, was already using digital courses before the pandemic, and we were able to innovate further by exposing students to new digital tools like Slido and Mural, as well as making available a compilation of recorded webinars . While there is no substitute for in-person interaction, and some courses will likely revert to meeting in person when it is again safe, the ability to offer courses in a digital format and make slides, toolkits and archived recordings available to participants helps democratize access to this vital knowledge for State Department employees, their families and the broader foreign affairs community. Because of the courses I have been exposed to at the Transition Center as both an instructor and participant, I feel more equipped to handle some of the upheaval and uncertainty embedded in a Foreign Service career. Uprooting every few years, serving in com- pounds like Baghdad or Lahore where you are perpetually on high alert, or missing life milestones (weddings, reunions, funerals and so forth) can feel isolating and stressful. For example, had I taken the Regulations, Allowance, and Finances seminar—a course that went into exceptional detail on how to navigate an evacuation— earlier in my career, my two evacuations out of Egypt, in 2011 and again in 2013, would have been much smoother. As Foreign Service officers, we are hardwired to put our per- sonal lives on the back burner to serve the broader mission. How- ever, this isn’t sustainable and ultimately leads to burnout. This is all the more acute for marginalized groups grappling with larger, systemic inequities. Secretary Blinken noted in recent remarks welcoming the State Department’s first-ever chief diversity and inclusion officer, Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, that diversity work “is not just the work of the CDIO—or any other individual with ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ in their title. … It is the job of every single member of this department.” FSI’s Transition Center touches every stage of one’s career life cycle and has the potential to not only lay the foundation for a more agile and inclusive workforce, but also create an enabling ecosystemwhere all employees can thrive, sustain their well- being and realize their full potential. n