The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

50 JULY-AUGUST 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Meanwhile, friends from business school were urging me to quit and come to Silicon Valley. Both this new role at Davidson and the prior position at Veracity are great fits for a former Foreign Service officer. At the surface level, my participation in the Foreign Service looks like a success. I served for just over 20 years, with relatively fast promotions that culminated in an appointment as Commerce’s deputy assistant secretary for Europe. And then I left in 2019—for greener pastures, right? The real story is a bit bumpier, however, involving family drama, resignations and quick decisions made with uncertain information. In short, real life. The First Round It all started when I joined State’s Foreign Service directly after business school. I turned down corporate offers from the MBA program’s generous sponsors to take what was almost surely the lowest-paying job for anyone in my class. The reason was simple and will resonate with many of my colleagues: I was driven by a sense of mission. I wanted to serve. And I figured that if it wasn’t a good fit, I could leave at any time to return to the private sector. Just before heading off to Santo Domingo for my visa tour, my life became richer and more complicated. I got married after a two-month whirlwind romance to a fellow college classmate. I was madly in love, and the job seemed much less important than our life together. That sounds basic, but not honoring marriage and family before career success is something that creates enor- mous challenges for the Foreign Service, with its quasi-military commitment to frequent moves and adverse postings. Santo Domingo worked well for both of us. My wife worked in the private sector, and we treated it as a honeymoon. But I can’t be the first Foreign Service officer to feel a bit underemployed after doing visa adjudication for two full years. Meanwhile, friends from business school were urging me to quit and come to Silicon Valley. The dot-com boom was in full swing. So my wife and I took a one-week trip to San Francisco. By the end of the week we had, between us, five offers—all of them exciting, chal- lenging and financially remunerative. I returned to Santo Domingo and resigned. I was not alone— one of my line colleagues, a stellar professional who had just graduated from law school, headed off to do management con- sulting. I thought I was done with the Foreign Service. Silicon Valley in the late 1990s—well, as far as characteriza- tions go, “a modern-day gold rush” may not be far off the mark. My wife’s company went public, making her an instant, if brief, internet millionaire. The ecommerce startup I joined was folded into Walmart.com, and I went on to join one of the dot com’s most infamous boom and bust stories—Webvan, the leading ecommerce grocery venture. My wife and I were working long hours with incredibly dedi- cated people. But then our first child came, and we realized that we did not want to both be working such long hours and in such uncertain conditions. In addition, I missed the sense of mission of the Foreign Service. Then 9/11 happened—and I felt a new determination to return to public service. The Second Round So I reapplied to State and also to the Department of Com- merce’s small but elite Foreign Commercial Service. Foreign Service insiders may get a kick out of the fact that I foundmyself being called off two registers, to join as an economic and also as a public diplomacy officer—but had just months earlier accepted the Com- merce offer and was already in place in Brasilia, with a focus on complex trade and investment dispute issues for U.S. companies. By this time, several things had begun to dawn on me. The first was that I had needed the short stint in Silicon Valley to convince myself that the MBA education was not in vain, and that money wasn’t the most important factor for job satisfaction. The second was that job happiness may depend less on location and more on your boss and your colleagues. The Foreign Service continues to be challenged with poor management. In Brasilia, however, I had an outstanding direct supervisor who cared immensely about doing the right thing by U.S. commercial interests and demanded much from his staff. At the same time, he was caring and empa- thetic about balancing hard work with family needs. The third is that even with that extraordinary boss, I wasn’t doing a good enough job being truly present for my growing family. My wife, now with two small children, was underem- ployed and felt neglected. Even when I was at home, I was still consumed with work. I sensed that something was off. And it came to a head during my next posting, in Monterrey. When my wife told me that we needed to return to the D.C. area because her father was in poor health, I tried to get the balance right by asking for a compassionate curtailment. It was promptly denied. It didn’t meet the needs of the Service. What does one do when family needs conflict with the needs

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