The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2022 53 Inspiring women … By Lycia Coble Sibilla From 1995 to 1997, I had the pleasure and honor to work with Secretary Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and her staff before, during and after the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing. I was a member of the Confer- ence Secretariat and then of the President’s Interagency Council on Women. There were Preparatory Committee meetings at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. and lots of briefings with nongovernmental orga- nizations planning to attend the conference. In Beijing, the most memorable moments were the first lady’s speech and visits to the NGO conference in Huairou—bad weather and mud notwithstanding. That night, the delegation celebrated at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. Spirits were high, and as a memento and a thank you for our efforts, Ambassador Albright gave each delegation member a signed Chinese poem she liked to quote: We keep a dog to watch the house. A pig is useful, too. We keep a cat to catch a mouse. But what can we do With a girl like you? As part of the U.S. follow-up to the conference, the President’s Interagency Council on Women was established at the White House. I was delighted to be asked to help stand up the office and then moved with it to the State Department. In 2000 Secretary Albright came to Moscow, where my hus- band was serving. After her meetings with Vladimir Putin, where she wore her famous “Three Monkeys” pins, she and Ambassa- dor James Collins dedicated the new embassy building and met with staff and families. A few years later I attended her book signing for Read My Pins at the Smithsonian and brought the photos from the embassy dedication along for her. She thought they were some of the best unofficial photos of her wearing the “Three Monkeys.” She was an inspiration and is greatly missed. Lycia Coble Sibilla, an HRO specialist and cur- rently co-course manager of HR training at FSI, joined the Foreign Service in 2016 and has served in Manila and Beijing. Before that she worked for eight years in the Family Liaison Office, and has been a Foreign Service family member for 29 years, serving with her (now retired) FSO spouse, Chris Sibilla, in Copenhagen, San José, Havana, Moscow, Vienna and Washington, D.C. The U.S. delegation to the Fourth World Conference of Women in Beijing in 1995. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright and First Lady Hillary Clinton are in the third row, center, holding white T-shirts. Ambassador James Collins introducing Secretary Albright at the dedication of a new embassy building in Moscow in 2000. Inset: The Secretary looks as Max Sibilla, the author’s son, enthusiastically points out an important feature of the embassy to her. U.S.WHITEHOUSE COURTESYOFLYCIASIBILLA