The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 67 AFSA NEWS AFSAWelcomes Newest FS Members At a series of events in May, AFSA was pleased to wel- come new members of the Foreign Service and intro- duce them to the work of the association on their behalf. The events included in-per- son lunches with the State Department’s joint Foreign Service orientation 168-214 class and with USAID’s C3 Class 35. AFSA President Eric Rubin welcomed the State Depart- ment group, explaining who the association represents and outlining its ongoing work for members, collec- tively and individually. The new State class, which was split into three lunches on May 1 and May 15, was made up of 98 generalists (23 consular, 23 economic, 17 management, 16 political, and 19 public diplomacy cone) and 122 specialists (with the largest subgroups consisting of 45 Diplomatic Security special agents, 17 office manage- ment specialists, and 16 information management specialists). It contained 11 former Consular Fellows, one former Embassy Science Fellow, and two Presidential Man- agement Fellows. Fifty-nine are former State Department employ- ees, while 61 have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. Among the class mem- bers are individuals who have participated in a Super Bowl halftime show, experienced mutiny at sea, become a certified venom- ous snake handler, ridden to the Arctic Circle and back on a motorcycle, and coached the Chinese women’s national lacrosse team in their first World Cup. Languages spoken include the six official lan- guages of the U.N., as well as Afrikaans, American Sign Language, Bemba, Bulgar- ian, Burmese, Cantonese, Danish, Farsi, Georgian, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, Korean, Luo, Macedonian, Malagasy, Norwegian, Pol- ish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, Tamil, and Turkish. The newest USAID class, which met with AFSA USAID Vice President Jason Singer on May 9, is made up of 10 members across four back- AFSA hosted the State Department’s joint Foreign Service orientation 168-214 class for in-person luncheons in May. AFSA/HANNAHCHAPMAN stops: one program officer, four financial management officers, two legal officers, and two humanitarian assis- tance officers. These new FSOs speak Arabic, Bambara, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Span- ish, Turkish, and Yoruba. They have worked or studied in 26 different countries, and three already have experi- ence working for USAID. Some class members have climbed Mount Fuji twice, dined with al-Qaida, and participated in mounted archery. n AFSAmet with USAID’s C3 Class 35 on May 9. AFSA/HANNAHCHAPMAN