42 JULY AUGUST 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL MB: Thanks. And I’m sure, Tom, without AFSA’s support, we would have never gotten the funding from Congress to make it a reality. So thank you, thank you, thank you. AFSA: How does the Secretary of State’s modernization agenda ensure that our diplomats have the new skill sets they need to be successful? MB: We have to start with recruitment and hiring. We had by the summer of 2022 a deficit of 27 percent in the Foreign Service alone that was a result of the hiring freeze in the previous administration. When we did start hiring, we were hiring at less than robust rates. President Biden made it clear he wanted to strengthen the foreign affairs workforce, so we have been hiring faster than any other federal agency, and we have the results to show. I just swore in an orientation class that has tied the record of the last three classes before it [as] the largest class we’ve taken in. We’re bringing in generalists and specialists together now; they begin their orientation together and then branch off for the different trainings that each one needs. I use March 2020 as the benchmark because that’s when we went into quarantine, if you will, as a nation. Twenty-one percent of all serving Foreign Service personnel today have been hired since March 2020. So we are a very young Service, seniority-wise, even as our average entry ages picked up slightly to 36. We’ve partnered with FSI [Foreign Service Institute] to expand the amount of training that’s available as well as change the culture surrounding training. We started with getting from Congress additional, full-time equivalent positions to support a bigger training float to go well beyond foreign language. FSI is busy expanding its course offerings, particularly for less traditional subject matter like cyber; science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) issues; health; and climate expertise. We also looked at what someone in the mid-level would need in terms of training and exposure in order to tee them up successfully, not only to lead as a mid-level employee but also to be competitive to get into the Senior Service. We worked with FSI on launching a mid-level training curriculum, a series of courses beyond mandatory training. Our leadership training remains mandatory. But we knew we couldn’t just offer more training. We also had to help change the culture. Too often people think of training as a wasted year, in that it’s a year they don’t have information to add to their EERs that will make them more competitive for promotion. And so we introduced two things: first, a learning policy which urges supervisors to provide at least 40 hours a year of training time for their staff. I would say, let’s expand this, make it 52 hours in the year, where people can either delve into a new subject matter or use 40 hours in one swoop to take a course they might not otherwise get to take. They can use it to attend seminars in town or virtually, the idea being some time dedicated to voluntary learning that not only helps you expand your skills but also has the added advantage—and this is the best practice in the private sector— of taking you away from the daily grind of your work and giving you a chance to sit back, relax, and, in a stress-free environment, take on some additional learning. Second, we have brought back multifunctional promotions. One of the activities that will count toward a multifunctional promotion will be long-term training. We want to give people some reward for taking time out of their career to expand their knowledge base. I know it involves a culture change, but if we don’t learn, if we don’t keep adapting, as the Secretary has pointed out, we’re going to find it increasingly difficult to do our work in such a dynamic world as we’re living in today. AFSA: Looking to the future, what change do you hope to have in place? MB: [We need] to make sure that we are bringing in the most diverse set of employees we can. We recruit for diversity, meaning I want to go to every corner of the country. We want to raise awareness but also spark the imaginations both of adults and students, that they, too, can represent their country overseas. I want us to be an inclusive employer—always on merit but making sure that we’re gathering the widest possible and most diverse set of employees, and that’s from every aspect. Surely our race and our gender play huge roles in forming our worldview. But so does where we grew up, the schools we attended, our birth order. All those aspects of our diversity provide the kind of agility that we’re going to need as the world becomes smaller. [As far as technology is concerned,] the changes are coming faster all the time. I can’t even imagine where we’ll be a year from now, much less in 50 years, but I’m confident technology will play a huge role. AFSA: What could we do better when it comes to raising awareness among the American public about what the Foreign Service does and why it is so vital?
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