18 JULY-AUGUST 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT Katherine Ntiamoah is the director of policy engagement and strategic partnerships at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. As a Foreign Service officer from 2011 to 2025, she served in Washington, D.C., Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. A 2026 Aspen Strategy Group Rising Leader and Aspen Ideas Fellow, she also directs the allocation of municipal social service funding for the City of Bloomington, Indiana. An alumna of the University of Denver and Indiana University, she interrogates the intersections of power, language, and culture on her Substack, Still, I Notice Everything. A merican diplomacy is at a pivotal moment. Rapid shifts in technology, global power dynamics, and societal expectations demand a Foreign Service that is agile and prepared for complex challenges. As a member of the Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board, I am writing to share a vision for the future of U.S. diplomacy, one that requires ambition rooted in humility, creativity anchored in accountability, and innovation married to experience. I have spent nearly all my professional career advancing U.S. foreign policy across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Along the way, I have advised ambassadors, briefed Cabinet-level officials, and represented U.S. policy to global audiences. Now at the Hamilton Lugar School, I combine diplomacy and academia to shape the next generation of foreign affairs professionals. I offer this context to frame my deeply held beliefs about who we are as a nation supported by one of the most capable and skilled diplomatic corps in the world. Beyond the Resource Trap The next 250 years of American diplomacy need more than a wish list; they demand a blueprint for a professional class that can adapt, experiment, and ensure that U.S. engagement continues to protect, stabilize, and elevate the nation long after headlines fade. It is a common refrain that U.S. diplomacy is chronically understaffed and underfunded. While true, resources alone are not the most salient variables of success. In the past, influxes of funding and staff have been diluted across competing mandates in the absence of a serious internal strategy—namely, the institutional discipline to prioritize core national interests and make the difficult trade-offs required to stop pursuing secondary objectives. Without such strategic discipline, new resources are simply absorbed by mission creep, leading to the same chronic shortfalls. We must move beyond pointing to external constraints. The real investment must be in the quality of our input: defining a rigorous standard of practice and fostering the moral courage to challenge failing status quos. The dismantling of critical U.S. humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding bodies has indeed constrained our capacity, but without a fundamental reimagining of our professional culture— including the institutional discipline to prioritize mission-critical objectives over a “Christmas tree” of peripheral mandates and a shift from bureaucratic riskaversion to practitioner-led tradecraft— even the most innovative funding models will fail to produce sustainable impact. We cannot simply fund our way out of an institutional deficit; we must intentionally restructure how we deploy our intellectual capital. Strengthening the Professional Corps The abrupt end of the Diplomat in Residence program last year highlighted the structural fragility of our outreach to Shaping the Next 250 Years of U.S. Diplomacy: Vision, Humility, and Action BY KATHERINE NTIAMOAH The real investment must be in the quality of our input: defining a rigorous standard of practice and fostering the moral courage to challenge failing status quos.
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