40 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Diplomats need to build clear structures that bring expertise into strategy development, not just crisis response. BY LEE E. VOTH-GAEDDERT Lee Voth-Gaeddert is a systems engineer who has worked at the State Department, USAID, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Peace Corps, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United Nations. He currently serves as a Distinguished Fellow at Arizona State University’s Leadership, Diplomacy and National Security Lab, where his work focuses on bridging technical expertise with diplomatic operations to strengthen the role of science and technology in foreign policy. In Jakarta, as part of a United Nations (UN) food security cluster, I watched international agencies—often competitors for visibility and resources—coordinate with laser precision. Access to senior government officials was scarce, and everyone understood that when the Ministry of Agriculture opened its doors, you had to show up ready. It was one of the most tightly coordinated environments I’ve worked in. Years later in Guatemala, I found the opposite. Embassies, UN agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) could book a meeting with a ministry official in days, if not hours. The urgency to coordinate across agencies, ironically, was absent. Those two experiences, on opposite ends of the coordination spectrum, taught me a simple truth: The systems we build shape the diplomacy we get. When it comes to science and technology (S&T), the U.S. Department of State has made important strides, but too often we rely on improvisation. Expertise arrives too late. Scientific insight gets lost in silos. And we continue to treat science as an add-on rather than as a design principle for diplomacy. A Practitioner’s Framework Science & Technology Integration at State THE FUTURE OF THE FOREIGN SERVICE FOCUS
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODIyMDU=