The Foreign Service Journal, September 2020

24 SEPTEMBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL State’s new initiatives create space for difficult conversations and incorporate accountability. BY M I REMBE NANTONGO InclusionHelps Drive Diversity Mirembe Nantongo is a deputy assistant secretary of State in the Bureau of Global Talent Manage- ment. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor, she served most recently as deputy chief of mission at U.S. Embassy Nairobi. She joined the Foreign Service in 1995 and has also served as director of the Office of Southern African Affairs and, before that, as director of the Mid-Level Division in the Human Resources Bureau’s Office of Career Development and Assignment. Other assignments include associate dean in the School of Professional and Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, deputy chief of mission at U.S. Embassy Doha and embassy spokesperson at U.S. Embassy Baghdad. Overseas, she has also served in Bangladesh, Colombia, Oman and Senegal. She is retiring this fall to spend time with her aging mother in the Netherlands. I t is said that diversity is being invited to a party, inclusion is being asked to dance. Without inclusion, in other words, the full power of an institution’s diversity remains untapped. Diversity has long been recognized as not just a laudable goal, but an institutional imperative. Diversity is about people and often involves discussions of data, while inclusion is about culture and concerns the way we behave. Data are important to our diversity efforts, and the State Department maintains a robust diver- sity data collection framework that serves as a progress indicator FOCUS ON ADDRESSING RACE, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION and enables barrier analysis. We are also increasing data trans- parency and encouraging workforce discussions around the data. At the same time, we are encouraging a newer and much broader conversation, across the institution, that goes beyond the data: a conversation on inclusion. The numbers are impor- tant, yes, but there is a story—and an entire culture—behind the numbers, and it is time to focus on that. In the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd, the department has seen exponential growth in interest in creating space for difficult conversations on inclusion and on how our Black and other minority colleagues have faced challenges in both personal and professional fora. In response, State Department leadership has reaffirmed its com- mitment to shifting our culture to speak up against discrimina- tion and ensure it has no place in our ranks. The diversity and inclusion unit alongside partners in the State Department’s Office of Civil Rights are helping to facilitate robust dialogue to change our institutional culture and to identify concrete steps for those interested in being allies on these issues. Under Secretary for Management Brian Bulatao put it clearly when he launched a task force for the Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan (DISP) in January 2020: Diversity and inclusion must go together—you cannot have one without the other. Workplace inclusion at the State Department concerns our culture, how we behave. This can mean everything fromwhether we use standardized questions for interviews and the channels we establish for open conversations between leadership and staff, to the way we treat each other on a daily basis. An inclusive organizational culture sustains the supportive and respectful