The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

44 OCTOBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL at the bottom of the Teams list, and then entering code 0p7xfcw to be automatically added to our team. Heather M. Pishko, chair of the Disability Action Group, is an office management specialist in the Political Training Division of the For- eign Service Institute’s School for Professional and Area Studies. She joined the Foreign Service in 2006, and has served in Helsinki, Lima, Frankfurt and Belgrade, in addition to domestic assignments in Fort Lauderdale and Washington, D.C. AAFAA: Innovating to Expand Diversity and Inclusion Conversations By Tina Wong In a time of destruction, create something. —Maxine Hong Kingston, Asian American author T hroughout the COVID-19 pandemic the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association (AAFAA) has been creating messages of hope, acts of solidarity and a community of resilience. Quarantine has forced us to find new and effective ways to engage the entire department in advancing diversity and inclusion. In May we shared the Vietnam boat refugee story of Lauren Vuong and the courageous American crew who saved her and many others through a screening of the film “Finding the Virgo,” followed by a Q&A with its directors. We called for action to confront the rise of coronavirus-related stigma and race- and ethnic-based discrimination within and outside the workplace. To raise awareness of and fight against hate, the AAFAA Board and members joined community leaders across the nation in our first-ever poem in honor of Asian American heroes and volunteers in the COVID-19 pandemic response directed by AAFAA Secretary Liz Liu. We also hosted a senior leaders panel led by Bureau of West- ern Hemisphere Affairs Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie Chung, Mumbai Consul General David Ranz and Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Hugo Yon to highlight the incredible contributions of our domestic and overseas colleagues to repatriate Americans. We strengthened allyship with many of our fellow employee affinity groups through professional development sessions on “Engaging with the 7th Floor” and “Mentoring vs. Sponsor- ship.” We have so much progress to be proud of, but our work is far from done. As our nation has now celebrated the 244th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, we reflect on one of its principles—equality. We acknowledge that America’s indepen- dence offered freedom only to some, and it took a civil war for African Americans to be freed from slavery. Now, more than a century later, waves of courageous protests have set into motion a long-overdue national conversation about equal rights for all. Throughout this summer, AAFAA joined forces with other employee affinity groups (EAGs) in a collaborative and con- structive call for equal opportunities for women and people of color across our ranks. In partnership with the Bureau of Global Talent Manage- ment’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary Mirembe Nantongo, the Secretary’s Office of Civil Right Diversity Management and Outreach team, and the South Asian American Employee Asso- ciation (SAAEA), we began an open conversation to explore ways to advance a more fair, transparent, accountable, diverse and inclusive institutional culture. In addition to ongoing consultations with AFSA and the Diplomatic Security Diversity and Inclusion teams, the AAFAA Board met with Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Princi- pal Deputy Assistant Secretary Atul Keshap and Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Ervin Massinga to discuss challenges fac- ing our community, including biases and outdated assumptions in the DS security clearance process that often lead to Asian Americans being dispropor- tionately affected by assignment restrictions. We elevated our voices through dialogue with Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun. Along with leaders of the Hispanic Employee Council of Foreign Affairs Agencies, Arab Americans in Foreign Affairs Agencies, and SAAEA, I represented AAFAA and discussed opportuni- ties for State leadership to improve our institutional culture to advance diversity and inclusion. For the second year, we brought together the voices of EAGs to engage regional bureau leadership to share best practices in Foreign Service bidding and recruitment outcomes. This year, we launched a new series of EAG conversations with functional bureau leadership on both Foreign Service and Civil Service diversity and inclusion initiatives in hiring and retention. In response to the killing of George Floyd and subsequent nationwide protests, AAFAA hosted listening ses-