The Foreign Service Journal, October 2020

50 OCTOBER 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL our local hire employees. While GSM@AID focuses entirely on LGBTI+ employees at USAID, we coordinate closely with glifaa on issues that affect our overlapping constituencies across the foreign affairs agencies. Although GSM@AID is one of the world’s largest international development agencies, many of our employees live and work in cultural contexts where LGBTI+ rights are not protected. One of GSM@AID’s greatest challenges is ensuring that, no matter what country they work in, the USAID work environment permits our LGBTI+ colleagues to bring their whole self to work every day. This is not always easy. According to a November 2019 report from F&MGlobal Barometer of Gay Rights at Franklin and Mar- shall College (fandmglobalbarometers.org) , 69 percent of coun- tries have a “failing” score on a gay rights index, and 76 percent have a failing score for trans rights. These indices represent a whole-of-being measure of discrimination and civil protections, including legal discrimination, de facto discrimination, LGBTI+ rights advocacy, socioeconomic outcomes for LGBTI+ people and societal persecution. With our offices in locations with varying levels of discrimina- tion, danger and criminalization, it is essential that our employ- ees everywhere have meaningful, ongoing support. This, how- ever, can look vastly different depending on the context, which points to another challenge we face in advancing acceptance and inclusion for LGBTI+ people. It is challenging to support LGBTI+ rights when the country you live in has criminalized homosexual acts. It is hard to be fully present in the office when the country you live in (whether the United States or overseas) and perhaps even your colleagues refuse to recognize your true gender and name. So it is critical that the agency and its employees actively ensure that all our staff are able to participate as full members of the USAID workforce, and that no one faces discrimination on account of their gender identity or sexual orientation. To that end, GSM@AID is doing the following: ■ Developing training material to improve the level of staff interaction with potentially confusing or awkward topics; ■ Preparing a management package for mission leadership to operationalize values of protection for LGBTI+ staff; ■ Reviewing and updatingUSAIDpolicies to incorporate LGBTI+ protections across the entire employee life cycle; and ■ Researching ways to protect staff in environments where they feel unwelcome or unsafe due to their identities. USAID’s values statement reads, in part: “We recognize and acknowledge the strength that comes from diversity.” It states that we “advance equality, foster equal opportunity and address inequality within our Agency and in our work.” These values are impossible to realize without conscious and deliberate efforts to create a space where everyone’s contribution is valued. The members of GSM@AID are working hard to help the agency live our values in everything we do and harness the diverse talent we need to suc- ceed in our mission. GSM@AID can be reached at gsm-board@ usaid.gov. Danielle Carnes is the chair of the employee resource group Gender and Sexual Minorities at USAID (GSM@AID). She entered the Civil Service as a Presidential Management Fellow in 2016, and now serves as a program officer in the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. As founder and chair of GSM@AID, she helps USAID achieve its development objectives by leading efforts to create safe and inclusive work environments for marginalized and underrepresented staff. She received the 2017 glifaa Employee of the Year Award for her contributions to transgender equality at USAID. PRFA: Working Against Bias and Misinformation to Realize Opportunities By Christina Tilghman T he Pickering and Rangel Fellows Association (PRFA) advocates on behalf of members to senior leadership on diversity and inclusion issues, and creates opportunities to support retention, recruitment and morale-boosting efforts through networking, career develop- ment and community service activities. Established in 2010, PRFA has more than 700 members serving with distinc- tion at U.S. missions around the world. Many PRFA members share experi- ences of enduring toxic behaviors in the workplace such as micro- aggressions and being second-guessed, undermined, harassed, and deemed unqualified, signaling a widespread problem of discriminatory behaviors and perceptions within the State Department. There is also persistent bias and a misunderstanding