THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2024 23 Foreign assistance works best when Washington leadership allows initiative to come from the embassy team–level to respond to emerging problems in real time. Given a constrained budget, where should a new administration take foreign assistance? Here are five top priorities. First, USAID must embrace diversity in a way it has never done. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines has noted that the most serious threat to our national security is not China, or Russia, but rather our blind spots resulting from groupthink, a product of our lack of diversity in the national security institutions. To address this, USAID Administrator Samantha Power signed agreements with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to create a recruitment pipeline of highly qualified talent. While that itself is good, it did not address the fundamental diversity problem at USAID: its ability to retain, advance, place, and promote its diverse workforce. Senior leadership at USAID should look like America. While a few women of color are serving as USAID mission directors, their numbers are still not representative of the American population. In the 1990s, USAID did better at recruitment of Latinos than it does now. It does USAID no good to recruit the nation’s top talent and invest a half million dollars in each new employee to train them in development, management, contracting, and accountability, only to have them walk out the door because we could not retain them. We need a financial return on this important investment. We will not address Director Haines’ concern until decisionmaking reflects the benefits of our diversity. Second, plan for the long term and keep politics out of assistance decisions. Politics changes with the news cycle.
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