The Foreign Service Journal, December 2022

26 DECEMBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AWP: There were four of us, and I was the oldest at 23. We were treated well by colleagues. Our super- visors made a point of having women like Ambas- sador Melissa Wells come talk to our class, and she made a big impression onme. Ambassador Wells is the only speaker I can remember after all these years. The training was fun and not overly serious. GLOBAL ASSIGNMENTS FSJ: What was your favorite posting and why? AWP: Bogotá was my favorite posting because I thought the United States made a difference with Plan Colombia. U.S. policy fundamentally turned around Colombia’s trajectory, reduced violence, and set the stage for an economic boom. I learned a lot when we served in Saudi Arabia for four years in the mid-1980s. I was the economic counselor. It was a great opportunity to observe excellent embassy leadership and learn from them. And, unlike Latin America, it was also important to live in a society that was entirely alien to our own. Pakistan was my most interesting post. It was the most stra- tegically important post I served in during my career. But it was a difficult country to understand. I had no experience in South Asia and was blessed to have two deputies who understood the region, Peter Bodde and Gerald Feierstein. I also had two multilateral posts, one in Geneva and one in New York. In both places, the U.S. had excellent political ambassadors. The Foreign Service needs to put more stress on multilateral experience. FSJ: You served as State Department deputy inspector general from 2003 to 2004. Was that a well-functioning office at that time? What was the job like, and why is the Office of Inspector General (OIG) important? AWP: Being in charge of the OIG was my first experience work- ing predominantly with civil servants, and it made me appreciate the rank-in-person system of the Foreign Service, as opposed to the rank-in-job system in the Civil Service. Unfortunately, in the Civil Service system, it is hard to get promoted and recognized, which has a predictable impact on morale. Most Foreign Service officers know the OIG by the regular inspections, but an important role of the OIG is to audit the huge financial activities of the State Department. The inspections, however, do identify problems and, ideally, provide suggestions for improvements. women” and provided information on the upcoming test. She told me, “You’re not doing anything. Go take this test.” So I did, and I joined the Foreign Service in October 1973. FSJ: What was notable about joining the Foreign Service in 1973? The unofficial policy that women had to resign if they married was dropped around that time. Was that, or the general call for opening up more opportunities for women in the Foreign Service, a consideration for you? AWP: Well, the Foreign Service was advertising its interest in hiring more women, so that was certainly a factor. At some point in the recruitment process, I called up the woman in charge of this effort and spoke to her. There were still a number of restric- tions in the early 1970s on what women could do. But there were dramatic improvements in the career possibilities for women over the next 40 years, and women like me owe a lot to some of the pioneers. The 1980s was a decade of considerable change for women in the Foreign Service. Women also received a huge boost early in the term of Secretary James Baker and Deputy Secretary Larry Eagleburger in 1989, when each bureau was told to select a female deputy assistant secretary (DAS). Not only did women receive jobs they had probably been denied in the past, but the “woman DAS” policy placed women in enough jobs, in enough different fields, so that it was clear that they could do any job the State Department had to offer. It meant that women began to reach critical mass in department leadership jobs. FSJ: What do you recall about the orientation and training of that time? How many women were in your A-100 class? REUTERS/ALAMY On Aug. 25, 2001, Ambassador Anne Patterson looks at dollars confiscated by Colombian police in a drug raid in Bogotá, totaling about $35 million. From left: Colombian National Police Chief Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert, Defense Minister Gustavo Well, Patterson, and U.S. DEA chief in Colombia Leo Arreguin.