The Club met (virtually) with Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley on October 25. The Ambassador spoke from her office on the 7th floor of the State Department.
Ambassador Abercrombie-Winstanley grew up in Cleveland Heights and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School. She became interested in the Foreign Service after taking a Hebrew language class at Heights High. That led to an interest in foreign cultures, eventual study abroad in Israel, the Peace Corps where she was impressed by U.S. diplomats, and in due course the Foreign Service Exam. “When I grew up Cleveland Heights was a very diverse community,” she said, “and for me that led directly into Foreign Service.”
She said that her current position – Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the State Department – was a creation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who established the office because he felt so deeply about diversity and wanted it as part of his legacy. “Making the State Department reflect America has many advantages,” she said. “For one, it will help women and minorities advance in good and highly useful careers. It will also help our foreign policy because persons in other countries will understand that in the United States we have persons of their cultures also, persons in positions to affect American decisions. That will strengthen our foreign policy and our effect abroad.”
“In addition, the world is changing,” she said. “The United States does not have the clout it did in the period up to the 1960s, so the art of diplomacy is more important than ever in bringing others to our point of view, of being able to meet foreign leaders at their levels of cultural and historical perceptions and thereby hold a better chance of having them understand our viewpoint and why it should benefit them.
“And in yet another way, American women and minorities have a special role to play,” she said. “They have a history in this country of not coming to issues from positions of strength, that is, of being able to impose their perspectives on others – instead, American women and minorities have a history of working at persuading others of the rightness of their positions not because they can impose it but because they have made the case.”
Abercrombie-Winstanley stated the senior level at the State Department is 84% European and more than 60% male. At lower ranks, the Department is more representative of American diversity, “so we have a retention problem,” she said. “We have to demonstrate that anyone here can rise with talent and effort rather than by whom a person knows. For example, we recently changed how a senior level position was filled, not by appointment, but by advertisement – now everyone knows when that position is open and can make the decision to apply. We are moving to a more diverse, inclusive and representative Foreign Service.”
She added, “The Department is working harder to promote talent and capability wherever we find it. For example, there is no requirement for a college degree; you can have a high school education and do well here – persons who work here have. Many people know facts, and our excellent Foreign Service Institute can teach facts. We look beyond that. We look for cultural competency, discernment, thoughtfulness, flexibility in approaching issues and emotional intelligence. There are different ways of acquiring these, not necessarily in college or elite schools.”
Abercrombie-Winstanley was in Cleveland recently working with its Sister Cities program. Several years previous she also served as diplomat-in-residence at Oberlin College, teaching students and helping raise awareness in the Midwest of Foreign Service careers. She noted that Ohio has the highest number of foreign students after New York and California, a statistic she welcomed because part of American international relations is having foreign students study here and taking their impressions back home. She also discussed the advantage of lay persons performing acts of diplomacy by joining trade delegations, science panels, international health organizations and the like. “This type of sub-national foreign policy is very important,” she said. “Ohio and Cleveland have a great base for offering many of these things.”
The Ambassador told Club members that she expects many of the reforms in the State Department during her tenure will endure no matter the presidential administration or the Secretary of State. She concluded by saying she hoped to see Club members in the future at face-to-face events.