 Hello everybody. I hope you're enjoying the HBCU foreign policy conference so far. My name is Jay Nathan Bland and I am a diplomat in residence for the Central South region which includes Louisiana, my home state, Mississippi, and Arkansas. We have 16 of us DIRs scattered all throughout the country and our role as DIRs are to try to reach out to students like yourselves and young professionals to let you all know about our careers and our student programs at the U.S. Department of State. The goal ultimately is to get you excited about careers and diplomacy and to let you know how to get there if you're at all interested. I'm based at Tulane University in New Orleans but as I mentioned I'm a resource for the whole region for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas so any student here can contact me instead of appointments and we can talk about your interests. One of our main goals also is just to increase the diversity within the U.S. diplomatic corps. In the past as you may well know most of the diplomats came from the northeast, most were white males and so now we really want the U.S. diplomatic corps to reflect all of America you know so that's why we're in small town Louisiana, small town Alabama, small town Colorado, Oklahoma trying to get that ethnic and racial diversity trying to get that geographic diversity, socioeconomic diversity, gender diversity you know because we want when we're abroad we want to represent all of America you know so all of its richness. One of the things that we like to tell students about obviously these are student programs I'm sure you must have heard about at least I hope you've heard about the Pickering and the Wango fellowships which are amazing fellowships they pay for two years of graduate school they provide two internships paid internships one domestic and one abroad and they bring you into the foreign service for a five-year commitment afterwards but have you also heard about the FATE fellowship the foreign affairs information technology fellowship which pretty much does the same thing but it does it for IT related majors in case for two years of schooling either your junior and senior year so you can apply as a sophomore or two years of grad school so you can apply as a senior as well and it provides the two paid internships and it brings you into the foreign service as a foreign service information management specialist. We also have study abroad programs like the critical language scholarship or the Gilman scholarship which is available now in fact applications are due in March those are fellowships that actually pay for you to go study abroad and if you want to study a language you can actually offer you a bit more money to go study a language abroad I remember when I was in undergrad I wanted to study abroad I went to London to study abroad and to paperwork my mom was out there doing fundraisers in our church in our community to help people these these scholarships and these fellowships help to paper those types of things I know there are plenty of HBCUs in my district so I hope you all reach out to me as I mentioned my name is Jay Nathan Bland my email address is dircentralsouthatstate.gov but for everybody for all of you you can easily find your DIR your diplomatic residence you go to our website careers.state.gov and at the top little box on the right there's something that says connect or connect with us and you um you find the diplomatic residence link you'll find a map and click on your state your region and you'll find the DIR for that region so please do please do reach out to us you can schedule appointments for one-on-one meetings we do career fairs we do info sessions for schools and everything right now is being done virtually due to the pandemic which um has its ups and downs it allows us to travel around and see all of you um much easier than before you know we we don't have to physically get out and go we just set a book with tele-meeting on Zoom or something and it's done so please do reach out to us either me or your DIR um and good luck with your studies good luck with everything you want to do I hope you are interested in our careers and I hope to hear from you soon thanks