 Welcome everyone to New America's Political Reform Program, New Models of Policy Change Initiative first ever webinar on diversity in national security policymaking. Is it really moving backward? I want to start by thanking our wonderful events team at New America, which made it possible for us to do this, taught all of us hopefully how not to be complete idiots on zoom and has made it possible for so many of you today. I also want to thank our fabulous panelists and team who jumped in very short notice, as well as our funder, the pleasure's fund, which barely given us the money and said, oh, no, you want to do this totally differently from how you told us to go ahead. So this event today is really the fruit of a lot of activity and flexibility. And what we hope will be the first of a series of events, we will take advantage of doing events virtually as long as number one, we have to and number two, anyone is willing to show up to a zoom event. And we hope to, as we did today, pull people all over the country and in future around the world to talk about this this gap or this fertile place of opportunity where diversity of perspective might lead us to actual measurable changes in policy outcome, which is what we are studying for more than four years now at the new models initiative, where we've been looking at this really interesting gap between what we know from other parts of the social sciences and private sector about how diversity influences policy outcomes and what we don't know and don't practice so much in the security policy sector. So we thought partly because of its ripped from the headlines quality and partly because we thought the issue isn't getting enough attention, we'd have an inaugural conversation be about the places where we're really falling short, where the community is really falling short, either in ways that are obvious or maybe ways that are that are not so obvious. And to do that, we are fortunate to be joined by three really fabulous experts who have extensive experience in practicing diplomacy, in practicing policy and lawmaking, in studying policy and lawmaking, in entering, managing and guiding attempts to actually open up and diversify our national security policy space. So all of the people, they can really really talk about this issue from both sides, both the practitioner and the observer expert mentor, and in a couple cases from really profound personal engagement with both the progress and the lack of progress we've seen on this issue. So we're going to start with Ambassador Abercrombie Wynne Stanley, who is a veteran sadly recently departed from the Foreign Service. She in her distinguished career holds multiple awards from the State Department. She was the first woman to lead a consulate in Saudi Arabia, during which time she survived an al-Qaeda attack on her consulate. She was the US Ambassador to Malta. In retirement, she is the Latin resident at Oberlin College. Her career also encompassed postings at the NSC and on Capitol Hill. And because it's always great to have a fun fact when you're chairing this kind of event, I discovered while trolling the internet this morning that Gina is also the co-author of Diplomacy and Contrast. And I don't know if we have the link to that and we're going to be able to post it during the meeting, but what definitely can post for you is Gina's reflections on the State Department and on serving her country and being a person of color serving her country in a very polarized time. Following Ambassador Wynne Stanley, we have Mika Oyang, who is the Vice President for National Security at Third Way, where she crafts policy and messaging on cyber and the full range of foreign and national security policy issues. Mika came to Third Way from a distinguished career on Capitol Hill that included serving as Chief of Staff Representative Anna Eshu, Defense Policy Advisor to the late Senator Kennedy, and Director of the House Permanent Select Intelligence. And you may have a question where she's a regular contributor to MSNBC and the PBS news tower. And last, it's a rare that the alphabet is okay. We have Dr. Sarah Kuchisvahane, who is the Director of the N-square hub, which promotes cross sector collaboration to Frozen. Should I take that as a sign about N-square? No. I don't know. I can't tell if we've been raw. No, we're still here. It looks like Heather's having just a slight technical difficulty. That's not a problem. Okay. Alex Stark, who is closely with Taver, will go ahead and jump in. Hi. So I didn't expect to be on camera today, but now you can see my RIP patriarchy. Oh, love it. I think, so hopefully Heather will be able to finish with the introductions when she gets back. I think we heard most of what she was going to say. We were going to kick off with Ambassador Eberkromby-Winstanley. I think Heather mentioned the congressional testimony that you gave recently about diversity at the State Department. And you cited some of the findings from a GAO report. And we'd love to hear more about that and how those research findings kind of mesh with your own experience working at the State Department and the State Department's shortcomings. Thank you, Alex. Thank you very much. The GAO report was released about two weeks ago, maybe two and a half. And of course, these days, I've completely lost track of when I was actually seeing people in person. But Senator Menendez hosted a launch of the report and a discussion of what needed to be done and asserted that legislation would be the result of this report. So that was mayhem the kitty. I just want to go through a little bit of what's in the executive summary of the report because most of the report is a whole series of tables, which you can, if you're into tables, indulge yourself. It covered the period of 2002 until 2018. So a 16-year period. And the overall draw from this report is that numbers of racial and ethnic minorities increased at the Department of State over a 16 year period by 4%. So going from 28 to 32. Stay calm. Digging a little deeper into these numbers and really you have to break it down by grade and cone if you're in the Foreign Service and by grade if you're in the Civil Service. The troubling details are while Asian Americans increased from 4% to 6%, which is a pretty accurate representation of their percentage in the U.S. population. Hispanics increased from 5% to 7%, continuing a significant under representation. African Americans went from 17% down to 15%. The other part of it is gender parity, which is that women overall at the Department of State have decreased in number. And that should trouble us significantly. So a couple of the questions that I had about the report, of course, is why that time frame. The Department of State talks about numbers in a 20-year time frame that you should see improvements over 20 years. And they did 16, and I didn't get an answer to that. They also gave a recommendation just one at the end of this report. And that was simply that the Department of State needs to look further at what the barriers might be to increased ethnic and racial minority participation and why promotions for racial and ethnic minorities might be slower and fewer. So the report confirms what employees see every day when they're walking around the Department of State. And that is that the overall portion of racial and ethnic minorities has decreased, has grown except for African Americans. And of course, that women have decreased in our presence there as well. Interestingly, to me, again, for purposes of that report is that in 2003, that would be 17 years ago, the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity published a directive, Management Directive 715, which lays out a four-step process for addressing what might be barriers to full participation for racial and ethnic and, indeed, women in foreign policy, in the government across the board, certain foreign policy. And the first step is to identify the triggers or potential barriers for inclusion and promotion. So the fact that the GAO did not look at this at all, I found surprising. I talked to the GAO representative at the Menendez event and he said, we try not to get too much into it. We try to make recommendations to agencies so that they look into it. But this four-step process was not addressed at all in the report, nor did they call out the Department of State for not having explained how they were pursuing this directive, 715. So promotions fewer, slower for racial ethnic minorities, also for women. And shockingly, in the civil service, racial and ethnic minorities have declined overall. So they've risen in the in the foreign service, except for African Americans and women. And they have declined overall in the civil service. This has been due entirely to losses of African Americans in the civil service of the Department of State. So all other groups, Asian, Hispanic, and European Americans increased and African Americans decreased. The efforts that the Department of State makes to increase diversity and inclusion were outlined in the report. They talked about diplomats and residents. They talked about the Rango and Pickering programs. And I believe very strongly that the issue is in retention, as opposed to bringing people in at the entry level. And if you look at the tables, you will see that as you go up logically in rank, you have fewer racial and ethnic minorities and fewer women represented at those higher levels. This certainly comports with my own experience of 30 years, 32 years at the Department of State. And I would say mostly from mid levels. When I came in, I did not see very many people who looked like me or even close to looking like me. As a Middle East specialist, I rarely saw other African Americans or Asian Americans and very few women, quite frankly, as I was posted around the world. I think many of us have the experience of being alone when you're at a post overseas or onesies or twosies. And I think that's one of the challenges, certainly in the foreign service of retention, that those things need to be looked at. What makes an employee comfortable, feel supported, feel valued, and feel that there is a pathway open to the top ranks, at least to the best of your particular abilities. Do you feel that you can serve to your full potential? And I would argue that many minorities and increasingly women would say no. And I'll stop there. I was only supposed to take five minutes. So if I went over and apologies and we'll look forward to the question and answer period. Thank you, Gina. And I apologize for the crumbiness of my. Mika, you have also in the last couple of years written more experiences as an Asian American in the security field in a way that makes the point, as Gina just did, this is a problem of long standing. It's certainly not something that starts with this administration or that can be blamed on the policies of this administration, although we're certainly seeing some developments right now. Can you talk about how the pressure on Asian Americans in the national security field has increased in recent years and what that looks like in historical terms? Yeah. So, you know, let me start with the historical terms, because I think it feels like now with the president calling it the Chinese virus and the Wuhan virus and some of the things that are happening that feels very like urgent and much more extreme than it has in the past. So the tension between the US and China feels like it's coming to a boiling point. But actually historically, there are much deeper roots of this and the tensions between China and the US and then in ways that spill over to all Asian Americans, because frankly, a lot of people can't tell us apart. But tensions between various Asian countries in the US over time have led to challenges for people in the national security space. And, you know, going back, you know, we talked about the historical roots of racism against Chinese Americans in the 1800s, but in the national security field, you know, going back to the communist revolution in China in the 1950s and a purging of all the China experts out of the State Department who knew something about China out of concern that they were communist. Real suspicion of Chinese Americans who were trying to enter government at that time, all throughout the Cold War, real sense that like this group of people might have dual loyalties and were looked at with additional scrutiny. And then moving forward in the 80s, the tensions turned more towards Japan as we were in economic competition with Japan. But after that, in the 90s, you saw an increase in tensions with China and the Clinton administration. A lot of attempts to target Asian Americans and Asian American scientists exacerbated by the fact that China was actually targeting Asian Americans for recruitment. So there were some cases where what was actually going on was it was very unclear. Cases like the scientist Wen He Li in the late 90s who was sent to jail for suspicions of espionage. And that kind of suspicion of China and this dual loyalty of Chinese Americans and spilling over into lots of other Asian Americans has persisted but only been exacerbated recently. In the last, I would say, five or so years, attempts to address Chinese espionage and attempts to get Chinese American researchers out of STEM and national security R&D projects. Some of whom have then lost their jobs and not had their scientific expertise available to America. And then moving forward to the sense of China being the real strategic threat. And there's a real challenge there, I think, for those of us who are in the field and who have been American by birth and have chosen to serve this country our entire careers, that just walking into a room leads people to question whether or not you actually belong and whether or not you're actually American. And it doesn't really matter how long you've been here. I've heard this from a number of other Asian Americans in the field that they're looked upon with suspicion and held at arm's length, which makes some of the problems that Gina talks about even harder because that means that people are not developed for leadership. They're not mentored in ways that allow them to bring their expertise to bear on behalf of the nation, their cultural understanding, their ability to gain trust from other countries and things like that. And so it's actually very problematic for our national security, our expertise in general, that this group of people who have the ability to build connections to other countries, who have the ability to understand those countries, who may have language capability, are looked at as scants in the national security field. Thanks. Lots more to unpack there. But we're going to bring ourselves right up to the present because I think for many of us it's nice to say, oh, this is a problem that government has and the outside government sectors are much better. As I alluded to earlier, you do have a lot more data coming out of the private sector about the value of diversity. And we were very excited to include Sarah and her work in this panel because she's recently done an in-depth interview study of one sector of the non-governmental national security field, which I think should give us all pause on the question of just how good a job we're doing outside government, modeling the kinds of diversity, inclusion, and broad sweeping policy thinking that we want to model inside government. So Sarah is going to present a couple of slides and talk about some of the findings of her research and how they relate to the challenges that we've just heard about. Thank you, Heather. Actually, I'm not going to use the slide, so sorry about that. But thank you so much, Heather, for convening this timely and really important conversation. Of course, I want to say thanks to Alex and the New America events team that are diligently working behind the scenes to make this a huge success. And of course, thank you to my fellow co-panelists. It's kind of an honor to, I can't say share the stage with you, but I can say share the screen with you nonetheless. And of course, to everyone watching out there, I also want to say it's kind of weird to be wearing professional clothes at home. But anyway, here we are. So I'm going to be talking about how diversity issues are experienced in the nuclear workforce. And as Heather alluded to, I'm going to focus my brief remarks on the N Square Greater Than Report, which we published in December, and it's available online, and it outlines a reimagination of the nuclear field. First, what I'd like to do is run through the why, how, when, who, and what as far as the research was concerned, and then conclude with the report's major findings. So why did we do this? Well, we had heard some chatter from the early and mid-career folk feeling miserable, where creative efforts and diverse thinking were being stifled, and we wanted to inquire further. And really, we wanted to help to find the programming for the DC Hub, which we established last April. We did a number of face-to-face interviews using a questionnaire approved by an ethnographer, and we completely anonymized the data. And we did this over a four to five week period last June and July. So we spoke to 72 nuclear threat reduction professionals in DC working on policy, advocacy, and research. It's important, though, for me to stress who we didn't speak to. We didn't talk to government folk. We didn't talk to funders, defense contractors, academics, or lab folk, primarily those who are based in DC working in think tanks and NGO, and NGOs on the nuclear threat reduction space, be it non-proliferation, nuclear security, disarmament, or arms control. And we spoke to a variety of people based in various stages of their careers. So we spoke to early career people, mid-career professionals, and advanced career professionals. And of the 72 interviews that we did, 22 of them make up the early career cadre, 18 make up the mid, and 32 make up the advanced career. And I can share the demographics that the gender spit in the Q&A if people are interested. And the types of questions that we asked, well, we were really interested in four main areas of inquiry. First, the current view of the field. Second, the priorities for evolution of the field and its mission. Third, the professional life cycle for people working on nuclear threats, and finally opportunities for innovation. Now, we heard a lot of dissatisfaction with the status quo, but at the same time, there was an appetite for innovation, collaboration, and diversity. And so I want to walk through very briefly the four key findings that emerge for the data. The first key finding that came up was this notion of stasis and risk aversion. And when we heard stasis, it was people were using the word old a lot to describe the field, not necessarily about the age of the people that occupied the space, I mean, partially, but also about the ideas as well, the notions, the concepts, they've just been very stuck, they've been very static. And as far as risk aversion was concerned, this was really interesting because this was primarily seen with the early and the, sorry, the young, the early and the mid careers, especially the women, they were very risk averse because they didn't want to be labeled as, you know, quote complainers as dumb, or as being unable to hack it. The second emerging theme that came out was this notion of fragmentation and competition. And here what was really interesting was one of the key words that came up a lot was this notion of ego driven. This word was used a lot by the early, the young, sorry, the early and the mid career professionals, but was never used by the advanced career professionals. And as far as the competition aspect was concerned, this is really related to three factors. First, this notion that there's a lack of awareness of other's efforts, which then leads to a lack of collaboration between initiatives, which then leads to uncoordinated duplication of efforts. The third emerging theme that came out was this notion of exclusivity and toxicity. And when we heard the word exclusivity, it wasn't so much about race, ethnicity or gender. I mean, of course, those all came into play. But it was really about viewpoints and perspectives, really about socioeconomic and career backgrounds of the people that make up the professionals in the community. And we heard about experiences as far as toxicity was concerned. Again, this was a word that was described a lot, especially by the young, sorry, the early and the mid career, none of the advanced career professionals use the word toxic. But when we heard about the toxic kind of examples, we heard about experiences that were combative, that were draining and that were unkind and just retaliatory. And then the final theme that emerged was this notion of career uncertainty and a lack of structural support. Now in our field, there's no such thing as a career pathway. There just isn't. And so added to that, you have unpaid internships being offered, you have no HR professionals in these organizations, no dedicated HR professionals, and a lot of really bad managers. I do want to stress, though, that we don't know how representative these key dissatisfactions are of just the nuclear space, or if they're endemic to working in policy in general, if they're endemic to working in nonprofits, or quite frankly, if it's just endemic to working in Washington DC. And so to conclude, I would like to stress that while we heard a lot of dissatisfaction, which I just very briefly alluded to, we did recognize that there was a voracious appetite for innovation, collaboration, and diversity, which I'd be more than happy to elaborate on in the Q&A. So thanks so much. And I think I did it within five minutes. Thank you so much, Sarah. Ambassador, I saw you nodding along during that. And it made me think, particularly the comment of young people, particularly young women being afraid of being labeled unable to hack it. It reminded me of a story that you shared in your GAO testimony that I found really shocking, although there was absolutely no reason I should have found it shocking, about 2016 State Department perceptions, and I believe it was promotion boards. And also some comments you made of perceptions about different pathways into the State Department and which are regarded as legit and which are not. And so I wonder if you could spin out a little bit how those early, some of these early career challenges look from the State Department perspective that you've occupied. Gina, you're muted. You hear me now? Okay, great. I was an examiner choosing the incoming class of diplomats, and that's considered our public service within the Department of State. It's not considered to be a career enhancing job per se that you are doing something in HR. We're just talking about the realities. And so as I was going through the training and I was listening to how we were all, there are 30 of us in the room, and how at one point the director of the office made the comment to those of us who are going to be doing the selecting that African Americans have difficulty with cognitive, large amounts of cognitive material, which left my jaw dropping, but no reaction generally in the room. I mean, we were all listening to this as if it were facts being shared with us. I did push back, don't worry. I did push back on it later. The other issue that I learned in training and after being in the Department of State for 30 years, even I who care about these issues deeply did not know that there are nine different pathways of coming into the foreign service, the vast majority of which do not need to take the written test, let alone pass the written test. The only fellows, and this includes Humphreys and Boran and AAAS and presidential management fellows, all of whom are brilliant people, all of whom are assumed to be generally European American, none of those have to take the written exam, but the ones who do are the Pickering and the Wrangle, which are fellowships that are associated with minorities, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, et cetera. Those are the only ones who are required to take the written exam. And yet when they come out to post, they come out, unless they've got someone who's eager to have, who's very experienced with them, they come out with a cloud over their heads and speaking very frankly. And it's infuriating because they're often better prepared than the rest of the incoming class because they've gone through these internships at the embassy in the Department of State. They've had training because we know the stigma that attaches to brown skin in the Department of State and they wanted to make sure they were absolutely prepared. So they come better prepared and they still have the stigma. They still have to deal with that. And it's a challenge and that's why I believe strongly it isn't the issue of bringing them in, it's the issue of keeping them. And when you've got this corrosive, whatever it is, whether ethnic background you've got or gender, if you've got this expectation of failure, you don't have as much space to make mistakes. You don't have as much time to recover from mistakes. People aren't going to help you. They're not going to say, you know, everybody screws up, bring them back in, let's help them out. It's hard to find mentors that you can really connect with who will lead you and guide you through in the same proportion that majority American males will find in the Department of State. Long answer, but thank you for asking. Okay, can I ping that over to you and invite you to talk about how you see these issues playing out where you sit, but also maybe to start have you having you talk a little bit about what it's been like the last month as we've dealt specifically with the the administration's choices in messaging around coronavirus and how that's making this even more challenging. Yeah, so, you know, to follow up on Gina's points about representation of the State Department, one of the things that I did when I was on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was look into the diversity numbers of the various intelligence community agencies. And that was sort of in the 2007 to 2009 timeframe, so about midway through the GAO period they were looking at. And what we saw there in the IC agencies is very similar to what you're seeing in the State Department. Not as much of a problem in terms of recruiting people into the agencies. Very difficult time getting them promoted to the senior levels. And a lot of that is a lack of mentorship and a leadership guidance, a lot of concern about, you know, how these people are going to perform in the Asian Americans called it the bamboo ceiling. But there's also an endemic attitude for a lot of people in the community about what an American looks like. And I asked this question when I went out to the agencies, I've actually written about this anecdote, but to ask them about their promotion numbers and their retention numbers. And I said, you know, why aren't you doing a better job of recruiting and retaining people who look like the target set? Right? Because we are trying to get people who understand, you know, this is the post 9-11 world, what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on in Asia, what's going on in Africa. So why aren't you recruiting people who look like the target set? And they said to me, well, the people that we look, that we work with prefer to work with someone who looks like an American. And I just thought, what do you think I look like? What do you think an American looks like? But that assumption, that mental image of what an American looks like means that for a lot of people, if your physical appearance deviates from that, you're just assumed to be different other in a special category and not just naturally belonging. And so you have to go through extra layers of proving your loyalty, even in meetings and in conversation, to reassure people that you really are on the team, which, you know, is an emotional load for people to carry. I do think it's gotten worse in the last month or so as we talk about coronavirus. And I've had this debate on social media, which because you can't have this debate in person anymore, with a number of colleagues in the national security community who said, well, why can't we just call it the Wuhan virus or the China virus? That's where it comes from. And we've called other diseases that and like, what's the big deal? And, you know, a lot of the language that says, well, China hid their numbers and they were deceptive and we have to blame China. And, you know, China is the source of this. And, and I've said to people over and over again, it's really hard because, you know, people are so scared right now. And feeling like China is the cause of this terrible thing that's happening to the world makes Asian Americans in this country, not just Chinese Americans, but Asian Americans in this country, afraid to go outside. And we hear daily stories of Asian Americans who are spit on and attacked in the streets because of this language. And so the plea that I've made with my colleagues in the national security community and in journalism generally is, please be specific in who you're criticizing. Because one thing that happened when many of us pushed back against this language about the China virus, the Wuhan virus, this rhetoric that we were seeing, especially coming out of the right when the scientific community had said, don't use it, was that, oh, well, you're just parroting Chinese government propaganda by calling it out as racist, that you are now a Chinese sympathizer by saying, hey, your language is racist, your language is causing harm to Asian Americans. And that makes it hard for people to engage in a legitimate question about whether or not this language is helpful or hurtful. And one of the things that we've seen the Chinese government do is try and weaponize that racism to defend themselves from their own criticism from their people and people around the world, the way that the US government, specifically political appointees in the US government, have used language. And the plea that I've made to people is, please be specific in your criticism about the Chinese government and their actions, because there's certainly plenty to criticize there, their failure to impose strict food safety protocols, their instinct to hide what was going on in the beginning, and to silence medical professionals, there's plenty to criticize the Chinese government for doing. But be careful and tailored in your language, because when you say China does this, or China does that, it gives people who are very nervous a target for their anger. And that target isn't specific, they're not actually going to Beijing and like getting mad at the government, they're taking it out on the nearest Chinese looking face, whether or not that person is actually Chinese, near them. And so it's really, it's very dangerous and it feels hard to criticize because you might get accused of being a sympathizer with the Chinese government, which, you know, there's plenty to criticize there. But we want to try and make sure that that's accurate and balanced. Thanks. I was really struck by another GAO report which came out recently looking at some of these questions at the Department of Homeland Security and said that in particular FEMA's failure to retain and promote Spanish speaking and Spanish culturally fluent agents had contributed to the disaster that was the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. And so this leads us to a kind of negative unhappy model of looking for places where a lack of diversity really has contributed to bad policy outcomes. And maybe Sarah, starting with you, I thought we'd go round and just invite everyone to contribute horror stories or other examples of where, you know, it really is the case that you, when you have a bunch of people who are all trained to think the same way, they will all think the same way less than optimal results will follow. Yeah, sure. So I am going to have to give a shout out to Kelsey Davenport from Arms Control Association who I can see is on the call. I mean, you can see me, Kelsey, I can't see you, but I can see your name. But I want to give Kelsey a shout out because she's been really helpful in kind of making me understand this, where this lack of diversity has kind of worsened policy outcomes in our space. And we know that there's been a poor record of women's representation in multilateral fora dealing with arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. And it kind of begs the question if we had more women and more diversity, would we be maybe making progress on these issues? You know, there have been studies that have shown that more diverse teams lead to more creative, sustainable outcomes. And again, we have to ask ourselves, have we not been achieving our disarmament goals then because these conversations have traditionally and consistently and currently are led by old white men. And the studies that I'd like to kind of reference, which I think are really kind of interesting and kind of, you know, that they really emphasize this point, was a recent paper in the Arms Control Today Journal. It came out in December 2017 by Elizabeth Miner. She basically shows the continuing under-representation of women in these multilateral fora on weapons and disarmament. And a more recent study that came out of Unidea called Still Behind the Curve that came out last June showing female diplomats even a significantly under-represented in these multilateral fora. So again, we have to ask ourselves these questions, are we not making progress in these issues because we are not including diverse diverse representation? Now as far as the work that we did with the N-square report, I think this is also really interesting because if we look at the breakdown, the gender breakdown of people in different stages of their careers, it's really telling that of the young, the early career and the mid-career, we spoke to more women than men because there are more women than men in those positions, right? But when we go and look at the breakdown of the advanced career professionals, it's a significantly higher number of men than there is of women. And it kind of, it's very much dovetails with what we've just been, what we've just heard. So again, it raises this question that if we kind of broaden the aperture of like inviting diverse voices, diverse perspective, are we likely to see kind of some changes? And I think that's the question that you may be asking us next. But yes, I think within the arms control, disarmament and nuclear and non-proliferation fora, we've seen a stifling of kind of, you know, progress simply because we just hear from a lot of like old white men essentially. Sorry if that's really un-PC thing to say. So this is the opportunity. I don't think, and I'll ever in the rest of my career get to issue a better title than the consensual straight back at report that we put up last year, which is a wonderful phrase from Natel Flournoy, former number three official at the Defense Department, which we haven't talked about at all today, mostly to limit the number on a Zoom call, but we could be having an equally dramatic, and I hope we will at some point in the not too future, looking at issues at DoD as well as looking at other axes of diversity that we haven't talked about today, including LGBTQIA. But anyway, Michelle's point is that to get into the nuclear field in particular, one has to, and even more stringently, if one biggest point does not look like one is supposed to look, one has to basically agree to put on this intellectual bracket. And like I say, I'll never, I'll never ever ever have a better report title than that. I could just hire Natel. But I'd love to hear both Gina and Nika, both examples of where a lack of diversity, you saw lack of diversity, how old U.S. policy back, or positive examples where you actually saw a broad spread of ideas and backgrounds lead to better outcomes. Yeah. Constantly, constantly. Your point about if you don't have diverse folks sitting around the table discussing issues that you come up with the same old, same old. And I often talk about national security and the need to make sure that we have diverse forces because our record on national security isn't that good. So we need a bit more diversity in those who are around the table. I would say certainly when you talk about international negotiations on whatever topic, but certainly when it comes to conflict resolution, the lack of females around the table can have a real impact. And there are a number of organizations certainly on the outside and the Women, Peace, and Security legislation, which recognizes this and mandates that women be part of the negotiating teams, negotiating teams that we deal with and that we provide because we recognize that our voices can make a difference. Unfortunately, although it's in black and white, it's not in practice. And you can look at Afghanistan, for instance, and see women not at the table and and the results, I think, are going to be clear to everyone on that. But the people who are living the experience of war or imperfect negotiations to resolve conflict need to be involved in it. Certainly with regard to diversity, and I've heard this from my friends and colleagues in Intel, that the irony is when we need to be able to understand and reach and connect with people. And it is often, let's be frank, easier to connect with people who look like you or at least have some clear overt shared interest. In my case, it might be Star Trek. I can talk to anyone around the world about that, that we need diverse staff. And I look at 9-11, I look at the Middle East, I look at who is out there with the language, with the knowledge of the culture and able to comfortably meet people where they are up and down the range, because it's not just senior government officials that it's important to understand and communicate with. And the fact, and I tell people my brown skin has been an advantage in my career. My knowledge of what it means to deal from the role of a minority person or someone who has dealt with oppression or discrimination or bias against me and dealing with the thousand pound gorilla that is the United States of America gives me a different way of opening negotiations, of approaching topics, of finding a meeting of the minds. And without more diversity around, we're going to have limited opportunities to display and deploy those sorts of advantages. You know, when you look at it, for examples on this, it's sort of tough because like national security decisions are often one off and the circumstances are very unique. So it's hard to do actual studies of how gender affects national security decision making. But in the financial industry, they've actually done studies of this and have found in investment teams where they are diverse. They tend to be less, they tend to be more risk averse, and they tend to actually do better than teams that are not diverse that tend to get into a groupthink and tend to overplay their hand and then wind up too far extended. But I would say that, you know, and so this is anecdotal and not a study, but in my experience, when you look at a place where you had a lot of groupthink and not a lot of diversity in the way that we thought about how to approach foreign policy challenge, example number one for me will always be the Iraq war in 2002-2003 and how we got into that conflict. I was working for Senator Kennedy at the time and, you know, when we took all the Democratic senators into a room to discuss how they were going to proceed on whether or not we were going to war, you know, it's a room of about 75 people, senators and staff, few experts. I looked around the room, there were six women in the room and two of those six were Madeleine Albright and Senator Clinton. There were not very many men or there are not very many women in the room and to your point, Heather, about the consensual straitjacket, many of the women who are in the room are not encouraged to speak up and go against the consensus. They are encouraged to mold their ideas and their tone to that of the prevailing attitude and so I think there were a lot of people who didn't raise questions about what happens in the post-war, what if this doesn't work out the way that you think. They didn't question authority, they didn't question the intelligence assumptions the same way they might have had they been fully empowered to be in the room or had there been more of them. And conversations that I had with Bush administration officials after that conflict about whether or not they wanted to go and whether or not striking Iran was a good idea. You know, again, they did not get challenged on their views. They were unwilling to think about the long-term and secondary consequences of the actions and we're really leaning forward and really resented being questioned. And I think that's a real challenge when you are a diverse person representing a diverse point of view in the room and being an outlier is that you're sort of doubly questioned about what you're saying in the room. It's harder to stand up and say, hey, I'm not comfortable with the direction this policy decision is going because you already stick out. And so the preference, the safer course of action is to go along. So I really into all you just said, I will say that having had my in my 30-year career constantly always wanting to be the most perfect person in the room so that as a woman, no holes could ever be poked. It is utterly misleading to me to have dropped my connection twice, but okay, here we are. We have had, we're going to start to shift over into audience questions at this point. There's one that conveniently is a question I was also going to ask. Two of you have had the experience of running of the US government and Sarah, all three of you in different ways have intensely researched and mentored. So what are what are practical first steps and best practices that people can take right now in their own institutions and in looking forward to developing their own leadership and in making demands of leaders both in and outside government? What are what are your sort of top three practical steps start getting at these problems? And maybe Sarah will start with you. Sure. So I'll talk about it from the NGO perspective, because you know, I don't have distinguished careers that everyone else on the screen does as far as working in the government. So I think kind of like some of the top three advice I or suggestions I would give to kind of leaders in the NGO space is really let's think intersectionally in hiring and in advancement and sorry, and in advancement. Let's value you in different types of professional and cultural competencies. And the thing that you know really gets to me and I'm going to sound like a huge hypocrite because you know, I have a PhD. But the question is, do we really have to require an entry level position and unpaid internship position? Do we have to require everyone have a graduate degree? And I'm not saying of course it's worthy. I mean, it's clearly helped me, but I don't think that should be like the fast kind of entry into the kind of into the space. And I would also like to see a way in which we can kind of broaden that aperture of kind of like disciplines, you know, I would love to see musicians coming into like the nuclear space. I mean, I just think there's a whole untapped kind of, you know, community of artists of creative types that we are really kind of like lacking. But as far as kind of, you know, the advice for the organizational leaders, one of the things I think we should really, really kind of fixate on especially in the nuclear security space with the NGOs and think tanks is we really need to hire dedicated and trained HR professionals. Because as I alluded to in the, in the, in the, in the research that we did, very many of these NGOs and organizations are very small. And so they don't necessarily have the resources to kind of pay for a dedicated HR professional. But when you look at the kind of, you know, the hierarchy of sorts, you'll see that there is of course an HR person, but that person is probably going to be the same person that's the executive director, or it's also going to be the person that doubles up as the finance director. And if you as a person in a small organization are having issues with the executive director, who also happens to be your HR person, who do you go to? Where do you go? And I think that by having dedicated trained HR professionals, that can also be helpful in kind of, you know, inviting diverse applications. The other thing I also want to stress is this notion of, well, there's two more things, and I know you said three, but just two more things if I may, one of them is I think we should ask our organizational leaders to always include a line item on their budget for paying their interns. Washington DC is such an expensive city. I mean, I'm from London for goodness sake, and DC is just crazy, crazy expensive, as you all know. So requiring these people to work a 48, 40 hour week and not being paid, I mean, quite frankly, that's really, really unfair. And I'm sure there's a way in which we can try to kind of include some line items to include to pay for our interns. And then the final thing I would stress in terms of kind of diversity is, you know, we should encourage management training, so training for managers to not only know how to manage people, but also be on the lookout for kind of, you know, attracting a diverse set of a diverse skill set. I mean, I have plenty more to say, but I won't because this is not a Q&A with me. So I think that's kind of enough for now. There's been an enormous amount of talk about fixing, reinventing, saving the State Department. What would you, what would you prioritize? If you, if somebody made you Under Secretary for Management, what would you do to fix the Department of State? I believe inclusion is a foundational issue that will make the organization effectively doing it, will make the organization stronger and more successful. So I would work to change some things about how we do business. As I've said before, the Department of State makes very clear what they value. They make very clear what you need to do as an employee, as an officer, and as a leader to be considered successful within the organization. That means that we have six precepts upon which you are judged, and I think we need to add a seventh or to tease it out in a way that makes it very clear. And that is what are you as an employee or a leader doing to strengthen the organization by making sure it is an inclusive one and that you are tapping the best of all the talent that is there. That means it has to be in black and white. It has to be something against which you are judged and that you need to account for the way you do everything else. So you can't just say, oh, I think it's great. You've got to document in black and white. Did you do some mentoring? Did you identify some candidates for consideration for hiring? Any number of things. It has to be black and white. And there has to be someone within the organization that is either held to account or able to hold others to account. And right now, I don't know if other agencies are any different, but it does not exist in the Department of State. There's a general, oh, yeah, maybe we should do this, but not my problem. And it isn't anybody's problem. Nobody is not going to get promoted because they didn't do this at any level of the organization. It can be ignored or embraced to a certain extent, depending on your personal feelings that day. And somehow we have to get our leaders up and down the organization to be intentional about this. It's not enough to think, yeah, I think it's a good idea, but that's not my priority. It's got to be part of our priority in order for the organization and, frankly, U.S. national security to be better, to be better. So I feel like, you know, I spent a lot of time mentoring young people, especially people of color in this field. And one of the things that I've learned for myself, and then I tell people all the time, especially as I tell friends of mine who manage people, as they're trying to manage people of color. And one of the things I think it's really hard for managers and people to think about is that if you are not in that sort of mental, people's mental model of what a national security professional looks like, if you're not a white man wearing Brooks Brothers with a family, if you deviate from that, you feel like you don't have the same permission to speak and to participate as someone who feels naturally empowered to do that. And so a lot of times people go through this extra mental step of like, well, should I speak up? Are they going to judge me? What happens if I'm wrong? And there's this sort of extra emotional weight that people carry when they're in a meeting and asked to participate or doing their jobs or being told, you know, you've got to be proactive, all those things that other people don't have to think about. And one of the things that I tell people to do is to think about it, not as you as a person, but you as the representative of the position that you're in, right? If you are a staffer for a senator, it's not about you, you're just the conduit for this senator. And so if the senator needs to know something, you have to ask the question for them. But that applies to any kind of job, right? The executive assistant to somebody, the research assistant to somebody, like to do your job well, there's certain questions that you have to ask. How do people want this report to look? What is the purpose? Where do I get the information? Not asking those questions puts you at a disadvantage professionally. And so it's like, well, what do I what would someone who is optimal in my position do, right? And think about it that way to give yourself a little bit of extra layer. It's not about you. It's about the position. The other advice that I would give to people is that like in meetings, a lot of times what happens, and I know Heather and I have talked about this before, it happens not just to minorities, but to women too. You have an idea and then someone else later in the meeting says your idea and everyone's like, Joe had a great idea. Be an ally and a hero in meetings when someone has a good idea, say, yes, that was a good idea that Heather mentioned a few minutes ago, right? Help lift up other people's ideas, especially for people of color. Anybody can do this. You don't have to be a person of color or a diverse or a woman to do this. Anybody can do it. So everyone should do that and look out for and help lift up the ideas of other people. And then the last thing that I would say is a tactic on this is especially because a lot of these organizations are small, political offices and nonprofits, and hiring is a long, can be a long and time consuming process. There's a real preference to just hire someone that you know. And I would urge people to resist that temptation and to actually run a process because a lot of times the people that you know or people who have gotten there because they're former interns, they could afford to, or you're just sort of perpetuating the network that you know. And by going out there and running a search, you may find someone who will really surprise you, who was not what you expected to be good at the job. It happened to me over and over again, but they actually turned out to be the best candidate for the job and even better than the person that you initially thought, well, if we just hire them, we can just move on with this and I'll have somebody on in the next two weeks and we don't have to run a search. Run the search. Put it out there, put it out there as widely as you can. You'll be really surprised with what you get back. Can I add something real quick to that because I think this is so perfect and I love what you said and I think moreover, the other way we can do this is not only run the search, but do a blind process. And then it's going to take time, but you know what it's worth it. So strip the name, strip the background, strip the academic qualifications or whatever. And just as if it's like candidate A and that is their application. And I think there have been studies in the UK that they did this. I really think that again, it's going to take time, but you know what, it's worth it. So thank you for starting that because that is just, I think that's so important. I will say on that. I actually ran a search for a summer person last summer where it was just on resume and then I did a phone interview with the person. So I'd never seen them and it turned out that I had hired an African-American man and I didn't know it until the day that he started, which is like right, blind hiring can result in different, it might not have. I didn't expect it to. I thought I was actually hiring a white dude with like a white guy who's a veteran, but that's not actually. Why would you do that? He was the best candidate in the pool, right? Okay, I wanted to add something to Mika's comment about dealing with that business in meetings when you've said something and it falls flat or into dead air and then suddenly the magical testosterone brings it back to life. It's great if you can help somebody in that case. It's great if somebody helps you in that case, but you can't always depend on that. So there are a few ways that you can help yourself that I have used and share, which is when the testosterone laden person restates your idea, you speak up immediately and say, Tom, thank you so much for restating my idea. Andrew, I'm glad you agree with me. James, you got it. That's it. As I said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, take it back. Do it graciously, ladies, but take it back. I'm still struggling with, on the sort of written equivalent of that, which is how do you say, I'm so delighted, really prominent person to see you popularizing in the New York Times an idea that I wrote a piece about six months ago. Just to really stress that this is not something you imagine and it never. No, I did this. I did this the other day. Josh Rogan wrote a piece on like holding the Chinese government specifically to account to eliminate racism and I tweeted back at MO. Josh, I see that you saw my series of tweets on the subject. Nice one. So I'm going to ask, I've been asked for some crowdsourcing here. We've had a question from someone saying that she finds it very difficult to find mentors in this space. And I know we have a bunch of people listening who actually run organizations that do mentoring, especially for early career folks. So if those of you who are involved in mentoring want to put some information about that into the chat, that would be a real bad sign for other folks on here. And I'll ask each of you as we come around on other topics, maybe you could also share your favorite source for mentoring advice for professionals. Sarah, I want to go back for you to a question we had earlier from someone at Girls Security. Can you talk a little more about what innovation in the security field would look like when we say we want innovation in national security? What do we actually mean by that? So that's a really good question. And I guess it really means it's kind of like in line with what we've been talking about. It's kind of, you know, turning the orthodoxy like on its head essentially, like let's move beyond the kind of the traditional barriers. So innovation could mean things like, and this is really kind of the bread and butter of the N square model, innovation can mean bringing these non-traditional voices to these conversations. So we can have, you know, film directors, we can have creative people, we can have people, anyone that has an interest in nuclear issues or just is curious to know a little bit about it, let's bring them into the conversation. What we're doing right now, this is very innovative, right? The whole like, let's have a webinar over Zoom, who would have thought about that, right? What happens in DC and all of the kind of a policy panels? It's the same white men most of the time speaking about the same things, all in their suits, all in their ties, we all have our little bottles of water in front of us with some paper and pen. I mean, I mean, that's important, but it's like, you know, let's kind of change that. Let's have meetings, I don't want to say in a bar, but like, let's have meetings, maybe outside of an office, maybe outside of, you know, as suit, like in a wee workspace in a public setting type space, you know, because I feel like where you're sitting, you know, that there's a lot of kind of, you know, the culture is really different, you know, if you're sitting in an office or in a library, it's so very different than if you're sitting in a shared space, like a wee workspace, you know, that creative juices kind of keep, just keep spinning. But really, I really think in terms of innovation, it's kind of like, you know, like I said, I feel like the report that we did, the kind of questions that we are, I mean, this is a space, we've had nuclear weapons for 75 years. And it's just really interesting that there's never been a study like this done before, like within the kind of the DC kind of community space. Is this an innovative kind of approach to looking at things? I would say so. I don't think the model per se is innovative in the sense that we've always had, you know, surveys and questionnaires and kind of interviews, but kind of applying those kind of old school kind of traditional approaches to a space, I think could be innovative. So really things like, you know, creativity, broadening the aperture of where people can come, like the disciplines, the kind of experiences that they bring to the table. And yeah, just again, like just being really flexible and adaptive to kind of the changing situations. Again, Heather, this was going to be an in-person conference right in May, but credit to you all for like, no, this is what we're going to do. This is seriously an example of innovation. So I hope that answers the question. Lauren, happy to engage further. If you'd like, you know, I work really closely with one of your girls security colleagues. So feel free, we can start and continue the conversation. Well, I can't resist adding an example to that, which we heard when we were interviewing for the straight-jacket report, which was that it was actually a man at the Defense Department during the Obama administration when they were trying to take chemical weapons out of Syria, come up with the idea of putting the chemical weapons on ships and destroying them in the Mediterranean. And everyone said, oh, that's an insane idea. That's a really dumb idea. And so then they went through a bunch of other ideas, couldn't think of anything, couldn't think of anything. And his female boss said, well, you know, actually, that dumb idea is the least dumb idea of all the ones we've come up with. And she brought it back. She again, ridiculed. But a number of her other female colleagues said, yeah, you know, that's right, that is, we have to think inside the box, because inside the box isn't working. And eventually, because not even because it was a woman who came up with the idea, because each of these women decided it was worth, you know, to the points that were made earlier, it was worth risking vertical going outside the box. It was worth doing the thing that you weren't supposed to do. That is eventually how the weapons were destroyed. And when we asked all kinds of people, both who'd been involved in the process, can you think of an occasion where having a critical mass of women in a role made a difference, they all cited that one. Because the women had been willing to champion and outside the box idea. And they'd been willing back to the points that both Gina and Mika were making, they've been willing to stand up for each other. So that that is an example that I love because I think it crystallizes several of these points. Gina, we have a question specifically for you from Raina Robinson-Sooten, who's a wonderful collaborator and scientist in the nuclear space. Thank you. Usually we hear that these days discrimination is subtle and informal and not as structured in as what you were describing in the process with the Pickering Fellows having to take the exam and the promotion processes at state. Can you think of other areas where we still have these kinds of formal pieces of discrimination that we should be going after? The definition of subtle versus hidden and I don't think the two words mean exactly the same thing. We have the numbers we do at the Department of State because it's hidden as opposed to subtle. Our process for being assigned jobs is very opaque. It really does depend on who is your sponsor, not the work that you've done, but who is going to be in the room to speak for you. And I was an office director my first time and finally got into what the State Department calls the meat market. And we go around and listen to everyone's bids for a particular job. We take each job and then whomever is in the room speaks for the candidates who are bidding for the job. So first of all, you have to know, understand that that's the process. Many women and minorities don't even know that's how it happens. No one's told us, no one's told them. So there are many times when I was bidding on jobs and thought, well, I was the perfect person. Why didn't I get that job? Well, I didn't know this was going on. So I didn't know I needed to go and advocate with somebody on the desk, you know, the deputy assistant secretary, the office director, the deputy to make my case for the job to get their support. I didn't even know to do that. Then the second thing is while I was in that room on that particular occasion, a officer's name came up and someone said, we hear she's trouble. Silence around the room, they were about to toss that folder out. But because I was in the room and I was the only brown person in the room, let me tell you, and it was another brown officer, Muslim American. And I said, wait, I know her, I've worked with her. What is the problem? Because she's been a great officer. And the person who made the comments said, I don't know, I was just told that when we did the research. And I said, well, I don't think she should be tossed if we don't even know why we're tossing her. And because I happened to be in the room and know her, I stopped that from happening. Well, the issues that were back there were somebody else had more support for the job. And although she was highly qualified, that was what was going to get her thrown out. That doesn't necessarily have to be a racial or gender thing, but it goes back to you better know your system. And minorities and women often don't get the information which goes back to our discussion of the importance of mentorship. Gina, did we lose you? I think so. Yeah. Okay, well, when she comes back, we will go back to that. And we've had a couple questions about what people have called diversity. Gina, we'll loop back to you. Actually, yeah, no, you go ahead and finish. No, no, I thought I had. Okay, great. No, we've had a couple questions about what I would call diversity fatigue or actually what what questioners have diversity fatigue. And which Jackie O'Neill said to their being this generational divide where the language that a younger generation of workers is totally invested in causes older workers, leaders to turn off entirely. And I will add to that that survey work we've done in a surprising number of cases, but early our senior leaders don't even know the terminology that is very sort of common currency to our younger staff resulting in an almost complete lack of conversation, even where folks want to engage. And as noted, folks don't want to engage. Vika, how do we do diversity fatigue? I don't know. It's a real challenge, right? I feel like I'm sort of, for those of us who are Gen Xers, we're sort of in the middle of this. We have everything fatigue, right? It's like, you sort of see it from both sides, right? That you came up in a system that was like, where there was so much sort of internalized misogyny that you just like all these things people are like getting fired for now. You're like, wait, that's not normal office behavior. That was totally normal office behavior as I was coming up in my career. And then sort of some of the things that you say, you're like, wait, is this the kind of thing that somebody later is going to be like, no, that was terrible. So you sort of get this feeling of like, wait, the sort of the lines are shifting and you're watching them shift in real time. I think that the challenge on diversity fatigue is really one of like, it keep people focused on the mission, right? At the end of the day, we all know the mission is better served by a diverse group of voices because people see different things. You, you focus in on different weaknesses, you bring different strengths. If everyone is agreeing all the time, if you're never having discussion and tension in your conversations about how to proceed, it means that you're not doing it right. It means that there's something missing there. And so when you think about, okay, how do we serve the mission well? How do we think about, you know, 360 degrees? How do we make sure that everyone that we're strengthening our position and we're planning for the things that we need to make sure that you're bringing in different voices to that? And it's not necessarily about, are we creating a Benetton ad of our staff photo, but are we really thinking about different perspectives? And like, you know, I have been through this myself where we wound up hiring somebody who was a Mormon from Georgia, and he actually brought tremendous intellectual diversity to our team because he thought about things differently. And for my organization, where we think about like, how do you reach the middle? If you grew up a coastal elite, you might not have in your mental map the things that will be persuasive there. So thinking about the mission and how do you strengthen the mission, I think really helps a lot when trying to focus on diversity. It's not a value in and of itself. It's in service of something. Sarah, I'm wondering if you have thoughts or what you heard, sort of what you would say about what the younger professionals you talked to, what you think they would say in response to us, us Xers and boomers in our diversity fatigue? I mean, I think I really agree with everything that Mika said. I really think, you know, if you're having conversations and the same things are being said and there's no disagreement, I really think that's a fundamental problem. And the way I kind of like to look at it is, you know, in our space, so God forbid if a nuclear weapon was ever to be used, it's not going to discriminate, right? It's not just going to kill the men. It's not just going to kill the women. It's not just going to kill the PhDs. Like we're all going to, I mean, I know that sounds really dramatic, but the point that the factor of the matter is, you know, everyone has a stake in this. So, you know, the more, and I feel like the younger people in particular, they don't understand, and I mean this respectfully, like, you know, how is it that these organizations, how are they getting away with like not paying their interns, for example, how are they demanding, mandating that, you know, for every kind of entry level position, you need to have a certain type of background and a certain type of graduate degree from a certain type of school. They're really interested in kind of thinking about, you know, thinking outside the box, having more kind of creative discussions. And to the point that you made earlier, Heather, it's one of the things that I found really funny, and this came up a lot in the interviews, was the young people were saying, you know, we love it when our bosses are saying, you know, we want to hear from the young people, we want to hear about what you have to think, but what you have to say, but instead of asking them, hey, what do you think about this? This old person with the greatest respect is thinking, well, I remember when I was 25, and these are the kinds of things I was thinking about, but it's like, you know what? When you were 25, the world was very different and the thinking was very different. So instead of us projecting what we remembered, how we thought about when we were 25, we have an army of like 25 who are, why don't we just ask them? You know, why don't we just give them these, they can be the ones that have these projects, like you help us understand. So I feel like in terms of kind of, you know, next steps, essentially by diversifying the field even further, you know, we as managers, as leaders of the organization, we should be giving responsibility to the young people for a job that only they and they themselves can do. Of course, come back to us and like solicit advice and like check-in, but again, if part of our problem right now in the nuclear community is like, how do we get the use engaged? Well, you know what? Again, let's ask them and that's because they've got friends and I can guarantee you that many of their friends don't even think about nuclear issues, but they talk about the same kind of thing. They use the same terminology. So there was a lot of eye rolls in those conversations about, yeah, the old people, they think they get it, but we're here, just use us. So, yeah. You've both touched on another angle of diversity, which in some ways I think is one that we're most or not most. It's another one that we're very neuralgic and that is the question of class and background. And the national security field, certainly the State Department, but by no means only the State Department, has a very rigid set of ideas around the kind of educational and social background that you're supposed to have to do to do this work. And that can in its own way be very challenging. And I wonder if any of you has thoughts about how we how we even quantify and talk about that that piece of our challenge. Yeah. Interestingly, and I assume most people know that in the Department of State you do not even require a bachelor's degree to join. So one of my class members and the first one to make Assistant Secretary is someone who was a high school graduate alone. I don't know if he wants me to say his name, but ask me and I'll tell you who it is. Because we went around everybody very proud of their master's degrees and their PhDs or that they were young and brilliant, therefore they only had a bachelor's and he stood up and said, I traveled the world, I do not have a bachelor's degree, graduated from high school and got on the road. So in fact, if you can pass that test, it doesn't matter what that background is until you get to the oral exam. And then when you are presenting, that's where we struggle a bit still because we're having a much wider variety of people present themselves and you've got a pretty narrow band of people who are making the decision. That's it for coming into the Department of State. Not that what's written in black and white is an issue, but those who are interpreting and making decisions are very narrow band of people. So of the 30 people who were sitting in the room with me when I was getting my training, two of us were African-American, one was Asian-American and the rest were European-American and that's it, even though the Department doesn't want to look like that or at least says it doesn't. And then some accommodations, I think, do have to be made. A consensual straight jacket needs to be put on for some parts of this. And then I think when you get the job, then you do it however you want and that's my view. The class doesn't necessarily stop you from getting into state or doing well. Yeah, I mean I think it's a real challenge because I do think it's not just about where you come from, but it's about how you present yourself. And while you might be able to overcome a background that is not, you know, Ivy League and pedigree and all the rest of that, the workplace still puts pressure on you to present a certain way, to speak a certain way, to develop a certain set of likes and dislikes. And I think about the old movie Six Degrees of Separation or like The Talents of Mr. Ripley or things like that, it's like there's a certain amount of self-transformation and so you may find yourself code-switching between your work life and your personal life or your personal life or your work life and your family life. And that also imposes a mental load on people who have to do that as opposed to people for whom the professional cultural setup is exactly what they were raised with and they sort of naturally know which fork to use and where to buy their ties or whatever the thing is. So I think that that's a real struggle, but I also think that there are people who will help with that. Like it's actually a lot easier to get people to help you, you know, hey does this tie work kind of conversation with people in the office who you think are doing well on that or who are sort of fitting in on that than some of the other things through the cultural adaptation can be easier. But I don't know that there's a real way to get past it, the cultural adaptation. I think the bigger challenge is getting in the door. And I think for those of us who do hiring, Sarah's point about not requiring the graduate degree is really important. I'll just say like I only had an undergraduate degree when I was a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee and managed floor consideration of the NDA. I did not need a graduate degree to do that. And like people need to rethink whether or not a master's in international relations actually helps you for that. It would not have helped me for that. It would have just loaded me up with a lot of debt to make me like really anxious about taking a low congressional salary. Yeah, I got my master's because people kept asking me where I had my advanced degree from. Not. I thought I could get an advanced degree. And I was advised to get a PhD by a male mentor because he told me and he meant it in a very kind way. He was like you know you've got your gender that's going against you right now. And if you don't he's like I'm not advocating that you change your gender. I was like well thank you. But you need to get a graduate degree and a PhD because otherwise no one will take you seriously in this field. I will say and I think because my mom is in the audience I got my law degree because my mom was worried that I wasn't going to go to medical school. So I really needed her to like make sure that she felt like I was going to be okay. So mom I got my law degree it's okay. Sarah was the gentleman who told you to get the PhD right. I mean did you find that a necessary ticket for entry? Well you know I mean I would say yes in the sense that you know I think so and honestly I got the PhD because like most of us and I can say this because I have one you know we're very deep we're deeply insecure about who we are and what we can bring to the table. And so having that PhD gives us like you know we have that accreditation. And you know people say that those three letters at the end of your name it doesn't mean or anything special it just means you went through psychological hell to basically point and yes that's true but yeah I do think it did help quite honestly and okay it never gets old to be referred to as doctor so yeah yeah okay. Then he did you a favor. He did he did. So we have a couple of great last questions. First one actually it's um I want to thank Kate Howard because for prompting me to reference what I'm about to reference and your check will be in the mail after this if you dare to open anything in the mail. But Kate mentions an effort that she's involved with at Vote Girl Vote to press future presidents and administrations to work towards greater levels of diversity and inclusion and that gives me the opportunity to mention that Mika and Tina and I are all involved in an organization called the Leadership Council for Women in National Security which succeeded in getting um all of the Democratic candidates still in the race as well as any no longer in the race and one Republican candidate who is no longer in the race to pledge that they would work toward um a gender parity and other forms of diversity in their campaign staffs and in their administrations. So I'm going to having done that little that little commercial for LC wins and so to encourage all of you to get involved in one of these efforts because frankly again take the pledges was the easy part in my view and getting either a campaign or presidency to fill it much more challenging but that brings up a whole bunch of anxieties and questions that people have about quotas and about you know do we want to be 50-50 or is there this perception that somehow at that point somehow I'd forbid not based on merit anymore. So I wonder if you'd like to take a brief swing at the so is this a quota and if so what's so terrible about quotas question. Well I think you just posed the question perfectly what is so terrible about quotas when you realize that nobody was worried about it if it was European American men I mean I I've always been used on at this issue and the fact that we've had smart men mediocre men okay men and sucky men in various positions move over move over let's give somebody else a chance so that's my answer. I really I have a problem with the idea that it's a quota because for me you know I see a lot of programs for diversity hires and the fear that you as a person who is diverse are only there because you are diverse feels like it's denigrating your substantive right to be there and so you know I think one of the things about a gender parity pledge and the reason that I really like the way that Elsie Wins did it is that it's a goal right it doesn't mean that every single office is 50-50 but that you are trying to seek this across the board but also there's some very concrete steps about how you do the hiring ensuring that you have a diverse candidate pool if everyone in the candidate pool has the same demographic characteristics as the person who's the head of the office you have a problem right you are trying to build a team that is diverse you are trying to get different points of view into the room and you're trying to find the best people for the job and you know looking around the national security community and all the diversity that I see in it I think it's totally possible the candidate pool is there you just have to give people the chance to actually apply for those jobs and don't close out the application process until you feel like the pool itself is diverse enough then if the best person that you happen to hire happens to be a white man okay but you have to make sure that you really were looking at everybody else and what did that person bring to the table what did they bring in terms of diversity of thinking or skill set or the rest of that so I don't want some kind of mathematical formula of like so many of these kinds of people and so many of those kinds of people it's really about the skill sets that are needed for the job and what the mission is but it seems like if you wound up with a demographically homogeneous group you were doing it wrong yeah I hear you with you don't want to be tagged with the affirmative action brush this is something that particularly African Americans in my generation struggled with the reality for those who are going to think that way they're going to think that anyway trust me they will think that anyway and and my mother always said however get through the door it matters what you do when you're in the room do you make clear by how you conduct yourself and what you bring to the enterprise that doesn't matter that you got the job because your dad knew somebody or your mom made a donation to someone or you went to the right school even if you went through with a gentleman see and made the right connections all of those things are part of what get whitening through why are we going to burden ourselves with higher expectations or higher hurdles to get through on the one hand when they've had it at their feet for so long and I think once you get in there and certainly with what you're able to do the question about were you a diversity hire will disappear pretty darn quickly if you know your business and I would say however you get through you better know your business you better be willing to step up and do the work and do the work well but I yeah I would assume and that might be a generational thing it might be generational so I would assume that every speaker on on this panel um has been told that she was a diversity hire at some point right oh yeah oh yeah I mean yeah fine get out of my way watch me yeah I mean I will say that like it's true that you know when I got the job on the armed services committee I was a diversity hire I was the youngest person to be hired and it was because I was really cheap and they were trying to fill the slot under the budget cap and so like yes that you know and look how we lucked out so our last question um comes from laura wholegate who's also doing fabulous work in this space and Laura you should quick you should quick um put up a link to to gender champions in the chat I don't think you have yet but you should ask a great question which kind of continues this which is we've all approached her for the last 30 minutes this conversation through the frame of you should care about diversity because it's going to create better policy outcomes you should care about diversity because there's a war for talent and there is this argument Laura points out that you know no you should just care about diversity because one should have access to every kind of work and everyone should be able to go as far as their talents will take them so there is an argument that is sometimes made and I think there's some truth to this that actually by always trying to frame diversity as look how helpful we're going to be if you just let us be there that be sometimes actually that that hasn't proven as effective as I think frankly many of us particularly um maybe this is a crime that can be particularly late at the door of white feminism but that um any of us thought that if we just showed you how helpful it would be if we were there of course you'd let us come and that turns out not to be how change works so um to what extent in the national security space should we be leaning on this but look at how better we're going to make policy argument as a suggestion that damn it it says we the people in the constitution and we the people looks like all these people I have thoughts but I'll let me get Sarah go first yeah I mean I guess you know there's a certain amount of stuff that's like mission requires that you can't just put diversity in there right like there's certain places where arabic speaker is more of a qualification than being asian right like being the one person filling the asian slot in in the mid-east team right there there are places where there are skills that are going to matter more than just having someone who has a particular kind of face um I you know I do think that part of the challenges on diversity has been and I see this in the field all the time groups gathering like groups senior people in the field finding younger versions of themselves because they are trying to mentor themselves into their own levels of prominence sort of a weird like almost child-parent relationship that kind of stuff I think really harms diversity in the field to try and replicate yourself through the field I don't those are not places where you can say we have a diverse team because there is no team right it's just one person I don't know how that I would be comfortable saying okay you have to hire someone with this demographic profile I do think you can say you've got to interview people with all of these characteristics and see who comes out best and if you really are keeping an open mind about it it will surprise you but I think you're setting up the person who is diverse for a really horrible work experience that could be really detrimental to their long-term future career if you force someone to take them when they don't really want to take them a whole series of bad performance reviews and bad right like I don't I don't think that that helps people I don't know like maybe there are experiences where that has worked out for people but like I just you know I think about all those commanders when we first integrated women into the military who were awful to those women like you have to have to commit to the mission of diversity otherwise you're just you're driving people out of the field and you don't want to take on someone just so that you can give yourself that check mark next to your name and like parade that person like a showpony it's like you know you want to take the people for you know to the point that you were saying because you know because they they really do bring something of value to the table and not be your token like diverse person on staff I hear you both coming from a demographic that was rejected until the law and demonstrations and protests made european americans accept us I'm going to have to push back on that sometimes it takes changing the requirement and people get used to it and better understand it because they have to do it if you wait for people to want to do it what if I was a white male I am not that interested in anybody else having the job or having access to the job or the opportunities but me that's human nature you're which is why you do have to make the case in some areas of the benefits of diversity as opposed to simply being the right thing to do but it is the right thing to do and some people even knowing that it would economically or better policy benefit them they still don't care because they don't want the change they don't want to be bothered with the effort of dealing with people who aren't like them so even though it might make their company more money they don't care it might make their company more effective or I mean how many times have we had in the past where housings couldn't be sold to black people even though they had the money to pay for them but they didn't want them so I disagree profoundly with you have to wait till people are ready for those changes we have to help them along because people don't just naturally get ready not when it comes to gender not when it comes to racial or ethnic minorities or sexual orientation people have to be pushed along and then once they're in it they can see the benefits and I do acknowledge that there is going to be a generation or a set of people who are really going to have a hellish experience at work because they were not wanted but my god you'd never see an african-american or female diplomat if people weren't willing to stand up for that and make the change and we have to do that. Tina you are reminding me of remarks that I heard the head of the Canadian Armed Forces give once on this subject of gender integration and he said you know bottom up is all very well but sometimes people just have to get told I like it and I'll be using it and on that note I want to thank all of you so much for jumping on and making this both a really substantive and a really personal conversation and our many participants for hanging in there with us through all of the technical difficulties my screen flashed your connection is unstable and it's like you think my connection is the only thing that's stable and thank you again to our wonderful events team at New America and all of you all we hope as I said in the comments we hope to be continuing to have this conversation on other facets of diversity we're also going to be trying to look at some specific areas I can tease that we're going to have a conversation on how diverse perspectives help us take a different look at nuclear deterrents coming up soon I think maybe there's going to be one on perspectives on how we think about climate policies so other topics you want to see other experts you want to hear from let us know because at least for now we get all the time in the world to do what thank you all so much for coming