Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State

>> My name is Doug Morrow, and I'm a Foreign Service Officer at the United States Department of States Department of State. Right now, my job title is Central Europe Public Diplomacy Officer, and essentially what that means is I solve problems for our public affairs sections at our embassies in Central Europe. No matter how old you are or what career experience you have, you always start at the same level. It's called an entry level officer. You're going to do a counselor tour. That means doing visas, visa interviews for people somewhere in the world, and then after that, you start to have the opportunity to work within what's called your cone, your speciality. There's five specialities at The Department of State. You can be a counselor officer who deals primarily with visas and American citizen services. So helping American citizens abroad. You can do economic or political reporting. That's the second and third. You can be a management officer who takes care of hiring and firing and procuring equipment for the embassy, or you can be a public diplomacy officer. That's mine cone. Public diplomacy officers essentially work with press and culture. I'll give you an example when I was working as an assistant cultural affairs office in Ukraine for two years. That was before the revolution there. So it was a little bit more stable of an environment, but I might be meeting with a group ever youth who were, we determined to be future leaders for that country, and we want to make sure that we can give them the support that they need to learn how to run NGOs, to learn how to talk to their government or to the media effectively. Later that day, I might meet with LGBT activists. I might then go to a meeting on housing board for the embassy to determine which incoming employees are going to move where. There's a lot that you can be doing. Ultimately, it really depends on the job that you're doing. At this stage in my career, where I'm essentially a problem solver, I react to emails that I receive from embassies. Oftentimes, they need answers to questions about press guidance. They need additional staff, resources, and I sort of work the bureaucracy on the Washington side to get them what they need to do their jobs.