Episode 3: Leave without Pay

How can the State Department benefit from letting its career employees spend time in other institutions?

fp21 founder and CEO Dan Spokojny speaks with Maryum Saifee, who is currently a U.S. diplomat contributing in her personal capacity. Her views do not reflect her institutional affiliations. While on a two-year sabbatical from the foreign service, Maryum was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and Truman Center for National Policy Senior Visiting Fellow where she led a 30-person taskforce on State Department reform.

Transcript

A machine produced the following transcript of the episode.

Maryum Saifee
It's a gift right to have people with the experience and knowledge and institution go out and actually gain the skills that they don't have that can be incredibly valuable. And then bring them back in the culture has to change where if somebody comes and says, I want to get a PhD in data science, then the answer should be "Oh my God, that's amazing", rather than have an adverse impact on your career.

Alex Bollfrass
Hello, I'm Alex Bollfrass. It's my pleasure to welcome you to Fp21 minutes, a podcast dedicated to evidence and integrity in foreign policy. We bring new conversations between practitioners and researchers about how American foreign policy is made and how it can be made better. Stay tuned to hear what they have to say.

This week Dan Spokojny, the fp21 founder and CEO is back with a conversation with Maryum Saifee. She is currently a US diplomat appearing here in her personal capacity. The views she is generously sharing with us do not reflect her current or past institutional affiliations. She will discuss her personal and professional experiences in depth as part of the conversation. But upfront might be helpful to know that Dan and her are discussing a Truman center report. If you'd like to look that up. You can find it on the Truman Center's website under the title transforming state pathways to a more just equitable and innovative institution. In the conversation, Miriam shares with Dan her personal perspective on reentering the State Department with a refreshed set of ideas. And together they explore proposals for how these kinds of broadening career experiences could be made more common and accessible to career civil servants and Foreign Service officers in the Department of State.

Maryum Saifee
I'm Maryum Saifee, I am mid-career Foreign Service officer. I have been in the department for just over a decade. I started my public service career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan many years ago. Then I did AmeriCorps. So I got the domestic version. And I mainly focus my career in the Middle East with postings in Cairo, Baghdad, and then your appeal the northern part of Iraq and Kurdistan as well as a couple of assignments in Washington focus on policy, one in the Secretary's Office of religion and global affairs, and the other in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues. And then most recently, I was the spokesperson for our consulate in before in Pakistan. But I've actually coming off of a two-year leave without pay, or a sabbatical period, where I did a couple of fellowships one with the Council on Foreign Relations through the international affairs fellowship program, and the other with the Truman center for national policy, that leave your just took in the Department of State, I would love to know what the experience has been like for you stepping out of this department culture being a woman of color, it's hard to deal with the racism that happens in the sexism that happens overseas when you're not perceived as being an American, as well as sometimes the unconscious bias or maybe less unconscious bias that's happening within the institution. That's not unique to State Department. But that's something that's happening everywhere. But feeling that weight over the course of so many years, when I had the opportunity after Pakistan, I realized I just needed a break. It was an intense period there. I was about to burn out. If I hadn't taken this leave without pay, I probably would have potentially even left the department and been another data point for the GAO report that would come out on the numbers of the lack of diversity when it comes to women and women of color in particular. That was my moment to push pause. And I was pretty grateful that the department actually had revised the policy on leave without pay as I was taking a year off formerly for this fellowship opportunity with the Council on Foreign Relations where was posted in human rights organization. That was for me, really fascinating to just be outside the culture because it's a culture that really hardwires you sometimes to just keep your head down Don't rock the boat. I had almost like an awakening and I rediscovered myself over the course of the two years. When I did the Truman center for national policy. I was a senior fellow leading a taskforce of about 30 mid-level officers. That was interesting for me because I could get into the guts of the institution and understand what the co-authors, the 30 other co-authors, we really were processing quite a bit, being able to push pause and then also do a deep dive reflection made me realize that how programmed I was like, you know, when I was in the department and the deprogramming that happened when I left for that sabbatical year has given me a fresh set of eyes when I compare the Department of State and diplomacy and foreign policy.

Dan Spokojny
See to our friends, as we say, across the river Department of Defense, they seem to have a much healthier ecosystem for the way that current and former officials, whether they be active duty military or civilian or otherwise can speak about the work that they do. There are official journals and magazines, there are war colleges that people go in and out of five different war colleges, their systems of federally funded research and development centers. Are there ways that the State Department might be able to build a healthier ecosystem to do the type of work that you've done to be able to step away from the day to day and say, What are the challenges that I'm facing that are keeping me from being more productive, more effective at my job and solving the problems that I face? How can the State Department do that better?

Maryum Saifee
One step is making the leave without pay process more, more accessible. And I think they've actually done that recently, I'm a case study of success for them in terms of that because I was about a year in and I was about to start bidding to try to find a way back in having that flexibility of people being able to come in exit, maybe get a degree, maybe they want to do architecture or something not even related to foreign policy, all of these things can have implications later. Some of it could be very strategic part of it is maybe doing a mapping of what are the needs of the 21st century in terms of skills, we're living in a time of disinformation, there's artificial intelligence are all these machine learning, they're all these things happening that are we may not have the literacy to report on. And so having the ability to have time off, or incentivizing higher education in critical areas, critical needs areas, I think, is really important. The military in the Department of Defense, they have more resources. And so part of the issue for the State Department is that we don't have the funding for a lot of things. And even for example, when I looked at the accountability section, a lot of best practices actually came. We were benchmarking from the Department of Defense, but they also have money. And so there was one thing that I that we said, if people are filing grievances, for example, right now the Foreign Service in within the Foreign Service structure, there's a volunteer who's an EEO, Equal Employment Opportunity counselor. And that's someone volunteering, that's someone who might be embedded in this power hierarchy, where they're also now in the midst of something that could be potentially not beneficial for their career or mobility, if, especially if the person in question is maybe in their chain of command. So what if we were to have a Foreign Service specialists corps of people who are trained, maybe regionally deployed, so maybe not every embassy, but like regionally available, just like we have regional medical officers, like regional EEO counselors, who can then they're trained in mediation and understanding that the very granular nuances of the department and the structures so that they can really be that resource. And that can be huge as if somebody's struggling. And because what ends up happening is somebody has maybe a really traumatic experience, and there's no reason there's no outlet for accountability, there's no resource, and then they just leave, that's what they do, they just leave.

A friend, who ended up becoming part of the Truman Task Force wanted to take two years, I think of leave without pay. And she was just tonight, No, you can't. And her husband wanted to go to law school. And it was basically her marriage or her career. And she chose her marriage. And she's now no longer in the department. And here's someone we invested in, she's done such great work. And she's still doing great work. But it's unfortunate that we lose people that way if we were to create more of a revolving door, where people can come back, and they can take time away, come back, either for education or for personal reasons are just life happening that would help with attrition, but it would also help in infusing the institution with more creativity and innovation. If somebody goes and works for Facebook or Google for a year or two years, they have this new set of eyes, all of these new networks as well, they can bring that into the department. And that's something that is just so critical. It's like oxygen for the department to really grow and breathe and meet the moment because the moment is not easy.

It's a gift right to have people with the experience and knowledge of the institution go out and actually gain the skills that they don't have that can be incredibly valuable and then bring them back in if we had more fluidity with the leave without pay system. It's getting there, though, which is good news, but it needs to be institutionalized and prioritized. The culture has to change where if somebody comes and says I want to get a PhD in data science, then the answer should be Oh my God, that's amazing. Rather than have an adverse impact on your career, maybe we should even consider paying people. If we can identify what were the gaps, right? What do we need, the resources may not be there to fund all foreign service officers to get PhDs. But if we know that there's these critical areas, then creating a process for higher education that is compensated through details. We do have things like that, and we have the program at Princeton, for example. So there's a model for this that already exists, but I think a big piece of it will be having more funding to do it. So having appropriations to actually really right size and fund the State Department in a way that it will never match the permanent events, but at least having a bit more allocation of resources, in addition to the training in terms of higher education, and skills development in core areas. Also, state and local diplomacy, mayors and governors are on the front lines of foreign policy every day, California is the fifth largest economy in the world, these sub-national actors, mayors and governors are already crafting their own foreign policies anyway. But it would be so beneficial for foreign service officers and civil servants to be embedded as details in Portland or Omaha. So then we can better understand what the needs are this foreign policy for the middle class that's being rolled out? And what are the actual needs happening geographically, not just in the urban centers, more Silicon Valley because tech is there. But it's more than we know now. It's more diffuse anyway, what's happening in the heartland in places, if there's granularity on the ground, that could be really beneficial to have foreign policy presence in these places, but then can come back into the department and say, Oh, yeah, when I was posted in Omaha, rather than I was posted overseas, because that that also can shape our policy as well and create a more diverse lived experience based on the postings and where people are really appreciating more due to this conversation. Merriam the connection between the diverse experiences, both lived experiences, but also professional educational experiences that people bring to the table to be able to pick what those issues are that we need to invest in more than if you rely only on the VA elites, quote unquote, if you rely only on the most senior officials in the department to say, here's the three issues that I think are vital to invest in, you're going to miss this vast set of experiences of Mr. Ambassador, Mrs. Ambassador, when I was engaged in this environment, I see that this is going to be so vital for the future of our foreign policy or to help the American people or to engage more productively. There's such a vital Nexus here between valuing diverse experiences and the diversity of people that makes America so great.

There's been an idea floated about having a mid-career parachute in type of program, people, for example, with PhDs Do you really want to start as an au three at the very bottom of the scale when you debts to pay for however many decades of that, you know, education you've had to invest in? I was thinking about the regional medical officers, these are physicians, right? These are people who pretty much start at the higher pay rate, because they're their levels of education, just time it took them to get where they are, what if we had something similar, this mid-career specialist program, or then people were based on identified needs, we say we need a whole cadre of data literate, Foreign Service specialists, they don't mean every post, but have this kind of concentrated expertise where it's needed. What if we then recruited for those people and then brought them in this kind of mid-career channel, and then with that, you're looking for that expertise. But making sure that the people we're bringing in are also diverse, by race, gender, etc. So then it's a very targeted need. And it's rather than just saying we need to add more diversity in from the top, because somehow that will magically make everything better. That's not the case, right? Because we know, if the institutional structures aren't there, if the culture Keep your head down, culture continues, and there's no accountability for perpetrators of abuse, then no matter how many people of color you parachute in, that's not going to fix that it's a cosmetic fix. But it's gonna, again, the attrition will still happen. And you create another structural barrier over the existing mid-level, women of color, people of color who are not getting they're just not getting promoted anyway. So now you've reduced the number of positions for them to get promoted into creating an even greater scarcity, and also resentment. That's because then people will see any person of color in a position that's at a higher level, and make assumptions like, oh, maybe this the reason they're there is because they're like a charity case rather than competent. It's a good idea in terms of intent. But in terms of how it would land, I think it's going to be a challenge to do the generalist one. I wonder if I could push you to talk about how do we get from good ideas to real change within the institution? What's your theory or your plan or your vision of how we, we actually take action on the things that we've talked about that seems so pressing? It's a great question. And it's one I'm thinking about a lot, because there's been a lot of listening sessions, right, like just a proliferation of people talking people sharing ideas, but then how do you actually operationalize these ideas, even the task force, right, like 55 pages of ideas, lots of things happening? And then how do you chip away and actually take parts of it, and some of that I'm starting to see already happening where, for example, one of our top-line recommendations was creating a chief diversity inclusion officer and having that person report directly to the secretary. And our co-chair here happened to be happens to now be that person, but there was also a I would say one possible strategy, which I think I learned when I was on leading this task force is to actually create organic spaces for these kinds of task forces to happen intuitively, just if somebody has an idea, or having it be encouraged within the institution, to say that you can take 10% of your work day or whatever, or 10% of your, your time, responsibilities, and focus on something else that may not be it could be linked to your work or could be an idea that you have, and then give permission and make it not just a voluntary thing, but something that's incentivize that you have these maybe many task forces that are happening, people assemble it themselves, they bring together people, so that it also gives people who are lower down on the totem pole, and the caste system, the ability to be a leader, like in my case, for example, in the department, but I'm not so high up in the caste system that I would ever really be ever seen as a leader. But when I left the department, and then I led this thing, I realized, Oh, no, I am a leader, actually, I can do this. I think it can encourage leadership at the decentralized levels, so that people can have opportunities to prove themselves if you created structures like that. And then on top of that have a mechanism, maybe the Policy Planning office or some office where it's we welcome new ideas. So instead of just being a sounding board of Okay, I have a random thought, but no, if you want to submit, you have to create the task force, you have to produce something that's been crowdsourced, maybe create criteria for how to do this so that it's a bit more substantive than just saying, What if we did this random thing, then that way, you're creating almost a culture of creative thought at all levels of the department so that it's not just the top layer, it gets to be creative. And usually, that layer is too risk-averse to be creative. They want to move to the next layer. So this is a way of inspiring people. We've seen it with Secretary Blinken. He said that Ambassador Jean Abercrombie and Stanley is a diplomat who knows when to be undiplomatic. And we should all listen to her and to others that are speaking that truth. And so having that culture, he's able to see it, and it's starting to trickle down. But you also need to have structural mechanisms to incentivize this further, so that it's not just words on a page, but becomes institutionalized.

Alex Bollfrass
If you haven't had the opportunity to look at the weekend reform, our roundup of news and views in the making of American foreign policy, I strongly encourage you to do so. This week, Thomas Sherer guest-edited a really compelling selection for us. One of the items is a review of a review of the many first 100 day reviews of the Biden administration's foreign policy. Another item in there that I personally care about a lot has to do with government secrecy and over classification. In my day job, I'm a researcher of foreign policy. So I have a personal vested interest in being able to access the information that's being produced by the government. A theme of this podcast series is how little use the government makes of its own information. So it's a real shame to cut off others who might be able to mine for practical insights and lessons with that information. But I'm also passionate about the value to American democracy, of being able to understand how with own government works, and sometimes doesn't work all that well. I've also had the privilege of seeing just how many researchers come to the United States from all over the world, often to learn about their own country's history from American archives. And that's because traditionally, the United States has been a leader in government openness, but many of the systems and procedures in place to ensure that openness have become severely outdated and are rarely functioning the way they were intended to.