Diversifying Diplomacy: My Journey from Roxbury to Dakar

Description

Today, diverse women of all hues represent this country overseas and elsewhere. Some have called this development the "Hillary Effect." But well before Hillary Clinton, our most recent female secretary of state, there was Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve in that capacity in 1997, and Condoleezza Rice, who served in that post from 2005 until 2009. And, beginning at a more junior posting in the Department of State in 1971, there was "the little Elam girl" from Boston. Diversifying Diplomacy: My Journey from Roxbury to Dakar tells the story of Harriet Elam-Thomas, a young black woman who beat the odds and challenged the status quo. Inspired by the strong women in her life, she followed in the footsteps of the few women who had gone before her in her effort to make the Foreign Service reflect the diverse faces of the United States. The youngest child of parents who left the segregated Old South to raise a family in Massachusetts, Elam-Thomas would distinguish herself with a diplomatic career at a time when few colleagues looked like her. Her inspiring memoir is a firsthand account of a decades-long career in the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service, recounting personal tales of making U.S. foreign policy, culture, and values understood abroad. Elam-Thomas served as a United States ambassador to Senegal (2000-2002), and retired with the rank of Career Minister after 42 years as a diplomat. Diversifying Diplomacy reveals the journey of this successful woman, who went on not only to shoulder some of the world's heftier problems, but also to ensure that new shepherds of honesty and authenticity would trace her international footsteps for generations to come.

Harriet Lee Elam-Thomas is a diplomat and professor who held numerous posts abroad over the course of her forty-two-year career, including positions in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, France, Belgium, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. She retired in 2005 from the U.S. State Department as a senior foreign-service officer with the rank of career minister and currently directs the University of Central Florida Diplomacy Program. Jim Robison is a retired newspaper reporter, columnist, and editor and is the author of eleven books on Central Florida history, lore, and legends.

"Diversifying Diplomacy, the memoir of Harriet Elam-Thomas, is more than just a personal history, more than just a 'her-story.' It is the timely narrative of an African American woman weaned in black Boston on family pride and ambition, liberated through education, inspired by civil rights battles, and mentored to the top by fellow travelers and battle-scarred elders. Hers is a great American story. It is fact, not fiction. It's real." - Milton Coleman, retired senior editor of the Washington Post "Harriet Lee Elam-Thomas's insights and inside stories from the State Department and her postings in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa make it clear that foreign relations is a tough, sensitive, and truly person-to-person undertaking, one that cannot be negotiated in a Twitter feed. This volume is essential for any student of America's international affairs over the past five decades." - Robert L. Dilenschneider, chairman and founder of the Dilenschneider Group, Inc. and author of Power and Influence and On Power "A prime resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of modern American diplomacy and its historical underpinnings. Rich with insights into the U.S. State Department, the Foreign Service in particular, and the government's foreign-policy apparatus, this memoir reads easily and compellingly. Readers will learn, through Harriet Elam-Thomas's eyes, how U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy evolved over the past four decades." - Gen. James L. Jones, USMC (Ret.), former national security advisor and former supreme allied commander Europe and combatant commander USEUCOM