EDITORIAL: Global Diplomacy is a Career Option for Local Youth

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On Tuesday, Sept. 24, President Joe Biden officially opened the 79^th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) with an address to the deliberative body.

The United Nations (UN) has 193 member states, and the UNGA is the world’s most deliberative body with universal representation.

Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield is the current Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN. She is a career service diplomat. Her previous posts include Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Liberia under former President Barack Obama.

Global diplomacy is a career option for local youth. 

In addition to the U.S. Department of State and the UN, other government opportunities for diplomatic careers can be found at the Peace Corps and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to name a few.

The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia high school students have many examples of local African Americans who distinguished themselves in diplomacy.

For example, abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as the Consul General to the Republic of Haiti.

General Colin Powell, who died in 2021, served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the late President George H. W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of Staff to former President George W. Bush.

With over 24 years of diplomacy, President Biden has nominated Dana L. Banks as the next U.S. executive director of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

High school students in Wards 7 and 8 can learn more about careers in global diplomacy through the International Ambassadors Program (IAP) and U.S. Foreign Service Initiative (USFSI) of the William O. Lockridge Community Foundation.

Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield often tells young people, “Dream big enough to scare you. You’re going to get to someplace you might not have imagined yourself getting to.”

Undoubtedly, there is a future president of the United States, a U.S. Ambassador to the UN, an American Secretary of State, or a U.S. Executive Director of the AfDB among us.