What do you do?
In general terms, I’m Eligible Family Member (EFM)-employed at my post, under a Family Member Appointment (FMA) mechanism that allows for spouses to apply for jobs at the mission where their Foreign Service Officer (FSO) spouse is assigned. I’ve served in several FMA positions over more than a decade.
How did you find your way into federal service? Did you always want to join up?
I met my spouse on their first assignment, and it was a very difficult decision I had to make to give up my career and follow them around the world. I have been fortunate that my education and experience qualified me for meaningful jobs wherever we served. It’s not always the case that trailing spouses get decent job opportunities. I’ve always felt honored to be able to contribute to the mission.
What does this work mean to you? Why is it important to you, personally?
It’s important because diplomacy is important, engaging with the rest of the world is important. The rest of the world look up to us, and, as diplomats, we feel an obligation to represent the US well. There are little things that go a long way, like small grants and alumni exchanges that don’t show immediate impact, but 10-20 years down the road you can see the effect. You can provide a library or water to a school in a poor country for, like, $10,000. The impact is that all of the kids who went to that school remember that the Americans provided that for them. It’s a win-win all around. I guess that’s the answer to the first part of your question — it’s being able to use our privilege as Americans to promote goodwill in the world, which benefits both USA and the world.
What should be important about this work to Americans? Why does it matter?
I think the reality is that there is evil in the world, and it’s not that the US should be the policeman of the world, but retreating from the international order cedes that space to bad actors. We may want to pretend that we can do as we wish as a country, but you can already see how some of Trump’s actions are disproving his belief that the world will fall in line with whatever the US wants. The foreign service is full of experienced diplomats whose job it is to provide that expertise and guidance back to the administration. We are in the field, in countries, reporting back on opportunities and risks, etc.
The point is that we can’t retreat from the world. Even our Department of Defense (DoD) colleagues recognize they can’t work without us. There’s value in the DoD, State and USAID team working together, and the DoD budget is much much bigger than the latter two. A military-only presence is not enough or appropriate.
What does all of this chaos and dysfunction mean to you? Do you have a sense of how it’s all going to impact your work and your mission?
It’s a reflection of the success of the United States Government’s apparatus that people won’t understand how they benefit from it until DOGE rips it apart. He’s not saving money, he’s cutting services that people didn’t have to think about, how those things happen, and who does that work. If anything, I’m so angry and disappointed that Americans don’t appreciate what they have. People who flee other countries for various reasons, economic or political, understand that, but I don’t think Americans have really had to grapple with what living in a failed state or without state services looks like. It’s utterly disappointing that we don’t have an opposition party, and that government workers are left to fend for themselves.
We’re apolitical and we take that very seriously, and we are constrained from doing more. We have to maintain neutrality for our missions, and provide some leadership for our local staff. With the hiring freeze, I don’t know if FMA jobs will be reinstated. For some Foreign Service families, that will be devastating. It’s difficult to figure out what’s next. FSOs are waiting to see what cuts will be made to State and how. We have no idea what’s coming. Not for ourselves, and not for the local staff that are looking to us for leadership.
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