(credit:  theblackexpat.com)     Lia Miller  is a career Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State. She currently serves as the Chief of the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia located in the Caucasus region between Asia and Europe.

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

Meet  Lia  Miller.   Lia is an African-American, a wife and mother of two,  who is a career U.S Foreign Service Officer/Diplomat currently living overseas in the former Soviet Republic  of  Yerevan, Armenia in Eastern Europe.  As a Foreign Service Officer, Lia has worked extensively on issues across the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America during her 15 years with the U.S. Department of State. She is currently the Chief  Public Affairs Officer at U.S. Embassy Yerevan.  Lia has also held assignments in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Operations Center, the Bureau of Public Affairs, the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and at the U.S. Embassies in Bolivia, Tunisia, Nicaragua, and Oman.  Lia is a 2001 Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Fellowship alumna.  Lia was also  named a 2018 Black American National Security & Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader by New America and the Diversity in National Security Network and separately as a Regional Policy Expert by Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security.   

U.S. State Department / Foreign Service Far From Being Racially Diverse

“Despite decades of attempts to make the Foreign Service look more like the real America, it’s still pretty much white, male, and Yale,”  according to a May 2016 article in Foreign Affairs.  The article is titled: “The State Department Has a Diversity Problem”   

Lia recently shared her  experiences as a foreign service officer during Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Diverse Diplomacy Leaders Speakers Series along with foreign service officer Christina Tilghman, both of whom served as President of the Pickering and Rangel Fellows Association.  For Lia, working as a diplomat for the U.S. government was initially not in her career plans when she graduated from college. Lia said it was more of a  “happy accident” that she became a foreign service officer. 

“I never thought I’d be a part of the government. I initially wanted  to be a social worker.  But I had realized that I didn’t have what it took to adopt 20 children. Then  I went back to school and got a (Thomas R.) Pickering Graduate Fellowship with a Masters in International Relations and Public Administration. I specialize in public affairs and public diplomacy. So, the budding social worker in me gets to be fulfilled because I get to work with people.”

Lia said she  had a curiosity of international travel at a very early age when her grandparents opened their own travel agency. She said she was bitten by the traveling bug early on in life that stimulated her curiosity about the world beyond the US.  After college, Lia came across the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship in Foreign Affairs. The Pickering Fellowship, a program funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by historically Black college Howard University, was Lia’s pathway into the  foreign service.  Lia has said that one of the elements of the Pickering Fellowship is that fellows  serve in an embassy overseas for a summer, and  serve in the State Department for another summer, so as to get a sense of what a foreign service officer does over the course of the two internships.

“That was my round-about way of getting there, and it was all due to the Pickering fellowship program that the State Department offers, with the sole purpose of bringing in more diverse foreign service officers – more diverse skills, ethnic and racial backgrounds, religious minorities, people from underrepresented geographic areas of the US, etc. This program was specifically designed with the intention of making the diplomatic corps more accurately reflect American society rather than perpetuating the typical “pale, male, Yale” stereotype.”  – Lia Miller

Lia Is a champion of  “Feminist Foreign Policy” 

(credit:  theblackexpat.com)     Lia Miller  is a career Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State. She currently serves as the Chief of the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan, Armenia located in the Caucasus region between Asia and Europe.

“For me, feminist foreign policy is women-centric, women-focused policy, written and driven for and by women.”

Lia Miller said in interview with Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy

“Women just go about things differently than men do, and a woman’s perspective is one that we could use in all spheres – foreign policy, domestic policy, government, private sector, academia, everywhere.”

The Department of State Has To Have The Will To Make Changes on Diversity:  Christina Tilghman

(credit: thursdayluncheongroup.org /    Foreign Service Officer Christina Tilghman,  is  Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Increasing diversity in the upper ranks of the U.S. Department of State entails a “cultural shift”, says Christina Tilghman, a career foreign service officer. Christina is currently Senior Advisor for Diversity and Inclusion in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. “It is a cultural shift. Our culture has to change. We have to look at how we are going to change the  (State) Department.  The Department has to have the will to change. We know,  as persons  of color, representation matters in the Department,”  Christina said. She joined the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in 2010. “I was the only Black woman and the  only person of color when I first started at the  U.S. Consulate,” Christina recounted an experience early in her career at a posting abroad.  She is a 2006 Thomas R. Pickering Undergraduate Foreign Affairs Fellow.

Lia Miller says the  Pickering Fellowship is a vital network to address issues of diversity, retention, promotion.

“More recently, the Pickering Fellowship is to strive for more change in the Department to  put people who look like us in more decision-making positions.  In addition,  the Charles B. Rangel Graduate Fellowship  is a program that aims to attract and prepare outstanding young people for careers in the Foreign Service.”  

 Advice To Young Foreign Service Officers Developing Careers:

-Mentorship Is Crucial

Christina:  “Mentors! Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask someone to be your mentor. If you see someone who championing your values,  reach out to them.   At the end of the day, this is your career. If you want support in your career, reach out. You need to find your voice in the Department, so as not to be viewed as the ‘angry Black woman’. 

Lia:  “Mentorship is important.  A lot of my mentors have left the Department due to changes in the presidential administrations over the years, but I still reach out to them.   You need mentors not only in the beginning of your career, but also even if you have been in the foreign service 15 years or longer.  Also the foreign service really is not a career.  It is a lifestyle.  You are often living away from home.” 

Lia said there is a richness in working in foreign service, particularly  in cultural affairs work, which is the reason  she has stayed in the service  as long as she has.

“We need more women and women of color specifically to enter this career field. We need you,  “pale, male, Yale” isn’t the way of the world anymore,  and it certainly isn’t reflective of the United States today. We need to hear more of those historically marginalized voices and learn from and utilize more those experience.”

Lia Miller – Women in Foreign Policy