Foreign Service OMS Podcast

Ep 03. Navigating Boundaries, Leadership & Impact: Laura Avakian’s OMS Journey

• Stacey Phengvath • Season 1 • Episode 3

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I sat down with Laura Avakian, office manager to Assistant Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols, to chat about her pathway into the Foreign Service. Laura shares how she establishes healthy relationships with her bosses, sets personal and professional boundaries, and prioritizes work-life balance. On the OMS corp, she encourages open communication and mutual respect to create a positive work environment. Listen to one of our fantastic colleagues sharing how they champion the office management role in the workplace.

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This is the Foreign Service Office Management Specialist Podcast. The Foreign Service OMS Podcast is not affiliated with the US Department of State. All stories, opinions, and claims are independent of the US government and does not represent the State Department in any official capacity. Welcome back to the Foreign Service Office Management Specialist Podcast. I'm Stacey, and joining me today is Laura Avakian.

Laura is here today to talk to us about her career experiences, as well as to give us guidance on how to set professional boundaries with your boss. Laura is serving as the OMS to Assistant Secretary Brian Nichols of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, a DC assignment, and has previously served in Kosovo, Turkey, Jordan, and Vietnam. An interesting fact about Laura is that she is also a host of a podcast, so she's familiar with this world.

Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you. I gave a super brief intro about you, but I want to kick this off by inviting you in. And so please tell us more about yourself, more of what you've done and what you're interested in. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. Yes. So as you've mentioned, I've done, this is my fifth tour and I recently received my handshake for my sixth tour, which will be Ambassador OMS in Juba, South Sudan. So I'm really excited to add that to.

my list. I've been in the State Department since September 2013. And it's really a job that I'm very passionate about my entire professional background has actually been in admin support, executive support, administrative business partner, any way you can look at it. That's really what I've kind of built my career around. So absolutely love it.

As far as other things I enjoy doing, I am a massive K-pop fan that basically consumes my entire life. I am known as the K-pop girl around HST.

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That's kind of become my identity inside and outside of work. And I love, you know, karaoke and just having fun and prioritizing myself outside of work hours. you had mentioned about working in executive assistant administrative issues in your career. So before the Foreign Service, were there positions that you held as an administrative assistant?

Absolutely. So I broke into my professional career at 17. No, sorry, at 16. Did my service in retail for a few years. But I actually started a job with Best Buy. I know you plan on releasing the recording possibly outside of the OMS core. So for anybody internationally listening, that's like a big box electronic store.

selling computers, repairing computers, things like that. And during my time with Best Buy, first in the store and then in our district and market offices later on, I was what was called an admin senior and then a district admin and then finally a market administrative assistant. So for the last eight years of my time with Best Buy, was

Essentially the OMS to our market team, which covered 38 stores over the Southwestern United States. So Southern California to Western Texas. I had two district staffs, so about 10 people that I was the EA for and then also assisting with various things going on at our 38 stores, traveling to our 38 stores to do what are called OFCCP audits, which are

auditing hiring practices, which were hired by the government. And really, the funny part is I had always wanted to work for the government. And one day I got an email from USA jobs for the OMS job vacancy in 2012. And I read the description. And I remember it like it was yesterday, I literally called my parents and I was like, did you guys know?

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that I can do the exact same job, but I can work overseas and make way more money. It's honestly even down to, you know, they were explaining you use a Reba and ILMS because that stuff that we were using at Best Buy too. I was like, I order products on those things. So, and I was making 1173 an hour. this was a, a big up.

Great. Laura, that's an amazing story and also a connection because as you mentioned, this podcast will be released externally, one of our goals is to reach the private sector population and to provide them a storyline of how the OMS Corps, folks who works in the government, what life was like before that there is a pathway from

private sector executive assistant into public sector, essentially of the same skill code. I didn't mean to cut you off, but yeah, the job that you had prior to the Foreign Service, it sounded like the skills, the fact that you had to do all the areas of what parts of what you know, MSDU in the Foreign Service translated pretty well. Absolutely. It was so great really coming into this position with that background.

Of course, there were the hiccups in the beginning. remember showing up for my first day in Hanoi in the econ section and my boss at the time was like, okay, so you're going to release a cable about X, Y and Z. And I'm like, yeah, what's the cable? my God. just came straight out of training. Because you know, in DC during the orientations have changed a lot since then. But back then they were like, well,

We have different functions or we have different programs domestically and internationally. So we'll tell you about this, but you won't see it till you get to post. So then I get out and I'm like, smart, what, what? So it was nice to have the core foundational skills to fall back on. And I knew at least, okay, I can at least take care of this and the rest of it'll come with time.

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It's not just your first assignment. It's each assignment that you move into. sort of have to relearn the culture and the functions of post and your role changes a little bit and you adapt, you figure it out. throughout your career from overseas, tracing all the way back to domestic, we'd love to learn a little bit more about the assignments if you can pick some highlights out of each assignment.

Absolutely. So, and I want to just give a quick tip. I've been, especially during bidding season and transition season, I'm telling not only all my OMS friends, but just all of my friends in the department in general, you have to give yourself three months of grace because when you get to a new post, you, you know, like you said, you have to figure out the lay of the land there, your job at its core, especially as an OMS or as a specialist.

A lot of it stays the same. 90 % of it, you know what you need to do, but it's that 10 % that is going to completely throw you off. But I'm telling you by like the first day of month three, you're going to look back and go, what was I so stressed out about? I know this. So that's my number one tip as far as settling in a new post, please give yourself three months of grace.

And then back to your question, some highlights from my tours. So my first tour was Econ ESTH OMS in Hanoi, Vietnam. And I think the main highlight from that tour for me, the main project we were working on was coordinating with USTR and other interagency colleagues on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP. It was a lot, a lot, a lot of work.

maybe just for me because I was first torn. I was figuring it out and I am not an econ minded person. But I worked very closely with our HR colleagues and with the host government to develop a more effective visa system for our interagency colleagues who had to travel on short notice to Vietnam. Vietnam visas take, I don't know if it's changed since then, but they take a

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a long time to process and our USTR colleagues had to be there in 48 hours. through a lot of conversation between HR, between our host government, our ambassador campaigning for us, we were able to formulate kind of a special process that allowed us to make those adjustments necessary. So that's probably that one. My next tour was

RSO OMS in Amman, Jordan, which was fascinating because number one, my background is in criminology and criminal justice. And then my master's is in intelligence operations. So RSO kind of, you know, fits very nicely in there. I loved learning about everything. I loved having the opportunity to be involved in some of the portfolios. I think my favorite project

was working on the talk, which was the tactical tactical operations center, which was, you know, like you see on TV, it's got all the big screens and you can throw stuff, not literally, but you know, you can put stuff up from different projects and stuff, which came in really handy on the day of the Jerusalem announcement when you know, they announced that they were moving the embassy in Israel. So

We, you know, we had a lot of protests outside the embassy and through the talk, we were able to maintain watch over that, keep the embassy community updated, things like that. where was I next? Next one was Ankara, Ankara Turkey as political OMS. And the best part about that tour, I was only there for eight months, but it gave me a lot of insight on doing what's best for you.

which I know we're going to talk about in this episode further on. But I had an opportunity in that tour due to the work that I had done in those eight months to move on to my next position, which was Ambassador OMS in Pristina Kosovo. When I arrived in Ankara, we had just a series of unfortunate events that resulted in them needing coverage in the front office because both OMSs were unexpectedly out.

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and our charge in Turkey, Ambassador Koznet, who's since retired.

scared me to death from day one. He's gonna listen to this and be like, my gosh. But he for a few, for several weeks, I covered in the front office until the two OMSs were able to kind of get back and get into the groove. And during that time, the work that I did with the best with CDA Cosnet at the time, is what ultimately led him to ask me to come to Pristina. So that's really the highlight for me because

Christina was an incredibly gratifying tour. I did spend three years there, two of them over COVID. So that was pretty unfortunate. But working with Ambassador Kosnet and having the level of access that we have in Kosovo, if anyone is looking for like a hidden jewel to bid on, I highly recommend Kosovo. It's got, I think,

I think it's still 25 % differential, but man, it is the level of access that you have there to the government. Like the president would call my cell phone and be like, can I talk to Phil? It was bizarre. It was bizarre. So absolutely recommend that. And then in November of 2021, I returned to DC. And that brings us to today where I am the OMS for Assistant Secretary Nichols in WHA.

And this has by far been my most gratifying tour. Not only has working in HST afforded me the opportunity to learn the nuts and bolts of how our policy is made and executed, but it's also given me just an invaluable look at

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like the inner workings of our department and how to, you have to balance personalities in certain ways. And honestly, it explained to the hierarchy of the department in a new way to me that I really didn't understand or grasp when I was overseas. So as far as projects and things like that, mean, being on this podcast is one of them very excited about that. I've also been working

with the new OMS program unit, which I know you spoke with Courtney or fearless leader. I'm currently on the future of the OMS panel for the OMS program unit discussing, you know, what is the OMS of the future look like 10 years, 20 years from now? How do we work towards that? Especially in the wake of, you know, AI and

using AI to look up things and help it reduce the standard flow of work. Well, we're going to have to change in reaction to that. I've set up a travel program with my boss so that myself and my staff assistants are able to travel with our assistant secretary and staff him, which has been invaluable professional development, particularly for our staff assistants who are typically

you know, second or third tour officers or civil servants who don't necessarily have the opportunity to travel overseas. So I, yeah, I've just, I've really loved this tour and I could probably talk about it all day, but I haven't heard from you in a while. So I'll stop. This is the reason why we have this podcast is to get your story on this platform and to tell it from the way you want it told. And what I loved about you taking me through the journey of your career.

is that at each location that you've been, there has been a challenge, but you've overcome it, right? We can see your learning arc and then we can see the point where you're like, I've got this. And then being challenged and then finding something gratifying out of each of your assignments. I think part of that reason would be how you establish your relationship with your boss.

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So I'd love to get your background on, you know, throughout your career or, you know, perhaps in a particular assignment that you've been or even right now working with the assistant secretary. What has your process been like to create that and develop that relationship with your boss so that you can define the career the way you want it to find?

and I'll be the first person to say that I have not always been this way. folks will recognize me from the listserv kind of banging the drum about setting personal and professional boundaries with people at work, with your boss. When I first started, I was a little bit of a doormat. Honestly, I was afraid of, you know, rocking the boat or I kind of felt like what we're always worried about, right? Like I'm the, I'm just...

just the girl behind the desk and I'll just be over here. But as the years passed, I not only developed my knowledge of the job and my knowledge of the department, but I also developed a confidence in myself and my role in this organization. Nothing happens without us. I mean, even Secretary Blinken has said it, nothing happens without us. So

It started really coming to a head in Kosovo. I experienced some unfortunate pushback when I was attempting to leave to go to Pristina. You know, worked through it, but it really set the stage for me about how important it was to ensure that my boss and my team always understood that my health came first.

So when I got to Kosovo and had thankfully, you know, established this fantastic relationship with Ambassador Kosnet, and I sat down with him at the beginning of the tour once we both arrived and had, I would say probably a 90 minute meeting. It doesn't need to be that long. That's just how it turned out for us where we set baselines, you know.

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Not only did we talk about, sir, how do you like to be interrupted in meetings? Do you prefer coffee be served or X, Y, and Z, the whole gambit, right, of what your ambassador or your principal prefers? But we also talked about what my expectations were. You know, I was comfortable with working overtime, but I would not be working.

15 hour days, you know, it would have to be planned or if it was an exorbitant circumstance, then it wouldn't be an overnight thing. would be on my terms.

really like the main thing at that point was work-life balance was really important to me at that time and it was presented in a way that he respected and it wasn't a battle or you know this this rough discussion and he was like absolutely no problem and there were a couple times where I was like sir we're like

It's time for me to go. And he was like, yeah, absolutely. And that's really what kind of started it for me. And so when I interviewed for this position with the assistant secretary, even in my interview, I kind of set the baseline of, you know, what a success look like for you. And then

wove that content that he gave me into what success in the position looks like for me. And what that looks like for me is a healthy, respectful relationship with my principal, where we both respect and value the work that we bring to the table. And Assistant Secretary Nichols has like blown it out of the water. You hear a lot of things about DC jobs.

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And I know that, you know, there are a lot of my colleagues here in DC, I keep in close contact with thank God for teams. I think I'm the only person in the world who would say that. You know, we talk all the time and I know some of my colleagues are working long, long hours, especially on the seventh floor. My boundary with assistant secretary Nichols was I will work overtime for you. However,

it's only going to be a few WhatsApp me after work. have a channel just with him and my chief of staff. And I said, if you need me, you can WhatsApp me and I will get online immediately, whether that's nights or weekends. And in three years, maybe twice that's happened because in a position like this, really in any position, right? But especially here in DC, like

You could work 24 hours a day. The emails will never stop coming. I could very easily just coast through my hours responding to things. So that is a clear boundary I've set with him. And the way that I have shown that to my peers, to my DASs, to my staffers is I put up an out of office on the weekends and I say, hi, it's the weekend.

Please enjoy the weekend. I'll respond to you on Monday and make it a little funny. And I've had people comment on it, but they're like, you know what? I think I'm going to use that. And I also have in my signature, in my emails that says, I'm reaching out to you at a time that's convenient for me. If it is not convenient to you, unless I note that it's an emergency, don't feel the need to respond immediately. And that has been, I've seen other.

not only other people in my bureau, but other people in other bureaus pick that up as well, which has been really gratifying to see because it makes a huge difference. COVID kind of wrecked this idea of separation of home and state, you know, like it destroyed it. And I've been really passionate about getting that back into place. You deserve to go home and whether it's

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have dinner with your kids, hang out with your spouse. In my case, like sit on the recliner and watch Scandal. That's what I want to do and I want to be able to do it. So that's gone exceptionally well. We even have one of our offices in my bureau, which I love. have weekend duty officers who are, they alternate and they...

That's who's in charge of clearing paper. our staffer knows, our weekend staffer knows, OK, if something urgent comes in for this office, I can reach out specifically to this person. And they send an email to all the offices and say, hey, I'm your insert office here, desk officer for the weekend. Here's my number. By the way, everyone in this office, go ahead and put this block of text that says,

I am not the duty officer this weekend. Please reach out to so and so. I'm really proud of the movement that that has made over the last couple of years. I think you're part of a culture shift in a very positive way because part of this platform is to highlight the scenarios and examples, real life scenarios of how you're living a healthy and positive

environment with your job, we have gotten a little bit lost as our identity is who we are when we clock into the office or never clock out for that matter. But I loved that you provided to us a real life example of, first off, it takes work. Okay, you've got to establish this relationship, this environment with your office and then make it a priority.

set an example and use creative ways and fun ways now for everybody's individual buy-in. We're all different people and we all come from different experiences with work. Some of it is cultural, you know, and I'd hate to say it, but some of it is a generational shift. I love that you mentioned that it also takes the principle in this leadership style to

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put that in place. And so the story that you have provided to us and told us about essentially is going to inspire a lot of our colleagues as well, those who feel that they are trapped and not able to speak to their principle about creative ways to make a fulfilling job. And I want to point out here in this podcast for the record that OMS traveling with a principle is

quite rare, but it can happen. So I just wanted to point out in a positive spin as to how do you create the foundation if that is something you're interested in, you want to do with your principal and you beautifully laid it out the way of what you did it. So I'm really grateful for that, Laura. And you know, thank you so much. And you know, the traveling with the assistant secretary came about purely out of one of our conversations about

things that we needed from each other. It's a constant ongoing discussion. I have daily check-ins with the assistant secretary, mostly to talk about scheduling and my chief of staff to talk about certain policy issues and things like that. But sometimes it comes down to, things are shifting. Venezuela's having a crazy election. Haiti is Haiti. You know, we need to shift some of these things. How do I help you?

and what do I need in order to help you best. And the traveling came about because during one of those meetings, he said, I'm really struggling on these trips, staying in contact with what's happening in DC. can't check my email. I'm becoming a bottleneck for seventh floor paper. I just don't know how to fix that. I said, well, you know what would fix that? Me.

And it, you know, it put together two things. I wanted to travel with the assistant secretary and he needed help. And so, you know, a couple of weeks later, he was doing a trip to Miami and to Haiti, and that was my first trip with him. And boy, was it great. And he told me afterwards, I need you to go with me every time. And I was like, I want to go with you every time. then, you know, I had to share with people. And I'm just kidding.

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But it's become a huge, you professional development activity for our staff assistants, which staff assistants also very rarely get to travel with their principals. So that's that's been morale wise in our office has been huge. And now as we're working on bidding, that's what a lot of our staff assistant bidders are asking. Hey, I heard that staffers get to travel in WHA. We sure do.

Here's how we do it. Wow. But again, it comes down to having having those conversations with your boss. You mentioned working and collaborating with the chief of staff and some of our colleagues have not had that experience because typically chief of staff is a domestic sort of setup. And so I'd love for you to provide an overview. What is a chief of staff? How do you work with them? And do they take away from your job or do they add to your job?

My Chief of Staff, I've had three so far in the three years, because normally it's a one-year job, similar to the staff assistants, the Foreign Service staff assistants. My experience working with the Chief of Staff, they have been nothing but helpful to my position. They are essentially the nexus of policy decisions in our bureau. It is his response, or hers, I've had both male and female, but it is the Chief of Staff's responsibility to kind of

catch all of these balls that, you know, the 15 different offices that we have, kind of meld them together into something that makes sense and then present it to the assistant secretary in a way that he will be able to comprehend in the very limited free time that he has. It's been especially helpful. My current chief of staff, Andrew Griffin, has been amazing at this. and whoever's going to work for him in Madrid next year, you're so lucky and I'm so jealous.

He has been fantastic at doing this because the assistant secretary's focus over the last several months has kind of really been focused on Haiti and Venezuela. Those have been the two more than hotspots. It's been the priority for our bureau. But just because of those two countries doesn't mean we don't have 50 other ones that have a lot of policy and have a lot of things we need to think about. So

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Working with a chief of staff in my experience has been having that person who is able to put all of those things together. Now, when it comes to having those conversations, right? I have conversations with all of my chiefs of staff and they are not in like he is not in my reporting structure. I don't report to him. We are colleagues. We are peers and I've

been incredibly lucky that I've been able to establish these relationships with my three chiefs of staff to where I am a respected colleague and I am on the same playing field. My chief of staffs come to me with, you know, hey, XYZ came up, what do you think about this? Hey, this office is saying this about this country. This doesn't seem right. What are you thinking? It's another window into

you know, getting out of the quote unquote scheduling mindset and putting more of a policy focused hat on. And that is really gratifying. So again, it comes down to relationship building and it comes down to being willing to have those conversations. I do know, you know, there have been colleagues in the past in other bureaus or in other offices that have not had the same experience.

really a lot of the work in DC that I saw when I came back in 2021 was like the OMS is the scheduler and that's it. And while I love me some Outlook calendar, I love it. That is not my only job. And that is not what you're paying me a very sizable salary for, right? So through those conversations and through that relationship building and honestly just

what I can do, you know, the actions behind my words has allowed me to build this really gratifying position with traveling with, you know, traveling with the principal. Right now, I am working on planning a conference on WHA topics, which is the first of its kind. I have been able to focus on OMS issues, spending a lot of time...

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mentoring newer OMSs who have come back to HST, helping, you know, crafting ideas for EERs and things like that, working with the OMS program unit with a specialist advocate. If you're willing to have those hard conversations, one, they stop being so hard. And two, you get to create

anything you want. get to create anything you want as long as you're willing to have those conversations. overviewed your experience working as the direct assistant to a senior principal. We've talked about your experiences working with lateral colleagues, strategic colleagues, such as chief of staffs and staff assistants. I want to take a quick pivot over to the OMS core. One of the

topics that is very important in our core that affects all of us, especially in our career development, professional development is the Foreign Service life and the additional, the constraints when it comes to our professional identity. So what I mean by that is, look, it's really hard living and working overseas, trying to establish yourself, your identity, what you mean to the organization.

And then on top of that, you experience institutional or systematic barriers as it relates to your job description. I would love to hear your perspective on what makes an OMS, an executive assistant job, harder when it comes to what our skill code, our function of our skill code and how our colleagues view the function of our skill code. So other ways to ask this question is sometimes it's hard being in OMS because you're deduced.

to just simply calendaring or opening, know, staying, staffing the office, picking up phones, that makes it hard. But I'd love your background and opinion on commenting on that and how that could change. would say I'm probably going to have some unpopular responses to this, but I would say one of the greatest difficulties

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that we have in the core is something we actually bring upon ourselves. And that is the OMS listserv. And I am deeply passionate about having an avenue for all of us to speak with each other and share ideas. I have so many emails from that listserv saved with like different trackers and different information. My gosh. So, you know, some folks have such a talent for data analysis and things like that.

But where we struggle and where it impacts us the most is the spiraling. And the spiraling not only affects the people who are reading those emails, but the spiraling, if it's happening in the listserv, it's happening in your real life as well, like in your non-listserv life. And that has a direct impact on how OMSs are viewed. Listen, everybody knows that OMSs have it hard.

we have made strides, and there are still there's still room to grow. But it's imperative that we remain the positive face of that growth. And

Every time I go to a new post, even when I showed up in DC, I've had principals come up to me here in DC who've been like,

you do this like no, no OMS I've ever worked with has done this before. And it's something like a travel voucher. And I'm like, that makes no sense. But it's, you know, things happen and our principles and our colleagues don't understand our job. That's a fact. And it's on us to not only positively represent that represent it to them, but to educate them.

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And it's true that not a lot of folks may want to hear it. I have a lot of hope for the newer generation of officers. Man, these folks are like interested and on it and want to be allies and advocates for us. And we do have that in the older generation as well. But what it comes down to is we are going to continue to have struggles and that's not going to go away.

overnight. But I want people to take solace in the fact that we have this OMS program unit now we have an entire office that is dedicated to us. And it is run by us like I cannot stress how incredible that is. But I also cannot stress enough how long that took to get into place. And the reason why is because guys we work in a bureaucracy.

It's, you're not going to make change overnight. So I think what I mean about the spiraling is it's great to commiserate, but we still need to find a positive way to do it because spiraling out of control is, it just makes me think of there's this comedian who has a song that says, shit like this brings the movement down. And that's honestly what it makes me think of.

When it comes to combating, you know, the stereotypical secretary, things like that, it's going to happen. There's no magical fix for it. You have to find a way to not spiral because of it and spin it in a way that you can positively educate them, whether that's through a conversation or whether that's through, you know,

a training on what an OMS is that's for everyone in the embassy and not just for that person, but you know, your leadership can make that person attend. Or if it's your leader, again, having that conversation with your leader. As a representative of the OMS Corps, you have to talk to people. And we do already every day, right? We're running this, we are getting it done. We need to get it done for ourselves.

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So prioritize yourself. You are actually your principal. And make sure that as you're representing the OMS Corps, you're also proud to be representing yourself as well. I healing comes from That's a huge, absolutely. And I've been through it in terms of the symptoms towards burnout. And it began for me, an identity crisis. Like, why am I here? Why am I doing this job?

when nobody respects me. my God. Yes. I the healing comes from within first. I say this in a way where I want to affirm and completely empathize and sympathize with our colleagues where I remember when that first hit me where I thought I were, we're highly educated individuals, professionals with from second, third careers. We're, we're not a set of

a population to mess with because we can do great things like you had mentioned. All of us literally were technologically savvy. And the thing is, when we are met with a systemic barrier, you had mentioned how it takes quite a bit of time to psychologically get your mind wrapped around the fact, look.

This is going to be a movement. It's going to be something where you perhaps some of us will have to dedicate our careers to changing and shifting. Is that fair? Okay. Fair is a different conversation. It's a different conversation when it comes to like, you know, should we, do we deserve this? Why is the institution like that? That's a different position. And I don't want to disregard individuals who are trying to put that upfront saying, well, that's not what equity looks like. That's a...

equally important conversation to be there. However, I wanted to bring you into this conversation about negativity in the service with respect to the office management specialist job code. It's because I see how we can change this. see the positivity we can create. This platform is part of that movement where we can pull such kick-ass stories from our colleagues and highlight them, value them.

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All right. And validate them. so exactly, appreciate you giving me that straight up perspective of we, we could correct course. Don't let us sink our own boat here. All the feelings like the spiraling valid, like I myself am a highly medicated spiral or like it, it's a thing. What's important is

not letting it run everything, you know, and as far as the internal healing, you couldn't be more right about that. My, all of this really came about, I hate to say thanks COVID, but thanks COVID because it gave me the opportunity to be alone with myself for an extended period of time. And I'm an introvert naturally. So I was one of those people who enjoyed it.

but it also gave me the opportunity to look myself in the mirror and come to terms with some really hard truths about myself. I mean, we could go into a whole conversation about self love and manifesting positivity. And I'm also a woo woo girl. Like I could show you my crystal collection. I read tarot cards. Like I'm one of those, right? But.

part of getting to this point where you're comfortable having these kinds of conversations and being more upfront and being not aggressive, I guess assertive is the right word, right? Being more assertive in your position comes from this experience of having worked through some of those inner demons and recognizing that you're the one in charge, actually. No one else can actually tell you what to do.

No one can tell you what to bid on. You can bid on any grade you want. They don't have to interview you, but they could. So why not bid on it? know, people don't travel with the assistant secretary. And I was like, why not? And surprise, I travel with the assistant secretary. Just ask the question, really. So I want to pivot.

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and wrap up towards the end of this podcast. One thing that we'd like to do is something that Courtney and I created. Courtney, the director of the OMS program unit, is a messaging campaign for OMSs. And so this is the opportunity for us to talk about your greatest successes, your proudest moment in the service. And I'd love it in the style of a story if you have it. But if not, we can discuss it. What is your greatest success, proudest moment, or most impactful project as an OMS thus far?

Picture it, Rio de Janeiro, February 2024. I had to look at the clock. No, it's, I can definitely tell you so many stories. I'm proud of so much of the work that I've done in this job. Honestly, it is so fulfilling, but my most recent moment that has, I think the most...

like policy impact, I would say is back in February during the G20 summit in Rio, I was in charge of putting together a foreign minister level ministerial on the crisis in Haiti. Of course, we have offices that not only manage Haitian affairs, also the international or sorry, the interagency working group geared towards the Haiti MSS, the multinational security support element. And

I mean, there's a lot going on. were drowning. They needed help, right? And we are project managers. That's like, we love this stuff, right? And so I went to my chief of staff who I had built this relationship with and I said, Andrew, I can do this. I can put this together. You know, we have the people on the ground who can keep contacts with their interagency and their international partners, but

you need someone who's going to get the event space, liaise with the G20 people, get everyone in one room, I will get them there. And so we sent a team, including myself, to Rio for about a week. And it was, my gosh, when I tell you it was up to the last minute, we did not know where this event was going to be until the day before because our, you know, our

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hosts in Rio were like, well, we want to co host, but we don't want to have it at the G 20 venue. And we were like, great, we'll have it at the hotel. And they were like, no, we can't do it at the hotel. It was, it was honestly one of the most frustrating things I've ever had to put together. But man, when it paid off, and I was sitting in the back of that room, and there were about 20 foreign ministers there from

countries all over the region and all over the world. We had representatives from other regions as well. And through that ministerial, which was hosted by the secretary, we also had UN rep there. We had the Kenyan government there because Kenya is running the MSS program now.

Through the ministerial itself, we were able to raise $110 million for the Haiti MSS through donations from other countries. And that was immensely gratifying after all of that work, because that's money that's going to go directly towards the MSS efforts, which is directly going to impact lives in Haiti and help cease gang activity and keep Haitian citizens safe as they attempt to

develop back to a fully functioning nation. So immensely proud of that. a beautiful story. You set the stage. Thank you. right about that. I had a picture in my head, you flying into country and there you are, and thick in the middle of it, putting these things together. But then you brought me through the impact afterwards. And that stellar figure that you put on there was wow. know, Laura, this conversation has been extremely

extremely thought provoking, exciting, just such a good conversation to have. am so glad to call you my colleague to be connected with you. And hopefully we have an opportunity in a future season to have you back on to share with us on some similar issues or other topics. would love to have you back. thank you so much, Laura, for absolutely being on our podcast today.

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Thank you. No, this has been such an exciting opportunity. I am thrilled that we have this venue to capture stories from all of our different colleagues. We all come from different backgrounds and have so many varying stories and examples that we can offer, strengths that we can help foster in others. And I'm just really excited to not only see what the future of

The OMS Corps is what the future of this podcast is, but I cannot wait to listen to the episodes and see what everyone's saying. Thanks for tuning in. We're so excited to have you be with us. This is the Foreign Service OMS Podcast.