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The Foreign Area Officer podcast is not an official audio production.

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The views shared in the recordings are the personal views of the interviewee and the host.

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They are for informational purposes only and not necessarily those of the Department of Defense or its components.

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Hello, everyone. This is Michael Hill with the Foreign Area Officer podcast.

0:46

Today, my guests are Lieutenant Colonels Alex and Emma Shade.

0:50

Emma Shade is a U. S. Army Signal Officer from Georgia.

0:53

She currently serves as Desk Officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency covering Sub Saharan Africa.

0:59

Emma speaks French and Arabic, which she used in her assignments in N'Djamena Chad as the Chief of the Office of Security Cooperation and at SETAF-AF in Vicenza, Italy as the Sub Saharan Africa Desk Officer.

1:11

She completed her I. R. T. at the U. S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

1:17

Alex Shade is from Ridgewood, New Jersey.

1:20

A graduate of the Citadel Military College, he commissioned as a U.

1:23

S. Army armor officer, where he served for two years before transitioning to military intelligence.

1:29

An Arabic and German speaker, he currently serves on the Joint Staff J5 on the Israel Desk.

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Previous assignments include Army Attaché in N'Djamena, Chad, including nine months as Acting SDO/DATT, North Africa Desk Officer at SETAF-AF in Vicenza, Italy, and he completed his IRT at U.

1:46

S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco.

1:49

Welcome to the podcast, Alex and Emma. it's a great pleasure to have you here with us today.

1:53

I want to start out asking you Alex, to tell us about your IRT experience in Morocco.

1:58

Was that a good experience for you? Is there anything that you would've changed to make it a better experience? No, the IRT experience in Morocco was phenomenal.

2:08

So I, I was there with five other FAOs.

2:11

Three of them were 48 Golfs two of them were 48 Juliets.

2:15

One of them was a Marine Corps FAO. And we fell under the Offices of Security Cooperation.

2:22

I know sometimes IRT FAOs fall under the DAO.

2:24

There was more utilization for us in the OSC.

2:27

It was great, the OSC chief at the time divvied out various projects for us to do.

2:33

And so between myself and another 48G we were responsible for representing the embassy at the African Lion joint exercise event.

2:43

Planning and contributing to the African lion exercise in Morocco.

2:47

At the time it was conducted by MARFOREURAF Marine Forces Europe, Africa so it was a great opportunity to, build initial relationships with Moroccan senior military leaders, with AFRICOM points of contact and with Marine forces, Europe, Africa points of contact.

3:05

And then when we were not doing that, which we considered a day job we were traveling in and around Morocco and around the region.

3:13

Emma was in Ethiopia at the time.

3:15

So we used a lot of opportunity to travel to see countries between North and Central Africa, Sub Saharan Africa.

3:25

So it was fantastic. I really enjoyed Morocco as an IRT site.

3:29

And Emma I want to talk about your IRT experience as well but I want to go back before your IRT experience and ask a question about your decision to switch from Arabic to French while you were at DLI and what was that experience like to have to shift from one language to another and what was the reason you made that switch? So I didn't really shift from one language to another.

3:53

I'd already had a decent background in French.

3:56

And at that point I was already testing in a 3 3 in French, just from study and college and so on.

4:03

So I was in the Arabic course at DLI because I was a Golf but I had a lot more professional interests in Africa.

4:11

And it just had more fascination for me.

4:14

So I requested from FAO Proponent that I be changed AOCs and my request was granted.

4:23

I think I was fairly fortunate because at that time Proponent needed Golfs and Juliets in fairly equal numbers, and so it was fairly mission neutral for Branch and Proponent.

4:33

And given that they needed officers in both AOCs, and I was language qualified by that point for both I think Proponent was happy for the officer to, to be professionally satisfied with where they were placed, given that I was equally qualified for both, and that there were equal mission needs for both.

4:54

So I wasn't asking to go against the needs of the army, which is what I think was really the factor that greased those skids.

5:00

That's interesting because I've had at least one friend that requested to switch to a different AOC and did not have that same experience.

5:09

He was in, in particular, he was a, assigned to be a Juliet but had a family history in another part of the world.

5:17

And spoke languages from that part of the world. I'm not saying which part of the world, cause I don't want to, I don't want to dox him.

5:22

But he might know who he is. I always found that interesting that you were able to make that switch, but I think like you said for, as far as the army is concerned, it's mission neutral.

5:32

Both regions tend to have fewer officers than they need.

5:37

So moving you from Golf to Juliet and you already have your 3/3 in French.

5:41

And you're finishing the Arabic course. So it was easy for them to make that switch.

5:45

But I imagine that having done the Arabic course it makes you a candidate for Northern African assignments.

5:52

Do you keep your Arabic well enough that you could still go and serve in a Golf assignment if you needed to? I think at this point it would take a fair bit of brushing up to get the kind of Arabic score that I was able to get coming out of DLI, let's just say.

6:05

But I think given our particular family circumstances and being enrolled in the army married couples program.

6:13

For us availability of assignments and timing of assignments being available for us is a more relevant factor than, optimal language fit, for example.

6:27

Gotcha. To add insult to injury, you were sent to DLI in Arabic and also knew French and then they sent you to Ethiopia, which of course is a completely different culture and language profile than anything else you had done.

6:42

So what does that experience like in Ethiopia? Were you able to use the languages that you knew or was it all a brand new experience? Yeah, so IRT site certainly was never selected because of its language training opportunities, let's just say.

6:57

But I did have a good experience there. I worked for the SDO/DATT and I spent a little bit of time doing some special projects in the OSC as well.

7:04

But mostly I was on the road traveling. And during the time when I was on IRT in Ethiopia, I was able to set up an opportunity to use language sustainment funds to enroll in a French course in Dakar, Senegal.

7:19

Specifically because I was assigned to a non- French speaking country and I was able to make the case that it'd be beneficial for my professional development to do some additional French work in a Francophone country.

7:32

So I was really fortunate to have that opportunity as well. And was that a good program in Senegal the French program that you did there for the language training? Absolutely Yeah, I've found with some people is that they want to do these, they want to go overseas and do the language training, but they don't know where to go.

7:49

No, it was phenomenal. I went to the Baobab Center for Language Studies in Dakar, Senegal at the recommendation of some other FAOs who'd studied there previously with language sustainment funds and had the kind of the system worked out and the processes worked out.

8:03

No, it was phenomenal. I had a one on one, about a month long course one on one with an instructor.

8:09

Almost completely verbal oral tutoring where we would sit in a room and talk about the issues of the day for Senegal, for Africa, for the world in French.

8:19

And then the instructor would, coach me and correct my errors.

8:23

And We would go on from there.

8:25

So it was really crucial for me to turn sort of my textbook college French knowledge into conversational French.

8:37

And was that a long course or just a couple weeks? I did about a month, actually.

8:43

Wow. I guess if we're on IRT, they're That's really what we're there for anyway.

8:48

But I imagine they can probably adjust fire as necessary for the length of course that you need.

8:52

Yeah, absolutely. You can tailor it whatever you need.

8:55

And you saw almost every country in Africa.

8:59

Maybe we could reduce that and say in Sub Saharan Africa, no, I wa I think you're giving me the traveler giving me, I think you're giving me more credit than I deserve, Michael.

9:08

I think I probably hit about 15 countries on IRT, which is significantly fewer than many Juliet's I speak with.

9:14

But I think that what I did see I learned a lot and saw thoroughly if I can say.

9:22

Does anything stand out as a formative experience, whether it be supporting an exercise or I don't know, hiking Mount Kilimanjaro is something that every FAO should do, but.

9:32

Anything that stands out as being a great experience from your IRT time? Yeah, absolutely.

9:38

And this is very AOC specific.

9:40

Of course, it depends on the security situation of wherever you're traveling.

9:44

But I would recommend to all FAOs if they can to do some self driving and to get out and just move yourself in a truck somewhere in a car, across a country, across a border.

9:54

Learn how to deal with all of that driving and negotiating the finding directions and the border crossings, all that stuff is formative for me.

10:04

I went with a couple of other FAOs on a 9, 000 kilometer road trip around Southern Africa in a truck that was located at embassy in Botswana that was available for FAOs to borrow.

10:18

The FAO program owned that truck. And so we all flew into Botswana and then jumped in the truck and set off across Southern Africa for six weeks and driving ourselves and getting into all sorts of trouble.

10:30

And the important thing is getting ourselves out of all sorts of trouble.

10:33

That was really formative and really crucial for learning how to navigate those sorts of situations on your own, so that when you're later assigned to a country team you can be the person who has experience doing those sorts of things who can.

10:48

Plan those trips for senior leaders or with host nation military and be able to do that sort of thing.

10:55

I think that's really, it was really formative for me.

10:57

And I think really crucial, something I would advise to all FAOs to do on IRT, if they have that sort of opportunity available to them, Now, I gotta ask What kind of trouble did you get into? And how did you get out of it? well, at one point we were we were driving up into the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and we were about.

11:18

Six hours from a paved road, which is also the last time we'd seen any other vehicle traffic.

11:24

All we saw was a bunch of elephants and zebras and gazelles and managed to get the truck mired in a big pit of sand.

11:32

Luckily had a pioneer kit on the truck and spent a couple hours digging ourselves out managed to be close enough to a tree that we could use the winch as well and managed to get the truck dug out and back on the road into some sort of a place of civilization before it got dark.

11:47

So no, no real sort of trouble but I guess self inflicted, but also self recovered.

11:53

I don't remember hearing stories, so you must not have gotten arrested or fined or caused any international incidents.

11:58

To tell that story on this podcast. Alex you shouldn't tell it either.

12:05

Fair enough. I'll leave that one I'll leave that one where it lies then.

12:08

Okay, Alec, what about you, Alex? Anything that from your IRT experience that that stands out in your mind is, you learn from it or that was an amazing experience? I, when you asked Emma that question I'm just sitting here, just going over all my IRT stories.

12:20

There were some. So many really cool experiences.

12:23

I had the opportunity to travel through most of North Africa, most of the Middle East.

12:29

The one that sticks out in my mind, I had planned this really long backpacking trip from northern Morocco all the way to the south.

12:36

And it culminated in a 1000 kilometers circuit motorcycle ride from Marrakesh and it is absolutely phenomenal sort of Motorcycle near the, yeah, I'm not, I'm probably, I probably violated a bunch of policies on that one, but it was totally worth it.

12:54

And yeah. Yeah, exactly.

12:57

No, it was absolutely phenomenal. So it was a route of a thousand Kasbahs and it is basically these little traditional Moroccan forts that, that pepper this road through the desert.

13:08

And so I spent about a week and a half just doing that trip.

13:11

Staying at these little hostels and interacting with like local communities.

13:16

It was really cool. That's just one.

13:18

There's so many, I had my camera confiscated in Algeria for taking pictures of things I shouldn't have.

13:25

And, There it is. yeah, I think Emma and I stumbled upon some sleeping border guards we're trying to get from Mauritania no, from Senegal into Mauritania.

13:36

Yeah, that's right. We drove from Dakar to Nouakchott one time on IRT.

13:41

We had to convince them To open up the border crossing and check our passports.

13:46

And it took a lot of patience to get through that one.

13:49

A lot of patience or a lot of sweet talk? I spent, I did not spend any money on that one.

13:56

So there was just lot of sweet talk. We, we spent the time instead of the money is how that works out.

14:01

That's fair. That's fair. Did they give you trouble because you were American or because you were traveling on certain passports They had just finished lunch and it was nap time.

14:12

Yeah. They just couldn't be bothered. So you guys having done IRT in different locations, how did that work for you guys in the Married Army Couples Program to get back together after that after that first assignment on IRT, was that an easy thing to do? We weren't married then actually.

14:33

Yeah. Fun fact. We got married afer IRT.

14:36

That's true. I didn't know that. I thought you guys got married at DLI.

14:40

No we met at DLI. No so we were still dating at that point but it was a unique opportunity because there, there are countries, again along the seams of North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa that have intrinsic value to any junior FAO to go visit and learn the cultures.

15:00

And so Emma and I maximized those opportunities, to go to Egypt or to go to Senegal or to go to Ethiopia and go on travels together where we had the chance.

15:11

So it was really cool. And we had a good cohort.

15:13

We still have a good cohort of foreign area officers who, we all linked up and did travels together at odds and ends and it's.

15:21

It was a really cool time looking back on those memories.

15:24

I want to talk a little bit about your experience in the Married Army Couples Program For those who don't know in the U.

15:33

S. Army, whenever you have two active duty officers, NCOs, soldiers that are married, the Army does its best to work with that couple to make sure that they get assignments either at the same post or at the very least at posts close to each other.

15:51

So this is, one part of your story that I think is amazing that, both of you are army FAOs.

15:58

So the assignments are very limited and you two are assigned to two different AORs, one being a 48 Golf Middle East North Africa and the other one being a Sub Saharan Africa for an area officer.

16:10

So how have you made that work so far to make sure you guys get assignments close to or next to each other? Like Emma said, our number one priority has always been being together as a family.

16:21

And then I think our secondary objective has always been to serve in some capacity overseas because we enjoy that aspect of the career.

16:31

And so we've had some pretty good luck with this, since we were married Being different AOCs has its own drawbacks regarding assignments.

16:38

But I think as a whole pre change to marketplace and then post change marketplace branch has always been flexible with finding assignments for us together.

16:49

Our first assignment together, we lucked out U.S.

16:53

Army Africa, which because of the fact that it works.

16:57

Through the entire continent it, it has billets for 48 Golfs and for 48 Juliets and with Chad obviously Arabic is a commonly used language so there's a justification there to have an Arabic speaker fill one of the roles there It's for us for success in the MACP.

17:17

Again, it's about looking for those opportunities where they exist and communicating with branch frequently.

17:24

I'll say that this new AIM marketplace that they've established it's broadened what you can look at.

17:30

But yeah. There, there's still a heavy hand from HRC guiding the market decisions rightly and I think we understand that but it's doable.

17:41

It's totally workable for two active duty FAOs who are married to make this career work.

17:49

I think it also depends a lot on the service members themselves being flexible about location.

17:56

Alex spoke to our priorities, which is to be together as a family as a number one priority.

18:01

And our number two priority is to have overseas assignments.

18:05

And that has been our guiding principles as we've been working with branch over the years trying to get assigned together.

18:13

But I think. It's good to be clear eyed about it because you're not going to get everything you want all the time.

18:20

You do to be willing to go places that otherwise you wouldn't choose to go to.

18:26

You might have to take assignments that wouldn't be your top choice assignment, or even the most career advancing assignment sometimes.

18:34

And, that's all. Those are Choices that we make and decisions that we make that also makes it work is being clear eyed about your priorities and being flexible.

18:45

Flexibility, has to be the number one, most important thing.

18:49

How long have you been at your current assignments? It's literally just about a year.

18:52

A year and a half for me, I got to the DC area about six months before Alex did.

18:57

Okay. So when do y'all start looking for your next assignment? You guys looking, a couple of years down the road at the assignments that might come available to see where you can FAO HRC does a pretty good job of sending the career managers out.

19:10

In the past, typically they would come visit and either attend a JFAOC or attend some kind of conference and make themselves available to talk not only about your file strength or you as an officer, how you're doing.

19:22

They would also talk about upcoming assignment options.

19:25

In the past, the way we've looked at it is, a year or so out, I think roughly is the timeline year and a half, maybe where they come online and say, Hey, this is what we're likely looking at.

19:35

And then for us, it's a tailored discussion because of our situation.

19:39

And they're like, are you willing to take XYZ option? How does that fit for your family? And we have some time to come back and give them an answer.

19:48

So that's typically how the process for us has worked.

19:51

So yeah roughly a year and a half out, I want to say, but I may be misremembering the timeline wise.

19:58

Okay. That's good. I find myself always looking for the next job.

20:03

I don't know what it is about me, but as soon as I got here, I started looking at the assignment cycles.

20:08

And when people are coming in and leaving and how long I was going to be here.

20:11

My wife loves to point out that we never stay anywhere for as long as we should.

20:16

I told her we were going to be here for three years she said, you told me that when we went to Mexico and we stayed there for two, how'd that work out? But it's something we, I think we all need to be doing is looking down the road a little ways.

20:30

You were on point timeline wise with Chad. What was it like a, oh, is it one year, one year unaccompanied? I ended up being 14 months with, COVID and yeah, oh yeah.

20:41

I forget about COVID. COVID and then of course you getting COVID delaying everything and everyone coming out to replace.

20:48

And then I got I don't want to tell much of my story here, but ended up working out well for me that you didn't come out so late.

20:56

And then also that the rebels came down from the North because I needed to go home.

21:03

And the army wasn't going to let me leave Chad until I had orders then you had already been there for a month by the time I, by the time I left.

21:10

And if it wasn't for that ordered departure I would have been there until June, just hanging out in the office.

21:17

I want to circle back. If we could.

21:19

Something that we discussed a little bit before and talk about your transition into FAO.

21:26

How did you find out about the FAO job? And then what was it like transitioning into it.

21:32

Yes, I found, I knew about the idea of FAO since since I saw the career day display at basic training in 2002.

21:42

I'd forgotten about it for 10 years or so.

21:46

With the idea that I knew I couldn't go into it until I had finished my KD time as captain.

21:51

One of my, one of my really good friends we'd been assigned together since second lieutenants.

21:57

He had submitted his FAO application and had found out that he had been accepted.

22:03

And that's when I found out that we were eligible.

22:05

I wasn't really keeping up with HRC or MILPER or ALARACT messages about when we were allowed to do the VTIP process.

22:12

So I found out right before I was deploying to Afghanistan that I was in the window to apply.

22:19

And so I submitted my application. I found out when we were wrapping up at JRTC that I was accepted, and then I went on my deployment to Afghanistan in 2013 knowing that at the end of it, I would be going to language school at DLI.

22:34

So I had DLI. And he dreams of living in Monterey, California on my mind, that entire deployment, which was horrendous.

22:43

And then from there it was starting the pipeline and moving into language school.

22:46

And so for Arabic as it's 18 months program.

22:50

So it was two years of essentially living in monterey.

22:52

I actually don't think I knew. I think was shorter, but I don't know why, but I can believe 18 months.

22:57

Yeah. And I milked it too. I think I, I flunked my first DLPT, so I got to stay there a Ha.

23:01

Shame on you. Yeah.

23:05

Let me, I have to ask you, was that Ryan Curtis, was the guy you were serving with? No, so Ryan Curtis was, we were both second lieutenants at the same time.

23:14

I didn't know he assessed to become a FAO until after I, I think I was in Morocco at the time and I found out.

23:20

Yeah, which is fantastic. He's a great, he's a great guy.

23:23

Glad he made the switch over, to FAO. Okay.

23:26

Were you in command when you applied? No I never did command.

23:29

So I was MI and I was a S2 for battalion.

23:33

And then my second KD job we had just formed a security force assistance brigade.

23:38

And so I was Intel advisor on one of the SFAB teams.

23:43

Interesting. That was a bit, that would have been one of the earlier SFAB teams, I think.

23:47

It was one of the first. What year was that? First for reference, So it was a, yeah 10th Mountain Division got they, they received orders to, to reform or form a SFAB back for their deployment to Afghanistan.

24:00

So we did a lot of lead up training We did language training in Dari.

24:03

We did and the type of training that is regional specific.

24:07

So it was really cool. There's a lot of culture training language training.

24:11

And then basic infantry stuff and a lot of maneuver at JROTC is it, is a cool experience watching how the brigade transformed into this SFAB and then deployed in that concept.

24:22

So we actually have one of the SFABs.

24:25

I think it's the first SFAB here at Fort Moore.

24:28

I think the mission and the construct has changed since you had done it, 10 years ago, but is that something that you would look forward to doing again? Working with an SFAB? As a FAO? Yeah.

24:40

Me personally, no it's not my bread and butter.

24:44

I think for me, I don't want to criticize it cause it's a great concept.

24:47

It's just for me personally it's more tactical than I want to be Okay.

24:51

Yeah, that's fair. at this point in my life. Yeah, but.

24:55

From what I understand, they have FAO billets now in the SFABs, right? Or there's some component that FAO plays with, with the SFAB? Yeah, so I, I think that's phenomenal.

25:06

two, I think, in the SFAB here. Definitely one, but I think two FAOs in the SFAB.

25:11

That's really cool. I imagine, too, that the structure and the mission has changed in the, the 10 years since you were working there.

25:20

No, sure and keep in mind the unit I was in, wasn't one of these permanent SFABs.

25:24

It was a temporary formation for that specific deployment.

25:29

And then once the deployment ended all the soldiers and teams broke back into their original battalions that they came from.

25:35

Vice being a, vice being an organic task organized SFAB, which is what they have nowadays.

25:41

But this is the precursor to it. And I think around the same time they were actually standing up the first SFABs because I remember right around the time I finished Monterey is when they were first getting utilized.

25:50

I remember they were doing a lot of recruiting for the SFAB when I was going through ILE back in 2017, so it sounds about right.

25:58

Yeah, so we ended up getting the first SFAB command teams coming out to U.

26:02

S. Army Africa back in, in 2019.

26:04

And then we saw SFAB commanders coming through in Chad as well in support of security cooperation efforts there, Yep, back in, in late 21.

26:16

That's great. Cause I had asked when I was there for SFAB support and they said, absolutely not.

26:22

They said, you are priority number, 25 of 22 priorities.

26:27

It took me about a year, Michael, actually, to get that set up.

26:31

And, Well done! And this is something too that I think is useful about just networking and going to different FAO assignments, right? Because before we got to Chad, we were assigned to U.

26:42

S. Army Africa. Which at that time was responsible for mission planning for SFAB utilization in Africa.

26:49

And I think even now they have a similar construct. So we had come from three years in the security cooperation directorate at U.

26:56

S. Army Africa, working on this SFAB planning problem set.

27:00

And so by the time we got to Chad and looked around and said, Hey, this could be really useful here.

27:06

We'd had that experience previously in USARAF with the planning process, and we knew who the players were and it was much easier to get into their planning cycle for the following year, which is why it took me, like I said, about a year to get it done.

27:21

But we were able to finally crack the code on that.

27:23

And I'm a huge proponent of FAOs spending time as they can on the Army staffs and the COCOM staffs.

27:30

I think it's huge as first assignments. I think it's hugely formative for FAOs and really useful to understand those processes when they go down to their country team assignments to know the players and the battle rhythms and the planning cycles really helps your effectiveness later on the country team.

27:49

I want to come back to that one. Actually a couple of things I want to circle back to, but I want to come back to being on the army staff and how that helped you in your other assignments.

27:58

But I wanted to ask you quickly about networking.

28:01

Is that something you mentioned too. How has that made a difference for you, Emma, in all the work that you've done, whether it be in chat or in other assignments? I think it's just the same thing that everyone knows about networking in any industry, any field.

28:17

It is so much easier to get stuff done with people, than if you're making cold calls if you've previously built relationships of trust, if you've demonstrated to people that you're competent and trustworthy and that you follow through when you say you're going to follow through then you can reach back out into that network.

28:35

In subsequent assignments, they know who you are, they know you're good for it.

28:39

And it's a lot easier to get people to say yes at that point.

28:45

Do you have any Practices or things that you do to help build your network? No nothing deliberate like that.

28:51

I think the most important thing is just to be good at your job and to give it your all when you're in every job that you're in, because everyone who you're working with you're, it's such a small community.

29:07

You're going to run into him again and reputation means so much among FAOs.

29:14

So no nothing specific about trying to deliberately cultivate a network other than just doing the best that you can and really thriving wherever you're assigned.

29:26

That's really the most important thing is doing well at the job you're currently doing.

29:32

And that will make all the difference. And so I wanted to talk a little bit more about your experience and I guess yours too, Alex on Army staff or working at SETAF and how that helped you help prepare you for the jobs that you would do later.

29:45

Yeah it was a perfect storm in terms of building regional competency for me, at least.

29:52

I started my understanding of Northern Africa, doing a 30 day immersion in Morocco and ended up going and doing a one year IRT there and then my first utilization assignment was as the North Africa desk officer at U.

30:08

S. Army Africa. It was it allowed me to continue to rely on things I had learned in the past specifically about the region and with relationships I had already established when I was working in Morocco and build on that in support of U.

30:23

S. Army Africa objectives on the continent.

30:26

That being said, I, that what Emma said the job itself working on army staff, I think is a perfect gateway job for a junior FAO.

30:37

It allows you to understand how a staff works.

30:41

It allows you to understand how that staff achieves its objectives with partner nations, how that staff works at the combat and command level and at the interagency level with the country teams.

30:53

And it gives you a really good perspective on the annual requirements, the the exercises, the programs for that specific region.

31:03

And if you as a FAO get an opportunity to serve at the Army staff and then a follow on assignment in that region you'll have a better, you'll have a better network address book.

31:16

You'll have a better understanding of the key players.

31:18

You'll have a better understanding of how to get what you need for your country.

31:23

So it was a great stepping stone. I think personally for me and it was a good opportunity.

31:28

Everybody at US Army Africa was fantastic FAOs and non FAOs.

31:32

Do you have anything to add to that one, Emma? No, I think Alex is spot on working at the COCOM or at the Army Component Command really helps you to learn the AOR.

31:45

And the processes and the exercises and the structures and that's the sort of military knowledge that makes you valuable to the ambassador to back to the COCOM et cetera, when you're on a country team assignment.

32:01

So it's a really great way to start out as a FAO if you have the chance.

32:07

I think one of the most important things we do or that we learn in our job is knowing who to call.

32:14

And I think working on that staff really helps you get that piece of it because I, there've been a lot of situations, current job and former jobs where someone asks a question, be it the ambassador or someone at the embassy.

32:26

The really, it comes down to who do I need to call to get this answer.

32:29

So being in that position where you've been the person to call or you get to know the structures of the organization and you know who you need to talk to get that answer.

32:37

It makes a big difference. It saves a lot of time and trouble.

32:40

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent.

32:44

I wanted to shift focus now and talk a little bit about mentorship in the FAO community.

32:49

And this is a favorite subject for me because I have benefited from some very fantastic mentors along the way.

32:56

And feel free to give shout outs to anybody if you feel like if there's anybody that's been helpful to you along the way but how have you sought out mentors and what have mentors done for you that has been helpful in the past? I'll self admit I'm not good at this.

33:12

I'm not good at seeking out mentors. Any of my former bosses will tell you that I'm a pain in the ass to work for.

33:18

That, that being said I'm grateful for the caliber of mentorship that has been offered to me.

33:24

And that has stuck by me for the for the past eight to 10 years that I've been doing this.

33:29

And I'll say that the caliber of mentorship that exists within the FAO community is incredible.

33:36

You've got some fantastic senior leaders.

33:39

General Nicholson, for example is phenomenal.

33:42

A lot of recently retired senior FAOs that, that still continue to remain active in the community that are still working in the capacity of civilian that are doing a fantastic job.

33:54

And some of my mentors have not been FAOs.

33:56

Our current ambassador, Chad is somebody I reach out to very frequently.

34:02

As someone I look for advice from he's a phenomenal person.

34:05

But I will say to any of the newer FAOs that mentors are critical and 95 percent of those in our branch are more than happy to give you advice on your career path or any challenges that you're facing.

34:17

I would agree. It's been my experience that Fejos are great at mentoring and giving advice and helping to guide more junior Fejos.

34:28

But I do think that's Something that FAOs have to specifically seek out to, to specifically, reach out to those folks and ask for their input or their guidance.

34:39

And but I think it's readily available to, to FAOs who ask for it.

34:44

It really is incumbent on us to reach out to them.

34:47

They'll always make time. But they don't know who you are unless you reach out to them.

34:52

Absolutely. Changing topics, how have you managed to keep up your language? Your last assignment was on the country team, so that's always very easy to do it then.

35:03

Arabic is a language that goes away fast if you're not using it.

35:08

Sure At least for me, French, not so much, but imagine Arabic goes away fast.

35:12

So how are you guys maintaining your language proficiency? So Arabic, it does go away fast, but the opportunities to maintain practice are there, especially with the internet.

35:23

You can log on to any major Arabic news broadcast site and get a live stream of their Arabic language broadcast and stay on it that way.

35:32

Same with reading. I think the challenge for Arabic, especially in North Africa, is that the dialects are so vastly different from schoolhouse Arabic that you end up getting a separate DLPT.

35:46

So for example for Chad, I actually took Sudanese dialect Arabic as a DLPT test solely because it the Chadian Arabic is so different from modern standard from classical Arabic.

35:57

So the opportunities are there at least. I think there's a lot of great resources that that DLI still has.

36:03

Online that you have access to. Now that be that being said, my first assignment I was living in Italy, surrounded by Italians working partly in North Africa.

36:13

My second assignment. Was in Chad, speaking a very different dialect of Chadian Arabic and then surrounded by everybody else who was speaking French.

36:23

And now I'm not using any Arabic because I'm working as the Israel desk officer for the Joint Staff.

36:29

I, all of those to say there's not a lot of organic opportunities to maintain modern standard Arabic.

36:37

It just requires you taking the time and putting in the legwork for it and sometimes I have the bandwidth to do that.

36:44

Sometimes I don't like right now with everything going on in Israel.

36:46

I don't have that bandwidth. I know. I've had.

36:49

Dreams and lots of plans to continue and improve my French by bringing out my Schaum's book that we got at DLI and opening on that up every day and doing 10 minutes.

36:59

But somehow that time just gets moved on to other stuff.

37:03

Yeah, for sure. It's a real challenge.

37:05

I would encourage everybody to keep on top of the language sustainment opportunities that FAO or various commands offer as you can, sometimes it's more useful if you can carve out a week or two of dedicated time to language study.

37:20

It might be more productive than trying to fit in 10 minutes here or there, if you can really force yourself to do that.

37:25

If you're in that assignment where you're not using it every day.

37:30

You gotta just find some way, I don't know, on your commute, during your lunch hour.

37:35

Turn on BBC Arabic, whatever it is for your target language.

37:39

And at a minimum, just do some passive absorption as you can.

37:43

Have either of you taken advantage of a language sustainment funds to do any more, direct, weeks long training? I know Emma, you said you did it during IRT, but have you found an opportunity to do it since then? I did it when I was assigned to USARAF during COVID lockdown.

38:00

I had about six weeks of French intensive study online that I was able to do.

38:05

And currently I'm assigned to DIA headquarters and I haven't personally done it, but the headquarters also offers in house language courses that are available for FAOs assigned to the headquarters to take advantage of at no cost.

38:21

So that's an opportunity as well. I have not yet taken advantage of any of that language sustainment funds, but I plan on it every year.

38:29

It's funny how that works out though, isn't it? I wanted to go back and talk a little bit about your experience in Chad working in different offices there.

38:37

But really what I want to talk about is what you did there that you felt was impactful.

38:43

We talked a little bit about the SFAB that, that ended up coming there which that for me was a big win for the United States in a country that's mostly dominated by the French as far as the security cooperation relationship.

38:55

I tell ya, it's pretty tricky what happened in Chad, because when we first arrived there, there was still a lot of COVID lockdown.

39:02

There was still a lot of programs that had been just not executed for a while because of COVID.

39:07

And then we were able to get some momentum going for about a year or two about a year and a half, maybe.

39:14

But the the rebel incursion and the ordered departure and the change in political circumstances in Chad, which, of course, impacted U.

39:24

S. programming for statutory reasons changed things also.

39:28

I think that's just the nature, though, of security cooperation.

39:31

You're constantly executing someone else's plans or you're making plans that someone else is going to execute after you're gone.

39:38

And political circumstances, policy circumstances, security circumstances, impact all of that as well, year to year.

39:47

So I, I don't know that the SFAB program in Chad ever came to this sort of fruition that I might've hoped that it would.

39:55

But that's the nature of the job, right? Are we have to execute the U S interest which change based on circumstances.

40:06

And we have to execute the combatant commander's campaign plan.

40:09

We have to execute the ambassador's integrated country strategy.

40:13

And that's all based on, our national interests and policies.

40:17

That just goes back to that flexibility and savvy that FAOs have to develop about those things and discretion to do what makes sense given the current circumstances.

40:28

We often don't end up executing the programs that we prepare.

40:34

When we roll into country at least for the first year, we spend executing all the programs that our predecessor had set up for us.

40:42

And then, especially in an assignment, where you're only there for two years, your second year there, you're setting up all the programs for your, follow on person.

40:52

In my previous assignment in Mexico that's exactly what it was.

40:55

And I rolled in and I executed some of the 284 programs that I had set up there that the, that my predecessor, Jamie Neely had done and then the next, and then I proposed all the programs for the following year and then started ramping those programs up.

41:09

But I will never see those programs executed because they're all in fiscal years and I'm not going to be, I'm not there anymore to see it done.

41:16

That's exactly right. So we are working somebody else's legacy and then setting up our own is how it ends up, how it ends up being is Unless you have A crisis, for example.

41:26

Any one of these countries that, that you name off the top of your head that's had a crisis in the last 50 years or so, they, there's derailed US programs to an extent.

41:38

So Alex, you walked into a crisis your second day on the job.

41:43

So Yeah. Pretty much We got on the flight on the departure flight on a Saturday.

41:49

Leaving Chad, and I think that was on October or on April 20th.

41:53

And then we landed in DC on the 21st and on BBC it said, Chadian president is dead.

42:01

So you walked right into a crisis on day two of being, in charge of the DAO.

42:06

What was that like for you? How did you, yeah. Yeah. Deal with that.

42:10

It is interesting. I arrived in Chad thinking to myself, this is great.

42:14

I'm going to get to spend time with my family. I'm going to get to go to a bunch of diplomatic receptions and hold my cocktail glasses at the stem and say a few words here there.

42:26

And and yeah, I think in April we were We were actively involved.

42:30

I think our, the entire embassy was actively involved in the in the election that was taking place that year.

42:36

So that was what, April 17th was? The military vote? I Sounds about right.

42:41

Yeah, somewhere around there. Yeah. And, and that was the same day that the Rebels former Chadian rebels came down from Libya into the country and started attacking, military sites in the north of the country.

42:51

And I think given the rate of their advancement and the questionable response by the Chadian military, that was enough for us to say, Hey, there are not enough adequate resources available in country to ensure.

43:06

The safety of American citizens. And so I, the embassy made the decision to do an ordered to departure.

43:12

And in that 24 hour window when you guys departed and when you landed President Deby had decided to go and lead his military on the front lines and had died on April 20th.

43:26

So it was interesting from going from steady state, normal day to day embassy life to dealing with a crisis.

43:33

It's, it was a unique experience.

43:36

It's not the first crisis that I had been involved with and I find myself in one again right now.

43:45

In my current job. But it was a really interesting opportunity to really work at the interagency, country team level at the national interagency level in figuring out what the U.

43:59

S. response was to what happened.

44:02

Once the military regime announced its formation and then how we worked that relationship going forward.

44:10

I it took several months from that weekend in April to where things started going back to some semblance of normal.

44:17

But it was a lot of long hours. And a lot of coordination, both with the COCOM, with the NSC, with adjacent countries in figuring out where this was all going to lead because there are a lot of implications for this, given the Chadian military's contributions to regional stability, or their contributions to the counterterrorism fight that France was leading and what the implications of this event in Chad would have on the rest of the Sahel.

44:47

Yeah, it was interesting. It was it's definitely not what I was expecting landed in N'Djamena.

44:51

Did you notice a change in your relationship with any of the other countries there? Whether it was France or any of the other Sahelian countries that are there in Chad? No, as the international community in N'Djamena is so small it's very tight knit.

45:07

You have a very small European entourage there.

45:11

You have us, and then you've got a few smatterings of Middle Eastern and African countries, at least in the diplomatic circuit.

45:18

I would say that, and this is this is probably at large, in crisis events like this, especially in countries where resources are constrained access to steady healthcare or flights or anything like that are are so scarce.

45:33

A, a close knit community will get closer.

45:36

And so we relied in part on our international partners as they relied on us just to be able to get the information to make sure that everyone was safe.

45:47

And then figure out a road map forward.

45:50

And I, we once the crisis, the immediate crisis was over.

45:55

I think the majority of my year and a half left was spent contributing to a way to salvage what was left.

46:04

Tell me more about salvaging what was left.

46:07

What do you mean by that? We've had coups in in Mali, what twice now, I believe.

46:13

Yeah, Mali, Burkina, Gabon it's a Niger, hugely, yeah.

46:18

Niger the challenge with the situation that happened in Chad is it, in, the president went and died in battle.

46:28

Given the state of the government at the time, there was no, and this is from, from their perspective, there was no alternate, there was no vice president the speaker of the house where the speaker of parliament said he didn't want to do the job.

46:41

And the leadership at the time, which is mostly comprised of military leadership to include a lot of Debbie's relatives formed a military council.

46:50

And so the argument was this a coup or was this not a coup? If it was a coup that has, like Emma said, implications on U.

46:58

S. security assistance, U. S. security cooperation funds any type of congressionally approved funds, would not be allowed to be used in a situation where a coup had taken place.

47:10

But then, from the Chadian argument, this wasn't a coup.

47:13

We had no other option. And so it became a long discussion.

47:18

One that eventually needed to be had by Chadian citizens about their own government and the way they wanted to be represented and the future that they wanted.

47:29

And I think eventually over a year plus we had the arrival of new ambassador and the mindset is that Chadian citizens have a right to self governance and that they need to figure out how to bring that into action.

47:41

And a lot of what we saw was steps taken in that direction.

47:45

Some, sometimes it wasn't it was really interesting to be there during all that and to watch it unfold.

47:50

I think it was also really interesting to watch and be a part of, as Alex was saying, because, we had a situation where the Chadian government for many years had been a very strong, partner to the United States in the area of counterterrorism.

48:06

But then with the death of president Debbie and the institution of the military transition government.

48:12

And that, that called into question a number of aspects of our relationship, right? Because we have a values based foreign policy.

48:20

And so it was really interesting to see the sort of confluence and the tension of those two things where there were aspects of our relationship with the Chadians that were very important for both of us and then there were aspects where we found ourselves, under tension because of the political circumstances.

48:39

So absolutely fascinating. And I think that's one of the really cool things about being a FAO is that you get to be at the nexus of all of that and contributing to figuring that all out.

48:50

To add onto that, the actual rebel crisis ended in a withdrawal.

48:55

And so the rebels were not technically defeated on the battlefield.

49:00

They withdrew. And so during this process was a continued presence of a rebel threat from the surrounding northern, western, eastern countries.

49:13

And so that, that sort of colored the narrative as well in terms of the decision making that the Chadian was taking and I found that really interesting for a country to face, have a self perception of threats around all of its borders and then compounded by the war in Russia and the rise of Wagner and the challenges in Sudan All of this sort of added to the tension in Chad itself.

49:44

and did our relationship fundamentally change? Beyond the first couple of months where there was a change in government and a shift to military government, did our relationship change much after things settled down? On a working level, no.

50:01

Eventually it did and eventually you saw, you can read now that I think that the French are consolidating their forces in the Sahel as well.

50:09

So in terms of the overall counterterrorism landscape the U.

50:13

S. has shifted its strategic focus.

50:15

We saw the pivot to Asia, was it in 2020, COVID happened, and now we're We had the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine and now the situation in Middle East.

50:25

I think the Africa CT mission has deprioritized in that sense just because of limited resources available.

50:34

So yeah, so that's going to have an impact on the relationship.

50:36

I'll say on a working level the folks you and I would talk to on a daily basis are still there having, Those conversations.

50:45

Emma, on your side from the OSC, did that change? The programs that we were doing? Did it change how we were able to work with the partner? Yeah, changed it hugely.

50:54

I think I learned the most that I know now about security cooperation from having had the experience and Chad of trying to undo security cooperation, you learn a lot about the, You're going to have to explain what you sure.

51:10

I learned a lot about funding and authorities and the bureaucratic mechanics and how the security cooperation enterprise works together through that experience in a technical sense.

51:21

Because. As a result of the death of President Deby and the transition to a military government there were a lot of congressional concerns about our security cooperation programs in Chad, yet a 7008 declaration of a coup was never actually made.

51:42

Yet Congress at that time chose to not approve funding for security cooperation programs in Chad.

51:51

We had to in order to execute the combatant commanders campaign plan in the absence of a continuous stream of funding coming from Congress we had to get really creative about what sort of programs can be done to meet the commander's intent, for example that have different sorts of funding and authorities.

52:11

That's what I mean about learning a lot about how to undo security cooperation, that programs that had been set in place three to five years prior, all of a sudden could not be executed.

52:23

But you have a partner with expectations and a mandate from the COCOM to maintain relationships and to make progress in certain areas to get certain things done without the resources that had been previously laid on to do those things.

52:39

That's where the creativity comes in, I think.

52:42

Was there any creativity in any specific instances of creativity that stand out in your mind that you're especially proud of that you're able to make happen? Yeah, absolutely.

52:50

Back to that that SFAB conversation we were having earlier.

52:53

We were able to fund a number of SFAB engagements using combatant commander MIL to MIL funding.

53:02

That wasn't actually congressionally notified triple 333 right? It's combatant commanders funds for military to military engagement interoperability and that sort of thing.

53:11

So we were able to make a lot of progress in those areas.

53:15

Do you think that the change in government and the withdrawal of the funds is what pushed Africom to assign an SFAB? Because they didn't have any other way to keep the, that relationship going in the security cooperation front.

53:28

I think that everybody at that time was amenable to exploring creative solutions.

53:36

Okay. That's fantastic. I think both of y'all did a really good job over there in Chad.

53:41

Emma you came in swinging and I was blown away with how quickly you pick things up and how easily you seemed to just walk through that office and just take control of everything.

53:49

Alex, I have no idea how you did cause I left your second day in the office, but I'm sure you also did well.

53:55

I showed up and there was a crisis. So that's how I did.

53:58

yeah, I say, here you go. Here's a soup sandwich enjoy.

54:03

But I hear they're delicious. I remember in JFAOC we had a senior army FAO, I think he's retired at the time, a general brand came and gave a short talk there at Jafayoc.

54:15

And I'll never forget he got up and said that, when you're on a country team, pray that your country gets invaded or falls apart, because that's when you really test your mettle as a FAO.

54:28

And he was the SDO/DATT in Georgia when Russia invaded back in 2008.

54:33

So I think he knew what he was talking about. I don't think we should pray that our countries get invaded or fall apart.

54:38

But I really think, in the more, turbulent areas of the world like Southern Asia, Sub Saharan Africa.

54:46

We're going to see that.

54:48

It's just a matter of time before you're going to be in a situation where things fall apart.

54:55

The challenge is it's that's hard to train for that kind of thing.

54:58

My knowledge of how to react in a crisis was wholly drawn on JFAOC discussions I had with other FAOs who had undergone similar situations in Sudan or in Yemen or in Libya.

55:15

But I don't know I don't think we have a codified system that teaches FAOs at least at the country team level how to deal with that aside from, what you either go through at JMAS or when whatever anti terrorism training we still have going on nowadays, but a lot of the actions to respond to that are on the job training and previous experience.

55:38

Prior to Chad, I was working the African lion 2020 exercise, which was supposed to be the biggest land force exercise on, on the continent, or at least that was what the vision was.

55:50

That was what we had been planning up to.

55:52

And so this included a ton of military equipment being shipped out from CONUS to Morocco.

56:00

And, a day before the exercise was supposed to start after all that equipment had arrived in country Morocco had closed its airspace and said that they can't do the exercise because of COVID.

56:10

And so we, myself and 14, brave Utah National Guard soldiers and three or four members from the US Army Africa staff stayed behind Morocco to help the Moroccans make sure our equipment got back to the U S.

56:27

Completely not in any training handbook, not in any there's no procedures for this except being on the ground, having those relationships built.

56:38

Having the networks ready, knowing who to talk to, knowing who to, like you said knowing who to call when you pick up the phone.

56:45

Same thing for Chad. It's who needs to know the information quickest and at what time and how much information.

56:53

So I don't know. I think you, you made the best point there was having those relationships built.

57:00

And that, and the implication there being ahead of time.

57:03

Because when that crisis hits, you don't want to have to then start asking yourself, who needs to know what, and who do I need to talk to figure this stuff out? So it's always building those relationships.

57:14

And Emma, like you said before establishing a reputation for yourself so that people know not just so that they can give you good advice and give you good direction, but also know that you have everything in hand is makes, makes all the difference.

57:29

So we have, we've been going here for about almost an hour Is anything else you want to cover? Any shout outs you want to give to buddies out in Timbuktu? I don't think I know anybody in I don't think I know anybody in No, fortunately not.

57:42

I think they all left. No, this has been great, Michael.

57:45

Thanks for putting it together. I really appreciate you guys coming on talking about your experiences.

57:51

I think both of y'all are fantastic professionals, fantastic foreign area officers, and I know you have a lot of amazing experiences ahead of you.

58:00

And absolutely look forward to seeing what you guys do next.

58:04

Yeah, this is a great initiative that you're doing. I appreciate it.

58:07

Look forward to hearing the other podcasts. Yeah, me too.

58:10

So again, appreciate all you do and look forward to seeing you again soon.

58:13

Downrange.