US Ambassador MaryKay Carlson: The beauty of diplomacy
On-screen and off, more and more women are taking on the posts of top diplomats: off-screen, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton as secretaries of state of the United States; on-screen, Tea Leoni in Netflix’s Madam Secretary, and Keri Russell in The Diplomat. In our very own shores, diplomatic row is getting to be more and more a woman’s world, there’s just no skirting the fact.
Among the female ambassadors that keep the Philippines in a firm handshake with an ally is US Ambassador MaryKay L. Carlson, a seasoned diplomat appointed as envoy to the Philippines by President Biden last year.
Does Ambassador Carlson believe diplomacy is a feminine art as diplomat and writer Clare Boothe Luce once said?
“I think that women can certainly be outstanding diplomats, we’ve had a lot of good examples of that. I think women in leadership roles, whether it’s diplomacy or anything else, approach leadership differently,” Ambassador Carlson said in an interview with this writer for PeopleAsia magazine in the embassy residence in Makati.
How so?
“At least what I’ve seen, oftentimes, it’s more collaboratively. You’re trying to actually achieve the goals as a team,” she points out, then quickly adds, “At least in my experience, there can be very, you know, outstanding men who are great leaders.”
Carlson, who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas (just like former President Bill Clinton) previously served as the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prior to her assignment to Argentina, she served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in New Delhi, India, and held the position of principal deputy executive secretary for the Secretary of State in Washington, DC. A Foreign Service officer since 1985, she has served at US diplomatic missions in China (twice), Ukraine, Hong Kong, Mozambique, Kenya, and the Dominican Republic.
Then a child, watching the TV coverage of the Vietnam War awakened in her a desire to communicate even with those who did not speak her language.
“When I was growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas — that was before the Internet -— my parents would watch the evening news. And this was during the time of the Vietnam War. You see the war imagery, which was really stressful. But what I thought was interesting — people just talking... I mean, that’s a different language and just how interesting because in Middle America, in Arkansas, I never heard anything other than English. And I just thought it was fascinating that there were other ways to speak that people could communicate with. In that case, it was Vietnamese. I never learned Vietnamese. But as soon as I could take a foreign language in school, I took Spanish in junior high.” Ambassador Carlson has studied Latin, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swahili, Mandarin Chinese and Ukrainian. Next to English she is most fluent in Spanish.
She spoke Spanish but had not yet set her sights on a career in the diplomatic service. But it was her destiny. She went to Rhodes College, a small liberal arts college in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, students drew numbers before they could choose their classes.
“Unfortunately for me, I drew bad lottery numbers. So by the time I got to choose my classes, the courses I had wanted to take were full. And so I ended up taking the ‘Politics of Latin America,’ and ‘Lesser-Known Plays of Shakespeare.’” The latter did not change her life, but the course on Latin American politics paved the way for the career she not only excels in, but finds fulfillment in.
Two years ago, during the pandemic, she was asked to write a self-assessment as a diplomat. She was then deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in Buenos Aires.
“I wrote that there’s nothing more meaningful that I’ve done in my career than delivering life-saving vaccines to people. It was so emotional, and so important. And you know, the United States made those vaccines available with no political strings attached, and quickly.
“Especially because at the time, they did not have any vaccines that young people could take. You had young people with health vulnerabilities. I was able to see the vaccines being administered. And parents were coming up to the health minister, just saying ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for working on this.’ It was really something. Thank God that we’re behind the worst of that.”
Balancing act
Like most women in top positions (her husband Aubrey Carlson is a retired diplomat, and just like in The Diplomat, they were a tandem couple in many overseas posts.)
So how did she juggle the diplomatic tightrope while raising two daughters, now aged 25 and 23, a role that calls for unique diplomatic skills itself?
“I had a wonderful mother as a role model. I would think of Mom. But when I was growing up, as I’ve said, my mother is still in the same house that we moved to when I was 10 years old. I’m now 64. My point is, though, with raising (my) daughters, we were moving every three years. So, although I had a wonderful role model, I didn’t have any sort of examples of ‘How do you pick up a family and move every three years?’ So I did a lot of reading about what that’s like, but in terms of how I did it, I also have an extremely wonderful spouse, my husband, Aubrey.”
She’s been living in the Philippines for over a year and the welcome mat is still unfurled for her wherever in these islands she goes.
“I think it’s the national character of Filipinos that’s so welcoming of outsiders that you let people in. My hypothesis is that maybe it’s due to the archipelagic nature of the country. Maybe it has to do with also the galleon trade. The Philippines is a seafaring nation with so much water — you’ve always been part of the global community. But really, you can’t know it until you’ve experienced it. You can imagine what it feels like as an outsider to come to the Philippines and feel so connected so quickly. And it’s not just Americans.”
The road less traveled when she was a freshman has widened up to include horizons the former MaryKay Loss never imagined in front of the TV set during the Vietnam War, when she dreamed of being able to communicate and connect with others. Now she has, and built bridges, too.
Now that’s the beauty of diplomacy.
(You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)
- Latest
