June 6, 2024 • 43 mins
**Content Warning: This podcast contains discussions of genocide and violence and may not be appropriate for some listeners.
What happens when someone with a passion for languages and cultures grows up to become a diplomatic problem-solver? Meet Cheryl Casebeer, or Casey as her friends call her, a seasoned diplomat from the US State Department. This episode takes you through Casey's unique upbringing, where frequent relocations sparked her interest in understanding diverse cultures, setting the stage for her remarkable career.
From the complexities of U.S.-Cuba relations to high-stress assignments in the Ivory Coast, Casey shares the intricate workings of American diplomacy. This episode also delves into the often-overlooked emotional toll of diplomatic service, discussing resilience and coping mechanisms essential for handling trauma.
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Jen Coronado (00:00):
Hi folks, it's Jen .
We are very excited for thisweek's podcast, as it contains a
lot of revelatory informationabout what it's like to work for
the US State Department.
We did, however, want to warnour listeners that towards the
end of the podcast, there aresome discussions on violence and
genocide that might betriggering for some people, so
please exercise some self-carewhen listening.
Otherwise, we hope you learn alot from this episode.
(00:23):
Otherwise, we hope you learn alot from this episode.
Casey Casebeer (00:24):
This is a really good example of how diplomacy
works.
Despite the fact that we didn'tlike each other and had
dramatically different ideasabout how government should
serve the people, we had a lotof stuff that had to be talked
about.
Jen Coronado (00:38):
Hello and welcome to Everyone Is.
I am your host, jenniferCoronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all types of people
and build an understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success has achieved thatsuccess because they are a
creative thinker.
So, whether you are an artistor a cook or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
(00:58):
human conversation.
And now, as they say, on withthe show.
And now, as they say on withthe show, I have always had a
fascination with government andhow it works, and also what
makes someone choose a life ofpublic service In one department
.
An area that I find especiallyintriguing is the US State
Department, so imagine mydelight when I was talking to
(01:20):
someone and they mentioned theirfriend was the most brilliant
problem solver they'd ever met,and that person is Cheryl
Casepear, also known as Casey.
Welcome to Everyone Is Cheryl.
Casey Casebeer (01:31):
Casepear.
Thanks for having me over totalk, jennifer, jennifer.
Jen Coronado (01:35):
Stover, I want to know a little bit about your
background, like where did yougrow up, jennifer Stover?
Casey Casebeer (01:38):
So I was born in Virginia and we lived on the
West Coast.
My dad was a native Californian, my mother was from Boston, my
dad was in the Navy until Iretired to my present house.
I never lived four years in arow in the same place.
When I was about 13, we movedto California and a couple of
(01:59):
years later my dad retired andI've been a resident of
California ever since, although,as I say, I've never been in
one place for very long.
Once I joined the ForeignService, it was, you know, a new
post every two or three years.
Jen Coronado (02:12):
Wow.
So did you find like you got atravel bug when you were a kid
because of that, because youmoved around so much, or did you
feel like you were alwaystrying to find a place to?
Casey Casebeer (02:22):
stick.
I think the connection with theuprooted childhood is more that
I got the bug for trying tounderstand people.
You know, moving from the EastCoast to the West Coast is a
shock to the system and movingback is also a shock to the
system and to the clothing.
Yeah, yes, and I have alwaysbeen interested in how people
(02:45):
who are apparently verydifferent are really the same
and how people who you expect tobe the same are really
different.
What about difference mattersand what about difference
doesn't matter?
Jen Coronado (02:55):
So that's something that I've thought
about all my working life thoughdid you see yourself
manifesting that as a kid, asyou're going through education?
Like things that you picked upon that were super interesting
for you because of that?
Casey Casebeer (03:11):
Not really.
I was interested in everything.
I was one of those kids thatyou know if there was a book I
would read it, regardless ofwhat it was about.
I went through the entirelibrary of my elementary school
and then went through thelibrary on the military base and
, you know, we didn't haveonline then there was no
internet, so you read what youcould get your hands on.
(03:33):
I'm a person who's alwaysinterested in the next thing.
As soon as I've masteredsomething, I lose interest in it
.
So I would read all the booksabout Greek mythology.
And then I was done with Greekmythology for a while and I
would go read everything aboutwildlife in North America and
once I got that down, I kind ofmoved on.
So by the time I went tocollege, my enemies and friends
(03:57):
in high school called me thewalking encyclopedia, and I
still do this and it drives myfriends crazy, you know somebody
says well, where does that songcome from?
And then, you know, threeminutes later in the chat I pop
up with a link saying it lookslike this song was originally
sung in Nova Scotia, but itpassed through the logging
community and ended up in.
You know, I can't help it.
(04:18):
That's the way my mind worksand fortunately that type of a
mind is perfect for the ForeignService.
You have to be constantly readyto learn something you didn't
know.
You were going to have to knowa day or two ago.
Jen Coronado (04:29):
Right, you mentioned college.
Where did you go to college?
Casey Casebeer (04:32):
Undergraduate Berkeley and master's degree at
Columbia.
Jen Coronado (04:36):
What were your focuses at the two universities?
Casey Casebeer (04:39):
Well, focus was not on my mind at first.
So I went to Berkeley and itwas a revelation to me.
It was the first place where Iwas not the smartest kid in the
class and that was good for me.
But then I wanted to studyeverything and I took
anthropology and archaeology andpolitical science and rhetoric
(05:00):
and history and French andSpanish and I just wanted it all
.
I couldn't have it all, but Iwanted it all.
I had been taking French rightthrough high school, so I got
advanced placement into collegewith French and I wanted to go
and spend my junior year abroad,in France.
And my counselor told me Cheryl,if you don't declare a major,
(05:22):
we're not going to let you go.
So I got the catalog and Istarted going through the
catalog trying to figure out howto.
Cheryl, if you don't declare amajor, we're not going to let
you go.
So I got the catalog and Istarted going through the
catalog trying to figure out howto how many of the courses I
had already taken might beapplied to some majors.
So I could get a little bitfurther, as my dad would say.
I ended up in something calledthe development studies.
It was a multidisciplinary,sort of experimental in those
(05:46):
times.
So the idea was that you takethe problem of developing
countries and developingcountries in general don't work
very well.
Why don't they work very well?
So I could apply anthropologyand sociology and history and
French and Spanish and all thesethings that I was interested in
anyway, toward a degree whichwas very handy.
(06:09):
Got out of my undergraduatedegree.
I wasn't interested in runninga city or a public
administration, I guess youwould call it.
So I wanted to continue tolearn about other countries, and
languages has always been acommon theme in my life.
I'm fascinated with otherlanguages.
Berkeley had a great program ininternational affairs, but with
(06:30):
a focus on organizations andadministration in international
affairs.
That wasn't what I wanted, so Iended up with a scholarship and
that helped me choose Columbia.
I got a region scholarship whichdoesn't steer you in any
particular direction, but theyhad a wonderful program, again a
(06:50):
little bit edgy at the time,that focused on developing
countries with a lens of lookingat how economics and politics
interact.
The idea is that you can't getvery far with your economic
ideas unless you can manage thepolitical environment, because
nobody will support you and youwon't get anything done and
people your great ideas will gonowhere.
(07:12):
Also, if you're a politician,you can't get anything done
unless you understand theeconomic effects on your base
and the economic limitations onwhat the projects that you want
to accomplish in your politicallife.
So I hesitate to use the wordpolitical economy because that
has a lot of baggage.
But what they were focused onis making sure that we graduated
(07:33):
always looking at these twosides of problem solving that in
any public arena.
You were going to have to bringalong both of those groups if
you wanted to get anything done.
Jen Coronado (07:44):
Well, going back to what you said before, that
goes into what you were sayingabout what was interesting to
you, which is people who arealike who can't meet, you know,
on common ground, and people whoare different who can meet on
common ground, right, yeah, sothat makes complete sense as far
as a strategy for studying howhumans work.
Right, as far as a strategy forstudying how humans work right,
(08:04):
absolutely.
Casey Casebeer (08:06):
So everybody in my specialization took the
Foreign Service exam, becauseeverybody did.
We just all went and took ittogether and I passed it.
So then I had to decide did Iwant to go on to the oral
assessment, which is the secondtriage step?
It involved going down toWashington DC, but they paid the
way.
(08:26):
So I went and lo and behold, Ipassed that as well.
So they put me on the roster,which is a list of fully
qualified people from which theydraw when they're ready to hire
.
Jen Coronado (08:36):
Really quick about the oral exam.
What is?
Casey Casebeer (08:40):
that like I don't know what it's like now, I
can only tell you what it waslike then.
So at the time, the idea of anassessment center that tested
people's actual skills ratherthan just making them take a
test and going by their answers,was a kind of a different idea,
and they had a number ofdifferent types of assessment.
(09:00):
They got four of us in a roomand gave us each a portfolio of
projects costing a certainamount of money and had us
negotiate how a limited budgetwas going to be spent.
One person had a law degree andcame in hard charging to get
her project through regardless,and, of course, me being the
generalist that I've always been, I ended up as the negotiator
(09:25):
saying okay, it looks to me asthough you know, this project
can't be funded no matter what,because it eats almost the
entire budget and some of theseother things are worthwhile, so
can we agree that we need torule this one out?
And sort of gradually guided usthrough the process.
It turned out that's what we'relooking for.
So I mean, there are plenty ofhard chargers out there, but
(09:46):
people who can negotiate arekind of thin on the ground.
Yeah, so they had that.
They had a pile of inbox stuffranging from the ambassador's
toilet is plugged up to you needto inspect fire damage in this
room before we can begin repairs, and they left us to get
through it.
(10:06):
And some people already had theskill needed to do a pile of
work like that, where you spreadit all out on your desk and
decide what's most pressing,anything that has to be done
today and can't be done tomorrow, anything that involves
somebody who has so muchinfluence that they can impede
your progress and all the restof it.
Anything that is genuinely andintrinsically important and
(10:29):
deserves your attention, whetheror not.
A lot of people are encouragingyou to do it.
So they were interested to seehow we weighed priorities, which
is not an easy thing to test ina candidate.
They had a one-on-one or atwo-on-one, which was even more
terrifying two-on-one interview.
So you went into an interviewwith two people, having no idea
(10:49):
what they were going to ask you.
They asked me about the role ofChina in the coming decades.
You know, here we are 50 yearslater.
Turns out to be a reallyrelevant question yeah,
prescient even, and I didn'tknow jack about China, but I did
know an awful lot about Africaat that point.
(11:10):
So I used Africa as an exampleand talked about China looking
for having an ever-growingpopulation and looking for
resources and knowing that theywere going to have to develop.
If they couldn't get away withdeveloping colonies, they would
have to find some other way topump other countries for
resources.
Anyway, I came up with somethingand apparently they weren't
really interested in whether Iknew about China.
(11:31):
They were interested in whetherI could think on my feet, which
is another really importantcharacteristic for foreign
service people.
You never know what someone'sgoing to ask you and you need to
know what you can say and whatyou can't say and what the
sensitivities of your audienceare, so that you know whether to
push a button or not.
They already knew before I setfoot in the room that I was a
bright student and that I couldlearn well.
(11:52):
What they were interested inwas what kind of a person was I
and how would I manage theenvironment in which the odd
environment in which foreignservice people work?
Jen Coronado (12:02):
Now you talk about .
You know these are the type ofthings that foreign service that
you know you need to know forforeign service work.
And you look at that all inhindsight right, because you
were in the foreign service forsuch a long time.
But what did Casey, at themoment can you remember as
you're taking this foreignservice exam, like, how do you
get past the terror of anervousness?
(12:23):
What resources did you draw?
Casey Casebeer (12:25):
from.
I don't think I was reallyterrified by tests, because I
was always a good student.
The question in the back of mymind was what if I pass?
The Foreign Service wasn'texactly what I had in mind.
I wanted to work ininternational development.
I wanted to help countries thatwere in the process of changing
their economies and theircultures in order to be able to
(12:49):
feed everybody, and that was thenexus of problems that
interested me the most.
Well, I passed it and they putme on the roster.
And then the Graham Redmondthing came along and there was a
hiring freeze.
Can you talk?
Jen Coronado (13:01):
about that for those who don't know what the
Graham Redmond thing is.
Casey Casebeer (13:04):
It was the beginning of the Republican
revolution in the United States.
It was an attempt by theRepublican Party to gain more
political control by controllingthe budget through the
congressional budgetary process,and it was very successful.
But, among other things, it wasthe beginning of a very long
(13:24):
period in the foreign serviceand in every other aspect of
government where people weretrying to keep the government
going without enough people andresources and training to do the
job.
And when you're overseas in ain a very difficult environment
and you can't get trainingbecause we can't afford the
(13:45):
airfare, this kind of thingrequires creative thinking.
I suppose we had to figure outother ways to get the job done,
and we did so.
You took the test.
Jen Coronado (13:54):
You're on the list and there is there a phone call
.
That happens.
You get a letter in the mailsigned by the president.
What happens?
How do you enter?
I?
Casey Casebeer (14:03):
knew I wasn't going to get a telephone call
for a while because there was nohiring being done.
But there were a couple oforganizations in the government
that were exempt from the hiringfreeze, and one of them was the
Social Security Administration.
So I went home to California andI got a job as a claims
interviewer for the SSI program,which is assistance to disabled
people and to people whoseretirement income is below a
(14:26):
certain threshold, and I wasassigned in a place in the north
part of the Central Valleywhich has a lot of farm workers,
and many of them spoke Spanish,and there had never been a
Spanish speaking claims rep inthat office.
Wow.
So I had a line around theblock because I was the only
person in the office that couldtalk to these folks, and some of
(14:48):
them had got crosswise, youknow, 10 years ago and never got
themselves disentangled.
You know how easily you can get, even if you speak the same
language as the personinterviewing you, how easily
they can misunderstand what yousay.
Well, these poor people hadlost their benefits and all
kinds of bad things, had beenforced to pay things back that
they shouldn't, and so I gotinvolved in disentangling all of
(15:11):
these old claims.
Well, that wasn't what theyhired me for.
Jen Coronado (15:16):
You're problem solving.
Casey Casebeer (15:17):
Then too, I couldn't help it.
So my boss, who she was limitedby the requirements of the
bureaucracy as well and shewanted to help those people and
couldn't.
So when she called me in to domy, you have to do an annual
evaluation.
It's part of the way thegovernment manages personnel.
When she called me in for myfirst annual evaluation, she
(15:39):
said I can't give you yourannual step increase because you
aren't doing what I hired youto do, and you know it.
And you're doing what I hiredyou to do, and you know it, and
you're doing what you want to doanyway.
However, I for one am reallyglad that it's getting done.
I'm sorry that I can't be morehonest with you.
So I really respected thiswoman.
She came right out with thelimitations of the institution
(16:01):
and she was aware of them.
She wasn't going to quitbecause of them, but she was
quietly getting the job done atthe cost of my first annual step
increase.
But hey, so that was a goodlearning experience for me that
that particular institutionwasn't equipped to value good
quality work.
What they wanted was volume.
They wanted me to move thoseclaims, interviews and annual
(16:27):
redeterminations of benefits.
A certain volume of them had togo across my desk every year,
and what I was doing was notmaking that happen.
So I became determined that Iwould not accept a job with the
Foreign Service or anybody elseagain until I could find an
employer who would value mydesire to do it right.
Jen Coronado (16:48):
It's very interesting.
I frequently think about rulesand how rules could be applied,
and I always think, if therecomes a point when rules don't
serve what you've set up tobegin with, that you can change
the rules because you madesomebody made the rules at some
point.
So that's interesting that youwere wanting to push through
(17:11):
that in your next role.
So what was your next role?
Casey Casebeer (17:14):
Well, I received a telephone call saying that
the hiring freeze was lifted andthey were filling long vacant
positions as fast as they could.
And was I interested in beingan administrative officer?
Now, the Foreign Service atthat time was broken up into
specialties that they call, forreasons lost in the mist of time
(17:38):
, cones.
So they had the consular cone.
Those are the people who managevisas and passports and the
problems of Americans overseas.
They have the political cone,who learn about the local
political situation and reporton it, so Washington understands
what's happening in a country.
Economic cone the same thing,but for the economic side and
(17:59):
financial side and business.
And then they had publicaffairs.
Handling the press, making pressreleases and managing the image
of the African roots hadinspired some of the music of
(18:34):
America and then how that musichad come back to Africa and
become mixed up with WestAfrican pop music and all this
sort of thing.
That showed people how we wereconnected.
Then, in addition, there'ssomebody who has to keep the
lights on the people who hireand fire and do the budgets and
run the motor pool and hirepeople with trade skills to
(18:56):
maintain people's houses and doan environment that's so
different from theirs that theycan't live like local people and
still do their job.
(19:19):
So the State Department'sapproach to this is to try to
make diplomats home as much likea home in the United States as
is practical in the localenvironment, much like a home in
the United States is practicalin the local environment.
So, anyway, somebody had to dothat job and those jobs had gone
begging during the hiringfreeze.
So I took the job because Idesperately wanted out of the
(19:41):
impasse I was in with the socialsecurity job and what I found
out right away was that myproblem solving skills were
central to my identity, that inany situation where there was
clearly a problem impeding whatI wanted to do, I wanted to fix
it.
So that was a good thing for meto know about myself and I
(20:05):
learned it early because ofsocial security, for which I
thank my old boss.
Jen Coronado (20:09):
Now let's step back for a second, because this
was your first assignment.
Casey Casebeer (20:14):
My first assignment?
Yes, and where exactly were youin that?
It was in Cuba.
Oddly enough, we didn't have,and don't have, formal relations
with Cuba for historicalreasons, and this is a really
good example of how diplomacyworks.
Despite the fact that we didn'tlike each other and had
dramatically different ideasabout how government should
(20:35):
serve the people, we had a lotof stuff that had to be talked
about.
You have a very heavy trafficair traffic area, so you have to
have overflight clearances.
Every flight that goes acrosssomebody's territory you have to
have the host government'spermission to be there or they
have the right to shoot you down.
So you have to talk about that,whether you like each other or
not.
We had to talk aboutimmigration, legal and illegal.
(20:57):
There was drug interdictionissues, being so close to
Florida, and all these thingsrequired that people speak in a
civil way, which was not whatwas going on on the public level
, but under the public level,the diplomats get on with the
job.
So it was actually afascinating assignment.
I ended up interviewing a groupof prisoners called the
(21:20):
plantados, the ones who wouldnot move because they were
political prisoners.
They viewed themselves aspolitical prisoners and wouldn't
wear the prison uniform.
So the Cubans at that time andI would say still play hardball
with people who don'tparticipate in their model.
So they said we can't make youwear the uniform, but we're not
(21:40):
going to give you anything else.
So these guys had been inprison for 20 years in their
shorts, which just is such animage of the hard-headed,
unmoving, unbendingunwillingness to discuss matters
that really matter that hascharacterized that relationship
for all these years.
So I got to interview theseguys in the prison for a special
(22:04):
visa program to get them whereCuba had said they would be
willing to release them to go tothe United States, and most of
them did in the end.
So here I am.
What was I?
24 at that time or 23?
23-year-old in high heels in aCuban prison, interviewing
crusty old guys in theirunderwear.
It was a very strangeintroduction to the Foreign
(22:26):
Service and welcome to thegovernment, yes, well, so it was
a wonderful tour and I lovedthe Caribbean.
Jen Coronado (22:35):
And so you were in Cuba and you were hanging out
with older guys in theirunderwear, and then you moved on
to what was your nextassignment after that.
Casey Casebeer (22:43):
Africa, because I had focused on Africa in my
graduate studies and I wanted tosee it for real.
So I went to Ivory Coast, côte,d'ivoire, and brushed off my
French, which, you know, I hadnot been using for those three
years, while I was speakingSpanish all the time.
Jen Coronado (23:02):
And what was your role there at that point in time
?
Casey Casebeer (23:05):
The first tour was consular because everybody
did a first tour as a consularofficer at that time.
So this was my first tour inthe specialization that I was
assigned to.
So it was my first tour doingadministrative work and the
embassy was at that time verylarge.
It was one of the two or threesort of hub embassies in Africa
(23:26):
where there are some functionsthat you need in an embassy,
like a doctor, but you can'tafford to put a doctor in every
country.
So you assign a doctor in acountry that has good air
service and the doctor then canmake regular runs to the
surrounding countries and checkon people with particular
(23:46):
medical conditions and assesswhatever needs to be assessed
locally.
Deal with the local.
You know, all of a suddeneverybody's getting some local
disease and he might be able tofigure out, or she might be able
to figure out what's going on.
So anyway, some hub embassieshad a very large population of
these regional people and so theadministrative section was
(24:07):
supporting a huge base of peoplewho weren't actually focused on
that country.
So I was doing leasing in thatfirst job, not a very romantic
job, but it got me out into thecommunity.
I was viewing houses andnegotiating with local people in
the local languages and I neverlearned anything but French.
(24:28):
But anybody who could afford toown a house at that time in
Ivory Coast probably had gone toschool in French, and so my
French got me through andlearned a lot about negotiation
and got my French back up tospeed.
Jen Coronado (24:42):
How many tours did you do?
Casey Casebeer (24:43):
and what was your next one?
You know I'd have to sit downand count, and my history is
complicated by the fact that intwo different periods of my life
I was what the State Departmentcalls a rover.
Africa has a lot of jobs thatfall vacant and stay vacant for
way too long, because it's hardto recruit people who are
willing to and trained to workin the African environment, and
(25:08):
so they maintain a small groupof people called rovers, who go
out for a year at a time withtheir bags and they're plugging
holes wherever some job has beenvacant too long and bad things
are starting to happen becausethere's nobody to do the job.
So you go from spot to spot.
You might stay for two weekswhile somebody takes a vacation,
or you might stay for sixmonths until they can recruit
(25:31):
and train somebody for the job.
So you never know from oneassignment to the next how long
you're going to be there orwhere you're going next.
Jen Coronado (25:39):
So I crisscrossed the map doing that what a
complex web you had.
Casey Casebeer (25:43):
You were talking earlier about breaking rules.
There are ways to break rulesin a bureaucracy.
Usually, a well-designedbureaucracy will have ways for
you to say I'm aware of thisrule.
Here's the situation.
If I apply the rule, thefollowing outcome will result,
which is not to our benefit.
Here's what I propose as anexception.
(26:04):
And usually it'll go highenough to where someone can make
a decision and they'll say goahead.
And then you have a piece ofpaper that says I'm authorized
to do this.
You cover whatever part of youranatomy requires covering at
that point and you get the jobdone.
So I learned how to how to usea bureaucracy and how to get
things done despite theobstacles that a bureaucracy
(26:26):
creates.
Jen Coronado (26:27):
I have to tell you , casey, what a skill that our
bureaucracy creates.
I have to tell you, casey, whata skill you have to be able to
see those gaps, to be able tosay, all right, if I do this and
these three things, then I'llbe able to hit this process and
take it up here and then get theapprovals I need to do, the one
thing that I need to completeand you're using the same skills
that the traditional problemsolvers are using.
Casey Casebeer (26:49):
In order for you to get that done, I bet you had
to make a friend.
You had to go in and sit downwith somebody and say you know,
I need an ally here.
I need you to understand whatI'm trying to get done.
So being a bridge is part ofwhat the Foreign Service is
about.
No matter what kind of workyou're doing, you are trying to
help Washington understand howthe world looks to the local
people and help the local peopleunderstand the oddities of
(27:13):
Washington's behavior andinterpret it so that they can
make good decisions forthemselves.
So you're constantly going backand forth across that bridge.
Jen Coronado (27:22):
It's interesting.
I wanted to get to one of yourlarger roles, which I think is
so fascinating, which is chiefof mission.
Casey Casebeer (27:28):
So the first time that happened, I was in
Burundi and they were having acivil war and the ambassador
reached the end of hisassignment and departed post.
I had just come in as thedeputy chief of mission, which
is the ambassador's number two,the person that acts as
ambassador when the ambassadoris out of country.
So I stepped into that position, which in the diplomatic world
(27:48):
is called the chargé d'affaires,the person who's in charge of
country.
So I stepped into that position, which in the diplomatic world
is called the chargé d'affaires,the person who's in charge of
matters.
Jen Coronado (27:56):
I love that I'm going to start calling myself
that that's right.
Casey Casebeer (27:59):
So I became the chargé within days of arrival at
post, but I didn't know anybodyand that I held that position
for, I guess, seven months or sountil they could get another
ambassador.
And that was the first time.
The second time I was deputychief of mission in Chad, and
(28:21):
that was when the Darfurconflict was happening.
Right, the State Department has, you know, you have the
secretary and the undersecretaryand then you have department
heads, so you have the AfricanBureau and you have a person in
charge of the African Bureau andthen a group of people right
under that person, and all ofthose people need staff.
Jen Coronado (28:42):
Yeah, I just find all that process so fascinating.
The other thing that I wasthinking about is you know,
you've had a lot.
You've been to Cuba, you'vevarious parts of Africa,
different jobs and roles thatyou got flown into.
What was the toughest situationyou ever got into that you had
to solve?
Casey Casebeer (29:02):
for One is in 1994, I was flown into Kigali,
rwanda, after the genocide.
So the genocide started inFebruary and ended in around I
don't know April, and then byAugust the violence was over and
(29:23):
we wanted to know if we couldreopen the embassy, the embassy.
So they sent in the formerambassador, a security guy and
an admin person me to figure outwhether conditions were ready
for, whether we could worksafely in that environment.
The embassy had a mortar shellthrough the ambassador's
conference rooms, this great bighole with rain pouring in, and
(29:47):
the houses where the diplomatswho were evacuated had lived had
all been occupied by what youmight call squatters, people who
needed a place to stay, andthere was an empty house.
So they moved in A milliondollars worth of household
furniture and refrigerators andwashing machines and what have
you had disappeared or beenmoved to the neighbor's house
(30:09):
and what have you haddisappeared or been moved to the
neighbor's house and ourwarehouse had been sacked.
There was no fuel delivery tothe country, so we had no power
and no water.
And there was one hotel.
The hotel rooms had no doorsbut they were renting out rooms
to people like us, diplomats andcompany representatives and so
(30:30):
forth, who were trying to decidewhether they could come back to
Rwanda.
So within three days of arrivalI had a door in my room, which
was a great reassurance, and wejust went through.
You know, we made a list of whatthe basics were without which
we couldn't operate safely.
Could we get a physicalperimeter where we could work
(30:52):
safely in the building?
Where were we going to get fuel?
We had generators.
So if we could get fuel for thegenerator we could get the
electricity back on.
Then would the computers work.
All of the batteries had beenrun all the way down and in
those days that was not a goodthing.
So could we get batteries in toget the system back up?
And what about medical coverage?
(31:14):
Could we get a nurse in?
And then how we were going toget medicines in?
And I mean every aspect of lifehad to be worked through.
I worked 16 hours a day.
If I was not sleeping, I wasworking for months.
I've never worked harder in mylife.
And all of our employees,because of the history of Rwanda
(31:35):
, at use, computers could draft,could speak foreign languages.
Almost all those people wereTutsis.
Tutsis, you'll remember, arethe people who were the subject
(31:58):
of the genocide, although manyHutus who didn't want to
cooperate with the genocide werekilled as well.
So almost all of our employeeshad either been killed or had
run off to refugee camps orhidden themselves in some way.
During the violence, and as theword got out into the community
that the Americans were back andthat there was somebody at the
(32:20):
embassy, people started totrickle in and they had stories.
Every one of them had lostparents and children and entire
villages, and it was beyondcomprehension, it was impossible
to absorb.
So for them, we, the embassy,were this one little tiny spark
(32:41):
of normality in a world that hadcompletely lost its meaning,
and they were determined to comeback to work and try to work.
But they were in post-traumaticstress and all of them were
(33:06):
mentally ill in some way.
At the beginning, you knowwindow, and he wouldn't even be
aware I was there.
You know I put a hand on hisshoulder and he would notice I
was there and smile.
And you know it was a veryunusual working environment, to
put it mildly.
To make a long story short, wewere able to get everybody, get
a whole lot of people whom wehad feared dead were able to
(33:27):
come back from neighboringcountries where they were living
in refugee camps.
We were able to slowly persuadepeople to give us back the
houses that we were leasing andbring in furniture, and I found
a way to get fuel driven downfrom Kenya so we could get the
electricity going and we got thehole in the ambassador's
(33:48):
conference room repaired theelectricity going and we got the
hole in the ambassador'sconference room repaired.
The rainy season came earlythat year and I was sleeping in
the library of the publicaffairs presence on a cot and it
started raining and all I couldthink was, oh my God, the
ambassador's conference room andI went charging upstairs with
an armful of tarpaulins andseveral other employees came to
(34:10):
help me and we were, you know,trying to protect the furniture
and things that remained in thatroom and the books Just
unpredictable things.
You don't know what to do firstin a situation like that.
You know, normally theambassador's conference room
would be very, very high on thelist of any administrative
officer overseas, but there wereway too many other things going
(34:32):
on and the ambassador, blesshis heart, was a man who knew
what was important and he didn'tmess with me.
He just said you know whatneeds to be done.
Tell me if I can move anobstacle for you.
And then he went about hisbusiness with the political and
economic side of the story.
Jen Coronado (34:49):
I mean, how do you you talked about the PTSD for
the people who suffered throughthat you know, very specifically
how do you deal?
With their trauma?
How do you deal with theirtrauma impacting you?
Casey Casebeer (35:03):
I was young for one thing, so I was resilient,
but I mean, I'm still dealingwith it.
You know, I'm still.
There are still people.
I remember when I came backfrom that assignment I got some
leave and came back toCalifornia, to this very house
In fact my parents lived here atthe time and we have a room
(35:27):
outside which once was anenclosed porch, which has been
turned into a room and has awood-burning stove.
It was wintertime and I built afire in the fireplace and sat
out there for hours with myguitar, and my mother would come
out and bring me food and sitfor a little while and I
wouldn't have a lot to say, andso she'd take the dirty dishes
and go back to the kitchen.
She was worried.
(35:47):
She told me later, but Iprocessed, and there were a few
take-home messages, a few thingsthat I will never forget as a
result of that experience.
One is that everybody can kill.
You think that you can't orthat you wouldn't, but when
faced with the right situation,set of circumstances, everybody
(36:09):
can kill, and fear is such apowerful thing that your body
will take over from your mindand make you do what you have to
do to save itself.
There were heroes, lots ofheroes, lots of people who
risked their lives for oneanother.
I'm not underselling orunderstating what they went
(36:31):
through and the chances thatthey took From that experience.
I couldn't look down onsomebody who wasn't a hero,
because a lot of good people dida lot of bad things in that
situation because they wereafraid.
They didn't want to die.
They didn't want the peoplethey loved to die.
And when somebody has a knifeto your you know your
(36:52):
six-year-old's throat and saysyou are going to come with us,
put on this uniform and killpeople, or I am going to kill
this child here and now, youjust do what's in front of you
to do and when it's all over,you sort through the wreckage
and try to make a life again.
So that was the first take-homemessage that everybody is
(37:13):
capable of doing terrible thingsin the right environment.
So try to be compassionate.
And I also learned how to setpriorities under time pressure.
In that situation, everythinghad gone wrong.
Every single aspect of ourlives was unendurable.
So, okay, first we have to havewater, because if we don't have
(37:36):
water we can't stay more than aweek.
So I worked on the water first.
Then we needed power, becausethe ambassador couldn't do his
job without a computer.
So then I worked on the fuelsituation and gradually worked
up a list of the things that hadto happen, and then, as people
came back, I had to bring inpeople from Washington to help
me sort out the personnel issues, which you can imagine were
(37:58):
incredible.
The State Department usuallysolves this problem by simply
paying people as though they hadbeen working through the whole
crisis, because there's nofiguring out at what time this
person was no longer working forthe US government.
Some of these people were inthe evacuation cavalcade and
helping to solve problems thewhole way.
How could we not have paid them?
(38:20):
I mean so set your prioritieswhen people's lives are on the
line and you only have a limitedamount of time to make your
decisions.
That was a really good earlylesson, which I used over and
over again in later years.
Jen Coronado (38:34):
You've since retired.
What are you doing now?
What are you doing now with allthese skills that you've
developed?
Casey Casebeer (38:42):
Well, interestingly enough, I'm doing
things that I really love doingand I'm not using most of those
skills.
When I retired, I went back oncontract, which is not unusual
at all in the Foreign Service.
You have, as you say, all thesespecialized skills, and jobs
are going begging in the ForeignService, so they bring people
(39:02):
back on six-month contract.
So I went to Niger while theywere having an Ebola epidemic in
West Africa and helpedorganizing a medical evacuation
network because the usual SOSmedical evacuation.
People didn't want to subjecttheir pilots and staff to the
danger of getting Ebola, so theyweren't going into that area,
(39:25):
but people needed to get out.
So I went back two or threetimes.
2015 was my last assignment, Ithink.
So since 2015, I've been doingthe two things that I couldn't
do when I was working that Idesperately wanted to do.
One of them was spending lotsof times with my friends, lots
of time.
I would come home for atwo-week R&R every year.
(39:48):
In that time I had to visit myparents and my friends in
Berkeley, which is about athree-hour drive away, and my
boyfriend in Oregon.
So it was three days here,three days there, three days
there, do a shopping trip and goback to Africa.
This is not normal, right.
So the few friends who wereable to keep real contact with
(40:09):
me during all of those years arepeople who really understood me
, and those people are worthtaking care of and I spend a lot
of time with them.
Now.
The other thing that I do issing.
When I was in the ForeignService I had to sing what
people locally wanted to singand with the people locally who
already liked to sing.
I didn't have time to develop acommunity.
(40:30):
I was only there for threeyears in that In Madagascar
everybody sings.
So I had a Friday night musicgroup that came to my house in
Madagascar and we sang, and inChad the only people who sang in
English were missionaries, so Isang a lot of gospel.
There were a couple of people inthe American community who
(40:52):
liked to sing show tunes, so Ilearned some show tunes, but I
couldn't sing what I wanted,which was traditional music, the
music that people in Europeanhistory have put together for
themselves that tells their ownstory.
So when I retired I really dugdeep into the English language
ballads, which are songs thattell a story.
(41:13):
All of this stuff reallyfascinates me.
So I have a ballad group, Ihave a harmony group, I have a
group of sing-along and chorussongs.
So you can do harmony in a biggroup with that wonderful
buzzing in your sinuses when youget perfectly tuned with a big
group of people.
So I'm doing music all the timenow and I love it.
(41:36):
Doesn't require muchdecision-making, not a great
deal of prioritizing, so thoseskills are lying fallow.
Jen Coronado (41:46):
Well, casey, I have to say I think you're very
impressive, and we frequentlytell people who have served in
the military thank you for yourservice, because it's an
important thing to do, but Ialso think I want to thank you
for your service in connectingwith global communities and
representing our country.
You've done tremendous thingsand I'm super envious of all of
(42:10):
it.
So thank you for taking timewith us today.
Casey Casebeer (42:13):
It was a pleasure.
You can't put a life into anhour, but you have the gift of
bringing people back to thethread, which is well applied to
this kind of communication, andI'm really glad you're doing it
.
Well applied to this kind ofcommunication, and I'm really
glad you're doing it.
(42:33):
So I suggest, may I suggest toyou, may I suggest?
Jen Coronado (42:48):
this is the best part of your life.
Thank you for listening toEveryone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson,
executive producer is AaronDussault, music by Doug Infinite
, our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker and I am Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a SlightlyDisappointed Productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
(43:09):
Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review,
and maybe even like andsubscribe.
Thank you for listening.
Hi folks, it's Jen .
We are very excited for thisweek's podcast, as it contains a
lot of revelatory informationabout what it's like to work for
the US State Department.
We did, however, want to warnour listeners that towards the
end of the podcast, there aresome discussions on violence and
genocide that might betriggering for some people, so
please exercise some self-carewhen listening.
Otherwise, we hope you learn alot from this episode.
(00:23):
Otherwise, we hope you learn alot from this episode.
Casey Casebeer (00:24):
This is a really good example of how diplomacy
works.
Despite the fact that we didn'tlike each other and had
dramatically different ideasabout how government should
serve the people, we had a lotof stuff that had to be talked
about.
Jen Coronado (00:38):
Hello and welcome to Everyone Is.
I am your host, jenniferCoronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all types of people
and build an understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success has achieved thatsuccess because they are a
creative thinker.
So, whether you are an artistor a cook or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the
(00:58):
human conversation.
And now, as they say, on withthe show.
And now, as they say on withthe show, I have always had a
fascination with government andhow it works, and also what
makes someone choose a life ofpublic service In one department
.
An area that I find especiallyintriguing is the US State
Department, so imagine mydelight when I was talking to
(01:20):
someone and they mentioned theirfriend was the most brilliant
problem solver they'd ever met,and that person is Cheryl
Casepear, also known as Casey.
Welcome to Everyone Is Cheryl.
Casey Casebeer (01:31):
Casepear.
Thanks for having me over totalk, jennifer, jennifer.
Jen Coronado (01:35):
Stover, I want to know a little bit about your
background, like where did yougrow up, jennifer Stover?
Casey Casebeer (01:38):
So I was born in Virginia and we lived on the
West Coast.
My dad was a native Californian, my mother was from Boston, my
dad was in the Navy until Iretired to my present house.
I never lived four years in arow in the same place.
When I was about 13, we movedto California and a couple of
(01:59):
years later my dad retired andI've been a resident of
California ever since, although,as I say, I've never been in
one place for very long.
Once I joined the ForeignService, it was, you know, a new
post every two or three years.
Jen Coronado (02:12):
Wow.
So did you find like you got atravel bug when you were a kid
because of that, because youmoved around so much, or did you
feel like you were alwaystrying to find a place to?
Casey Casebeer (02:22):
stick.
I think the connection with theuprooted childhood is more that
I got the bug for trying tounderstand people.
You know, moving from the EastCoast to the West Coast is a
shock to the system and movingback is also a shock to the
system and to the clothing.
Yeah, yes, and I have alwaysbeen interested in how people
(02:45):
who are apparently verydifferent are really the same
and how people who you expect tobe the same are really
different.
What about difference mattersand what about difference
doesn't matter?
Jen Coronado (02:55):
So that's something that I've thought
about all my working life thoughdid you see yourself
manifesting that as a kid, asyou're going through education?
Like things that you picked upon that were super interesting
for you because of that?
Casey Casebeer (03:11):
Not really.
I was interested in everything.
I was one of those kids thatyou know if there was a book I
would read it, regardless ofwhat it was about.
I went through the entirelibrary of my elementary school
and then went through thelibrary on the military base and
, you know, we didn't haveonline then there was no
internet, so you read what youcould get your hands on.
(03:33):
I'm a person who's alwaysinterested in the next thing.
As soon as I've masteredsomething, I lose interest in it
.
So I would read all the booksabout Greek mythology.
And then I was done with Greekmythology for a while and I
would go read everything aboutwildlife in North America and
once I got that down, I kind ofmoved on.
So by the time I went tocollege, my enemies and friends
(03:57):
in high school called me thewalking encyclopedia, and I
still do this and it drives myfriends crazy, you know somebody
says well, where does that songcome from?
And then, you know, threeminutes later in the chat I pop
up with a link saying it lookslike this song was originally
sung in Nova Scotia, but itpassed through the logging
community and ended up in.
You know, I can't help it.
(04:18):
That's the way my mind worksand fortunately that type of a
mind is perfect for the ForeignService.
You have to be constantly readyto learn something you didn't
know.
You were going to have to knowa day or two ago.
Jen Coronado (04:29):
Right, you mentioned college.
Where did you go to college?
Casey Casebeer (04:32):
Undergraduate Berkeley and master's degree at
Columbia.
Jen Coronado (04:36):
What were your focuses at the two universities?
Casey Casebeer (04:39):
Well, focus was not on my mind at first.
So I went to Berkeley and itwas a revelation to me.
It was the first place where Iwas not the smartest kid in the
class and that was good for me.
But then I wanted to studyeverything and I took
anthropology and archaeology andpolitical science and rhetoric
(05:00):
and history and French andSpanish and I just wanted it all
.
I couldn't have it all, but Iwanted it all.
I had been taking French rightthrough high school, so I got
advanced placement into collegewith French and I wanted to go
and spend my junior year abroad,in France.
And my counselor told me Cheryl,if you don't declare a major,
(05:22):
we're not going to let you go.
So I got the catalog and Istarted going through the
catalog trying to figure out howto.
Cheryl, if you don't declare amajor, we're not going to let
you go.
So I got the catalog and Istarted going through the
catalog trying to figure out howto how many of the courses I
had already taken might beapplied to some majors.
So I could get a little bitfurther, as my dad would say.
I ended up in something calledthe development studies.
It was a multidisciplinary,sort of experimental in those
(05:46):
times.
So the idea was that you takethe problem of developing
countries and developingcountries in general don't work
very well.
Why don't they work very well?
So I could apply anthropologyand sociology and history and
French and Spanish and all thesethings that I was interested in
anyway, toward a degree whichwas very handy.
(06:09):
Got out of my undergraduatedegree.
I wasn't interested in runninga city or a public
administration, I guess youwould call it.
So I wanted to continue tolearn about other countries, and
languages has always been acommon theme in my life.
I'm fascinated with otherlanguages.
Berkeley had a great program ininternational affairs, but with
(06:30):
a focus on organizations andadministration in international
affairs.
That wasn't what I wanted, so Iended up with a scholarship and
that helped me choose Columbia.
I got a region scholarship whichdoesn't steer you in any
particular direction, but theyhad a wonderful program, again a
(06:50):
little bit edgy at the time,that focused on developing
countries with a lens of lookingat how economics and politics
interact.
The idea is that you can't getvery far with your economic
ideas unless you can manage thepolitical environment, because
nobody will support you and youwon't get anything done and
people your great ideas will gonowhere.
(07:12):
Also, if you're a politician,you can't get anything done
unless you understand theeconomic effects on your base
and the economic limitations onwhat the projects that you want
to accomplish in your politicallife.
So I hesitate to use the wordpolitical economy because that
has a lot of baggage.
But what they were focused onis making sure that we graduated
(07:33):
always looking at these twosides of problem solving that in
any public arena.
You were going to have to bringalong both of those groups if
you wanted to get anything done.
Jen Coronado (07:44):
Well, going back to what you said before, that
goes into what you were sayingabout what was interesting to
you, which is people who arealike who can't meet, you know,
on common ground, and people whoare different who can meet on
common ground, right, yeah, sothat makes complete sense as far
as a strategy for studying howhumans work.
Right, as far as a strategy forstudying how humans work right,
(08:04):
absolutely.
Casey Casebeer (08:06):
So everybody in my specialization took the
Foreign Service exam, becauseeverybody did.
We just all went and took ittogether and I passed it.
So then I had to decide did Iwant to go on to the oral
assessment, which is the secondtriage step?
It involved going down toWashington DC, but they paid the
way.
(08:26):
So I went and lo and behold, Ipassed that as well.
So they put me on the roster,which is a list of fully
qualified people from which theydraw when they're ready to hire
.
Jen Coronado (08:36):
Really quick about the oral exam.
What is?
Casey Casebeer (08:40):
that like I don't know what it's like now, I
can only tell you what it waslike then.
So at the time, the idea of anassessment center that tested
people's actual skills ratherthan just making them take a
test and going by their answers,was a kind of a different idea,
and they had a number ofdifferent types of assessment.
(09:00):
They got four of us in a roomand gave us each a portfolio of
projects costing a certainamount of money and had us
negotiate how a limited budgetwas going to be spent.
One person had a law degree andcame in hard charging to get
her project through regardless,and, of course, me being the
generalist that I've always been, I ended up as the negotiator
(09:25):
saying okay, it looks to me asthough you know, this project
can't be funded no matter what,because it eats almost the
entire budget and some of theseother things are worthwhile, so
can we agree that we need torule this one out?
And sort of gradually guided usthrough the process.
It turned out that's what we'relooking for.
So I mean, there are plenty ofhard chargers out there, but
(09:46):
people who can negotiate arekind of thin on the ground.
Yeah, so they had that.
They had a pile of inbox stuffranging from the ambassador's
toilet is plugged up to you needto inspect fire damage in this
room before we can begin repairs, and they left us to get
through it.
(10:06):
And some people already had theskill needed to do a pile of
work like that, where you spreadit all out on your desk and
decide what's most pressing,anything that has to be done
today and can't be done tomorrow, anything that involves
somebody who has so muchinfluence that they can impede
your progress and all the restof it.
Anything that is genuinely andintrinsically important and
(10:29):
deserves your attention, whetheror not.
A lot of people are encouragingyou to do it.
So they were interested to seehow we weighed priorities, which
is not an easy thing to test ina candidate.
They had a one-on-one or atwo-on-one, which was even more
terrifying two-on-one interview.
So you went into an interviewwith two people, having no idea
(10:49):
what they were going to ask you.
They asked me about the role ofChina in the coming decades.
You know, here we are 50 yearslater.
Turns out to be a reallyrelevant question yeah,
prescient even, and I didn'tknow jack about China, but I did
know an awful lot about Africaat that point.
(11:10):
So I used Africa as an exampleand talked about China looking
for having an ever-growingpopulation and looking for
resources and knowing that theywere going to have to develop.
If they couldn't get away withdeveloping colonies, they would
have to find some other way topump other countries for
resources.
Anyway, I came up with somethingand apparently they weren't
really interested in whether Iknew about China.
(11:31):
They were interested in whetherI could think on my feet, which
is another really importantcharacteristic for foreign
service people.
You never know what someone'sgoing to ask you and you need to
know what you can say and whatyou can't say and what the
sensitivities of your audienceare, so that you know whether to
push a button or not.
They already knew before I setfoot in the room that I was a
bright student and that I couldlearn well.
(11:52):
What they were interested inwas what kind of a person was I
and how would I manage theenvironment in which the odd
environment in which foreignservice people work?
Jen Coronado (12:02):
Now you talk about .
You know these are the type ofthings that foreign service that
you know you need to know forforeign service work.
And you look at that all inhindsight right, because you
were in the foreign service forsuch a long time.
But what did Casey, at themoment can you remember as
you're taking this foreignservice exam, like, how do you
get past the terror of anervousness?
(12:23):
What resources did you draw?
Casey Casebeer (12:25):
from.
I don't think I was reallyterrified by tests, because I
was always a good student.
The question in the back of mymind was what if I pass?
The Foreign Service wasn'texactly what I had in mind.
I wanted to work ininternational development.
I wanted to help countries thatwere in the process of changing
their economies and theircultures in order to be able to
(12:49):
feed everybody, and that was thenexus of problems that
interested me the most.
Well, I passed it and they putme on the roster.
And then the Graham Redmondthing came along and there was a
hiring freeze.
Can you talk?
Jen Coronado (13:01):
about that for those who don't know what the
Graham Redmond thing is.
Casey Casebeer (13:04):
It was the beginning of the Republican
revolution in the United States.
It was an attempt by theRepublican Party to gain more
political control by controllingthe budget through the
congressional budgetary process,and it was very successful.
But, among other things, it wasthe beginning of a very long
(13:24):
period in the foreign serviceand in every other aspect of
government where people weretrying to keep the government
going without enough people andresources and training to do the
job.
And when you're overseas in ain a very difficult environment
and you can't get trainingbecause we can't afford the
(13:45):
airfare, this kind of thingrequires creative thinking.
I suppose we had to figure outother ways to get the job done,
and we did so.
You took the test.
Jen Coronado (13:54):
You're on the list and there is there a phone call
.
That happens.
You get a letter in the mailsigned by the president.
What happens?
How do you enter?
I?
Casey Casebeer (14:03):
knew I wasn't going to get a telephone call
for a while because there was nohiring being done.
But there were a couple oforganizations in the government
that were exempt from the hiringfreeze, and one of them was the
Social Security Administration.
So I went home to California andI got a job as a claims
interviewer for the SSI program,which is assistance to disabled
people and to people whoseretirement income is below a
(14:26):
certain threshold, and I wasassigned in a place in the north
part of the Central Valleywhich has a lot of farm workers,
and many of them spoke Spanish,and there had never been a
Spanish speaking claims rep inthat office.
Wow.
So I had a line around theblock because I was the only
person in the office that couldtalk to these folks, and some of
(14:48):
them had got crosswise, youknow, 10 years ago and never got
themselves disentangled.
You know how easily you can get, even if you speak the same
language as the personinterviewing you, how easily
they can misunderstand what yousay.
Well, these poor people hadlost their benefits and all
kinds of bad things, had beenforced to pay things back that
they shouldn't, and so I gotinvolved in disentangling all of
(15:11):
these old claims.
Well, that wasn't what theyhired me for.
Jen Coronado (15:16):
You're problem solving.
Casey Casebeer (15:17):
Then too, I couldn't help it.
So my boss, who she was limitedby the requirements of the
bureaucracy as well and shewanted to help those people and
couldn't.
So when she called me in to domy, you have to do an annual
evaluation.
It's part of the way thegovernment manages personnel.
When she called me in for myfirst annual evaluation, she
(15:39):
said I can't give you yourannual step increase because you
aren't doing what I hired youto do, and you know it.
And you're doing what I hiredyou to do, and you know it, and
you're doing what you want to doanyway.
However, I for one am reallyglad that it's getting done.
I'm sorry that I can't be morehonest with you.
So I really respected thiswoman.
She came right out with thelimitations of the institution
(16:01):
and she was aware of them.
She wasn't going to quitbecause of them, but she was
quietly getting the job done atthe cost of my first annual step
increase.
But hey, so that was a goodlearning experience for me that
that particular institutionwasn't equipped to value good
quality work.
What they wanted was volume.
They wanted me to move thoseclaims, interviews and annual
(16:27):
redeterminations of benefits.
A certain volume of them had togo across my desk every year,
and what I was doing was notmaking that happen.
So I became determined that Iwould not accept a job with the
Foreign Service or anybody elseagain until I could find an
employer who would value mydesire to do it right.
Jen Coronado (16:48):
It's very interesting.
I frequently think about rulesand how rules could be applied,
and I always think, if therecomes a point when rules don't
serve what you've set up tobegin with, that you can change
the rules because you madesomebody made the rules at some
point.
So that's interesting that youwere wanting to push through
(17:11):
that in your next role.
So what was your next role?
Casey Casebeer (17:14):
Well, I received a telephone call saying that
the hiring freeze was lifted andthey were filling long vacant
positions as fast as they could.
And was I interested in beingan administrative officer?
Now, the Foreign Service atthat time was broken up into
specialties that they call, forreasons lost in the mist of time
(17:38):
, cones.
So they had the consular cone.
Those are the people who managevisas and passports and the
problems of Americans overseas.
They have the political cone,who learn about the local
political situation and reporton it, so Washington understands
what's happening in a country.
Economic cone the same thing,but for the economic side and
(17:59):
financial side and business.
And then they had publicaffairs.
Handling the press, making pressreleases and managing the image
of the African roots hadinspired some of the music of
(18:34):
America and then how that musichad come back to Africa and
become mixed up with WestAfrican pop music and all this
sort of thing.
That showed people how we wereconnected.
Then, in addition, there'ssomebody who has to keep the
lights on the people who hireand fire and do the budgets and
run the motor pool and hirepeople with trade skills to
(18:56):
maintain people's houses and doan environment that's so
different from theirs that theycan't live like local people and
still do their job.
(19:19):
So the State Department'sapproach to this is to try to
make diplomats home as much likea home in the United States as
is practical in the localenvironment, much like a home in
the United States is practicalin the local environment.
So, anyway, somebody had to dothat job and those jobs had gone
begging during the hiringfreeze.
So I took the job because Idesperately wanted out of the
(19:41):
impasse I was in with the socialsecurity job and what I found
out right away was that myproblem solving skills were
central to my identity, that inany situation where there was
clearly a problem impeding whatI wanted to do, I wanted to fix
it.
So that was a good thing for meto know about myself and I
(20:05):
learned it early because ofsocial security, for which I
thank my old boss.
Jen Coronado (20:09):
Now let's step back for a second, because this
was your first assignment.
Casey Casebeer (20:14):
My first assignment?
Yes, and where exactly were youin that?
It was in Cuba.
Oddly enough, we didn't have,and don't have, formal relations
with Cuba for historicalreasons, and this is a really
good example of how diplomacyworks.
Despite the fact that we didn'tlike each other and had
dramatically different ideasabout how government should
(20:35):
serve the people, we had a lotof stuff that had to be talked
about.
You have a very heavy trafficair traffic area, so you have to
have overflight clearances.
Every flight that goes acrosssomebody's territory you have to
have the host government'spermission to be there or they
have the right to shoot you down.
So you have to talk about that,whether you like each other or
not.
We had to talk aboutimmigration, legal and illegal.
(20:57):
There was drug interdictionissues, being so close to
Florida, and all these thingsrequired that people speak in a
civil way, which was not whatwas going on on the public level
, but under the public level,the diplomats get on with the
job.
So it was actually afascinating assignment.
I ended up interviewing a groupof prisoners called the
(21:20):
plantados, the ones who wouldnot move because they were
political prisoners.
They viewed themselves aspolitical prisoners and wouldn't
wear the prison uniform.
So the Cubans at that time andI would say still play hardball
with people who don'tparticipate in their model.
So they said we can't make youwear the uniform, but we're not
(21:40):
going to give you anything else.
So these guys had been inprison for 20 years in their
shorts, which just is such animage of the hard-headed,
unmoving, unbendingunwillingness to discuss matters
that really matter that hascharacterized that relationship
for all these years.
So I got to interview theseguys in the prison for a special
(22:04):
visa program to get them whereCuba had said they would be
willing to release them to go tothe United States, and most of
them did in the end.
So here I am.
What was I?
24 at that time or 23?
23-year-old in high heels in aCuban prison, interviewing
crusty old guys in theirunderwear.
It was a very strangeintroduction to the Foreign
(22:26):
Service and welcome to thegovernment, yes, well, so it was
a wonderful tour and I lovedthe Caribbean.
Jen Coronado (22:35):
And so you were in Cuba and you were hanging out
with older guys in theirunderwear, and then you moved on
to what was your nextassignment after that.
Casey Casebeer (22:43):
Africa, because I had focused on Africa in my
graduate studies and I wanted tosee it for real.
So I went to Ivory Coast, côte,d'ivoire, and brushed off my
French, which, you know, I hadnot been using for those three
years, while I was speakingSpanish all the time.
Jen Coronado (23:02):
And what was your role there at that point in time
?
Casey Casebeer (23:05):
The first tour was consular because everybody
did a first tour as a consularofficer at that time.
So this was my first tour inthe specialization that I was
assigned to.
So it was my first tour doingadministrative work and the
embassy was at that time verylarge.
It was one of the two or threesort of hub embassies in Africa
(23:26):
where there are some functionsthat you need in an embassy,
like a doctor, but you can'tafford to put a doctor in every
country.
So you assign a doctor in acountry that has good air
service and the doctor then canmake regular runs to the
surrounding countries and checkon people with particular
(23:46):
medical conditions and assesswhatever needs to be assessed
locally.
Deal with the local.
You know, all of a suddeneverybody's getting some local
disease and he might be able tofigure out, or she might be able
to figure out what's going on.
So anyway, some hub embassieshad a very large population of
these regional people and so theadministrative section was
(24:07):
supporting a huge base of peoplewho weren't actually focused on
that country.
So I was doing leasing in thatfirst job, not a very romantic
job, but it got me out into thecommunity.
I was viewing houses andnegotiating with local people in
the local languages and I neverlearned anything but French.
(24:28):
But anybody who could afford toown a house at that time in
Ivory Coast probably had gone toschool in French, and so my
French got me through andlearned a lot about negotiation
and got my French back up tospeed.
Jen Coronado (24:42):
How many tours did you do?
Casey Casebeer (24:43):
and what was your next one?
You know I'd have to sit downand count, and my history is
complicated by the fact that intwo different periods of my life
I was what the State Departmentcalls a rover.
Africa has a lot of jobs thatfall vacant and stay vacant for
way too long, because it's hardto recruit people who are
willing to and trained to workin the African environment, and
(25:08):
so they maintain a small groupof people called rovers, who go
out for a year at a time withtheir bags and they're plugging
holes wherever some job has beenvacant too long and bad things
are starting to happen becausethere's nobody to do the job.
So you go from spot to spot.
You might stay for two weekswhile somebody takes a vacation,
or you might stay for sixmonths until they can recruit
(25:31):
and train somebody for the job.
So you never know from oneassignment to the next how long
you're going to be there orwhere you're going next.
Jen Coronado (25:39):
So I crisscrossed the map doing that what a
complex web you had.
Casey Casebeer (25:43):
You were talking earlier about breaking rules.
There are ways to break rulesin a bureaucracy.
Usually, a well-designedbureaucracy will have ways for
you to say I'm aware of thisrule.
Here's the situation.
If I apply the rule, thefollowing outcome will result,
which is not to our benefit.
Here's what I propose as anexception.
(26:04):
And usually it'll go highenough to where someone can make
a decision and they'll say goahead.
And then you have a piece ofpaper that says I'm authorized
to do this.
You cover whatever part of youranatomy requires covering at
that point and you get the jobdone.
So I learned how to how to usea bureaucracy and how to get
things done despite theobstacles that a bureaucracy
(26:26):
creates.
Jen Coronado (26:27):
I have to tell you , casey, what a skill that our
bureaucracy creates.
I have to tell you, casey, whata skill you have to be able to
see those gaps, to be able tosay, all right, if I do this and
these three things, then I'llbe able to hit this process and
take it up here and then get theapprovals I need to do, the one
thing that I need to completeand you're using the same skills
that the traditional problemsolvers are using.
Casey Casebeer (26:49):
In order for you to get that done, I bet you had
to make a friend.
You had to go in and sit downwith somebody and say you know,
I need an ally here.
I need you to understand whatI'm trying to get done.
So being a bridge is part ofwhat the Foreign Service is
about.
No matter what kind of workyou're doing, you are trying to
help Washington understand howthe world looks to the local
people and help the local peopleunderstand the oddities of
(27:13):
Washington's behavior andinterpret it so that they can
make good decisions forthemselves.
So you're constantly going backand forth across that bridge.
Jen Coronado (27:22):
It's interesting.
I wanted to get to one of yourlarger roles, which I think is
so fascinating, which is chiefof mission.
Casey Casebeer (27:28):
So the first time that happened, I was in
Burundi and they were having acivil war and the ambassador
reached the end of hisassignment and departed post.
I had just come in as thedeputy chief of mission, which
is the ambassador's number two,the person that acts as
ambassador when the ambassadoris out of country.
So I stepped into that position, which in the diplomatic world
(27:48):
is called the chargé d'affaires,the person who's in charge of
country.
So I stepped into that position, which in the diplomatic world
is called the chargé d'affaires,the person who's in charge of
matters.
Jen Coronado (27:56):
I love that I'm going to start calling myself
that that's right.
Casey Casebeer (27:59):
So I became the chargé within days of arrival at
post, but I didn't know anybodyand that I held that position
for, I guess, seven months or sountil they could get another
ambassador.
And that was the first time.
The second time I was deputychief of mission in Chad, and
(28:21):
that was when the Darfurconflict was happening.
Right, the State Department has, you know, you have the
secretary and the undersecretaryand then you have department
heads, so you have the AfricanBureau and you have a person in
charge of the African Bureau andthen a group of people right
under that person, and all ofthose people need staff.
Jen Coronado (28:42):
Yeah, I just find all that process so fascinating.
The other thing that I wasthinking about is you know,
you've had a lot.
You've been to Cuba, you'vevarious parts of Africa,
different jobs and roles thatyou got flown into.
What was the toughest situationyou ever got into that you had
to solve?
Casey Casebeer (29:02):
for One is in 1994, I was flown into Kigali,
rwanda, after the genocide.
So the genocide started inFebruary and ended in around I
don't know April, and then byAugust the violence was over and
(29:23):
we wanted to know if we couldreopen the embassy, the embassy.
So they sent in the formerambassador, a security guy and
an admin person me to figure outwhether conditions were ready
for, whether we could worksafely in that environment.
The embassy had a mortar shellthrough the ambassador's
conference rooms, this great bighole with rain pouring in, and
(29:47):
the houses where the diplomatswho were evacuated had lived had
all been occupied by what youmight call squatters, people who
needed a place to stay, andthere was an empty house.
So they moved in A milliondollars worth of household
furniture and refrigerators andwashing machines and what have
you had disappeared or beenmoved to the neighbor's house
(30:09):
and what have you haddisappeared or been moved to the
neighbor's house and ourwarehouse had been sacked.
There was no fuel delivery tothe country, so we had no power
and no water.
And there was one hotel.
The hotel rooms had no doorsbut they were renting out rooms
to people like us, diplomats andcompany representatives and so
(30:30):
forth, who were trying to decidewhether they could come back to
Rwanda.
So within three days of arrivalI had a door in my room, which
was a great reassurance, and wejust went through.
You know, we made a list of whatthe basics were without which
we couldn't operate safely.
Could we get a physicalperimeter where we could work
(30:52):
safely in the building?
Where were we going to get fuel?
We had generators.
So if we could get fuel for thegenerator we could get the
electricity back on.
Then would the computers work.
All of the batteries had beenrun all the way down and in
those days that was not a goodthing.
So could we get batteries in toget the system back up?
And what about medical coverage?
(31:14):
Could we get a nurse in?
And then how we were going toget medicines in?
And I mean every aspect of lifehad to be worked through.
I worked 16 hours a day.
If I was not sleeping, I wasworking for months.
I've never worked harder in mylife.
And all of our employees,because of the history of Rwanda
(31:35):
, at use, computers could draft,could speak foreign languages.
Almost all those people wereTutsis.
Tutsis, you'll remember, arethe people who were the subject
(31:58):
of the genocide, although manyHutus who didn't want to
cooperate with the genocide werekilled as well.
So almost all of our employeeshad either been killed or had
run off to refugee camps orhidden themselves in some way.
During the violence, and as theword got out into the community
that the Americans were back andthat there was somebody at the
(32:20):
embassy, people started totrickle in and they had stories.
Every one of them had lostparents and children and entire
villages, and it was beyondcomprehension, it was impossible
to absorb.
So for them, we, the embassy,were this one little tiny spark
(32:41):
of normality in a world that hadcompletely lost its meaning,
and they were determined to comeback to work and try to work.
But they were in post-traumaticstress and all of them were
(33:06):
mentally ill in some way.
At the beginning, you knowwindow, and he wouldn't even be
aware I was there.
You know I put a hand on hisshoulder and he would notice I
was there and smile.
And you know it was a veryunusual working environment, to
put it mildly.
To make a long story short, wewere able to get everybody, get
a whole lot of people whom wehad feared dead were able to
(33:27):
come back from neighboringcountries where they were living
in refugee camps.
We were able to slowly persuadepeople to give us back the
houses that we were leasing andbring in furniture, and I found
a way to get fuel driven downfrom Kenya so we could get the
electricity going and we got thehole in the ambassador's
(33:48):
conference room repaired theelectricity going and we got the
hole in the ambassador'sconference room repaired.
The rainy season came earlythat year and I was sleeping in
the library of the publicaffairs presence on a cot and it
started raining and all I couldthink was, oh my God, the
ambassador's conference room andI went charging upstairs with
an armful of tarpaulins andseveral other employees came to
(34:10):
help me and we were, you know,trying to protect the furniture
and things that remained in thatroom and the books Just
unpredictable things.
You don't know what to do firstin a situation like that.
You know, normally theambassador's conference room
would be very, very high on thelist of any administrative
officer overseas, but there wereway too many other things going
(34:32):
on and the ambassador, blesshis heart, was a man who knew
what was important and he didn'tmess with me.
He just said you know whatneeds to be done.
Tell me if I can move anobstacle for you.
And then he went about hisbusiness with the political and
economic side of the story.
Jen Coronado (34:49):
I mean, how do you you talked about the PTSD for
the people who suffered throughthat you know, very specifically
how do you deal?
With their trauma?
How do you deal with theirtrauma impacting you?
Casey Casebeer (35:03):
I was young for one thing, so I was resilient,
but I mean, I'm still dealingwith it.
You know, I'm still.
There are still people.
I remember when I came backfrom that assignment I got some
leave and came back toCalifornia, to this very house
In fact my parents lived here atthe time and we have a room
(35:27):
outside which once was anenclosed porch, which has been
turned into a room and has awood-burning stove.
It was wintertime and I built afire in the fireplace and sat
out there for hours with myguitar, and my mother would come
out and bring me food and sitfor a little while and I
wouldn't have a lot to say, andso she'd take the dirty dishes
and go back to the kitchen.
She was worried.
(35:47):
She told me later, but Iprocessed, and there were a few
take-home messages, a few thingsthat I will never forget as a
result of that experience.
One is that everybody can kill.
You think that you can't orthat you wouldn't, but when
faced with the right situation,set of circumstances, everybody
(36:09):
can kill, and fear is such apowerful thing that your body
will take over from your mindand make you do what you have to
do to save itself.
There were heroes, lots ofheroes, lots of people who
risked their lives for oneanother.
I'm not underselling orunderstating what they went
(36:31):
through and the chances thatthey took From that experience.
I couldn't look down onsomebody who wasn't a hero,
because a lot of good people dida lot of bad things in that
situation because they wereafraid.
They didn't want to die.
They didn't want the peoplethey loved to die.
And when somebody has a knifeto your you know your
(36:52):
six-year-old's throat and saysyou are going to come with us,
put on this uniform and killpeople, or I am going to kill
this child here and now, youjust do what's in front of you
to do and when it's all over,you sort through the wreckage
and try to make a life again.
So that was the first take-homemessage that everybody is
(37:13):
capable of doing terrible thingsin the right environment.
So try to be compassionate.
And I also learned how to setpriorities under time pressure.
In that situation, everythinghad gone wrong.
Every single aspect of ourlives was unendurable.
So, okay, first we have to havewater, because if we don't have
(37:36):
water we can't stay more than aweek.
So I worked on the water first.
Then we needed power, becausethe ambassador couldn't do his
job without a computer.
So then I worked on the fuelsituation and gradually worked
up a list of the things that hadto happen, and then, as people
came back, I had to bring inpeople from Washington to help
me sort out the personnel issues, which you can imagine were
(37:58):
incredible.
The State Department usuallysolves this problem by simply
paying people as though they hadbeen working through the whole
crisis, because there's nofiguring out at what time this
person was no longer working forthe US government.
Some of these people were inthe evacuation cavalcade and
helping to solve problems thewhole way.
How could we not have paid them?
(38:20):
I mean so set your prioritieswhen people's lives are on the
line and you only have a limitedamount of time to make your
decisions.
That was a really good earlylesson, which I used over and
over again in later years.
Jen Coronado (38:34):
You've since retired.
What are you doing now?
What are you doing now with allthese skills that you've
developed?
Casey Casebeer (38:42):
Well, interestingly enough, I'm doing
things that I really love doingand I'm not using most of those
skills.
When I retired, I went back oncontract, which is not unusual
at all in the Foreign Service.
You have, as you say, all thesespecialized skills, and jobs
are going begging in the ForeignService, so they bring people
(39:02):
back on six-month contract.
So I went to Niger while theywere having an Ebola epidemic in
West Africa and helpedorganizing a medical evacuation
network because the usual SOSmedical evacuation.
People didn't want to subjecttheir pilots and staff to the
danger of getting Ebola, so theyweren't going into that area,
(39:25):
but people needed to get out.
So I went back two or threetimes.
2015 was my last assignment, Ithink.
So since 2015, I've been doingthe two things that I couldn't
do when I was working that Idesperately wanted to do.
One of them was spending lotsof times with my friends, lots
of time.
I would come home for atwo-week R&R every year.
(39:48):
In that time I had to visit myparents and my friends in
Berkeley, which is about athree-hour drive away, and my
boyfriend in Oregon.
So it was three days here,three days there, three days
there, do a shopping trip and goback to Africa.
This is not normal, right.
So the few friends who wereable to keep real contact with
(40:09):
me during all of those years arepeople who really understood me
, and those people are worthtaking care of and I spend a lot
of time with them.
Now.
The other thing that I do issing.
When I was in the ForeignService I had to sing what
people locally wanted to singand with the people locally who
already liked to sing.
I didn't have time to develop acommunity.
(40:30):
I was only there for threeyears in that In Madagascar
everybody sings.
So I had a Friday night musicgroup that came to my house in
Madagascar and we sang, and inChad the only people who sang in
English were missionaries, so Isang a lot of gospel.
There were a couple of people inthe American community who
(40:52):
liked to sing show tunes, so Ilearned some show tunes, but I
couldn't sing what I wanted,which was traditional music, the
music that people in Europeanhistory have put together for
themselves that tells their ownstory.
So when I retired I really dugdeep into the English language
ballads, which are songs thattell a story.
(41:13):
All of this stuff reallyfascinates me.
So I have a ballad group, Ihave a harmony group, I have a
group of sing-along and chorussongs.
So you can do harmony in a biggroup with that wonderful
buzzing in your sinuses when youget perfectly tuned with a big
group of people.
So I'm doing music all the timenow and I love it.
(41:36):
Doesn't require muchdecision-making, not a great
deal of prioritizing, so thoseskills are lying fallow.
Jen Coronado (41:46):
Well, casey, I have to say I think you're very
impressive, and we frequentlytell people who have served in
the military thank you for yourservice, because it's an
important thing to do, but Ialso think I want to thank you
for your service in connectingwith global communities and
representing our country.
You've done tremendous thingsand I'm super envious of all of
(42:10):
it.
So thank you for taking timewith us today.
Casey Casebeer (42:13):
It was a pleasure.
You can't put a life into anhour, but you have the gift of
bringing people back to thethread, which is well applied to
this kind of communication, andI'm really glad you're doing it
.
Well applied to this kind ofcommunication, and I'm really
glad you're doing it.
(42:33):
So I suggest, may I suggest toyou, may I suggest?
Jen Coronado (42:48):
this is the best part of your life.
Thank you for listening toEveryone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson,
executive producer is AaronDussault, music by Doug Infinite
, our logo and graphic design isby Harrison Parker and I am Jen
Coronado.
Everyone Is is a SlightlyDisappointed Productions
production dropping every otherThursday.
(43:09):
Wherever podcasts are available, make sure to rate and review,
and maybe even like andsubscribe.
Thank you for listening.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com