How I Got My Career in Foreign Policy: Michelle Gavin

When it came time to pick a career, Michelle Gavin knew she wanted her “world to get bigger.” After studying abroad in Cameroon in college, she developed a fascination with Africa that kick-started her journey in foreign policy. After years in the Senate, including on the subcommittee on African Affairs, she joined the Obama administration, serving first on the National Security Council (NSC) before being appointed U.S. ambassador to Botswana. She is currently a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her next book, “The Age of Change: How Urban Youth are Transforming African Politics,” was published September 4. Gavin talks below about the different skills needed in the legislative and executive branches, the value of being a regional specialist versus remaining a foreign policy generalist, and her favorite trip to Ghana with President Obama.

Here’s how Michelle Gavin got her career in foreign policy.

What did you want to be when you were little?

I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer.

When did your interest in foreign policy begin? Did you enter college wanting to study international relations or did that come to you later?

What I remember very clearly when I was thinking about going to college, is that I wanted my world to get bigger. So I applied to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, because I was hoping to study international relations. And just to be clear, it’s not because I had so much international experience. I didn’t have a passport. I’d never been out of the country.

When did you decide to start specializing in Africa? How did that come about?

When I was at Georgetown, to graduate, you needed to pass a foreign language proficiency test, and my public high school in Arizona had not prepared me sufficiently to be on par with my classmates. So I knew I had to study abroad—I was studying French— in a Francophone country if I had any chance of passing this proficiency test. 

I was an optimist, and I thought, “okay, at some point I’m going to get to see Paris and Western Europe, as a tourist. But will I ever really get to West, Central Africa? Not sure.” So I studied abroad in Cameroon. It was 1994. It was politically in Cameroon actually a really, really interesting time. There were Ghost Town strikes and this opposition movement, the Social Democratic Front, appeared to be a genuine force in the country. But 1994 was also the year of the Rwandan genocide. It was the year of South African liberation. The stakes of African politics that year were so compelling that once I sort of turned my focus in that direction, I never really looked away.

What brought you into the Senate? How did you decide that that was the way you wanted to enter into the field?

I was incredibly lucky, and when I was a senior in college, I started working for Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS), who chaired the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs. I got the job—it was a right place, right time situation. Then I went off to graduate school and I did some other things, but when the ranking member of the subcommittee, Russ Feingold, was looking for a new foreign policy person, I was a known quantity, because I’d worked with them in the past. So, I think that got my foot in the door.

After spending years in the Senate, what was it like to shift into the executive branch role, and do you feel like one prepared you for the other?

The Senate was a wonderful place to get a perspective on U.S. foreign policy, to learn a lot about U.S.-Africa policy, if for no other reason than you do these ambassadorial confirmations. Every three years, you’re thinking about specific bilateral relationships and what are the good questions to ask? What would constitute an appropriate sort of oversight and vetting? 

My first job in the executive branch was at the National Security Council, which is really an education unto itself, because it’s where all of the executive branch agencies sort of come together and try to get coordinated. So that’s a completely different skill set and mechanism than oversight, right? It’s policy coordination and direction. I will say that job, the skills you need to bring people together, definitely helped prepare me for diplomacy afterward.

How did you end up being brought into the NSC?

Again, sort of being a known quantity. When Barack Obama was a senator, and he was on the Foreign Relations Committee and he was planning a trip to Africa, his staff asked me to come, do a briefing and draft a speech for him, because there are only so many Africanists in the Senate. I had some relationship to him and to people around him that was positive, so I was one of a cast of thousands who provided talking points and whatnot on the campaign, and then they offered me the senior director job.

What’s the difference between working on foreign policy at the legislative level, and then in the executive branch, that you think people maybe don’t realize?

I mean, Congress can play an important role in foreign policy, but ultimately, constitutionally, it’s largely an executive branch prerogative. Congress’ power of the purse gives them an ability to conduct oversight into how we’re implementing these policies, how we’re spending money. Then, of course, there’s the confirmation process and war powers. 

But at the end of the day, foreign policy is largely conducted by the executive branch. One is sort of a degree removed and playing this oversight role, providing authorities or not, permissions or not, funding or not. And the other is building the relationships, setting the strategic direction, and trying to apply all of these different aspects of national power and the government’s tools to try and achieve these objectives.

From the NSC and the executive branch, you become ambassador to Botswana for President Obama. What’s the biggest challenge about moving to on-the-ground implementation?

The biggest challenge in that transition for me really was going from staff to principal. All of the jobs I’d had before, most of the time, if there’s a camera, you’re diving out of the frame. But when you’re the ambassador, you’re supposed to be in the frame. It’s this different role where you’re kind of like the physical embodiment of the policy and of the U.S. presence—which is a very different way of relating to the public and thinking about what your role is whenever you enter a room. It’s not to be a resource on the side, whispering the information, but rather to engage. And there’s certainly some of that at the NSC, but it’s not so public. There’s a huge public diplomacy piece to the ambassador role that was totally new to me and a fun new muscle to flex.

Why or how did it end up being Botswana, versus another country in Africa?

I was really lucky and I got to choose. I was shown a list of countries that were coming up for rotation. I chose Botswana in large part because my daughter was two-and-a-half, and I hadn’t seen much of her while I worked at the NSC. Botswana is an incredibly safe post. It’s safe by U.S. government determinations, which just means you have more freedom in your personal and family life. I could get into my private vehicle and drive to lunch with my daughter, which isn’t really possible in lots of other places. 

Botswana, a peaceful democracy since independence—there’s just a lot to like. So much of the work at the NSC really is crisis management. You’re putting out fires every day. And the relationship with Botswana, there’s this huge overlap in the Venn diagram of interests and values. We share a lot—not everything, we disagree on some things, that’s fine. But we could think about, “what could be an entirely positive and proactive agenda? What can we get done together?” Because Botswana has had this remarkable development trajectory, where they’re an upper-middle-income country, it’s not a donor-recipient relationship. Yes, we’d spent foreign assistance funds there, but they were dwarfed by the funds that the people of Botswana themselves were pouring into these same projects. And so, the strange power dynamics of donor-recipient—those weren’t there. 

So it really was a chance to say, “Okay, what if our relationships with African countries looked like we wanted them to? Looked like development had been successful? And now, here we are, two democratic states with these shared interests, trying to get things done together.” That was really exciting and interesting, and the total opposite of, “how can I prevent the worst-case scenario today?”  I really enjoyed that aspect of the job. 

What’s the role mentorship had in your career? Were there people that you looked to when carving this path, or were there people who maybe didn’t have that path but gave you good advice?

Absolutely. I mean, I was blessed to have some wonderful bosses, [including] my first boss, when I was still an undergraduate in Senator Kassebaum’s office, who is a brilliant guy. Or Senator Feingold, who’s just an incredible, for me, example of moral courage and intellectual rigor in a political role, which you don’t always see. I keep in touch with him, and he’s been a wonderful sense of true north. And, not like we’re buddies, but I was very, very honored to work for President Obama. 

So I think I’ve been very lucky. And it’s advice that I often give younger people—to try to make sure, if you’re going to work for an elected official, do you feel good about that association? And that it’s not going to be one you’re trying to explain away, somewhere down the line.

For young people who are starting out and who want to carve out careers in this space, what are the main ways you think the foreign policy field has changed since the time you started out? Do you have advice for them?

So many things have changed. The way we think about the U.S. role in the world has changed. Obviously the entire development assistance enterprise is being called into question. I think public service, in the formalized form of government service, in some quarters, has been vilified. I think that’s incredibly difficult and confusing, and I really feel for young people who are interested in these issues and want to make a life’s work out of them, trying to figure out, not just how to navigate the “where are the jobs?” but these messages about what is worthy and honorable work. I think that’s really difficult. 

That said, there are so many different facets to international engagement. There are private sector roles that are incredibly meaty and consequential, and I actually think there’ll be more of those going forward, as we trim down what’s in government. You can’t have a foreign policy based on commercial diplomacy if you don’t have staff doing that. 

The private sector, those private risk analysis people, they’re all going to become more important. Then there’s a host of nonprofits that do really important work, and it doesn’t all rely on federal funding. There are actually some really interesting things that happen at state and municipal levels around international engagement that will probably become more important, at least in the near term. And then, of course, there’s academia, the world of ideas. It’s not just people with careers like mine, where the first part of my career is all government. I think sometimes the thinking is too narrow about how to go about finding really meaningful, substantial work in international relations.

How do you think about the value of specializing in an issue or region early on versus being a generalist?

I have always gotten the career advice, “don’t just focus on Africa.” I’ve done more, certainly when I was in the Senate I spent a lot of time on Africa, but that wasn’t the only thing I was doing. I have struggled to follow that advice, in part because, since I was studying abroad, I just find it so fascinating. I find it so endlessly interesting. And I think that, by and large, the U.S. lacks the sort of will and resources to think more seriously about the region. 

I think it really depends on what it is you want from your career. If there are job titles that are very important to you, or certain types of prestige or validation that are meaningful to you, probably being too much of a specialist is not in your interest. But I think everybody has to choose their own adventure and figure out what gets them out of bed in the morning and makes them excited to go to work. And I just—Africa, you can’t be bored. It’s so fascinating. 

Do you have advice specifically for young people who want to work on Africa policy?

Yes. Listen. Listen as much as you can to what’s happening in African political debates in African media. It’s very easy, and I’m sure I’m often guilty of this as well, of seeing a really distorted view of different countries and issues through our lens, rather than understanding what the crux of the matter is on the ground. It’s so much richer and more interesting when you’re not just listening to what other Western analysts think, but you’re really listening to what the conversation is in the region and in the country. It’ll help prevent the issues from getting stale.

I’m sure, over the course of your time at the White House and as an ambassador, you had some really fascinating trips and dinners. Can you describe maybe the most memorable one?

I will say, getting to travel with President Obama to Ghana, where he did his first trip as president to Africa—and just getting to be a part of what you’ve seen for so long, of Air Force One and riding in the beast to do the pre-brief before his bilateral meeting with then-President [John Atta] Mills of Ghana—that was all so exciting. 

But what I remember most vividly from that was the kindness of President Obama as we were sitting in the limo. President Mills needed to come down a very long staircase, and he was an older gentleman, so it was taking some time—and you know, much better to stay in the car and not make him feel rushed. So we’re there in the vehicle and the president asked me about my daughter, who was five months old when I started working at the White House, and this was my first trip away from her. I pretty much only saw her while she was sleeping at night. When he asked me about her, I really embarrassingly—I didn’t cry—but I think my eyes got really glassy. He was so kind about it and I just remember him saying, “Oh, I get it. You miss this.” (Mimes holding a baby to chest) And he was exactly right, that visceral closeness to your child. I always remember that, because he’s the leader of the free world, he’s got a thousand things on his plate, and it was so kind and exactly what I was thinking. It made me feel better about being glassy eyed, and I’m really grateful for it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It represents the views and opinions solely of the interviewee. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.