Investigative Summary

Former senior U.S. Foreign Service officer with over 20 years’ experience managing institutional decision-making under crisis conditions, including evacuations, compliance oversight, and mission leadership in fragile and conflict-affected environments. My work now applies lessons from real governance failures—most notably the August 2021 Afghan evacuation—to audit-first AI governance, incident reconstruction, and accountable use of powerful, fallible AI systems.

Background and Experience

I am a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer with over twenty years of experience (2005–2025) operating inside high-risk institutional environments. My career focused on crisis response, consular operations, and organizational management under legal and ethical constraint, including service as Acting Deputy Chief of Mission in multiple hardship posts. I retired in November 2025 after completing two years of full-time Mandarin Chinese study at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute.

A central feature of my work was decision-making under uncertainty: evacuations, emergency response, and sustained operations where information was incomplete, guidance shifted rapidly, and informal authority often substituted for formal process. The August 2021 evacuation of Afghan refugees crystallized a recurring failure mode I observed throughout my career—institutions making consequential decisions without durable records of rationale, responsibility, or uncertainty, leaving accountability and learning impossible after the fact.

My current work on Agora-AI applies these lessons to AI governance. It focuses on audit-first memory, structured claims, and reconstructable decision records so that institutions using powerful AI systems retain the ability to explain, review, and correct their decisions over time.

Why This Background Matters for AI Governance

  • Lived experience with institutional failure: Direct exposure to how governance breaks under crisis, including evacuations, political collapse, and emergency decision-making.
  • Accountability under constraint: Worked inside systems where legal, ethical, and human consequences were immediate, not hypothetical.
  • Institutional memory gaps: Repeatedly saw decisions become un-auditable due to fragmented records, informal exceptions, and leadership turnover.
  • Governance tooling, not theory: Built and restructured real information and oversight systems (case tracking, crisis workflows, compliance processes) to make reasoning and responsibility explicit.
  • AI governance relevance: Brings a practitioner’s perspective to AI risk—focused on incident reconstruction, auditability, and enforceable accountability rather than model performance or abstraction.
  • Independence: Retired from government service; able to examine institutional failures without agency capture or operational constraints.

Education and Professional Experience

Education

  • M.A., Organizational Leadership — Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington (2017)
  • B.A., Literature and Linguistics — Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington (1998)
  • Mandarin Chinese (Advanced Professional Training) — Foreign Service Institute, Arlington, Virginia (2023–2025)

Professional Experience (Selected)

U.S. Foreign Service Officer — U.S. Department of State (Jan 2005–Nov 2025)

    • Career Development Officer, Washington, DC (2020–2023)
      Career counseling for consular officers; development of information management resources.
    • Consular Section Chief, Kolkata, India (2017–2020)
      Leadership of consular operations; crisis management; governance and information systems design.
    • Deputy Consular Section Chief, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2014–2017)
      High-fraud environment; backlog reduction; accountability and case-management systems.
    • Consular Section Chief, Port Moresby / Solomon Islands / Vanuatu (2011–2014)
      Sole consular officer; crisis response; policy reporting; Acting DCM duties.
    • American Citizen Services Unit Chief, Santiago, Chile (2009–2011)
      Evacuation and disaster response following major earthquake.
    • Consular Officer, Baghdad, Iraq (2007–2008)
      Emergency assistance; evacuation planning; interagency coordination.
    • General Services Officer, Sana’a, Yemen (2005–2007)
      Logistics, procurement, fraud detection, and operational accountability.