Good afternoon.

My name is Curtis Minter Jr., Senior Fellow at ThirdSpace Action Lab and president of Akron Roundtable.

On behalf of our title sponsor, state and federal communications, our board of directors, staff and volunteers, we welcome you to a Signature Series luncheon at Quaker Station featuring Ambassador Tracy.

Let's give her a round of applause.

The Akron Roundtable legacy as one, we hope prove stories still matter.

Many of us are still moved to action by public speakers, particularly those who recognize they, too, can change the world through inspiration.

The work that began in the local Kiwanis Club has now blossomed into a longstanding commitment to bring voices from the world to greater Akron and a longstanding commitment now of 50 years.

Round of applause.

With that, we would like to thank our 50th anniversary sponsors, Huntington Bank and the Billow Funeral Homes.

We would also like to acknowledge our program sponsor, the Gertrude F. Orr Donor Advised Fund of the Akron Community Foundation, who have afforded us the opportunity to be present here today.

The ambassador will take questions following her presentation today.

Akron Roundtable board member, Natalie Schulte, attorney at Roetzel, will moderate.

To submit a question, please be sure to refer to the QR codes in your brochures or on the screens to my side.

With that, you are also able to flag down one of our Akron Roundtable staff to secure a physical note card to write down your question, and we will share it at the end.

If you would, I ask that you take out your mobile devices and silence them, in effort not to disrupt the speaker or the forum today.

Very much appreciate it.

And at this time, we'd like to invite Matt Akers, who is special assistant to the president for government relations and associate director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, to introduce our speaker for the hour.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Curtis, and good afternoon, everyone.

I am honored to introduce our speaker for today, Ambassador Lynne Tracy.

Ambassador Tracy is a retired U.S.

Department of State Senior Foreign Service officer with 31 years of diplomatic experience.

Most recently, she was ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2023 to 2025, an ambassador to the Republic of Armenia from 2019 to 2022.

You can read more about her impressive career in the program on the tables.

But I do want to highlight her connections to the Akron area.

She is a native of Barberton, and she graduated from the University of Akron School of Law.

Today, Ambassador Tracy will talk about some of her family and hometown influences that led her to a life of public service and how those influences helped her succeed in a high stakes international environment.

We have a saying at the University of Akron, “Take that leap, we've got you.

It all starts at UA.” We'll hear today about how Ambassador Tracy started here in Barberton and Akron and ascended to the highest levels of international diplomacy.

Ambassador Tracy has proved that you can start here and go anywhere.

With that, please join me in welcoming Ambassador Tracy to the podium.

Curtis, Matt, thank you very much for those warm words of welcome in that introduction.

I want to express my appreciation to the Akron Roundtable for this invitation to talk to you today about my career as a diplomat and some of the influences for my hometown area.

My father, Albert Tracy, was an Akron native, and my sisters and I grew up in Barberton.

And I absolutely have to give a shout out to the high school students from Barberton High School, Garfield High School, my dad's high school in North High School.

Young people are our future, and I'm really glad to see them here today.

My sister, Anita Jepsky is here with me today, and I want to pay tribute to her, my parents and our family.

Many of the countries I served in, places like Russia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were difficult and sometimes dangerous.

Diplomacy is a team sport and my family has always been a part of my team.

Knowing that I had their support made all the difference in some very tough situations and kept me going.

Anita, my parents and other members of our family visited me in places not likely to be found on Triple A's top ten vacation destinations.

I have been asked where I got my grit and determination to take on such hard jobs.

I credit my parents and grandparents who always set a good example about the importance of taking on responsibility and whether large or small, doing it to the best of my ability.

And that's probably one of the reasons I kept getting asked to go back to hard places.

My grandma kept a map on her wall and marked each city I moved to with a star.

She and my grandpa told me they didn't know where I got my interest in international affairs from.

The only people in our family who had been outside the country were those who had been in the military, serving during World War Two or Vietnam.

My father, grandfather and uncle all worked at Firestone, and my mother's parents were dairy farmers in Stark County.

Although our lives were very locally grounded, my parents kept up with what was going on in the world.

We were subscribers to the Akron Beacon Journal and I still recall reading an article in the paper during junior high school that described the U.S.

State Departments Foreign Service and the work of diplomacy to look after our country's interests abroad.

I still can't explain precisely why the Beacon Journal article made such an impression on me, but I was definitely hooked and determined to pursue a public service career in the foreign affairs arena.

There were other local influences as well that contributed to my success as a diplomat, especially teachers, professors and mentors.

At Barberton High School, Mr.

(uknown) world history class, nurtured my understanding of other countries and their cultures.

Mrs.

(unknown) structured composition class remains the foundation of my grit and communication skills.

Even in today's social meeting message limits of 40 characters.

While I did not go on to become a practicing attorney, I will always be grateful for my time at the University of Akron School of Law, which developed my critical thinking abilities, a skill set that was indispensable for the responsibility of explaining complex foreign environments and the challenges they presented to U.S.

interests.

The other experience that cemented my pursuit of a Foreign Service career was travel and living abroad that was life changing.

While I was a Soviet studies major at the University of Georgia.

I visited the Soviet Union twice, including a student trip with my sister Anita.

As I finished my undergraduate degree in 1986, an opportunity to work at the U.S.

Embassy in Moscow opened up.

This was for a limited time on a contractual basis in a support position, rather than going as a career foreign service officer.

But it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

It was not only the chance to live in a foreign country that I had been studying, but also meant that I had an extended preview of foreign service work in life that served me well many times over in the future, including some practical experience that was invaluable when I took the Foreign Service exam.

When I arrived as a contractor in the summer of 1987 at the US Embassy in Moscow, U.S.

Soviet relations were entering a historic moment.

Relations between our countries had been very low as a part of the Cold War era, but President Reagan had found a partner in President Gorbachev who was ready to strike what became landmark, landmark arms control agreements that opened the door to larger improvements in the relationship.

The other factor that helped our bilateral relations was President Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika, transparency and reform.

These changes didn't happen overnight, but I saw during my three years in Moscow how the Soviet Union was opening up.

The marker that has stayed with me is the memory of the beating of a lone Soviet citizen protester in front of the embassy in the fall of 1987.

I'm not even sure what he was protesting, because he didn't have much of a chance to unravel the banner he was carrying before uniformed police and plainclothes security services swarmed him and beat him to a bloody pulp on the sidewalk of the main street before dragging him away.

By the summer of 1990, we had Soviet citizens regularly demonstrating in front of the embassy without any interference or violence.

Occasionally, these demonstrations were about U.S.

policies, but more often they were there to protest their own government in a place they knew would have added attention.

It would take me almost 25 years before I would manage to come back to Moscow as a foreign service officer, but the experiences of this period were invaluable, especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union, where I have spent two thirds of my diplomatic career.

I packed a lot in during my 31 years in the Foreign Service.

But first, a bit more background about the Foreign Service made me helpful.

The U.S.

State Department, where I worked, is the federal government's lead agency for international relations.

Foreign service officers are federal government employees, but unlike federal civil service employees, we have a requirement to work the majority of our careers overseas, representing the United States at embassies and consulates.

Foreign service officers do serve in Washington, D.C., but only for limited periods, and that definitely created some complications when my mom wanted to know why I couldn't get an assignment in Hawaii, and I had to explain to her Hawaii is not a foreign country.

Generally, the work of embassies and foreign service officers involves watching out for U.S.

national security interests, advocating for U.S.

businesses and agriculture.

Promoting American culture and carrying out consular services that include support for American citizens services abroad, and issuance of visas for foreigners coming to the United States.

While I did some of all these things, especially when I was an ambassador, safeguarding U.S.

national security was generally the dominant interest in most of the countries where I worked.

Let me start with the U.S.

consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, my first posting as a diplomat and ultimately one of the most formative places in my career.

Peshawar is just 30 miles from the border with Afghanistan.

It was 1995 and I was the Consulate's Afghanistan watcher.

We had closed the embassy in Kabul because of instability in the country after the Soviet Union had withdrawn its forces in 1989.

My job was to report on developments inside Afghanistan.

The Taliban had just begun to impact the power struggle inside the country, and within a year of my arrival, Osama bin Laden secretly returned to Afghanistan.

I traveled multiple times inside Afghanistan to meet political leaders and help monitor the humanitarian assistance that we were providing through organizations like the International Red Cross.

None of this was easy.

I was a female.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan are Muslim majority countries with very strict views about the role of women in society.

I had to adapt to a culture that was guided by a different religion and shaped by historical forces that were thousands of years old.

Sometimes people didn't want to meet me and I had to work to win their trust and confidence.

I didn't always succeed, but I believe that when I did, it was partly because of my small town background and my upbringing that emphasized the importance of family life and community.

These were often the topics that helped me make a connection or start a conversation.

During this first tour, my parents visited me, staying at my house in Peshawar and traveling around the Northwest Frontier Province.

My Pakistani neighbors marveled at this visit and told me later how impressed they were, because they had always believed that Americans didn't want to take care of their, of the elderly and lock them up in nursing home institutions.

Now, to be fair to my parents, they were in their 50s.

But that is old in Pakistan, where life ages most people very quickly.

The level of poverty is difficult for us to imagine.

For many, life is just about finding water, food and shelter in that order every day.

Something that reinforced to me what blessings we have in our country.

The literacy rate in this part of Pakistan was about 19% at the time, and literacy there was defined as being able to sign your name.

Many of the women who I met couldn't even do that and signed their documents with a thumbprint.

This was another way my parents made such a positive impact.

My dad talked to people no matter what level of education they had.

Every morning he went outside and had a cup of tea with the guard at my house, who is a very humble person.

I'm pretty sure that guard had no idea exactly what my dad was saying, and I know that my dad did not understand Pashtu.

But my dad's gesture was seen as a sign of respect and made a lasting positive impression among my Pakistani colleagues and friends.

It was also an example that stayed with me throughout my career as I interacted with people from all walks of life.

At the consulate, I also covered consular responsibilities because we were a very small office.

Just five Americans, along with Pakistani staff who primarily handled logistical issues.

We weren't issuing visas, but we did provide services to help American citizens in our area.

Consular support was the part of my career where I learned never to be surprised by what people will say or do.

My first lesson on this point came in the form of a phone call from an American who had arrived in town asking me to help him get from Peshawar to Tashkent, Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

I said, you're in luck.

There's a regular flight from Peshawar to Tashkent.

The gentleman, however, did not like my suggestion.

That's like seeing the world in a submarine, he told me.

Can't I go overland?

I explained that there was a civil war going on next door in Afghanistan, and that he would have to cross several front lines to go overland.

He was not discouraged and asked me if there were some Jesuits he could stay with.

Now Pakistan has a minority Christian community, but Afghanistan was and is 99% Muslim.

So I had to tell him that idea wouldn't work.

At this point, he gave up on me and hung up, saying he would just go ahead on his own.

Thankfully, I knew that he would need to get a visa to cross the border, and I was pretty sure that the Afghan consulate would not give him one.

And that was the last I heard from him or of an American traveler looking to stay with Catholic priests in Afghanistan.

But it was the beginning of my preparation for dealing with all kinds of crazy, tense, and sometimes dangerous situations that American citizens can find themselves in.

I served twice in Peshawar, and the second time was as the principal officer, the head of the consulate, and I believe two of my colleagues who served with me then, (unknown) are here in the audience today.

And if I'm right, (unknown), it's wonderful for you to be here.

They were wonderful colleagues and a great source of strength and support to me in a very difficult assignment.

This was one of my first leadership jobs, and even though I had worked in Peshawar before, the second time was very different.

It was 2006 and the embassy in Kabul was open, along with a very large U.S.

military presence in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001.

The consulate in Peshawar was now focused on supporting the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who was believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

After 911, Peshawar and Pakistan in general had become a more dangerous place because of the threat of terrorism.

The second time in Peshawar was just as formative, if not more so, than my first experience because of the added safety and security responsibilities, including for our consulate team that had become much larger since the mid 1990s.

The menace of security threats grew over my time as principal officer, and in 2008, my vehicle was ambushed by terrorists on the way to work, whose aim was to kidnap or kill me.

This episode was the basis for my award for heroism.

We were traveling in an armed vehicle.

Armored, I should say armored vehicle as we did every day to and from work.

I lived in a neighborhood surrounded by other houses, houses that were all behind walls, narrow neighborhood streets where you might encounter a horse and cart, women in burqas that shawl, that blocks the view of, of someone behind it, making it hard to see often stepping in front of vehicles.

I mean, the streets there were pretty chaotic, but for some reason, that morning I was looking out my window, out the windshield ahead, and I saw a car approaching us.

I can't tell you to this day why that vehicle grabbed my attention, but I kept watching it.

And as it approached us, and got closer, it suddenly swerved into our path and forced us to stop.

We were probably just less than five feet away.

Nose to nose.

And I realized pretty quickly that we were under attack because I could see the passenger in the front seat grab an AK 47, and exit the vehicle.

And at the same time, I could see a shooter from the back exit.

They quickly approached close to the car, strafing the car with gunfire.

And thankfully, a couple things happened.

One, my bodyguard, very smartly did not open the doors because our best security was being in a armored vehicle remaining sealed.

My driver quickly put the car into reverse and backed up for several blocks and just kept moving even though we encountered some obstacles behind us.

Thankfully, nobody behind us was a part of the attack or was ultimately killed.

But, you know, it speaks to the intensity of the moment that, as I said, my driver just kept reversing until we got to my street.

My house was nearby.

We went into the gates to my house.

The engine block was leaking oil.

You know, the car was just shot up.

I ran into the house and I immediately made a series of phone calls.

I called my security officer at the consulate.

I called the embassy in Islamabad.

I called the operation center at the State Department.

And then I really knew why they had drilled into us.

Memorize the number of the operations center.

And then I called my sister, who was here with me today, because I was very worried that something would break into the news and my family would see this and be very alarmed.

The police came to the house, took a statement because they were obviously going to pursue this.

And then I went to work.

Because one of the things I understood was that there was going to be a lot of rumors swirling about what had happened, and people needed to see me.

Needed to see that I was okay.

And so I went to work.

And I can say that I did some things right that day.

But I also wanted to say that so much of the credit for the day's outcome goes to my brave Pakistani driver and bodyguard, whose actions that day did so much to save us.

The point I made in my report on the day of the attack, and have continued to make, is the importance of good training.

When the worst happens, thinking and responses tend to narrow.

My driver, bodyguard and I had all been through training that gave us something to fall back on to minimize mistakes, manage panic, and ultimately reflexively respond in ways that made the difference between life and death.

The other formative experience of this tour that I want to tell you about took place a few months later.

We kept the consulate open despite the threats and the attack.

Because of the priority of the bin Laden hunt.

One night past midnight, my two security officers came to my house to tell me that we had information that terrorists were planning to attack consulate employees on their way to work.

Our information indicated that they had our routes and the timing.

My security team needed some decisions for me about our next steps, and uppermost in my mind was how to keep people safe in the coming hours and beyond that.

I had no secure communications at my house to call the embassy for guidance, and the security officers did not want me at that point driving into the consulate.

It was a moment when I felt very alone and the real weight of responsibility to make the best decisions possible to protect the lives of our employees.

In this instance, training was certainly important, but the accumulation of experience and the development of good judgment were essential.

The choices I made, thankfully kept us safe until we could consult with the embassy in Islamabad for a longer term security plan.

And I'm sometimes asked why I stayed despite the ambush and the ongoing threats against the consulate.

I felt very strongly at the time that when we had been encouraging local leaders to stand firm against the terrorists, that it would send a terrible signal to appear to be running away.

I will always be grateful to my family, who understood and supported my decision to stay on and finish my three year tour of duty as planned.

Let me turn from Pakistan to say a few words about Central Asia, where I had multiple tours during my entry and mid-level years as a diplomat in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan.

At one point, my mom asked me if I was ever going to serve in a country that did not end in the word stan.

Central Asia was largely closed to foreign visitors during the Soviet period, wedged between Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan.

The geography of this region is a very tough neighborhood.

The early years of independence were particularly difficult, as these countries struggled with establishing institutions of governance to succeed the old communist structures, and as well as building economic resilience after such a long period of being dominated by Moscows priorities.

The United States quickly opened up embassies in all the countries that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union to reinforce a policy of supporting their independence, sovereignty and prosperity.

There were real practical challenges associated with serving in places that had been through years of isolation and limited infrastructure, infrastructure development, a deep suspicion of outsiders, long and complicated travel arrangements to reach capitals where our embassies were located, and limited goods and services.

I still remember the sense of breakthrough after being invited to the home of a local friend for a family meal, the frustration and worry of trying to find reliable air transportation, and how I needed to time visits to the local grocery store to catch the delivery of long life shelf milk before it sold out.

But we were pioneers in these early years, building embassies, operations and networks of local contacts from scratch.

Professional opportunities that are rare and that quickly build confidence and resourcefulness.

In Kyrgyzstan, I was the consular officer where I became proficient at helping Americans experiencing health emergencies, such as a heart attack or an appendicitis, to get medically evacuated or find appropriate local care while navigating language barriers.

In Kazakhstan, where we were building a new embassy in the relocated capital of Astana, 800 miles away from the existing embassy in al-Mahdi, I was the lead officer for, among other things, identifying solutions to cope with -40 winters.

Ohio.

Thank you.

And preparing the plans to move 100 plus personnel when the new embassy construction was completed.

In Turkmenistan, I was advocating to the government in support of a major U.S.

energy company's interest in establishing a production sharing agreement.

These were not easy diplomatic assignments, but rich in professional rewards.

Two highlights of my career as a senior diplomat were my appointments to be the U.S.

Ambassador to Armenia and then later the U.S.

ambassador to the Russian Federation.

An American Ambassador, per the U.S.

Constitution is considered the president's personal representative to a foreign country.

In our system, there are people like me, career diplomats who are nominated, and there are non-career appointments as well, usually called political ambassadors, who may have a close connection to the president or a background outside government that is a good fit in a particular country.

In my experience, there have been successful and unsuccessful people from the career ranks and as well as from the political world.

Generally, as a career diplomat, securing a nomination is a combination of a strong record of experience, good timing and a little bit of luck.

There is a long behind the scenes vetting process, then a requirement that the receiving country agrees to the candidate, and then confirmation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or by the Senate as a whole.

Often the Senate confirmation process can be the trickiest and toughest, including an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

At my hearing for Armenia, I was with a group of five other ambassadorial nominees, which is fairly typical.

I was well prepared for the Armenia questions.

The thing that bothered me the most was our chairs were very low compared to the table, and I felt like I needed an old telephone book to be at a height where I could see over the table properly, which taught me something about checking the logistics of the room.

I was lucky that my nominations for both Armenia and then later Russia had bipartisan support.

When I appeared alone before the committee for my Russian nomination, rather than in a panel with other nominees, Senator Rob Portman introduced me, which was a very generous and helpful gesture.

It didn't mean no tough questions, but it helped set up a constructive atmosphere that ultimately resulted in 95 out of 100 senators voting to confirm me.

Senator Portman called me during as the confirmation vote was concluding to congratulate me and tell me that the vote reflected the Senate's desire to send a strong signal to the Russians about the political support I had at home in December 2022, as we neared the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Before retirement, I was pretty careful about applying the word favorite to any of my assignments that might lead to some unnecessary, slighted feelings somewhere and might make it harder to do my job.

I will say now that Armenia was probably my favorite posting.

Armenia is an ancient land with roots that stretch back into the earliest biblical times.

The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity in 301 AD.

The Christian faith in the Armenian Apostolic Church have been essential to the survival of Armenians who have endured despite terrible tragedies and hostile neighbors.

The Ottoman Empire, modern day Turkey launched what is now considered a genocide against the Armenian people toward the end of World War One that resulted in more than a million deaths.

To put that into context, Armenia today has a population of just under 3 million.

The genocide resulted in the first large scale wave of Armenians coming to the United States, and today we are home to one of the largest populations of Armenians outside the country, second only to Russia.

And any time you see a name ending in I-A-N or Y-A-N, you are probably looking at a name of Armenian origin.

I see I got an Armenian in the audience.

I had never been to Armenia before my ambassadorship, but my Soviet studies background was a good starting place for understanding the Armenia that had emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I arrived at a moment of political change, where the new government wanted to strengthen ties with the United States and move firmly away from some of the legacies of the Soviet period.

This was my first and only assignment where my interactions with government officials was largely positive, reflecting similar values and goals.

This historic country with so much natural beauty, sites of interest, and such warmth toward Americans made my nearly four years in Armenia some of the best in my career as we cooperated closely on shared priorities, even as we also experienced the pandemic and the horrors of war due to a renewed conflict with Armenia's neighbor Azerbaijan.

I have been very fortunate to visit friends in Armenia since concluding my time as ambassador, something I hope to continue doing, including later this year.

Finally, Russia once more.

As I described earlier, I lived in Moscow in the late 1980s before I joined the Foreign Service.

I was well into my diplomatic career before I returned to Moscow in 2014 as the deputy chief of Mission.

The number two to the ambassador, and then again in 2023 for a final time as ambassador, in what felt like having come full circle to the place where my foreign affairs experience had begun.

My personal feelings toward Russia are complicated.

Russia is a country with a rich history and culture.

It is vast, spanning 11 time zones and with a multi-ethnic population that dates from the time of the Russian Empire under the czars.

The similarities to the United States were always a basis for forming friendships and connections, and I was lucky to meet many warm and generous Russians, some of whom some, who even now, I have been able to manage to maintain contact.

But Russia, for all its power, wealth and greatness, has a deep and wide streak of insecurity that is rooted in its history of being invaded, particularly from the East in the 1200s.

This period of Russian history embedded an approach to governing.

Whether its czars, communists or Vladimir Putin that emphasizes exercising power with cruelty and little toleration of dissent.

There was a time during my experience, as I talked about earlier, where it seemed like the Soviet Union, Russia, was opening up and moving in a positive direction, where even when there were disagreements between our countries, those differences could be managed because of what we could agree on.

Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin's view that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union has increasingly driven him to make choices that have undermined peace, culminating in his decision to invade Ukraine.

When I was asked to go back and serve as ambassador to Russia, relations were still in a very low place, but there was some hope that we might be able to make some modest but important improvements.

I was one of the few active duty Foreign Service officers who had significant, recent significant Russia leadership.

Or, excuse me, who had significant recent leadership experience in Russia.

After I finished my assignment as deputy Chief of Mission in 2017, the embassy suffered huge losses of personnel because of expulsions and other measures imposed by the Russian government.

Embassy operations were in bad shape.

The department hoped I could go back and begin to rebuild.

I had to think about it because I had some idea of how hard it might be, and the question for me was, could I make a difference?

Ultimately, I decided the answer was yes because of my prior experience and because my government was asking me to go, which is no small thing.

Just a few months after I agreed to go, the intelligence began showing that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine.

I knew that any idea of rebuilding the embassy and improving the atmosphere was probably out the window, and that my job would even be harder than I had originally imagined.

I arrived in Moscow in late January 2023.

On my first morning, the Russians rolled out the welcome mat by disrupting power to the embassy compound, which included the office and housing.

They didn't know that I know how to manage with power outages.

It wasn't long before I realized that I was in the most difficult posting of my career.

Harder than even Pakistan, because while there wasn't so much a physical danger like the threat of terrorism, the Russian government was using every means in its power to bring the embassy to its knees and prevent us from operating effectively and carrying out normal diplomatic responsibilities.

This pressure was often psychological and relentless and it took a huge toll on morale.

Outside the embassy walls, we had this very disorienting experience of being in what looked like a modern European city, with a very little visible sign that Russia was waging an unjustified and unprovoked war against its neighbor, Ukraine.

But bubbling up regularly were incidents that reminded us of how far U.S.

Russia relations had sunk and how determined Putin was to silence any criticism from his own people over his decision to go to war.

Political opposition figures such as Vladimir Kara-Murza were receiving what amounted to life sentences in extremely harsh conditions simply for challenging the... The idea that the war against Ukraine was justified.

Even ordinary Russians who did simple things such as putting a like emoji on social media next to a message for peace, were facing serious jail time or heavy fines.

Russia ramped up wrongful detentions of American citizens, including Paul Whelan and the Wall Street journalist, Evan Gershkovich.

I like to joke in moments of dark humor that I spent more time in courtrooms and jails than this one tour than I had in my whole life.

But I know from talking with Americans and Russians who were imprisoned and then later released in the summer of 2024, in one of the largest post-Cold War era prisoner swaps, how important it was to keep a public spotlight on these cases.

Knowing that they had not been forgotten, was the lifeline that sustained these men and women, and kept the hope of being freed alive.

Putin's intolerance of criticism and fear of losing power was, and is at the root of his broad campaign to intimidate and silence political opponents.

One of the saddest but most powerful moments I experienced as the ambassador was the public reaction to the killing of anti-corruption activists Alexei Navalny by Russian authorities while in their custody.

Navalny had been jailed in an Arctic prison for his unrelenting efforts to shine a light on the graft and corruption surrounding Putin, his government and his business cronies.

Even from jail, Navalny projected a demeanor of strength, good humor and a capacity to continue pursuing stories that underscored the outrageousness of the unchecked corruption in Putin's Russia.

The news of Navalny's death sent shockwaves through Russia, particularly because he had just been seen days earlier in a video of a procedural hearing, sparring good naturedly with the judge.

Even after finally achieving Navalny's death, the Russian government couldn't stop and continue to harass his parents as they attempted to claim his body and make funeral arrangements.

When the day of his memorial service finally arrived, I, along with many other diplomats, came out to pay our respects to a figure who had been such a champion for the principle of holding government accountable to its citizens.

It was unclear how many Russian citizens would be able to turn out because of the intimidating presence of so many security forces on the streets near the church and the cemetery.

But as the day unfolded, tens of thousands of Russians turned out to show their support and at great risk of arrest or other retaliation given the pervasiveness of surveillance technology.

Numbers in this strength had not been seen in years because of the increasingly restrictive laws against peaceful public demonstrations.

As we waited to gain entrance to the church and the crowds swelled, it became clear that the security forces intended to prevent mourners from gaining access.

There was still some chance of visiting the nearby cemetery, but in that moment, it was hard to leave and give the security forces a sense of victory.

I shouldn't have worried.

As my diplomatic colleagues and I moved away, Russian citizens in the crowd called out to us, thanking us for being with them, remembering what Navalny had stood for and many use this opportunity to call out and reject the war that Putin had unleashed on Ukraine.

At times, the actions of diplomats are symbolic, but we should never forget that there can be a deep and abiding power in such expressions.

It was one of my proudest moments as a diplomat.

When I left Moscow last June, U.S.

Russian Relations and the embassy situation remained in a very difficult place.

But I am a diplomat with a tendency to see the glass half full rather than half empty.

I had managed to add stability to the embassy, maintain our core responsibilities on behalf of the American people, and leave the door open for a future ambassador to make bigger improvements when the time is right.

When that time may be as difficult to predict since Putin appears unlikely to leave office any time soon and is unwilling to compromise based on the conviction that he has more patience than Western nations.

Russia has the advantage of deep resilience due to its size and experience with hardship, but Russia also faces an increasingly grim future if it remains on its present course of mortgaging its future to grasp at the illusion of regaining a lost empire.

In closing, I must also note that my last tour in Moscow wasn't just about finishing another assignment, it marked much more, the end of my time as a diplomat and career in public service.

I was sad to leave a profession that I had loved and where I had never struggled for motivation.

But it was time and I left, proud of the years of service I had given to protect and defend my country.

Words that are a part of the oath all federal employees take to uphold the Constitution on entering government service.

I also said at the start of my talk that diplomacy is a team sport.

I have been fortunate throughout my career to work with so many smart and brave Americans, not just at the State Department, but in the military, the intelligence community, and those who are a part of the U.S.

agency for International Development, USAID.

In my assignments abroad, I always found good people in the host countries who had a shared interest in building a better, more peaceful future.

None of my successes would have been possible without the support I found among all these colleagues.

Finally, if you will allow me to make one last point, it is the importance of continuing to attract talented people to public service at all levels, but particularly to the federal workforce that is merit based.

And I hope some of you listening will consider a career in diplomacy.

The challenges of the 21st century will only grow, and we need our best people to help steer and protect our country to continued success.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

I'm Natalie Schulte, I'm a board member of Akron Roundtable.

I'm also a lawyer at Roetzal & Andress.

And I am going to be helping with the Q&A today.

So thank you for that incredibly inspiring, and just informational speech.

We have a ton of questions.

So the first one I'm going to start with is, In countries where relations with the U.S.

are strained, what personal strategies or approaches did you find most effective for building trust and maintaining dialog?

- I think one of the key strategies, you know, when you're in a country where there are a lot of policy disagreements, where theres a sense of hostility is to always first of all, look for the things that you do agree on.

I think I referenced that even with, there were times with the Soviet Union and Russia where we found, you know, things that we could agree on.

And when you start from places of things you can agree on, you start to build some trust and confidence in one another.

You start to find that you can be civil with one another.

You can agree to disagree on some issues.

You know, in some cases, where there was an issue that was very charged, and I speak now about my own personality.

This is in everyone's approach.

My tendency was to remain calm, not to escalate.

I think there's a time and place for well-placed anger and outrage, but if it's overused, it starts to diminish in value.

And so I looked mainly to try to de-escalate and find ways, again where we could, if not agree, remain talking to each other because that's the name of the game.

The worst possible situation you can be in as a diplomat is if you are totally shut out by your host government, because you do depend on the host government for so many things.

And as I saw in Moscow, when you are in that like really just extremely low place, they can make even the most simplest of operations difficult.

And so you wind up spending a lot more of your time just taking care of yourself rather than doing the work of diplomacy.

So stay calm and carry on.

- How important is it for the U.S.

to have an embassy or diplomatic presence in a country?

Do you consider it dangerous for the U.S to abandon its presence in some foreign nations?

- It's a really good question.

Something I've thought about a lot, because, you know, before 911, we, our threshold for maintaining an embassy, in terms of the safety and security environment, we did not have a lot of toleration for an embassy under threat.

And we closed embassies in a number of places.

But after 911, when we realized that, you know, some of our blindness, when it came to the September 11th attacks had to do with a blindness, in terms of, of human intelligence, the kind of intelligence you only get from being on the ground in a place and having, you know, having that fingertip sense of what's happening.

You know, our threshold changed.

We had some places that are closed today, and I think rightly so.

Yemen, you know, theres just no way to operate.

There's some other places that are very dangerous, but, you know, and at the end of the day, if you don't have the cooperation of the host government to help maintain, secure the basic fundamental security around the embassy, it is impossible to keep an embassy open.

So that's like the first and most fundamental question.

If that's not there, then closure is the only other answer.

But after that, then you start looking at what is, you know, what information, what are the interests.

You know, what is to be gained with staying in.

You know, it's, every place is its own calculation.

But given the kind of challenges we're facing in the 21st century, I think there's a lot of places that we just can't afford to close, even though we see, you know, every day, war and conflict that put our government, you know, embassy workers, our military, you know, people, our American citizens who are abroad.

You know, we see why there are probably many reasons that we wouldn't like people to be there, but sometimes we just have to be in places to make sure that the larger goal of protecting and defending our country is maintained.

- So you were at so many different places, how did you work through language barriers in your career?

- So Russian served me well for most of my assignments.

Because even in Central Asia, because of the period in which the Central Asian countries had been a part of the Soviet Union, Russia was the lingua franca, the, the language of the government elite, the educated.

But, you know, we had also local staff who, for instance, you know, were able to speak Kazakh or Kyrgyz and, you know, so we were also able to depend on our local staff, who were really a key part of of our embassy structures and our federal workforce.

It's something people don't often realize I mean, how important nationals of other countries work for us.

And as I say, are essential to our ability to operate abroad.

The, you know, my first assignment going to Peshawar as an Afghanistan watcher.

So I didn't have, I didn't study Pashto.

I didn't study one of the local languages coming into the Foreign Service.

But I was given a six month course, and I still remember my first day of class, and I looked at the book and I thought, well, this book is facing the wrong direction.

And I realized, oh, they read from right to left.

You know, I eventually I became, I became sufficiently proficient for everyday life.

But in the six month period, it's very hard to build up the kind of expertise that I had in Russian.

So, again, I depended on local staff.

I loved Armenian, I learned some Armenian.

But again, I came late in life to it.

But the reason Armenian, I want to, you know, touch on our Armenian for a moment is because, I mentioned what Armenians have endured over the millennium.

And one of the strengths has been their in maintaining their identity, their sense of community has been their language.

And so I really admire that.

And it's a beautiful language.

- All right.

I think we have one more question.

Oh, time for one more question.

And there are so many good questions on here, but this one seems like it's going to have a good story.

Can you please tell us about the dog you picked up in your travels?

- That's an Armenia story.

Because at our embassy in Yerevan, we seem to be a magnet for street dogs, stray dogs.

And some of them were mean, because Armenia had a system where they would pick up strays, they'd test them, temperament test them.

If they passed the temperament test, then they would give them a rabies shot, neuter them.

But then they, and they put a chip in their ear so people knew that they had been tested, but then they were put back out on the street.

So in January of 2020, this little dog showed up in front of the embassy, and he was just so cute and very friendly to people.

And, you know, too many people were saying, oh, he's so cute, I'm going to take him.

And I kept seeing him out there.

And I had been thinking about a dog.

And, so finally at the beginning of March, he came home with me, and it was good timing.

I had him before the pandemic really kicked in.

So we had time to bond.

And if Natalie, if I have, like, one, like, further comment on this.

So, Max.

But, you know, I mean, I was getting used to him, and I wasn't sure what he was, you know, what he was prepared for in terms of the life of a diplomat, you know, he'd been out on the street.

He'd come from the curb to the mansion, so to speak.

And I still remember.

So when I was holding a reception one night at my house and I had a top floor where my personal quarters were.

And so I put some gates up, and I bungee corded these gates really tightly to keep him up there because I just thought, you know, not everybody is a dog person.

Okay.

So the reception starts, and I'm right, like this.

I'm just starting to make my remarks and all of a sudden I look down and there is Max standing next to me.

How did you get here?

And then, one of the, one of the guests said to one of our embassy colleagues, he said, “Does the ambassador know that a street dog snuck into her house?” Well, needless to say, he was ushered out.

But, Max has been a wonderful diplomatic dog.

And he is still with me now here in Ohio.

Thank you for asking.

- It's the most amazing coming to this luncheon on a month to month basis and realizing just how much we do not know.

I am familiar with Foreign Affairs.

But from your point of view, I've learned so much today, Ambassador Tracy.

So let's celebrate her with a round of applause.