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In support of the Twenty-Five Year Apprenticeship (25YA), we, the undersigned, offer our guidance to all current diplomats, civil and foreign service. We succeeded as diplomats in large part due to the mentorship we received from those in leadership positions who were determined to make a difference. We support the apolitical and inclusive nature of the site and laud all who seek to serve the United States more effectively, persuasively, and actively. Each of us could name several people without whose help we would not have had the opportunities to contribute that we enjoyed. We support the 25YA initiative because we hope it will serve the State Department and the talented people who work there in the following ways: (1) provide an online forum for us and other leaders to offer guidance and mentorship; (2) offer specific ideas and tools for current and next generation diplomats based on the lessons we have learned over our combined hundreds of years of real-world experience and through our many decades of lived experience; (3) build a community of current and former diplomats to exchange views on how to best advance U.S. national security goals through strategic, engaged, and thoughtful diplomacy. We look forward to contributing to the initiative—through articles, interviews, advice, and conversations with readers—and encourage other leaders, current and former, to contact the apprentices and offer advice and contributions. While we are current and former apolitical career diplomats, we encourage the 25YA organizers to solicit input from military leaders, the think tank community, Capitol Hill and elsewhere—the biggest successes we had as diplomats were possible when we worked well with our partners in and out of government and when we understood who the key actors were who could influence our policy. Diplomacy is an art and success is incremental, built on ideas and relationships. We hope this initiative will offer our leaders and those working on U.S. diplomacy creative ideas to strengthen the relationships within our diplomatic community.
Bill Burns, Victoria Nuland, Richard Boucher, Uzra Zeya, Alexander Vershbow, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Virginia Bennett, Jeff DeLaurentis, Roberta Jacobson, Maura Harty, Deborah K. Jones, Cameron Munter, James F. Jeffrey, Kristie Kenney, Robert Blake, Danny Russel, Frank Wisner, Barbara Leaf, Lew Lukens, Jeff Feltman, Deborah McCarthy, Robin Raphel, Ken Gross, Thomas Pickering, Glyn Davies, Nicholas Burns, Ronald Neumann, Gordon Gray, Stephen Mull, Tracey Jacobson, Charles Ries, Kurt Tong, Gary Grappo, John Heffern, Steven Pifer, David Pearce, Laura Kennedy, Adam Ereli, Doug Lute, Marc Grossman, Hugo Llorens, Pete Romero, Charles Ray, Shaun Donnelly, Barbara Bodine, John Kornblum, Anthony Quainton, Edmund Hull, Thomas Krajeski, David Bruce Wharton, John Tefft, Tony Wayne, Luis Moreno, Chris Hill, Stu Jones, Bonnie Jenkins, Susan Elliott, Liliana Ayalde, Dawn Liberi, Bob Silverman, John Ordway, Richard Hoagland, Elisabeth Millard, Greg Delawie, Eric John, Kathleen Doherty, Joseph Cassidy, Annie Pforzheimer, Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, Harry Thomas, Kate Canavan, P. Michael McKinley, William Imbrie, James Melville, Rick Olson, Ted Osius, James Warlick, John Blaney, Bruce Berton, Emil Skodon, John O’Keefe, Jim Nealon, Tom Armbruster, Eric Rubin, Herro Mustafa, Geoff Pyatt, David Satterfield, John Bass, Henry Wooster, Dereck Hogan, Rick Mills, Bridget Brink, William Popp, Kelly Degnan, Ervin Massinga, Don Yamamoto, Philip Kosnett, Ken Merten, Julie Chung, John Mark Pommersheim, Yuri Kim, Joe Yun, Paul Folmsbee, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., Judith Garber, Don Lu, Carl Paschall, Phil Goldberg
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