The Foreign Service Journal, October 2014

8 OCTOBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Specialists Today BY SHAWN DORMAN M Shawn Dorman is the editor of e Foreign Service Journal. members—specialist, o cer/generalist, o cer, diplomat—can be perceived as perpetuating hierarchies, both between specialists and generalists and among some specialists. To address these and other concerns, we have tried to bring as many Foreign Service Specialist voices into our cover- age as possible, reaching out to them for input through various channels, includ- ing an AFSAnet invitation. Still, I am concerned that a number of potential authors were reluctant to write for attribution this month. We lost at least two articles for that reason, and another was not submitted because its authors were unable to get clearance. One specialist who declined to give his name speculated that specialists may fear that speaking up about professional concerns can hurt their promotion potential, which is already highly limited in many cases. Nonetheless, we hope this focus will open the door to more articles and contributions, both by and about Foreign Service Specialists. Francesca Kelly’s cover story explores the wide world of “ e New Specialists”: who they are; the critical roles they play at overseas missions and in the United States; how their work has evolved; and what their concerns are. One comment stands out: “Specialists are hired on experience; generalists are hired on potential.” is month’s Speaking Out column is a collection of comments getting at “What Specialists Want You to Know.” And we close our focus with a compila- tion of three short commentaries and one to-do list from specialists in various career tracks. Elsewhere in this issue, Foreign Service Know-How takes an in-depth look at child custody. As if divorce and the related custody issues aren’t hard enough, add the FS lifestyle and you get a truly dizzying array of complicating factors. ree experts walk us through how to navigate such a situation. Sandya Das from the State Depart- ment’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration writes about “Learning from Women’s Success in Afghanistan.” And on the lighter side, follow the brave team at Embassy Colombo on a mad- cap adventure in Chris Teal’s “Flying Monkeys in the Embassy.” And in his President’s Views column, Bob Silver- man shares “Two Secrets of the Foreign Service.” Finally, a note on style. Bowing to “the pressure of the acronym” (yes, that is a thing) in this month’s focus, we have taken some liberties with capitalization. Our usual style (following Associated Press) is to minimize capitalization of job titles unless they come before a name. But that gets awkward when lower- casing makes them sound generic, so this month we are swinging the pendulum toward the upper case. In other words, we’ve gone wild with caps! Should this be a one-time exercise, or does it make reading easier? Please weigh in with feedback. n Next month, look for our popular annual focus on books by Foreign Service authors, “In eir Own Write.” any members of the Foreign Service community lack a complete picture of the wide variety of critical roles Foreign Service Specialists play. So this month we shine the spotlight on Foreign Service Specialists, both to give a sense of what they do and to illustrate com- monalities between life and work for them and the rest of the Foreign Service. First, some basics. About 40 percent of the current State Department Foreign Service corps are specialists; as of June, there were 5,832 FS Specialists and 8,076 FS Generalists. FS Specialists also make up about 40 percent of AFSA members. Specialists follow 19 distinct, profes- sional career tracks (as spelled out by State’s Human Resources Bureau): Financial Management O cer, Gen- eral Services O cer, Human Resources O cer, Construction Engineer, Facility Manager, Information Management Specialist, Information Management Technical Specialist (Radio), Informa- tion Management Technical Specialist (Uni ed Communications), English Language O cer, Information Resource O cer, Health Practitioner, Regional Medical O cer, Regional Medical O - cer/Psychiatrist, Regional Medical Labo- ratory Scientist, O ce Management Specialist, Diplomatic Courier, Security Engineering O cer, Security Technical Specialist and Diplo- matic Security Special Agent. Foreign Service language to categorize