Alonzo's World of Risks and Rewards in Diplomatic and Humanitarian Work

Living a life in full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by the new fellowship and certificate programs now being offered by the center for Global Initiatives. As you may know, the center is an all volunteer organization and the same is true for the faculty in these programs. So all the tuition goes to support the work of the Center. It has always been our ethos to open source humanitarian intervention and these programs use the same approach in that all the materials we use are freely available all the time to anyone, everywhere, even if you don't take a course. We have built a world class faculty and contracts with other universities, medical schools and partnered NGOs. There are two fellowship tracks, one for those wishing to start their own nonprofit or non governmental organization and one for those seeking mentorship for career development and advancement and humanitarian work. Our initial certificate programs include humanitarian intervention, social entrepreneurship and global health practice. Please consider taking a world class masterclass with us. Visit alifeinfull.org and click on the CourseWorks tab to learn more. Thanks. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. Hello, I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Alan Alonzo Wind is a former Senior Foreign Service officer from the U.S. agency for International Development, or USAID. Having worked on diplomatic assignments in Peru, Nicaragua, Angola, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and South Africa. He provided oversight to US Government foreign aid, development and humanitarian assistance and supported US Ambassadors as their Senior Development Officer on multiple US Embassy country teams in South Africa. He established the Southern African Regional Leadership center as part of President Obama's Young African Leadership Initiative and contributed to other youth development efforts and business incubators. Alonso began his career as a rural Public Health Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. He then served as a Global Program Coordinator for Save the Children and as a Country Director and health sector coordinator for numerous non profit, private voluntary organizations including Care Plan International in Ecuador, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom. He graduated from the University of Chicago, is originally a New Yorker, and as a high schooler attended the well known Syvestant High School in Manhattan where he studied creative writing for two years with the famous Irish American writer Frank McCourt in his recent book, in Andean, An Unexpected Search for Meaning, Purpose and Discovery Across Three Countries, is an Amazon bestseller and has been translated into Spanish. The audiobook version was released on Audible and we'll be discussing the book in depth. Alonso serves on the boards of various non governmental organizations, including Hunger Relief International in their efforts in Guatemala and Haiti, and he was recently recruited as a scholar and senior advisor to the foundation for Law and International Affairs. Welcome to the show, Alonzo. It's great to have you on.

Thank you so much, Chris. I'm honored and enthusiastic about joining you today.

I'm tickled. I've been so looking forward to this even before I had the chance to get to know you better in your memoir. I have to say we were talking off mic before about some overlaps, like in a Venn diagram of some of our friends and work and activities and places in the world. But I had done some diplomatic work, if you will, at the United Nation through an NGO that the American Psychological association had, had. And that's been some gosh dating myself over 20 years ago. And I'd done some writing and work and publishing and policy development. But I have to say your diplomatic work is a smidge different than mine because you have been shot at, arrested, jailed, tear gassed, threatened, almost died in the jungle and been in a number of other dangerous situations that I think include a terrorist car bombing in Peru. And I think you were expell from Bolivia. So perhaps way different than my experiences in Manhattan. So perhaps you could tell us about all about that in the context of your memoir that's just been released and a bit more about your origin story.

Well, thank you very much. I should say that I wasn't actually expelled from Bolivia, but merely threatened. So.

Oh, okay.

What was then called the Graniff Award by the then US Ambassador in Bolivia who had me down unfairly and inappropriately for interfering with some of their illicit intel efforts in the Chaco region of Bolivia. But I think, you know, many of these aspects of my life, you know, they sound very dramatic, of course, when you present them and lay them out in that kind of fashion, but it just, it really was part of an evolving, growing connection of experiences as I got deeper and deeper into working in developing countries around the world. And I am certainly not unique, but a little unusual these days in terms of being someone who actually spent a career of sorts, an initial career with non governmental organizations and then took on a second career of actually coming into USAID as a commissioned foreign service officer and working a full career of over 20 years there, my wife many times has reminded me that I had the chance to join the State Department even before I formally joined USAID as a career officer, because I had taken the State Department Foreign Service exam and had gone through the simulations that they do for those that pass the written exam. But much to the consternation of the State Department's board of Examiners, I resisted all of their efforts to try and draw me in. They even offered salary boosts and all sorts of things to try and encourage me to join the State Department. They were arguing, and this is back in the late 90s, that they were trying to gain further expertise in the development world and they couldn't understand why. I just couldn't bring myself to what I perhaps unfairly described as being a cable telegram writer reporter back to Washington rather than an active interlocutor, which is really how I saw my life and how things developed.

And so that was really kind of one of the differences, that it wasn't that to be sort of a pseudo figurehead or something as opposed to actually rolling up your sleeves and getting involved with the communities that you were a part of, is that right?

Well, it's true. And in fact, you know, I resisted going into USAID for a while as well. Again, some of this was before I actually got married in Peru. I had been working for about 10 years or so in Ecuador and Bolivia in different assignments, taking on gradually more and more senior responsibilities until I actually became the country director of a growing development program from an organization based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Esperanza received some USAID funding, but they had a lot of private support as well. And, you know, I was very much caught up in the ethos of what USAID does and what governmental development agencies attempt to undertake. Perhaps not evil, but often on the wrong side of things, often very much a top down sort of initiative. And really what drew me into USAID the first time around when I ended up applying and joining as a child survival coordinator in Peru, was a result of a mentor of mine over the years, a health officer at the USAID mission in Bolivia, who, despite my having been threatened with expulsion a year or two earlier, ended up trying to persuade me to apply for a position at the USAID mission in Lima, right when Sendero Luminoso was taking shape in a much greater degree and launching car bombings in Lima and the embassy was removing many of the so called non essential career U.S. personnel. I resisted because I enjoyed my work at the grassroots level, the community level, working with NGOs and Paul turned to me and said, no, no, no, Alonzo, you don't understand. If you take this job at USA Peru, it'll be a great way to learn the folk ways of the enemy.

Oh, man.

And at that, he was singing my song, Chris, you know, that was appealing to me. And, you know, I actually, I came to sea within a USAID mission. I was at the relatively low end of the totem pole. Initially. I was a personal services coordinator, personal services contractor, I should say within the mission. But I had been tapped by the mission director in Peru at that time to take on ultimately greater and greater responsibilities, largely because of the evacuation of many of the more senior staff, perhaps. And I came to see an evolving, changing agency. We're talking about the early 90s and what we were attempting to undertake. And that would later establish the foundation for me to decide to ultimately go into USAID. When USAID started hiring again in the late 90s after some years where they had been conducting reductions in force rifts and other efforts to kind of streamline under Clinton and, of course, the influence of Jesse Helms, the notorious Jesse helms in the U.S. senate.

Mm. So you. So the. Would it from your start with the Peace Corps, was this sort of an eye opener for you or kind of like the. The thing that appealed to you the most, because that was maybe the most grassroots and. And shoulder to shoulder with the people that you're working with and yet less bureaucratic or kind of talk about our. Your first experiences with that as. As a starter, and then how that impacted you or how you impacted that for the evolution of what came next.

Well, I've tried to convey in the book my changing attitudes and awareness and understanding as a result of the interactions on the community level with people. And really from the very start, I had no idea that I would end up with this sort of life, this sort of vocation. My intention, intent on joining the Peace Corps, was to fulfill a sense of commitment, a sense of a belief in what Peace Corps was all about from even before college. But I thought in terms of after finishing at the University of Chicago, I would go serve two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and then return to the US in one or the other types of roles, perhaps working in health policy, which I had been doing some work in at school, or perhaps elective politics, because I'd been very political in Chicago during my time there. But really the experience in Peace Corps as a rural public health volunteer, working initially in a cluster of small villages around precinct center called Buena Fe in the coastal part of the country led me to open my eyes to how I could really have a much more meaningful and impactful life. And really the virus, I call it a virus, the virus of political elective politics. And all of that left me as I found myself much more drawn to direct people to people, family to family interactions, working with people. First as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a result of a chain of rather remarkable circumstances and the intervention of the then Ecuadorian Minister of Health, I ended up joining Foster Parents Plan Plan International to help support their program in the highlands and high valley areas of Ecuador. And ultimately the five years in Ecuador between being a Peace Corps volunteer and working with this NGO cemented, began to cement for me the sense that this is really the sort of work that I found to be more valuable and really a platform for me to learn so much more about myself and much more about the. The world.

I remember in the book, speaking of your Chicago connections and things, you worked with Rahm Emanuel, too, during that era, is that right?

Yes, we were volunteers together, actually, with Common Cause Illinois.

Right.

And in my last year of college, I ended up spending a bit of time going down to Springfield, Illinois, often with Rahm, to do some lobbying members of the Illinois General assembly, the Illinois State Senate, and particularly the. The governor at that time, Big Jim Thompson.

Big Jim, Yeah, Big Jim.

And, you know, he was, you know, an interesting character and, you know, really within an ideological position, you could say, of Republicans that simply don't exist anymore, along with John Anderson, who was a Republican congressman from the Chicago suburbs, who I came to meet around that same time in a Chicago subway station and ended up volunteering for his campaign all during my senior year.

You know, I totally get that. And I, you know, from getting to know you better through your memoir, it made me appreciate, because this is also. I moved to the Chicago area in 81, so. So. And then I got more politically active and involved when I was part of the Illinois Psychological Association. So we would do, you know, Springfield trips and we would do testimony and we would, you know, kind of do those things. And it was just like you went to another world when you left Chicago and then went to Springfield. You know, it was sort of like these odd, you know, reversals of politics and these like, like, you know, when you have a governor named Big Jim, you know, it's sort of like that's kind of, you know, telling something as well, too. But I could see also where the, the mishmash of a lot of the things, you know, where now have. Have come to roost with multiple governors, you know, spending jail time and things like that would kind of, you know, be a push away from the. The political machine, as they called it in in Chicago. Is. Was that also one of the things, I mean, did. It's sort of like you got to look behind the curtains and it was sort of, you know, disenchanting or disenfranchising to say, this isn't something I want to be a part of. Or was it just more so the gravitational pull of the opportunities that you had to do in foreign service?

Well, there was some of that. The association with Rahm gave me a little bit of a window into some of the realities of the Chicago machine. Rahm's father was a pediatrician for, you know, the. The first Mayor Daley, Richard J. Daly, and then subsequently for Richard M. Daly, his son.

I didn't know that.

I think that, you know, was the opportunity really ultimately for Rahm to get involved into politics. I mean, he was certainly very ambitious in that and, you know, was certainly very successful in the 90s in Congress and joining the Clinton White House and his subsequent activities. I think he probably has at least some second thoughts over how difficult it is to get a hold of Chicago politics and try and move things in a positive direction, given, you know, his difficult experiences as mayor of Chicago, from which he stepped down, I guess, about a year or two ago. But I think it was the sense that, you know, all too often in politics, you know, including, you know, down in that kind of legislative environment of Springfield, a lot of people were spinning their wheels and not necessarily able to accomplish something. And I had had this idea at one point that I could in fact plot a course from my linkages from the Chicago student community in Hyde park on the south side, where I could run for the state assemblyman from one of the wards of Chicago. Because at that time, and this was still the case in 81, when you got to Chicago, Illinois had these multi member districts where in effect in the city of Chicago you would elect almost always two Democrats and one Republican for the General assembly, and downstate, more of a Republican area, it would be the reverse. The practical effects of this meant that you actually needed fewer votes as the minority party candidate in either area, either as a Republican in Chicago or as a Democrat in downstate. Now, I wasn't, you know, consciously a Republican at that point, although even in high school, as a freshman in high school, I had loved teasing my friends in homeroom that I was supporting President Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972, when everyone else was a McGovernite. But I mean, I wasn't ideologically linked to the Republicans. But what it meant in the nuances of Illinois politics at the time was that you needed fewer votes. And while you could get some crackpots getting elected, the reality is that within the Illinois General assembly you had essentially a reform caucus of like minded individuals, either Republicans or Democrats, elected from the respective minority seats in each district. And often it was that fraction of the reform caucus that came up with good ideas in terms of trying to take things forward. And generally we're able to work with a moderate Republican governor like Big Jim Thompson. But be that as it may, I mean, I found elective politics ultimately to be very weak tea compared to the sort of work that I could do internationally.

That's very well put. I totally get it. It just brings back some of my post traumatic stress disorder issues of being down in Springfield and whatnot. That's, that's very articulate and very diplomatically put. So then take us back through your resume, so to speak. And I want to balance this out too, because I'm very curious about. During your career, obviously you also had a family and have a very accomplished daughter. What was it like and when was that? And where were you? Because you were in various different places. But as, as a family, was your family always with you? Unpack that. Tell us about that.

Well, during my first 10 years in Ecuador and Bolivia, I hadn't really pursued, you know, actually establishing a family and the like. As it turned out, midway through my time in, in Bolivia, in a story, an anecdote that I tell in the book, I did end up getting married to a girlfriend with whom I had shared a lot of common interests in life and who I had known when she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. But I was already working for Plan International. But in hindsight, I think we both realized that things changed once we got married. Rather than being, you know, friends, we went from being perhaps friends with benefits to a marital situation. And it was particularly difficult and acute, as I would learn ruefully, because she was working under me in the same organization. And though I was aware of the risk, I tried to avoid, you know, causing any kind of triggers. As far as that went, I think it was almost unavoidable with me serving as a country director of this growing private voluntary organization, having to take certain responsibilities and unfortunately, perhaps foolishly ignoring how my own approach to leadership at that point, I would come to learn better, I hope. But my approach to leadership at that point was perhaps infecting the marriage as well. So we ended up getting divorced fairly quickly after a couple of years. No children or the like. But when I went to Peru with USAID in 1990, I came to meet Katya, introduced by a friend who was actually doing some matchmaking, and we ended up getting married. During that time, we ended up having actually a bit of a commotion of a wedding because we were having a Baha' I wedding in Lima, and all sorts of people, including the then US Ambassador, Tony Quinton, were intrigued by the idea of a Baha' I wedding. He let me know that he certainly expected to be invited to the wedding. We had planned on having us smaller affair. It ended up becoming a rather big to do. But it was really a remarkable opening into getting to know Peruvian life from the point of view of my wife and her family and the sorts of things that she experienced in her life. Really, the effects of terrorism over the years in Peru, that had been, you know, certainly affecting Peruvian families in a much more dire way for many years in the interior before you began to get the kind of more visible attacks of car bombs and other more public things. In Lima, the capital city, our daughter, Katrina Rose, was born there. And as it would turn out, you know, Katrina would end up having the sort of life where she was very much an international child. The only time she spent overseas, I mean, the only time she spent in the United States was actually a period of kindergarten to the second grade in Falls Church, Virginia. The rest of her life was in largely all the different countries that I and my family would come to go to. The exceptions were the countries that were basically downrange in areas of conflict where we had unaccompanied assignments. And I had to do, ultimately two assignments in Iraq and one period of time helping out in Kandahar, Afghanistan. And the family couldn't join me there, but elsewhere, largely, the family did join me.

That's great. How long were those periods of time where you were separated?

Well, each assignment was about a year.

Oh, my gosh. Well, that's significant. Wow.

It is. And perhaps I kid myself to a certain extent because we did have very much the practice of RRs, you know, for rest and recuperation. So there would be an opportunity to travel back to the States every three months or so for a period of up to two and a half to three weeks.

Okay.

So that was offering an opportunity to at least reconnect with family. But, you know, I think for many people, that's obviously not enough. Certainly distance does create difficulties and challenges, I would imagine.

Too, though. I mean, even the wonderfulness of getting back together and spending that kind of time episodically. But I would imagine then they both worried for your safety when you weren't stateside. Is that right? And how did that, you know, was that tough on both of them?

Well, I know it was certainly tough on our daughter who at one point talked about nightmares that she had. But I made clear to really try to, you know, for better or worse, I really minimized any kind of risks involved and certainly didn't go into in any kind of detail until much later on, some of the things that I actually did face and have to deal with in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gosh. Well, and everything's now out in the open with the book and my introduction, I guess, too, Alonso. So, my gosh, to a certain extent,

although the readers may be wondering, well, where is the next chapter? And in fact, in this book, I talk primarily about the first 13 or 14 years in Latin America, and I am planning on doing a second volume talking about my African and Asian adventures. And there I'll have to try to shape things and be able to convey a message while also making sure I don't, you know, step on any US Government regulations.

Right. Well, and I will look forward to that. I mean, again, I think because of the breadth and depth of your life and activities thus far, because I know you're not done yet, will be just fascinating to see these different volumes kind of country based or activity based. I recently had Art Bell on the show. He was the founder of Comedy Central, what became Comedy Central. And he was very frank and straightforward in his memoir about kind of naming names in the industry about this experience and that experience. Do you. You're in a little bit of a different circumstance because, like, literally, you know, it's, it's, you know, like what, what's his name's book? I was in the room or whatever at the time. The, the aspect of, you know, having to, to vet a story and, you know, how much can, can this story even go into the book and, and do I have to, you know, change certain kinds of things to keep the story correct, but other kinds of things, to kind of maintain a certain level of confidentiality about things. Is that an issue for you as a writer when it comes to doing a memoir with your kind of background and involvement in state matters?

Absolutely. I mean, I actually want to avoid having to step into the whole process of State Department clearance or agency clearance in terms of what ultimately I publish. And so that's kind of shaping To a certain extent, what I include in the, in the book. But I think particularly in the next volume, I probably will have to submit it for some sort of at least initial review since it will go into more the period of time when I held Top Secret clearance and, you know, some of the different permutations of that. But I'm going to make sure that I don't get into anything that kind of steps over the line in terms of my own experiences. And certainly the level that I was at is nowhere near as complicated as the one that, for example, John Bolton was going through in terms of his book with Oval Office activities. Although I unfortunately came to see, particularly towards the end of my career, some unfortunate shenanigans from the, the last administration. I'm not eager to get into that whole.

Right, yeah, I don't blame you. Yeah, I don't blame you. Well, in the context of your experience, again, we talked about this a little bit before we hit record, but you know, you have had a life of service. You have had a very fascinating, you know, process in terms of how that's gone. You know, I myself, I kind of, you know, jokingly a little tongue in Chee, but actually quite honestly refer to myself as an accidental humanitarian. It wasn't like I got a degree in it or something. You've kind of done these similar kinds of things and I think you've probably done it with a little bit more aplomb and being a gadfly in some ways than I've had the courage to do. But from your perspective and your vantage point with a lot of the people that are fans of the show, they want to get involved or they want to get deeper involved, or they want to be more broadly involved in the humanitarian or diplomatic or policy space. Do you have any advice or like, from your leadership positions, do you see, like what, what would you identify as qualities of someone that would be successful in development and international service from what you've seen?

Well, I think, you know, your self attribution as an accidental humanitarian is an excellent one, not only for you, but I think probably for a number of us who end up taking up this sort of vocation, I suppose there was some element of choice involved at least. My wife will sometimes hit me over the head with that in terms of some of the choices that I've made. But I've felt that I've been really driven as a result of the experiences to try to do as much as I can and to really look for ways in which I could better contribute and provide the sort, ultimately the sort of coaching and mentoring to others, facilitation, helping as a networker within different organizations over the years. And that's true. Including on up into my decision to join the Foreign Service within usaid, I saw this really as an opportunity to play a role on the donor side of the equation, rather than on the NGO side, where I had been participating with different nonprofits and private volunteer organizations who would present grant applications and solicitation proposals and sometimes find success, sometimes find a great deal of frustration in terms of being able to succeed in funding. I think opportunities of service on any scale are things that really open us up and amplify us as individuals and make us stronger in terms of being able to better understand the world and really better prepare us for whatever life we want to ultimately follow. And I've tried to offer that message within the book, particularly to young people, encouraging young people to think about national service, be it overseas within a Peace Corps context or domestically, you know, within some of the different nonprofit arrangements or domestic service arrangements that exist, even if they want to go on to other things in their life. Because I think it's invaluable to have that, to be in a situation where really you can get your hands dirty, really get involved in terms of helping others. I'm certainly very pleased that Peace Corps now offers a range of experiences, even though volunteers, unfortunately, overseas have all been evacuated as a result of the pandemic for the first time in history. There are these different approaches that Peace Corps is offering now in terms of shorter term voluntary assignments, you know, particularly as people return overseas in different sorts of roles. And I think that that's something that, you know, many young people should consider or people who are in the middle of their careers who want to take a kind of a gap year between one and the other if they're able to do that, or people that are more in the autumn of things and after they perhaps have retired and want to go in as a. An older volunteer. Certainly when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I saw plenty of people in their 60s and even in their early 70s as volunteers, sort of like, what was it, Jimmy Carter's mother, Ms. Lillian, who did that in India.

Yeah, that's a great point. I want to take a quick pause there because I had a very dear friend that I worked with for a number of years, and his mother was divorced, had gotten remarried, and the two of them in their later years did exactly that as a couple. And I just thought that is really cool. I guess it's a Bit of an ageist perspective on my part. I always kind of think about it like, you know, young people. And I like your point about like, you know, maybe, you know, early on a gap year, maybe post, you know, graduating from college and then thinking about, you know, jobs or thinking about career, thinking about graduate schools or whatever. It seems like a wonderfully opportune time to be able to, to experience that, but it's, it's not at all limited to that. I think that's a wonderful point. So do people. I know you're not, you know, just a marketer for Peace Corps, but is it just as simple as going onto the website and looking at places? Once things start to become more normalized post Covid or if someone does have an interest in that, or at least a curiosity, where would they start to learn more?

Well, there's, I think, a number of different sources that people can go to. Of course, the Peace Corps.gov website has a lot of different links. There's also a National Peace Corps association website. I think it's npca.org if I'm not mistaken. That includes a lot of material from returned Peace Corps volunteers and their experiences. There's a lot of affinity groups that are out there around the country of people who've been connected with different countries and who try to remain connected to that. And you know, Peace Corps is one approach. I think for me it was a very valuable approach. But, you know, working within nonprofits, working with non governmental organizations that are attempting to carry out activities, I think there are plenty of voluntary channels that could lend themselves for some of the listeners who may not necessarily want to take on the full time commitment of a Peace Corps service, but who want to get more actively involved. And I've seen that in terms of my engagement these days with Hunger Relief International, which, you know, has been a lovely experience because the organization was actually founded about 10 years ago by a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who was with me as a rural public health volunteer back in the early 1980s. And she reached out to me a year or two ago to let me know that she was hoping to recruit me to the board of directors and to get involved. And ultimately I was able to bring my own kind of field expertise to a rather eclectic mix of interesting people from Oklahoma, which is where she, she ended up after a very active career and in a lot of different areas dealing with refugees and humanitarian assistance. So I think, you know, that does also lend itself to being able to open yourself up to a better understanding of what's going on in the world and also look for, for the sorts of projects and voluntary activities where you can hopefully be making an impact in building self reliance. You know, that's an area, the journey to self reliance that maybe history will tell us is the single more positive contribution from the previous administration. Mark Green had been appointed as a former Republican congressman and a founder of the Millennium Challenge Corporation. He'd been appointed by the previous president as the administrator of usaid. And he brought to USAID on the one hand, a willingness to be brave and resilient and sort of serve as a buffer with some of the more loathsome White House shenanigans that were affecting the State department and other U.S. government agencies. But at the same time, he promoted a concept of the journey to self reliance and a narrative saying that the purpose of foreign assistance should be to eliminate the need for foreign assistance. And though that was initially raising some eyebrows among some of the more progressive elements of the Congress and the like, I think people came to realize that when you analyze that and think about what that means, it's a very positive, very valid statement because we have seen over the last, you know, 30, 40, 50 years, tremendous progress, I think in a lot of key areas of humanitarian assistance and community development around the world, particularly in the area of health and in education. But at the same time there is something of a risk of a self perpetuating development industry. Yes, that, you know, we need to be able to at least clarify our own understanding in terms of our roles. Speaking for myself, my role as hopefully a catalyst, as a facilitator, as a networker with different organizations, I shouldn't be trying to prolong or extend the relationships of assistance and foreign aid, but rather looking for a way of trying to promote self reliance and resilience in the countries and communities where we're serving. But at the same time making sure that I am supporting a narrative in terms of accountability and transparency and calling out those governments and leaders who are clearly not working for the benefit of the wider population, but really are focused more in terms of feathering their own pockets and that of many of the elites. That was something that, you know, I, I saw happening in South Africa during the time that we were there. There was huge debate in the South Africa press about the worry of state capture, where basically some different companies and investors who are coming into South Africa, sometimes under the so called auspices of investing into the future and economic development of the country, were in fact capturing South Africa government resources in a way that was really holding back the development and progress of the country.

Wow, wow. You have said a lot. I want to unpack. That is so true. And I mean, we see this and just, you know, open up the newspaper just about on any random day and there's these kinds of things showing. I mean, I was in Colombo, Sri Lanka a few years ago and saw, you know, just to be vague about this, you know, some international development that was being there, done there, that was very helpful and very necessary at the time. But I thought there is a very large string attached, you know, to what this means and to, you know, to what's going to come from that. And I think I get that point. I mean, the aspect of self reliance and in the work that I do, it tends to be more medically and health care and public health involved. And the idea, there's been a lot of pushback in the literature. Some it started probably at least 10 years ago in advocacy kinds of issues of this irony of kind of, you know, people wanting to do good. I mean, their heart's in the right place, but then coming in and doing, let's say a medical project. And then they come in, they feel good about themselves about what they did, which is fine, you know, pride in your work and doing, helping someone else and nothing wrong with that. But then it creates the circumstance. There's no supply chain for medication. There's no, you know, consistently, you know, here we are today, we'll never see you again, you know, kind of parachute, like literally, you know, the cliche of parachuting in doing a commando style, you know, intervention and then leaving that. That can be helpful in the context of a national or a natural disaster, but it's not necessarily helpful, you know, if you're trying to, you know, improve women's health in a resource poor kind of area. So I think there's been this evolution in sort of my space of looking at, you know, we don't go into one place and we establish a relationship. And usually for us, for my center in particular, that was a general statement. But like, you know, we go places where we get invited. We don't, you know, we don't ever pick a place. You know, the place picks us. And then we look at it to say, how can we have either a sustainable partnership where we can continue to work with you collaboratively until something is finished, we will never start something, you know, that will continue to need dependence on us. It's getting to this point of where how can you become independent and do this without just becoming a little colonial kind of perspective, where we continue to have to do this, this and this. So it's sort of like this having to have a respect and understanding the realities of certain kinds of things for starting something, but not with an expectation that we've atrogenically developed a dependence that no one wants, that no one sees as appropr. Sustainable or even ethical. So I get that. I think you also talking about USAID and some of the potential, I think there, I think one of your focuses from the book, you've talked a lot about human centered development. And is that kind of what you're speaking to in this concept as well too? That it's not just entities and structures and governments coming in and putting a band aid on something, but kind of unpack what you're thinking about human centered development is and how that might be different than, than what your typical circumstance might be?

Well, I think of human centered development in a couple of ways. A first slice of it of course has been the recognition that I saw really early on about how important it was to take into account values and you know, the sort of ethical principles within any sort of development initiative to ensure that actually there would be success within. I learned early on that, you know, supporting these sort of micro loan projects in a way that would in effect implant into a given community the opportunity of having access to resources without taking into account traditional value so that people would protect the existence of a loan fund and make sure that it would continue to grow and that they would honor repayment of microloans, you know, to be so important. And all too often, I think, you know, in earlier years there were many organizations that would come in for projects. And in part this has been encouraged by an approach not only limited to usaid, but you know, some other bilateral donors as well. But USAID in particular has been a model where often these short projects of three years are funded without really helping to ensure that there is a superstructure that will continue on the activities beyond the life of the project. Oh, there is lip service to that of course, in terms of encouraging program implementers to have a sustainability plan and to explain how things will be able to continue. But the time frame all too often for development programs is very short term focus. And you know, there's not much that you can do if you're really trying to change people's attitudes and approaches and help build that self reliance. You really need to look on a generational basis. You need to look in terms of 10, 15, 20 years in terms of what you can accomplish. I'm not trying to convey this in any one particular Religious direction. I've seen different spiritual based approaches succeed or fail, you know, regardless of the validity of the spiritual values of perhaps the, the founders and the, the people impotent implementing the project. But I have seen and come to appreciate how really working on a grassroots level, engaging with the whole array of a community so that a program is established that they can truly buy into with their own resources and understanding is so important. The other side of it in terms of human centered development kind of was brought into relief. If I could add on from experiences in Nigeria I came to know when I was in Nigeria, Babatunde Oshotamehen. I don't know if you ever crossed paths with him. He was initially the head of the Nigerian HIV AIDS Agency, then became Minister of Health in Nigeria. He would later move on and be selected by the United nations to be the head of unfpa, the United Nations Family Planning association, until his unfortunately untimely death a few years ago. But I remember talking with him, I became good friends with him about the transaction costs of many different development efforts on countries like Nigeria where you might have perhaps 25 or 30, 30 different projects supporting perhaps in the area of health broadly or addressing HIV AIDS or polio eradication or what have you. And the practice at least some years ago was that often each donor demanded their own sort of reporting, their own sort of feedback and accountability. And it created enormous costs for the Nigerian Ministry of Health to have to report back to 20 or 30 different donors instead of having one more unified approach to outside funding complementing Nigeria government resources for that.

Yeah, I totally, man, you hit the nail on the head. That is so reminiscent of a lot of the criticisms because historically it seemed like, you know, there would be organizations that were doing good work and there was this evolution which I rightfully agree with. I mean, I, you know, looking at outcomes and people wanting to see, you know, like people. I remember there was like a lot of marketing campaigns and stuff with nonprofits and fundraisers and stuff about, you know, adopt an outcome and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the fact of it seems, I think again a little bit from a western bias that you know, we want to pay for performance. You know, we want, if we're going to, quote, unquote, invest our philanthropic dollars in a project, you know, no one wants to waste that, no one wants to waste any money and the recipients don't want it wasted as well. But yeah, I think there becomes this disconnect of then, well, what are the. What again? A different type of string being attached that's going to cost money, cost, you know, person power and the ability to report these things. And then you have this diversity. No one, you know, there's no like universal kind of reporting system or mechanism to be able to, to do that. And speaking to your point about longevity of projects, we were invited some years ago to be a partner to do a project in Ukraine with USAID looking at what were called internauts, which were sort of like these orphanages for children that had profound different kinds of disabilities, physical and mental and psychological and cognitive. And in the process of that it was exactly like you said, it was a three year program, but for us and similar to what I think by implication you were saying is like that was just, that was the starter. I mean that three year project was basically to go in and do an assessment of circumstances before and establish a baseline so that then you would come back again with another grant proposal, hopefully get funded and then do the actual intervention. You know, so by the time that you would do these kinds of things, you know, it would be a 10 year span before you would probably be able to have any kind of outcome to look at. And you know, that's with usaid, if you look at, you know, private foundation and philanthropic associations making donations, it's almost like being a private company looking at quarter to quarter performance of someone's stock. So you know, if you're, if you're doing a early infant mortality intervention or if you're doing maternal health, pregnant women or something, it's going to take five years before you know, if your intervention, you know, is successful in the first place. Or you may take, it may take you two years to get proper kinds of data to be able to look at that. And there's sort of like this, again, this, this naive disconnect of, of people with checkbooks and wanting to do good work saying well, tick, tick, you know, let's, we need to take a look at, you know, what is this dollar actually going to produce in terms of outcomes. I think that's still kind of a squishy area. It's something that we deal with. And just, you know, looking at donors, we have to say to them, you know, these are, you know, longer term kinds of perspectives. These are things if you're, you know, putting together something around education, it could be 10 years before someone gets through a program to actually graduate. That if you're looking at maternal health, you know, so, you know, I think your point is really well taken that it almost seems like there needs to be some kind of universal reporting system that could be, you know, tweaked and adopted just to diminish the burden of that, but then also to properly gauge expectations of entities and donors and foundations to be able to see that, I think that's 100%.

And you know, one other characteristic of this that I'm reminded of, you know, you're talking about the example in the orphanage. One of my, really, my initial exposure to development after Peace Corps was working within an organization that was essentially centered around the concept of child sponsorship. Donors, in this case, you know, private citizens would sign up, you know, with appeals, sponsor this child, contribute $19 a month to support this child. And, you know, this was something that was pretty popular and successful really, as a model for fundraising back in the 1970s and, and 80s. And my experience actually with plan within Bolivar Province and with some of the remarkable leaders that I came to know when I was there, that I talk about within the book, was how to a certain extent, they were really in the avant garde of this, because this was essentially a pilot experience for plan, because rather than doing what PLAN and many of the child sponsorship agencies had been typically doing going into a community, signing up perhaps 15 or 20 families, and then providing this very paternalistic direct assistance to the family. Plan believer said, okay, look, when we do our marketing or when we structure this, we've got to make it clear that, you know, however this is presented by the international headquarters to the actual donors who support this. We're going to take essentially a fund, a pool of funding for each community that comes in as a result of the numbers of children that are signed up to be basically adopted as a, you know, foster child under, under this kind of program. And we're going to use that money for the benefit in a participatory approach for investment in the community as a whole. We'll have some small direct assistance in terms of school supplies and perhaps a little bit of food here and there, but we'll really try to minimize that. But we'll try to use the money raised to go into development projects for the wider community. Things like latrines for the schools, water projects, building school classrooms. This was a real eye opener for me, which then 10 years later, I would come to confront when I was recruited to serve as the Global Program Coordinator in London at the International Save the Children Alliance Secretariat. And having to wrestle between the Save the Children management from Save the Children, US Save the Children, United Kingdom, the Scandinavian countries, and Canada, each of which had different nuances in terms of their approaches. But on the whole, the Scandinavians had a much more progressive approach that really rejected this sort of direct assistance model in communities as being risky, divisive for the community. And they could point to plenty of studies that showed how, you know, you could have a child sponsorship agency coming into a given community, a given country, and, you know, some years down the line you would have these divisions forming in the community between those families that were getting help and those families that had perhaps very similar circumstances but weren't getting help. So wrestling with those kinds of issues and challenges was quite an eye opener and a learning experience and very humbling for me in terms of helping to clarify for me the sorts of approaches that had to be followed when I went into USAID as a career officer and then began to interact with many of these different child sponsorship agencies from the other side of the street in terms of encouraging them to look at their models of community engagement.

I'm so glad you said that because I think it again, you know, there's, there's such a scientific aspect to this in some sense of thinking about people come up with an idea and it has face validity. You know, it sounds like, okay, this is a good idea. You know, what's, what's wrong with this? And it's sort of like you, you know, people probably, you know, just in an academic experience couldn't like come up with, you know, five ways that this is wrong and here's 10 new ways to do it or whatever. But then to actually have these things done, you know, in vivo to see and then the people, whoever it is that's doing those kinds of studies can, well, here's how the model was thought to work. Here's what has happened as we've just now been talking X years post intervention. And here's what's worked well and here's what's not worked well. I think that's brilliant. We're pushing on an hour, but I have just a few more questions if you have time. Is that okay? Or how are you for time? Okay, great. Thank you. This has been a treat for me, I guess maybe to kind of take a step back, it seems like, and again, we can be careful about our, you know, we can both be very diplomatic in thinking out loud about this. But from my bias, from my point of view, it seems like more recently we're a bit more isolationist or we, we have been, hopefully that's kind of thawing out a bit or, or jingoistic these days. Do you have any ideas or thoughts about why Americans should care about what's happening overseas. I oftentimes read these kind of pushbacks to say, hey, we got enough problems here or I'm with my own center. We tend, we're very, very, very internationally focused. 90% of 95% probably of what we do is not US based. And I have to, you know, explain why that is. But why do you what from your perspective, your worldly perspective, all of the experiences that you've had, good, bad and in between, do you have a thought about why you feel like Americans should care about what, what happens across the other side of our border?

Yeah, I've got a number of thoughts on that. And I think one of the first things I would highlight is that unfortunately the American public is not well informed about what's all about development and foreign aid and what are the characteristics of it, why is it necessary, what are the levels of resource required? Part of that is structural in that the Congress really early on put in a lot of restrictions for USAID as a federal agency, as an independent statutory agency from doing what you might call development education in terms of helping to educate the home front about what was really happening. And while there has been some, some efforts to adjust that a bit over the years, USAID is still an agency that's probably largely unknown to the vast bulk of the American people. Which is really, really a shame in terms of, you know, so many different studies and polls that have put out. Pew and other pollsters I think have demonstrated over the years, and I'm sure you're abundantly familiar with this, that you know, you can, depending on how you word a poll, it's very easy to get a reaction from majority of Americans to say that, you know, they don't want to see more money going into foreign aid and they don't want to see money going down another rat hole. They don't support the amount of resources that are going into assistance. But when you drill down deeper with some clarifying questions, it becomes clear that in part that's because there's a misunderstanding that a large fraction of the federal government budget, sometimes people believe upwards of 10 or 20% are going to foreign assistance endeavors. And when you ask them, well, what do you think would be a more appropriate level of help that the US Government should provide for developing countries to address disasters man made or nature centered, or to try to help build up the capacity of these different countries populations, you often will get a response along the lines of well I think, you know, perhaps 5% is a more reasonable sum. And of course the reality as we know is that less than 1% of the U.S. government budget actually goes to foreign assistance. And, you know, it's a fraction. And if anything, you know, the kinds of problems that we're facing these days in terms of the pandemics that have been progressively coming, and of course, COVID 19 is the most recent. But, you know, there have been other smaller impact pandemics that have also created a bit of a scare for a time for the professionals that have been less well understood by the American people. The Zika virus, of course, the effects of Ebola, SARS and others. But it is getting ramping up to the point where clearly, if we fail to take the necessary action of investing enough in terms of addressing not only health, but also how people live, how communities survive, what is their basis of economic development to discourage them from tearing down the forests, from going and invading the habitat of wild animals where so many of these infections come from. If we fail to invest in education that's necessary to bring people up to being able to complete primary and complete secondary education and go beyond, then the consequences of that, of course, will be these repetitive migration crises where people find themselves in situations in their home countries, particularly in the Northern Triangle, but not limited to there, where they feel their only solution is to go where the potential for a job might be in the United States. So many of these global problems can really only be addressed by dedicating sufficient resources and in a wise, enabling and empowering way to encourage really that sort of growth and development around the world. And we need to do it in a collective way. I mean, you mentioned before the whole problem of the isolationism. And unfortunately, the experience of the past administration was such that it really contributed to what I think is a certain amount of backsliding in so many different development efforts around the world compared to the progress that we saw in a more sustained basis up until about 2015 or so, 2015, 2016. But there's also the reality that we can't do it alone. And yet we've been shirking any effort to truly collaborate, not only with European institutions, but with rising powers that clearly have resources and that clearly could be in a position that are in a position to approach development and infrastructure in ways that could hopefully complement what we're doing. When I was in South Africa, for example, I was invited to a meeting of the Southern Africa Development Community that was being held initially in Haberoni in Botswana, but then in Pretoria, with the participation as guests of all the different donors. And as it turned out, the ambassador from China to South Africa And SADC was sitting next to me, and we began to develop this relationship, this conversation, talking about what each of our countries were doing. And I reached out to him subsequently, trying to encourage. And this was, of course, prior to this administration, but I reached out prior to the former administration. I reached out to him in terms of saying, look, China has its own approach to development. We don't agree with some of the things that you're doing. You may not agree with some of the things that we're doing, but perhaps we can learn from each other. We can learn from what have been the lessons learned of each and try to work in a way that's more collaborative and that is helping to reinforce each other. And sadly, we invited him a number of times, he and his people to meetings at the US Embassy. I actually got the US Ambassador and the deputy chief of mission at that point on board with the idea of having a joint meeting initially with the Chinese to kind of talk about development experiences. The Chinese side ended up pulling back and not really taking the invitation. And then, of course, in 2017, that whole question began to be undermined by the former administration. I think clearly we've got to find ways of bringing together the capacity of China. There are good things and there are negative things about their belt and road initiative. Let's find a way of being able to develop some sort of partnership where perhaps we are going to continue. Of course we're going to continue as geopolitical rivals and competitors in a number of ways. But just as you know, we've had to deal with enemies and former enemies in the past. We have to find a way of working collaboratively so that much of our work doesn't go to waste and much of their work doesn't go to waste. Because certainly I saw over the years in quite a few African countries the waste of Chinese infrastructure efforts where they might build a highway that or road that was being requested by the government and failed to take into account certain practical realities of need for maintenance and secure that kind of ongoing support from governments and different multilateral organizations about the maintenance needs of roads. And then to see within a few years roads breaking apart and perhaps even worse off for the farmers and villagers in a given area.

Right. Oh, gosh, this is so. So many kinds of things. It just really is so stimulating. Thank you, Alonzo. I guess maybe to transition and to start to wrap up. I believe I know this. So clarify for me, if I have my facts not too straight. But you have a new role and you're going to be working with the foundation for Law and International affairs and I think in their Inclusive Diplomat program. Tell us, tell us what you'll be doing and tell us about that program and that organization.

FLEA has been active for the last five or six years. In fact, they have Wednesday, their sixth anniversary celebration that's going to be held virtually. I actually found out about them earlier this year when their vice president reached out to the Speaker's Bureau of the American Foreign Service association and asked for someone to talk within an international symposium on the question of youth in a post Covid world, and I was interested in the topic. I was contacted by the Foreign Service association as a retired senior Foreign Service officer and brought to the attention of the folks from flia. They have an interesting leadership in that their president is actually from China, but is on the faculty of schools both in China as well as in the eu and their vice president is here in the States and formally attached to a number of American universities. And they've been developing this approach of coaching and mentorship, bringing in young professionals who are working really across the world in a wide range of countries. It's still a relatively modest effort, but they asked me to join this symposium that ended up being a joint effort between the foundation and East China University and the East China University Law School and School of Political Science. There proved to be hundreds of people linking in not only from China but also from around the world. And that provided me with an opportunity to get to know them better, to be interviewed by some of their young interns and to have my story posted online on their website@www.flia.org and inclusivediplomat.com. i think it is where they showcase not only my experience, but that of three or four other individuals who have been working in a comparable way in humanitarian assistance and other types of community development efforts around the world. And they've been trying to get different stories out over the last several months. And last month they invited me to join as a FLIA scholar and senior advisor to help them in developing a broader program that we hope will get the support from different donors over the course of this coming year. For those that are interested in learning more certainly I encourage them to take a look at the the foundation websites. It's still, to a certain extent a project, you know, under development, but there are some very animated and interested individuals in a wide range of countries. And I was particularly interested in one of the recent interns who I had a chance to meet online last week, this young Colombian woman, an anthropologist by the name of Lorena Gomez Ramirez, who it turned out had been working in the area of development tourism, eco friendly tourism, as well as tourism into post recovery areas of conflict, initially in Colombia, but then she was invited, I think under the auspices of the US Institute of Peace to Nepal to visit some similar type of initiatives in that part of the world. And she actually had a chance to meet with and have an interview with the Dalai Lama during that visit. So it's been fun to have a chance to meet, you know, young professionals like her from different walks of life and to be able to share something of my experiences and lessons learned that hopefully will be valuable to them in terms of their own professional development.

I'm sure the treat was quite mutual for them to have the opportunity to spend time with you and have conversation, pick your brain. So I can say for myself, this has been quite a treat. I'm sure it has been for our audience as well. To wrap up, I want to thank you for your time today. I want to thank you for taking the time to put together just a wonderful book and I'm looking forward to the next literal chapters in the next books for people that want to reach out to you, want to get the book, learn more, connect. What are some of the best ways to do that?

Alonzo well, one way is to visit my website, which is@enablenoble.net and they can join my newsletter. I've got a monthly newsletter that I try to send out to people who are interested. I also encourage people, if they want to send me an email directly, they're welcome to write to ajwind ajwindable ennoble.net which is also a platform that I'm using in terms of trying to have a continuing conversation about not only these Andean adventures, but future adventures that I'll talk about in in Africa and and Asia. And the book is on Amazon and can be easily found there, along with connections to my author page on Amazon and blogs there and on Goodreads.

And did you do the voiceover for the audio book?

I did and let me show you. Chris have you ever tried to undertake no. I don't know if I was perhaps having an overly inflated view of my capabilities or whatnot, but I had been told since I was young that I had a great radio voice and oh, you should be participating in radio shows. And I've actually did a little bit of radio education in some of the countries that I was in. So I after doing some research I decided, well, why try and hire a narrator? I studied the approach in terms of developing the book on audible and then proceeded to get the hardware here, kind of a mini studio set up and the software to be able to edit the audio files. The book ended up being about roughly 10 hours recorded in terms of the different chapters. But let me tell you, the editing process of those 10 hours.

A thousand hours of recording for 10

hours of result, certainly it was about a 10 to 1 ratio, about 100 hours of work at least in terms of trying to get out, you know, some of the different ticks and breath voices and other kinds of noises that could come into play. But it was fun.

Good.

And I've had some good feedback on it and it seems like the audiobook has also been selling pretty well.

Good. I think it is a treat, to be honest. Art Bell was just in the process of doing similar with his memoir and I think very much a treat for the listener because in my head, you know, I had known from doing research on you, I'd seen some of your interviews before and listened to them. But, you know, I kind of, you know, in my head it's your voice, you know, reading the words as I'm kind of, you know, reading them in the book. But I think it's really a treat for people to be able to, you know, to hear it actually in the author's voice. And I just, just recently I was shooting a commercial for video for promo for a startup I'm involved with and, and I was working off a teleprompter. I mean, it wasn't my words. I was, you know, using something that someone had written a script for and I found that very difficult. But I thought, gosh, it would be just as hard if, you know, especially your own book and trying to get certain, you know, intonations and inflections and everything right. And oh my gosh, I tip my hat to you. I think that's. It's wonderful once it's done, but I just think it would be such a difficult process. So good for you for being able to do that. That's, that's wonderful. Well, listen, again, my thanks for your time, your generosity. I know you're leaving the country soon, so to be able to fit us in is just wonderful. And I will put all these links that you've just now discussed and links to the book, etc. In the show, notes for people that maybe are in a position listening to this where they can't write something down. So just, they can come to our website and be able to get that. And again, I look forward to keeping in touch again. We seem to be identical cousins. We've done variations on a theme of our work and careers and what comes next. So looking forward to the next chapters on so safe travels.

The opportunity to meet in person someday.

Likewise. Likewise. Thanks so much. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout. To learn more, stop by our website A lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks and until next time.