Washington, DC
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you so much, Andy [Plitt]. It's hard to think of a steadier hand than Andy Plitt for a more turbulent region. A challenging region to be sure – but a region, again, whose potential it is all our jobs to try to help unlock.
Thanks to Dina Kawar, my great friend and Jordan’s Ambassador to the United Nations, before she became a seemingly permanent fixture here in Washington as Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States. Dina and I had the chance to break the record – and I think we probably would have still broken the record – for the number of female ambassadors at the UN Security Council at the same time. I think we got to 6 out of 15. Not exactly the ratio that you'd think would be record-breaking, but it was a great, great privilege to work with Dina. As you can tell, she is very gentle, very polite, very caring – she’s totally fierce. It's all an act. It's all an act, as we learned as an Administration in recent budget negotiations up on the Hill, as Dina delivered as she always does for Jordan and for her people.
I welcome Leslie's family, of course her brother Brett and her niece Emma, who is an avid reader and is going to be reading books about Jordan, I bet, within no time. But also, on the screen we have Leslie's husband, Martin, and their four sons, who are tuning in from Cairo. I don't know if your cameras are on or if we can see you, maybe, I’m not sure. But anyway, we have them joining. We also have friends and colleagues from across the Agency and the country who have joined us here in Washington and online. I think there's a posse from the Export-Import Bank. I see some nods here – maintaining those connections. And Leslie’s best friend Patricia, it’s very good to have you here as well.
One thing I want to say is that we really do have people from all over the world joining, in part because Leslie is about to be a five-time Mission Director. And that is just remarkable. I asked her, "Is that a record?" Because I certainly have never sworn in anybody who’s been Mission Director five times. And her reaction was just like, "I’m so grateful," and just that love of being around the world and love of arriving in a new place with all those questions. Leslie is clearly made for this line of work, which I will come back to.
I want to start by paying tribute to Leslie's late parents – her father, her mother, and her stepmother – who I can imagine would really have loved – I am not going to look at you – who would have loved to be here – we've already started. And particularly because they celebrated public service and would be utterly amazed by everything that she has achieved.
Leslie’s father, Richard, worked for the San Jose City government, as did her stepmother, Carol. But before his career in local government, Richard was a member of the Naval Reserves. In the early 1960s, as the Vietnam War was beginning, he helped transport the first American military advisors to South Vietnam. Richard encouraged his children to always put others first and to serve people in need.
Leslie absorbed her parents' values of service and sacrifice, but her drive for service was always oriented, I gather, internationally. She read voraciously about international affairs and delved deep into current events.
And her interest served her in unexpected ways. In high school, Leslie and her lifelong friend Patricia learned that their English teacher, Mr. Shivly, also loved engaging in debates about international affairs. Every morning before class, Patricia and Leslie, bound by a shared lack of interest in literature – Emma, I'm sorry about that – would plot together on which world event was the best choice in their quest to derail the lesson plan. Most of the time, to their delight, they succeeded.
But it was clear that Leslie's desire to serve abroad was deeply held. Patricia recalls Leslie as someone who wanted to learn about the world and find her place in it. She remembers the two of them sitting in the living room, hardly 16, having those quintessential, wending, winding discussions about dreams and possibilities. When asked what career she wanted to pursue, Leslie replied with no hesitation: "I want to go into international development". Not your average 16-year-old.
But that is exactly what she did. In her junior year of college, she chose to study abroad at the American University in Cairo. That was in the early 1980s, just after the assassination of President Sadat and the beginning of Hosni Mubarak’s long reign. It was at AUC that she first learned about USAID, which supported a library for AUC students. Leslie wrote paper after paper in that library, and in the process, she learned about the vital work this Agency does to serve communities in need.
She traveled to Kenya the following year as part of something called Operation Crossroads Africa, where she helped build libraries, health centers, and water wells in rural communities. After obtaining a law degree – with her left hand seemingly – a stint at a private law firm, and almost a decade at the Export-Import Bank of the United States, she landed a job as a Regional Legal Advisor for the USAID's Mission in Peru in the summer of 1999.
Leslie worked her way up the ranks as an Agency lawyer, eventually becoming Assistant General Counsel for USAID's Africa Bureau. And nearly a decade after she first arrived at the agency, she was appointed Deputy Mission Director of USAID’s Mission for Southern Africa.
In the 15 years since, she has proven herself not just an adept development mind, but a true leader as well, heading up our missions in Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Egypt before now heading to Jordan.
In Ethiopia, she helped coordinate the Mission's response to the catastrophic drought of 2017, providing emergency food, health shelter, and clean water to more than 140,000 displaced Ethiopians. And really, the response there is a model of how we have responded over the last year to the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia.
In South Sudan, she helped deliver humanitarian assistance to the 7.5 million flood survivors in need of aid while also responding to the rapidly escalating COVID-19 pandemic. And in Egypt, she worked to elevate the Mission’s climate and conservation work, launching an incredible public-private partnership at COP27 to protect coral reefs and coastal ecosystems in and around the Red Sea. I was very privileged to get to launch that while in Egypt, and to associate myself with Leslie and her team’s incredible work.
Leslie has also been a fierce advocate for her staff and, in particular, for her foreign service nationals. When new staff members started on Leslie's teams over the years, they always found themselves invited to her house for dinner within the first months on their job. When the Ugandan government passed the first Anti-Homosexuality Act, during her time there as Mission Director, she went office to office to carve out safe spaces so that her staff would be able to discuss their fears and their difficult emotions – to talk about the dangers facing their families and friends – without fear of retribution.
And as a first-time Mission Director in Uganda, she pioneered the Mission of Leaders program – an award-winning initiative based on the philosophy that leaders exist everywhere in a Mission’s hierarchy, not just at the top. She partnered with Ernst and Young to discover how the Mission could better empower staff members at every level of the Agency, and worked to implement their recommendations through trainings, retreats, and Mission-wide charters. And she supplemented that work by creating formal leadership positions for FSNs, helping establish as well an FSN Advisory Leadership Council within USAID's Mission in South Sudan where one had not existed before.
I will also say, in the tough economic times that all of our staff around the world – our foreign service national staff – have been facing, Leslie in this last year has been a tireless champion of improving compensation for her team in Egypt and indeed has been very effective working with Deputy Administrator Adams-Allen to that effect, securing some additional support in the face of terrible inflation.
Brett, Leslie's brother, said that his sister has always been a model of someone doing good out in the world. But Leslie also understands that doing good in the world starts by doing good by your own people – by empowering teams to drive tangible progress, by seeing every member of the team as an individual deserving of respect, hearing them, listening to them. It really is the mark of someone incredibly valuable to have here at USAID. I think our broader Foreign Service National empowerment agenda is stronger because of the kinds of trailblazing work that Leslie has done at various Missions around the world.
Leslie's leadership skills and ability to navigate Missions through challenging times will serve her well in her next assignment: Mission Director for USAID/Jordan, which is USAID's largest bilateral assistance program in the entire world.
She takes the reins at the Mission at a critical time for Jordan.
One of the most water-scarce countries in the world, Jordan currently has enough water supply for just two-thirds of its population. Creating economic opportunity for its people – notwithstanding all of the human capital that Ambassador Kawar spoke about – is very challenging, especially providing opportunities to women and young people. Less than one in every five women are formally employed, and only one of every three young people between the ages of 15 and 30 have formal work.
Even as Jordan struggles to meet existing resource and economic demands, however, the country has maintained an incredibly, improbably generous policy for refugees. Surrounded by Israel, the West Bank, Iraq, and Syria, Jordan has taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees in the last decade – so many that at its peak, Za’atari Refugee Camp, which many of us have visited, hosted enough people to be Jordan’s largest city.
Leslie’s arrival as Mission Director signals the enduring partnership between our two countries that Ambassador Kawar spoke about.
In September, the United States and Jordan signed a seven-year partnership that provides nearly $1.5 billion in assistance per year. That money is going to help our USAID Mission in Jordan expand economic opportunities for women and young people, build and renovate schools and hospitals, and train teachers and healthcare workers to meet the needs of their students and patients. It will support existing programs to design and repair Jordan’s water infrastructure, treat wastewater, and equip agricultural workers—who use more than half of the country’s water supply – to use less water-intensive methods to producing their crops.
With her long career serving communities across Africa and the Middle East, her proven ability to navigate Missions through challenging times, and her clear dedication to her staff, and lifting individuals around her up – especially to her local staff – Leslie is a perfect choice to lead such a vital Mission in Jordan at such a vital time. I am immensely grateful for her willingness to take on this important role, and it is really actually impossible to think of a better choice to represent USAID and the United States in Amman.
I will also thank Leslie for enduring this ceremony. She hates talking about herself. Leslie, we have a saying in Ireland, where I am originally from, which is that "Irish people don’t even like using the first person in therapy." And I think you can relate to that, so I want everyone to know how hard this is for Leslie to listen to all these nice things said about her. But you know what, after a career like the one you’ve had, you deserve applause once in a while, if nothing else, your four sons need to hear this and your niece needs to hear this, so thank you for always being willing to answer the call to serve in such challenging times. We are so lucky to have you.
It is now my pleasure to swear in Leslie Reed as our new Mission Director in Jordan.