Public Diplomacy and DEIA Promotion: Telling America’s Story to the World (2023)

The ACPD is a bipartisan panel created by Congress in 1948 to formulate, assess, and recommend policies and programs to carry out the Public Diplomacy (PD) functions vested in U.S. government entities, to include the Department of State. This special report focuses on the integration of principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) into U.S. government (USG) public diplomacy outreach and program activities. 

In fulfillment of Executive Order 13985, the Department of State has undertaken the comprehensive internal adoption of and adherence to principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. As the lead foreign affairs agency and the face of the nation to the rest of the world, the Department of State also has a mandate to promote DEIA principles abroad. 

Much of the responsibility for this external DEIA outreach and engagement lies with the Department’s public diplomacy practitioners. The ACPD is pleased to offer this assessment of the current programmatic focus on DEIA and how it has shaped the practice of public diplomacy.

We are also proud to showcase the great work that public diplomacy professionals at home and aboard have done to put these principles into practice, producing significant, and in some cases remarkable, outcomes despite resource and capacity constraints.