“Smart Women, Smart Power”: A Podcast Interview Between Under Secretary of State Elizabeth M. Allen and CSIS Senior Fellow Dr. Kathleen McInnis

Listen to the podcast: Smart Women, Smart Power .

Kathleen McInnis: This is Smart Women, Smart Power — a podcast that features conversations with some of the world’s most powerful women.

Liz Allen: Our ability to make progress on the things we want to make progress on — the way we want to make progress on them — means we have to continue to try to humanize each other.

Kathleen McInnis: We feature thought leaders at all career levels, where we explore, among other things, the many contributions that women make to the fields of international business, national security, foreign policy, and international development. Does having women in positions of power influence the outcomes of decisions in these fields? Why or why not? Join me, Dr. Kathleen McInnis, Director of the Smart Women, Smart Power initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for these incredible conversations.

I’m honored to be joined today by Under Secretary Liz Allen on the Smart Women, Smart Power podcast. Liz is currently the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department where she’s focused on reimagining the power and the purpose of American diplomacy. So, welcome to the podcast.

Liz Allen: Thanks so much for having me. I’m honored to be here.

Kathleen McInnis: Well, I love to kick off these conversations by asking you know, what got you into this field? Like what brought you into the weird world of international affairs and the communications tracks specifically?

Liz Allen: I love this question because for me, it’s like let’s go way back. And for me, I am someone who loved, loved my high school government teachers, and my high school history teachers. I was inspired kind of in that high school era of my life because I found the subject matter so resonant. At the same time, you know, that our country was dealing with 9/11 and we were in an increasingly globalized world, international affairs, civic participation really spoke to me.

Kathleen McInnis: And where did you grow up?

Liz Allen: I grew up in Buffalo, New York. I am a very proud Buffalo native, that could be a whole other podcast, so “Go Bills!”. I gotta get that in there. But you know, I’m somebody who thought I wanted to be a social studies teacher and actually, here we are, we find ourselves here, you know, twenty years later, not in fact, doing that and feeling very honored about the position we have.

Kathleen McInnis: Or maybe you are doing it?

Liz Allen: The ultimate —

Kathleen McInnis: The ultimate social studies teacher!

Liz Allen: Exactly!

Liz Allen: But a bit more practical answer to the question, I was a State Department intern when I was in college. Yeah, I decided sort of through my college education that with as much due respect to teachers as they deserve, I wanted to try something different. And I worked on international women’s issues at the State Department as an intern.

Kathleen McInnis: Oh, wow. Okay, so what year was that?

Liz Allen: That was 2004 and ‘05. And it was very powerful to be working on that side of issues at that moment because First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were paying a lot of attention to the rights and outcomes for Afghan women.

Kathleen McInnis: Right, of course.

Liz Allen: And so really, the lens of international women and girls and the importance of women and girls policy, to the broader U.S. foreign policy agenda, was how I got my start in this world as a policy matter, and it was a really important thing that really stays with me.

Kathleen McInnis: So could I just ask a digression because — and obviously Smart Women, Smart Power —

Liz Allen: Yeah. Love a digression.

Kathleen McInnis: You know, like and, and just, I’d love your thoughts on you know, because you started your career on women and girls issues at the State Department. What do you see as the progress or where do we see the state of things now given your history with that set of issues?

Liz Allen: So, I think there’s two ways to look at this. I’m someone who believes strongly in the phrase “two things can be true”. And so I would offer that frame and that rubric for my view on this, which is, we’ve made enormous progress on both the conceptual agreement and understanding that women and girls issues deserve attention, deserve resources, deserve everything that we’re putting against it, in this administration in particular, because what we find over and over is women and girls issues are at the center of almost every other issue, right?

Kathleen McInnis: Hundred percent. Hundred percent!

Liz Allen: You can’t have a conversation about you know, economic outcomes or democratic outcomes or free and open societies, without knowing that all of those things are directly tied to women and girls issues. And I have found that over and over in my travels in this role, and recently, including, I’ll share one powerful anecdote. I was in Vanuatu in the Pacific Islands in October of this year, and there aren’t many U.S. visitors to Vanuatu. We’re really working on increasing our diplomatic engagement there. And I sat down for an event in a roundtable with civil society leaders that was framed around transparency and anti-corruption in civil society. And it turned into a very emotional, very heartfelt discussion about the rights of women to participate in society in those ways.

Kathleen McInnis: Interesting.

Liz Allen: And it all comes back to women and girls. So, I think as a policy matter, we’ve made a lot of progress. I think as a practical matter, there’s been a lot of progress made. I think what we’re all seeing now though, is that there is a regression in many parts of the world, including here in the United States when it comes to the rights of women and girls and so I would echo something that Secretary Hillary Clinton said at this most recent Clinton Global Initiative in September on the on the sidelines of UNGA. It was very powerful. She said, you know, as the person who went to Beijing in the mid 90’s and declared women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights, she did not anticipate that 30 years later, we would be at the point we are where we still have to say that.

Kathleen McInnis: Yes.

Liz Allen: And we do feel like we have to say that. So, with as much progress as has been made, I think there’s a lot of clear-eyed understanding that there is so much more progress to make, including in some spaces to reverse some backsliding.

Kathleen McInnis: Right, I mean, especially because authoritarian regimes specifically seem to be using gendered rhetoric, repression of women to consolidate power. So, if we’re really serious about this thing we’re calling strategic competition, it does seem to me that we need to get a lot more serious about women and girls in their treatment in these different societies.

Liz Allen: Absolutely and it’s one reason I mean, we — this this Administration released the first of its kind Women’s Economic Security Report last year, because exactly to your point, it’s not just a matter of values, it really is a matter of practical opportunities and enabling those practical opportunities.

Kathleen McInnis: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you have written on the information space, public diplomacy. We seem to be awash in this sea of disinformation. How do you begin to wrap your arms around, much less tackle that challenge from where you’re sitting at the State Department?

Liz Allen: Well, thank you for asking. And I would just say, you know, the practice of public diplomacy is as old as any kind of diplomacy. It just really means the interaction between and among people and publics. And so, for a long time, public diplomacy was sort of bisected into two tracks. It was media relations and storytelling to make sure that our messaging can get out there. And then it was educational diplomacy and exchange programs and things that created opportunities for relationship building, both of which are still important. But to your point, the information space itself, the media space itself, enabled by social media and the proliferation of delivery platforms, as we like to say — how people get their information — has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, and particularly in the last eight to ten years. And so, we have reimagined, we have to reimagine what it means to communicate with people, to interact with people, to tell stories in ways that actually make a difference as a policy matter. And so, to your question, one thing I would just offer is that while the information space, disinformation, those things have long been thought of as communications issues, as narrative problems, as content that needs moderating to get rid of it.

Kathleen McInnis: Or counter, like the active measures sort of stuff?

Liz Allen: Right, you know, lies are truths. And, you know, fictions, here’s the facts instead and some of that is still important. Where we are now is really at with a much more acute and existential understanding that the very health of our information, the truth, the proliferation of truth is something that underpins every single issue in every single geography amongst every single audience. And it means that our imperative to counter disinformation, to enable the flow of truthful information is a national security imperative, because we can’t talk about, tackle, or solve any other challenge or issue if we don’t have a common basis of shared truth. And so, it isn’t just a matter of favorable narratives or truths and lies, really, these days we’re thinking about the information space as a national security imperative. And as something that is really, you know, a tool for influence, right? People have to know the media space is a theater of competition, just as traditional security spaces have been.

Kathleen McInnis: So, segwaying into the decision that you — or we’re going to talk to, or talk about today, which is this sort of creative way to reach new or different audiences I would argue. It’s, it was – your decision to well, to be the brain behind the encounter between President Obama and Anthony Bourdain.

Liz Allen: Oh, sure.

Kathleen McInnis: In Vietnam and the amazing dinner sequence. I mean, I was just rewatching it. That moment where President Obama shares, you know, his optimism about the future. It was just a really unique, profound…so how did you come up with this? Because it’s not, I mean, you’re used to seeing a president on a podium saying the words and like, yeah, how did how did that come about?

Liz Allen: Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk about this. In some ways, it’s really meaningful to think about it at the time because it was such a pivotal moment in hindsight, in particular. What I’ll say before maybe getting into that specific case is, to your earlier question about how we’re thinking about countering disinformation, it’s a matter of making sure that we reach people where they are, right? That’s the fundamental tenet of any good strategic communications policy. We have to go to talk to people in ways they’re used to in places they already are, which will bring us to the Bourdain moment and we have to think not just about rebutting false information, but about allowing more truthful, credible information to flourish in the first place, which is why so much of what we’re doing is enabling independent media and thinking about communications well beyond traditional media sources, and going to places where people are. These days that looks a lot like engaging digital influencers on Instagram or Facebook or Tik Tok, because like it or not, people are getting their news there. And so, you know, kind of a beta version of what is now a very robust digital influencer effort by the U.S. government was this moment between President Obama and Anthony Bourdain. And to your question, my colleague in the White House at the time, Ben Rhodes, he and myself and another one of our colleagues had sort of all independently thought about some kind of interaction like this. And we had sort of the luck of someone in President Obama who, you know, was very tapped into pop culture, who was a great speaker, and could sort of, you know, understand the value of leveraging culture, particularly given his own history, upbringing, and background. But you know, it wasn’t a given that something like this was worth a President’s time.

Kathleen McInnis: Right! Because there’s these questions about are you diminishing the power of the president or the station of the person? I mean, again, I’m just imagining some of the push back.

Liz Allen: Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, when you work in the White House, or for anybody that works for any boss, you realize that time is the most valuable commodity. So, the imperative to justify that time is high, which is why when, you know, it’s an honor really to reflect on this moment or decision as you framed it, because a lot of times we look back on decisions as moments of crisis — we had to do A or B. And actually, I would offer that this, you know, “decision to recommend and move forward with this engagement” was really much more a matter of sort of trying something with a high-risk tolerance that we hoped and thought would pay off. And in this case, it did but that wasn’t a given either. Right? So, to put it in for context for your listeners, this was a trip in the spring of the year 2016 and the President was going to Vietnam and to Japan. And the reason we were going to Japan was to mark agreed upon sort of reconciliation moment over the bombings in World War II of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and so the tone and tenor of the trip was quite serious.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah.

Liz Allen: This is a moment where our relationship with Vietnam was really at a pivotal moment really looking to show that we were invested. And so to your point, it was a serious matter as most matters of foreign policy and national security are, and there were a lot of optics to consider on the trip, but we knew that we wanted to find a moment to make sure that President Obama, on behalf of the United States, could speak to people well outside of those who pay attention to foreign policy.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah, and also choosing to have Vietnamese street food.

Liz Allen: Yes.

Kathleen McInnis: Right? So that’s also a signal to the Vietnamese as a sign of respect?

Liz Allen: One hundred percent and, you know, look, Anthony Bourdain was uniquely suited to be able to have a conversation that cut past, you know, sort of the, the BS meter if I may. And so, you know, being there in Vietnam with them and watching them have this conversation, that, you know, had some TV production to it for mass audiences, but really turned into an extremely genuine conversation between two very well-traveled men of influence. I think it was powerful to see what kind of commonality they shared.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah.

Liz Allen: And they both felt, and you hear this in the end of the conversation, they both felt such a calling, to talk to people about talking to each other. We have to find ways to come around a table together, for example, to talk about things that matter to everyone. We have to be able to realize that if we’re going to advance a future based on our values, those of us in the United States and in democratic countries, it means that we have to push people to find more similarities than differences amongst each other. And that’s what was so powerful about that conversation. And they really issued a call to action, frankly, to their audience, on finding ways to come together, which brings us to a lot of how we think about modern day public diplomacy, which is, you know, diplomacy doesn’t always happen around the conference table, it happens around the dinner table or it happens around —  you know, we were talking about the importance of music and art. It happens in the art studio. It happens in the concert hall. It happens in the sports stadium, right? The power of international sport is not lost on us as a way to bring people together. And I would offer that I think that the President Obama – Anthony Bourdain moment was, at the time the most high-profile way to demonstrate that concept that we’ve been building on ever since. And it’s worth saying, to the point about assessing risk and assessing the return on investment, that if you go back now to that noodle shop in Vietnam where that episode was filmed now almost eight years ago — it is a revered location. It is a revered dish. You can show up and order the President Obama order. They have the table in case in a plastic protection barrier. That’s a signal that a lot of people both in the Vietnamese public and in the international audience will not remember anything from President Obama’s trip to Vietnam except eight years later, that iconic moment and that actually, I think, proves the point that really trying to build these more human moments as a part of diplomacy pays off in the long run.

Kathleen McInnis: For people. Governments are made of people.

Liz Allen: That’s right.

Kathleen McInnis: You know, it’s all about human connections, isn’t it?

Liz Allen: It is.

Liz Allen: And I just have to say on that note, I mean, one thing that I’ve become fond of saying in this job, that is such an obvious point, but when you say it, particularly to those who work on matters of national security and foreign policy, the idea that the future is not just going to be shaped by government to government relationships, it’s actually going to be shaped by people to people relationships.

Kathleen McInnis: It’s about the people!

Liz Allen: It underpins everything we do. It is why we invest in young leaders around the world. It’s why we’re using culture to bring people together. It’s why we believe so strongly in training, you know, the leaders of tomorrow in every sector because particularly in this moment we find ourselves in, let’s think about the disruptors in people’s lives. This is something that Secretary Blinken has talked to us on his team about. The disruptors in people’s lives, the issues foremost on their minds…

Kathleen McInnis: Right.

Liz Allen: …broadly, globally in the last few years — digital technology and the advent of emerging technologies that impact your daily life, and the pandemic.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah.

Liz Allen: The highest disruptors, right?

Kathleen McInnis: Right.

Liz Allen: Those problems, those issues, they know no borders.

Kathleen McInnis: Right. No, that’s right.

Liz Allen: We are in that together. Just like we’re in it together when it comes to climate change, when it comes to food security, when it comes to how other technology is affecting our lives.

Kathleen McInnis: And as it comes to war.

Liz Allen: A hundred percent.

Kathleen McInnis: The war in Ukraine is impacting people around the globe in so many different ways.

Liz Allen: Absolutely.

Kathleen McInnis: The global effects are extraordinary.

Liz Allen: And to that point, I mean, just you know, having to say to audiences over and over what you think is a security issue is also an economic issue in almost every case. It just shows our interconnectedness and so, you know, we feel really called to be able to train this next generation — engage this next generation. The work of public diplomacy is not just the short term, sort of crisis driven imperative to make our information space healthier, as we talked about earlier in our conversation, but it really is to build the long-lasting relationships that are going to matter into the future.

Kathleen McInnis: It’s a strategic perspective.

Liz Allen: It’s absolutely a strategic perspective. And I would say as we kick off 2024, you know, we think about 2024, there are so many consequential elections around the world this year.

Kathleen McInnis: Isn’t seventy percent of the world’s population is going to be going through an election?

Liz Allen: That’s right and so many of our, you know, bedrock democracies, so many of our emerging democracies, it’s going to be a very revealing year in terms of all the election results. And there’s a lot of conversation about what it will mean for our ability to have partnerships and allies going forward, how we solve problems, and what a lot of us are saying and what we believe so strongly, I just talked to the Secretary about this last week, is our ability to solve problems with like-minded partners is going to depend on our people working together to withstand potential government transitions. And that’s a strategic imperative.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah. And and, and, and cultivating a sense of empathy, right? I worked in government all these years ago, but like, you know, just at the time, I felt like we were reasonably good at building an interagency position, but actually talking to allies and partners in the formulation of strategy bringing people on board at the frontend, it was much more challenging. And so, we just, I just felt like we ended up talking at our partners or talking at our allies. It does seem that this administration is and has taken a different approach to that kind of strategic collaboration.

Liz Allen: Absolutely. I mean, I would say two things on this. One is, and this is a particularly heartfelt concept coming out of what we’ve seen in the Middle East in the last few months, is our ability to make progress on the things we want to make progress on, the way we want to make progress on them, means we have to continue to try to humanize each other right?

Kathleen McInnis: Damn straight.

Liz Allen: And so, the work, particularly the work of public diplomacy, of our exchange programs, of our study abroad programs, of our storytelling, really comes down to trying to humanize people around the world for each other because we’re not always aiming for agreement amongst people, but we should be aiming for understanding.

Kathleen McInnis: And respect.

Liz Allen: And respect and to your point, empathy. You know, on the point of, it’s really interesting to hear you talk about kind of this point about talking past each other or talking past our own counterparts. Even with the best of intentions, we have to think about how we make progress. And one of the biggest changes having come back into government this time, this my sixth job at the State Department, the thing that feels the most different now than any time in the past, is having the sort of intellectual honesty to understand how narratives and public sentiment affect our policy decisions.

Kathleen McInnis: Oh interesting. That’s interesting.

Liz Allen: I would just say I mean, this is something Secretary Blinken says, if we don’t have communicators at the table, we are not having as intellectually honest and rigorous a discussion as we can be having, because to your point, a lot of considerations around people, and how they’re feeling, and what they need, and the likelihood of implementation of a policy or an understanding of the human trade-offs of a certain policy, are what’s going to ultimately lead to its success or failure. And so there has been an effort ongoing to continue to think about the human trade-offs of a policy in those early discussions.

Kathleen McInnis: Ah, that is amazing. That is amazing. That’s fantastic. So, to wrap up our conversation, do you feel that your gender as a woman has had an impact on the decision to recommend the President Obama conversation with Anthony Bourdain and your approach to how you take decisions, your leadership style overall? If so, why and if not, why not?

Liz Allen: I think…… I love this question. And I think of course it does, and sometimes in different ways than you might think and sometimes in not, you know, not as acute in ways that might be a little bit more stereotypical. You know, I’d offer a couple of things. I think women are sometimes slower to trust their instincts than some of our male colleagues because I think a lot of us feel like we have to be right more often than not or there is a pressure to feel like we need to be right on behalf of all women, right? So, we move us forward. And I would say though, that often is the instinct and judgment part of my own decision making that proves out more often than not. I mean, as I say to a lot of interns and college students, and I love talking to them. I benefited from that as a college student, especially coming to events at CSIS. True, true story. I talk a lot about the importance of EQ, not just IQ, and I think a lot of us who’ve worked in and out of government have come back to government, recognize that that EQ component continues to be extremely important and at the risk of dramatically oversimplifying the fact that I think women sometimes have a really honed EQ, I think that can really lead to better decision making. You know, the other thing that comes to mind when we think about being a woman in a position of leadership is what we all often talk about, the concept of imposter syndrome. And certainly, one’s own imposter syndrome can be a limiting factor and a lot of us have worked to move through that, move past it or reconcile with it. You know, I would offer, I think, I talked to a lot of women at the State Department and across the U.S. government. Sometimes we feel like really confident about our own abilities and we’ve worked past our own imposter syndrome, but we are dealing with others projecting theirs upon us about our roles.

Kathleen McInnis: Oh yeah. That’s interesting, yeah.

Liz Allen: And I sometimes feel like, you know, in your day-to-day decision making or in your day-to-day work, women are talking about the fact that they have to overcome a bigger gap and benefit of the doubt…

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah.

Liz Allen: …than they should have to…

Kathleen McInnis: Interesting.

Liz Allen: …because of ongoing stereotypes and perceptions. Even if you’re sort of like “I’m in the right place in the right time”.

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah.

Liz Allen: “I’m feeling pretty good”. Right?

Kathleen McInnis: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Allen: And that’s a dynamic that I’ve talked to some people about of late.

Kathleen McInnis: Wow, the external dimensions of — wow.

Liz Allen: Yeah. And dealing with dealing with people’s projections of their own perceptions upon you and how much should you take that into account for your own efficacy and how much can you just sort of tune out the noise, know what the signal is and move forward?

Kathleen McInnis: Right, and especially given you know what you’re saying about EQ. You know, part of EQ is being able to sense those vibes so like, is shutting some of that off actually impacting your EQ? There are some trade-offs there too. That’s fascinating I mean…

Liz Allen: Let’s get a psychologist in here to help us with this.

Both: (laughter)

Kathleen McInnis: Anybody who’s listening? Thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you so much for this, this really terrific conversation about how important it is to be human with each other.

Liz Allen: Thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure. A lot of us wake up every day feel very driven by our mission. It’s an honor to be in the position to try to make a little bit of change, even when incremental. Incremental change is still change. And I appreciate the fact that we do so with partners, like you and your team here. So, it’s been great to be with you.

Kathleen McInnis: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Liz Allen: Thank you.