Effectiveness of us communication with others, other republics and other countries. We have with us today im speaker will be assistant secretary of state and senior artificial in a euro of Public Affairs, and were glad you could joinus today. We look forward to this event. She joins the state department in every third 2018. But in the year later she became, she was already assistant secretary but took on the responsibility of the undersecretary ofstate. For Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Two of which were united under the nine, she has led one of the largest restructurings in 20 years so this is a very ambitious, interesting effort which is not created the bureau of Global Public affairs which she is the head. Welcome, she was Global CorporateCommunications SeniorVice President for the waiver set of new york and she has also previously in washington worked for Newt Gingrich and as a lead member of his medications team. And communications survey. She holds a masters degree in political management from George Washington university and ab in Political Science at ucla and one of the things that impressed me most on this was you was team captain from the usc la gymnastics team. Thank you so much for being here today on this rainy morning and over to you. Good morning, thank you very much for the introduction. All of us are excited to be here today. To have a conversation with you around the Public Diplomacy and all that were focused on at the state department in communicative American Values, committed americanforeignpolicy and engaging the public in advancing the interests of the United States all at all across the world. Theres never been a more important time for Public Diplomacy. And the Public Diplomacy today ismore important than ever. Engaging people, engaging the public , individuals and citizens in American Values, in American Foreign policy and the Critical Issues of our time is not only a nice to do a requirement for success and theres a number of factors contributing to thisthe world is increasingly interconnected, its increasingly transparent. Weve had a number of factors making Public Diplomacy core to how we succeed at Thestate Department. The first is technology and we know that there is a preliminary of channels, platforms to new ways that we are able to communicate with citizens from across the world so that were engaging and having our conversations and reaching new audiences to use these tools and channels. Represents an enormous amount of opportunity but then you also have Technology Driving new challenges andrisks. If you read the acp report on Public Diplomacy reporting 2017 on can Public Diplomacy survived the internet, take a look at the trends to almost now three years ago that theyre highlighting. Thats checkbox, artificial intelligence, computational propaganda. Theres the scale and the speed of technology and tools to pump information into the ecosystem where all living in after medically changed and again, presents a lot of risks that you can use thatas tools for truth , you can also use it as tools or fiction. And were seeing some old malign actors using these as a way to confuse and spew misinformation, disinformation into the world theres a lot of rest and Opportunities Technology is bringing to the way in which we put blood publicly view diplomacy and in parallel we see more people around the world having empowered voices through technology. Social media allowing people to pay attention, to speak up, to have their voice be heard so there pressuring institutions. Theyre effecting change because their voices now are more empowered through technology and using these platforms so youve got technology interestingly enough making people more important and the way in which we engage and communicate with people more important than ever to Public Diplomacy. Secondly, were in the new era of race power competition with china, with russia, with the islamic republic. And there is more demand and an importance to the way in which we can indicate American Values across the world. More so than in any other time in engaging people proactively and that message to those stories to help advance the values of the United States. And that really is hard Public Diplomacy. So we know that diplomacy isnt just government to government conversations anymore. We have to engage a public and people in what were doing. We celebrated the sum of the 230th anniversary of the state department and we know that our mission over the course of those 230 years is the same and that is to advance american interests in every corner of the world but how to do that requires new thinking and new approaches and Public Diplomacy is at the forefront and how we do that, engaging people in society and citizens in making sure were effectively advancing american diplomacy. So quick overview of how were doing that at the state department, my colleagues will give you a deeper dive into their areas of expertise but we got thousands of Public Diplomacy officers through the globe engaging the public in citizens in American Values and communicative American Foreignpolicy. We got Regional Media hubs in brussels, london, miami, dubai, johannesburg and every major media market where were engaging with the media and foreign audiences so we know theres still a lot of constituencies in areas of the world where digital hasnt penetrated as much as it has in the United States before engaging with traditional media in many forms in order to reach those audiences and tell our story. Digitally we are engaging with millions of fans and followers and subscribers across social channels, Digital Channels of the state department. Havingrealtime conversations, using those as important listening tools to understand whats important to the audiences were trying to communicate with. Were using technology and not will talk about tech camps, bringing together technologists like Digital Experts together with Civil Society leaders to help them use digital to encourage an advanced civic engagement, transparency, government participation, empowering more voices. Were engaging through the gec, countering misinformation and disinformation and propaganda from state actors and nonstate actors and through eca as well amid all this digital and Technology Change not forgetting that human relationships and people to people ties andinteractions are still at the core of how we do our job. Those human relationships amid all this Digital Change are more important than ever to match will talk about that and i think one of the ways as was mentioned earlier that were trying to modernize how we do Public Diplomacy for 2019 and beyond is this merger we did to create a new Global Public affairs bureau. It was the largest restructuring in 20 years since the merger of usia with state and the whole purpose and Mission Behind that was to elevate and enhance and accelerate how we are communicating with audiences around the world in real time to advance policy and our values. I was very pleased to lead this alongside nicole kulik who is the head of the National InformationProgram Bureau and we worked together to create Global Public affairs but putting an emphasis ondata and analytics. We increase in multiple ways our investment in resources and data and analytics to measure and improve how we are to mitigating in audiences and with audiences across the world. A lot of emphasis on content and different types of ways and creative ways that we can communicate with audiences across multiple platforms whether it betraditional , digital or emerging platforms and laced that future focus on platforms that will be emerging whether its augmented reality, virtual reality, ai, how are we thinking about you getting in those types of platforms to make sure were advancing american diplomacy as technology continues to drive change so seeing a lot of ways through the merger in Global Public affairs how were deepening and accelerating and enhancing our ability to communicate across the world one of our greatest advantages and ill close with this is the United States amid all this changing Technology AmidGreat Power Competition as the best story to tell. That is our competitive advantage. It is the values and founding values that make our country the most successful and prosperous country in the history of the world and American Foreignpolicy today , our story is grounded in our founding principles and our fundamental values. Due to the leadership of President Trump and secretary pompeo. We know our first duty is to the American People, to preserve their rights, advance their interests and protect theirsecurity and to defend our values. And in that pursuit and the focus of the state department is to seek and find in and create partnerships and friendships and cooperation and all alliances with countries and strong sovereign independent nations who share our values, who choose independence and cooperation over global governance. Respect the rights of their neighbors and promote security, peace, dignity and prosperity for their citizens and those across the world. So as the president said at the Un General Assembly in 2016 and as he echoed again this year , were calling for a great reawakening of nations. Their people, their pride, their patriotism. So at the state department we are uniquely positioned because of our global footprint and the ways in which we can communicate and engage with people in countries across the world not just at home , have a great story to tell about the partnership, friendship and cooperation we help create with countries across the world that share our interest in order to achieve mutual gain. You can see this in the ministerial to advance religious freedom, first ever posted by the secretary last year. He did it again this year. Gathering, more than 100 countries anticipated to help advance religious freedom, think about how we and religious persecution. In the Global Coalition to defeat isis, many of the United States as well as 80 countries coming together to cooperate, think through how we stop the threat of lysis everywhere across the world. You see it in the new trade deal with the president just signed. You see it in the us and ca. The work on ministerial we participated in in february, we have countries been together to think about middle east peace and security. We have several working groups, the United States will host one, so will south korea, bahrain and romania and poland to talk about in partnerships and multiple countries how were going to help advance peace and security in the United States and all across the world. And sorry, the middle east. In venezuela you have the United States and 50 nations coming together to recognize and support 11. 0 as a legitimate interim president and a national democratically elected assembly and when and where we participate in International Agreements and institutions, it is in order to advance american interests and american ideals and the secretary has made this clear. We will cooperate with and partner with and form friendships with countries who share our values so we benefit together. So this is american stories, this is our Public Diplomacy mission. Where bringing the tools to bear to engage the public in the Critical Issues of our time to communicate our interests to advance and protect them. Day in and day out, so we are serving the interests of the United States and those of our fellow citizens so with that ill turn it over to my colleagues here. Ill introduce first nicole kulik who is the Principal Deputy assistant for our bureau of Public Affairs. The goal is Foreign Service officer and spent much of her career in south asia for helping me to spearhead the realignment of gpa. Ill then turn it over to matt who is Principal Deputy assistant secretary for the bureau of education and Cultural Affairs and also a senior Foreign Service officer reserved in the middle east and has most recently served as Deputy Mission and knowledge in morocco and finally we will hear from chris, the leader for the global encountering influence operations from our global adversaries and with that ill turn it over to nicole. Thank you michelle. As michelle mentioned there has never been a more exciting or more important time to be engaged in Public Diplomacy and communication. In shaping how the United States communicates policy and values overseas and domestically. We know the Communications Landscape is accelerating and we need to communicate effectively in that type of environment. The new bureau of Global Public affairs was created to strengthen communication at the department of state. Were now four months old. Let me tell you a little bit about its creation. The goal of the merger of the two bureaus, the bureau of interNational Information programs and bureau of Public Affairs was to effectively Shape Communications for the United States around the world. Our focus is to bring together the best of both worlds of those two bureaus, focus on Strategic Communications. The merger is not a new idea. In fact this has been talked about since the integration of the usinformation agency into the state department. Anniversary, that 20 Year Anniversary is tomorrow so this merger of ip and va is long overdue and something that had been talked about for years. The difference in this effort and i believe the reason it is successful is that the mission or the focus of the new bureau was tightly on Strategic Communications. So Public Affairs would with traditionally be focused on communicating foreignpolicy to domestic and foreign audiences whereas ip focus on contextualizing American Foreign policy goals and American Values for international audiences. When michelle and i first looked at this merger over a year ago, we thought about the capabilities that would be needed to form a really Effective Communications operation. We had a tremendous amount of support and leadership from secretary pompeo on the merger and ultimate goal of strengthening indications. Though michelle and i provided guidance to a task force and make that guidance and ran with it, created the structure and the framework for the new bureau and then flesh out the details. It worked with hr folks, lawyers to make sure we were doing all right, that we were getting the Human Resources right and the money piece right and they developed this section. The merger was neutral and by that i mean there was no increase in budget, no increase or decrease in personnel and no loss of programs. My colleague matt losing half will talk a little bit about some of the programs that we realigned because while focusing the bureau tightly on Strategic Communications we realize theres some places or programs that would be better hows in other pa