Call the airwaves but thank you so much for joining us today and a very special welcome to our guests, assistant secretary and peaceful Deputy Assistant secretary for the Global Public affairs bureau. We are honored to have them here today. Special welcome to our commissioners the Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy and vice chairman and commissioner. Today as you know under the auspices of the Advisory Commission we have called a Public Meeting to look at the question of the newly formed gpa and where it sits in state Department Vision for public democracy Going Forward for the 21st century. As the executive director it is my honor to open this event. Before i turn the microphone over to my colleagues are opening comments i want to tell you about how things will go today. Mr. Farah will give us brief comments and then turn it over to our passable speakers and they will speak in the tech Team Formation and at the end of their presentation we will be happy to take your questions and comments but please hold your questions and comments until they have finished their presentation. For the moderated q a session there will be a microphone and please speak into the microphone as you ask your questions because this whole event to include not only the remarks but your questions and our answers are part of a transcript that will be part of Public Record so its important that we capture your questions so we protect them accurately. With that it is my great pleasure to turn it over to chairman for our. Thank you, that he and. Thank you to the audience and a special thank you to our guest host, president of the Public Diplomacy counsel. Hes a director of usc and medications leadership for policy programs in washington dc. Pleased to be joined by my distinguished colleagues from the commission we have bill here, vice chairman in colorado springs, colorado and and from chicago illinois. For several years the commission is rented Public Interest by advising the Global Information media, cultural and Educational Exchange programs and accept bipartisan and independent body created by congress in 1948 to assess and recommend policies and programs to support all u. S. Government efforts to understa understand, inform and influence foreign publics particularly but not limited to the work of the guest apartment of state and u. S. Agency for global media. The commission mandated by law to report its findings, recommendations to the president of the United States, titus, secretary of state and the american people. The commission to the commission to comprehend the report Public Diplomacy is the ac pds premier product and compiles and analyzes data cluster from other 20 officers and other u. S. Government agencies this includes carefully recommendations from the commission for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the u. S. Government programs. Since fiscal year 2013 the commission has made 112 recommendations roughly 55 of which have been implanted or in the process of being plummeted resulting in improved operational efficiencies in Program Effectiveness and indeed, one of these recommendations and the reason we are here today is im pleased to say the proposed merger of the bureaus of Public Affairs and International Information programs into what is now known as the bureau of Global Public affairs. The gpas creation has been described as a largest restructuring of the state permits since the merger of the u. S. Information agency and the apartment of state 20 years ago and its hard to believe its gone by that quickly but we are pertinent to have his assistant ticket estate as well as tpa and they are both here today to help us understand what the newest gpa looks like and where it fits into the broader Strategic Vision for Public Diplomacy. The commission appreciate this opportunity to learn about the structural problematic policy changes underway and the challenge that remains in the ways in which the commission and the Public Policy community can support this effort. Again thank you for turning us here today and i am pleased to invite assistant secretary of state to state speak well of by assistant deputy of state. Thank you very much. Thank you. Its a pleasure to be here today and thank you for hosting us. I may ucla bruins but i love being involved with this. Go bruins but love being involved with this Diplomacy Program as well. Very excited to talk to you today and as you know theres never been a more can you hear me . Letter . Not better. Can you hear me now . Never been a more exciting or important time for Public Diplomacy and medications and tout the United States is mitigating both policy and values in every corner of the world. In this type of environment and foreignpolicy department for thinking we put behind this murder in the intent behind it was to make sure we can accelerate and deliver on what we are charged with doing previously both from pa and it and effectively can negate for the United States around the world. We know that medications landscape is fast accelerating and changing everyday and theres a new for popping up and tech is driving change when comes to communication and theres br, ar, ai and the ac pd report in 2017 about whether or not Public Diplomacy can survive the internet was a good indication of where things are going and coming fast. We know business and media and culture and entertainment and government are colliding. They dont sit in separate worlds anymore and these are all integrated as we need to commit gate in that environment where things that we do from a government impact culture and vice versa but we know that the Foreign Policy issues that we are dealing with on any given day are most if not all multiregional and multinational in nature so we look at things through a lens, global lens to commit gait effectively and think about the audiences that we are trying to reach. In that environment again our focus was to bring together the best of both worlds from Public Affairs from iip and the strengths the both of them have to accelerate and enhance the ability of the United States to compete in the world today. It wasnt an internal driven thing but an external term and thing but we have to compete and win and lead to be effective and successful in the world today. Been able to do that meant integrating with the strengths and best of both worlds. That means medicating both to the u. S. And foreign audiences so that message focus in the foreign focus how do we think about both of those and then commit getting about policy and values. Theres a foreignpolicy piece that pa would traditionally be focused on community and theres the really rich storytelling and value driven to medications that ip was doing to International Audiences and how we think of the medicating america to the world. And really talk about the values that make america unique in our longstanding history and the will of law, religious freedom, individual liberty and things like that. This is not the first time a merger was explored or thought about and they put together a reclamation for it to happen and we had conversations with alumni from the state department within and without who currently have previously explored iterations of the merger before to inform our thinking and so the difference when we think again was the external world. There was an urgency to the need for the United States to communicate effectively and wanted to make sure to deliver on that. We have terminus amount of support and leadership from sec. Pompeo who from day one has made sure to state farm team to make the changes to do our jobs most effectively and we knew we had at the port going into this. Nicole talk about how and how we accomplished the merger. Areas of focus and bringing together the best of both worlds really were first and foremost integration and i use that a lot but how do we bring together the best of both worlds and the strength again from storytelling indicating values and understanding foreign audiences and working with posts to understand the audiences on the ground, culture into which and the narrative on the ground and bringing that to our storytelling and the public force strength from Strategic Communications and the realtime environment and both of those together. Secondly, we placed a very large emphasis on data and insight and research and analytics. Because one of the terminus opportunities that energy provided us in Digital Communications has provided us is been able to measure in some cases in real time how effectively and quickly we are committing on any given issue. As well as longterm Audience Research on how overtime we are making an impact which is thats been explored for a number of years that we placed a big emphasis on how are we putting data and insight at the court of commit getting to not only measure at the back and how we can mitigate but inform when we are designing a strategy and arc medications and message how we communicate. We are informing the beginning and measuring a long way in improving in real time as close to real time as possible. Speed was another focus and that new cycle is moving instantaneously so how are we working together quickly to deliver on that and get our message out to make sure the truth is out there in the First Encounter narrative from other folks out there in the world so that we are being effective and fast with how we communicate in addition to the longterm medications and values that we are communicating over time. Lastly, we focused on teacher proofing the beer as we did not want to design a bureau just for 2019 when we started but 2019 and we wanted to make sure youre setting ourselves up for success for five, ten years down the line and that means having written into our structure in the way that we work to focus on exploring new forms and new technologies and best practices and not only onto county but in person to medications and that Relationship Building and how are we future proofing Global Public affairs so reluctantly improving and changing and evolving as fast as or ahead of the communications escape in the world today. That was a big focus of ours. I has had a great strength in doing that over the course last for years and so we want to make sure that was core to the culture in the merger. It was a collaborative effort, deliberate effort and the call to talk about the way in which he made this happen and it was a large exercise in collaboration together important opportunity to Work Together with folks across the department not only in pa and ip but across the permit with other external stakeholders as well but i will turn it over to nicole to explain more. Im happy to be here and talk to you about the how that we put together. Michelle has laid out the vision behind the merger and creation of Public Affairs so i mean get in the weeds and talk about the how. Last year we put together a working group with michelle had mentioned with reps and deaths from across the department and we included ip, and major to have calyx from big hr at the department to make sure we were considering all the hr potential issues and colleagues from our Budget Office so we were thinking about what the budget might look like and senior pd professionals so we could get the benefit of their experience. So we could get the benefit of their experience and incorporate their thoughts into this. We gave the team a basic framework and then leaned on them to put a plan together. Let me lay out what that framework consisted of. First, they were to focus on strategic medications and that was the purpose of the new bureau in merger but also to look at the capabilities in high ip and think about where if they do not fit into a strategic medications bureau where might they be excessively housed within the state department. The merger was to be budget neutral we were not asking for any additional funding for this and we were trying to future proof this as michelle mentioned we wanted to build the structure that would last into the future that was not based on personalities or anything like that but a structure that would last into the future and make the best use of owl our Employee Skills and abilities so they ended up where they could utilize their talents. They put a plan together and developed it. We looked at it and continued to consult throughout the department and we talked to a cpd and engaged our legal colleagues to make sure we were thinking about how we can mitigate to the mastic in foreign audiences. We continued to engage with budget and Human Resources to make sure we were thinking about those issues. And to make sure we had the details right. As you know the devil is in the details. We did initial reefs to the hill and to the employee unions to see what their concerns might be to incorporate feedback they gave us. Then we worked on implementati implementation. We started the hard work of implement in the changes. Through implementation we set up working groups so we could elicit broad contrition or broad participation from the workforce and we wanted to make sure that folks within iip and pa had the opportunity to have their voices heard and that we were taking into consideration their thoughts as we were moving forward with implementation. We prioritized regular communications. Michelle and i send out regular communications talking about the process and talking about what was going to happen. We took input from the field and from posts and regional bureaus and sent out a survey to Public Diplomacy professionals to see how they wanted to partner with the new bureau and what they had valued most from the old iip and we can say about what we could continue in the new bureau. The emphasis has been during that time was on medication and continues to be on communication between a fully functional and have been functional for about three months and so we are focusing on the medication within the bureau to make sure our colleagues here domestically and at posts around the world understand what a partner we can be in committee gating about American Values and we recognize that posts are often best equipped to bilateral relationships but we have a distinct advantage in communicating about the key Foreign Policy priorities and on American Values and that is where our comparative advantages so we will continue to engage in that is part of the ongoing planning and we will continue to engage with others as well. This engagement here is part of spreading the word about what the new bureau will do and we hope to continue to work with a cpd and how we may continue to improve at the state farm and. Wanting to go talk to don before returning to questions as this idea to engage and improve. This process has been what our values are in one of the core values to Public Affairs is change. We know that the world outside of us is changing quickly because of technology and the way the world is accelerating and so we have tried to put that at the center of power mitigating which is change will be constant and consistent and if we will be effective as what we do. Now that we do not solve everything right away or that this is not how its a static thing. Our team will have to keep evolving and learning and changing in the barrel will keep evolving and learning and changing to make sure were able to deliver on our objective which is to mitigate on half of the United States. We made that clear when we are working with Hr Department that we would continue to be changes and tweaks to make the bureau as effective as it can be. Thank you both for coming today and for that incredible news and discussion of what you have done but i have to say congratulations on changing a major piece of strongly ingrained bureaucracy. It is no small feat and you done it with such great competence. That is awesome. What we will do now is take questions from the audience about the new dpa bureau and the four 12 started off with a softball and how i thought about it as you describe it is that it seems like only the creation of that gpa has perhaps and you can say whether or not, elevated functions to a place where has my respect inside the state department something because i was a young officer back in the day and the function was seen as lesser and maybe now youve been able to great a status and career focus that did not exist before so maybe you could comment on that. Sure, we hope that to be true and certainly think of the Energy Around this and the impact that it has makes that true. Again we want to tie in storytelling and the way in which we can mitigate around values to policy priorities and things that are at the center of that conversation while we are still mitigating longterm and across the world. Ive been at the state permit for a year and half and even in that time the way in w