This interview is part of the “A Peek behind the Curtain” interview series.
Abigail Olvera was a U.S. diplomat last working at the China Desk. Abi was formerly stationed at the US Embassies in Egypt and Senegal and holds a Master's of Global Affairs from Yale University.
In this interview, Abi and I discuss her experience with working in policy, her thoughts on networking, and how her career path unfolded.
Note: This interview is from late 2020 and some parts may no longer accurately represent the guest's views. The transcript has been edited for clarity and readability. The views expressed belong solely to this individual and do not represent the views of the U.S. government.
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Lynette: How did you get to where you are in your career, particularly since you have a pretty unusual career for EAs? I think that's really valuable. I know you got scholarships, you went to Yale, but how did you do each of these steps to get to working in the Foreign Service?
Abi: Actually, I think the part of me that made EA so attractive is also the part of me that drove me to develop systems to get scholarships and fellowships that helped me get in the Foreign Service. When I was in high school, I wasn't really college track. The guidance counselor even proposed that I do a three-year degree program, but that wasn't going to leave me able to apply to any colleges. I think the counselor saw me differently because I had turned down AP classes solely because of the $100 AP test fees (after doing great in pre-AP for years). I enrolled in my local university. It was, I think, $5,000 or $6,000 a year. My grades were perfect, but I didn't have time for anything other work and grades.
I had read online that the way you get scholarships is by doing extracurriculars. This was the level at which my understanding was. In order to follow the guidelines I saw online, I decided to transfer to a community college where the Pell grant would cover all tuition. All I would have to do was focus on working enough to pay my gas and my expenses. I would have time for the debate team and student government.
That's exactly what I did. I found that there were a lot of power vacuums. A lot of leadership positions were vacant. I became a student senator with no stressful campaigning and was able to travel with the debate team because there were vacancies. I was able to juggle so much more. This helped me checkmark the list: have two or three leadership positions, have three membership positions where I did cool things, maintain two jobs, and continue to have a 4.0 GPA.
Then I applied for 15-16 universities because I was scared I wouldn’t get into any. I didn't have any people who knew my entire plan to assure me that “this is how it works. Don't worry. It's going to work.” My thinking was, "I hope these websites are accurate. This seems like a real thing." I was disappointed that some schools didn't extend the full financial aid promise to transfer students, which was not clear when I applied. Two schools gave me full rides!
I went to the one that brought me closer to D.C. because I wanted to work in policy. I continued doing extracurriculars and academics with that same momentum because I was “this is how you make yourself competitive for things” and it's also really fun. I was doing 12+ hour days but I was just excited about the things that I was doing. It wasn't draining.
I was applying for a lot of scholarships and fellowships. I was really open with my teachers about really wanting to get funding for grad school. They started telling me about opportunities. Even my friends actually, that’s how I found out about the scholarship that I ended up winning.
I’m making it sound easier than what it actually was. I applied for and got rejected from tons of scholarships, sometimes I was a finalist but not the winner. It was hard to see those rejections and be like, "I'm always just good enough but not quite there." Then there was this final one that was right. I was right for them and they were right for me. That's all I actually needed. I just needed the one to change my life. I won the Pickering Fellowship and after that everything was pretty set because they paid for my grad school, some rent, and even gave me paid internships every year until I became a Foreign Service Officer after my master's. They even waived the graduate school application fees! It was like suddenly having a benefactor. I didn't have to worry about anything apart from being a great student and now I even had time to hang out with friends. Maybe optimize a little less. Maybe add some more fun to my life. My path into federal government employment was definitely different than most.
Actually, when I applied for the fellowship, I wasn't entirely aware of the career of the Foreign Service. I'd never met a State Department employee. I didn't realize what embassies do. The Pickering Fellowship was geared for pivoting students who wouldn't normally enter because of disconnect from the policy world. I had absolutely no connection to the Foreign Service but I was an excellent student managing several leadership opportunities and I showed initiative, habits that predict success as a Foreign Service Officer. It's been pretty great.
Lynette: Yes, I think it's really impressive that you managed all of this. I'm curious. How did you make these transitions? How did you get through the application process? Were you getting advice from anyone? Were you just applying for a lot of things? What do you think was contributing there?
Abi: I was optimizing for just making something happen, not particularly this, but just anything. Every single time an application for a scholarship fellowship came in front of me, I would just apply.
I definitely didn’t have the recommended number of people read my scholarship essays. I actually submitted the Pickering Fellowship application 20 minutes before the deadline. I was juggling several scholarship applications.
I would set aside time for applying for grad school funding because I knew this was important. This was a long-term goal, but it felt urgent, so it fell into my Eisenhower matrix quadrant of top priority. I was thinking “you have to do this because after you graduate, you're just going to be out in the real world but not really continuing what you want to be doing which is getting a Masters.” I became single-focused like I had done with the undergraduate universities.
I actually applied off for those 15 undergrad universities out of pocket, as a waitress. That was all my money. Plus the application fees for their financial aid stuff alone is like $200!
I read online that when you get your financial aid offers, you're comparing tens of thousands of dollars so that $2,000 you spent to apply to several schools will seem like chump change. I'm really glad I did that because the two schools that, a) I got into and, b) gave me full funding were not the ones that I had been expecting. I ended up going to, and adoring, one of my backup schools.
I got into some universities with low admission rates but didn’t get into some with much easier admission rates. I read later that universities don’t have to be need-blind. Admissions officers can use your need to be fully funded against you, unfortunately.
I'm really glad I had done my method of just going all in. I actually didn't even have any backup schools in Texas. I was like, "I'm either out or out." That's probably pretty rash of me to not have a true backup, a local in-state backup, but I was just so excited about going somewhere different.
Lynette: Were you just doing a lot of research online on your own to try and find all this stuff out? Because you seem to be optimizing a lot of these steps despite having very limited knowledge of it.
Abi: It felt like walking blind. I remember one time someone close to me said, "You know you're just wasting the best years of your life doing all of this." I responded, "No, it's going to be worth it." But no one close to me had seen what that looks like. I myself wasn’t actually totally sure it would work. The socio and economic divide is just really big. Well-off students might understand the college system without even remembering when they learned about it, but to me, I kid you not, putting 110% in school and extracurriculars when I had little money was a really big risk.
I was thinking about writing a how-to book for other students going through the same thing. These things are really important to know and there's a lot of smart kids who don't do it just because they don't know.
Lynette: There's not a lot of colleges that do the full-need-met thing. When I was applying, I looked and there were only like 30.
Abi: Exactly, there's only 30. I think they've expanded a little bit more, but also some of them are only doing the full-need-met if you're from that state.
I remember one time I was on the freeway doing a 45 minute drive to a class or work and my car just died like it did sometimes. I was stuck in heavy rain on a really fast and kind of scary freeway. I started crying, and I just felt really hopeless. I wasn’t sure if my efforts would pay off or what it's going to look like in the end.
Lynette: If you could send a list back in time to your college freshman self, what would you want to tell them? Would you have general advice?
Abi: I would probably say to have started therapy sooner.
Lynette: That's a good one.
Abi: You never quite understand the paradigm shift that you'll take on once therapy helps put your quirks or things in perspective.
Apart from that I would say, I don't know. If I'm talking to my freshman self, I wish I could have told her that everything was going to work out, but you can't say that to everybody because unless they work hard and are lucky, it might not work out. I was really lucky that I didn't have any health issues pop up because I didn’t have health insurance. I had a dear friend’s studies get derailed from health care debt.
Lynette: You were trying a lot of things. In hindsight, is there anything that you are still missing that if you'd had more information would have made that process easier?
Abi: Yes. I wish I had known about how college works in high school. Looking back, I probably could have loosened up a bit and had more fun during university but I wouldn't have been comfortable risking it. It's really hard to compete with people who are the 20 who get a national scholarship. I feel like if I would have eased up, it wouldn't have happened and then I would have had outcomes that are more typical of people from my socioeconomic background.
Lynette: How much do you think that accomplishing what you did was a trade-off against being happy, either then or later?
Abi: I think I was actually happy in the sense that I had something to look forward to and believe in. That's what made the journey feel way bigger than me. It felt really great when I did get small scholarships. I actually wasn't unhappy but I had reached, probably, the max of what I could do, at least in terms of time. It probably wasn’t sustainable in the longer term.
Abi: I was happy and energetic but stressed. Probably the biggest fear was insecurity. Insecurity of “what if I don't get into any of the schools and this is actually all for nothing and they’re right, I did waste my time?” Or “what if this is all fake and the internet was wrong? Maybe there's other things going on that I wasn't aware of and this is not actually how things work.”
But probably those could have easily been solved if I had been around more people who got into good colleges out of high school. Thankfully, now my life is so much easier than back then. My career is going the way I dreamed, and a lot is due to my work earlier on in life.
Lynette: Do you still feel that insecurity? That feeling of being unsure whether you'll be able to accomplish what you're dreaming of?
Abi: I think so, though the questions have shifted. A lot of people excited about altruism want to have an impact that they can describe, that they can point to, but that's not usually how policy careers work. Given how big the government is, you're more trying to increase the probability that better policy happens.
Important things are so decentralized that you'll more than likely just get one piece of it, but that's still ridiculously important. I've asked retired diplomats how they feel about their impact. They'll look back at all the amazing things that they've done, and the responses so far still tend to be along the lines of "I hope I made an impact." Even after 30 years, 40 years as a diplomat, many people can only actually just say that. Which I think is pretty frustrating for someone who likes to optimize for this.
One big issue here could also be that the diplomats I spoke to might not be allowed to talk about their greatest impact actions because of the sensitivity of the information. Nonetheless, I do worry about whether I'll feel like I’m making enough of a strong counterfactual impact. Most likely, the impact would come from pushing big government decisions to be slightly better or small government decisions much better.
Another important consideration is work-life balance. The closer you get to the principal decision-makers, the crazier the hours because you have to be ready at all times to inform and advise that policymaker on things that happen overnight.
Lynette: I've noticed there's huge discrepancies in how many hours people work in different jobs. Like grad students doing research are basically never going to work 12 hours a day unless they're really bad about it. There's something that is just the status quo and norm in the jobs you're describing. How does that feel to be in it? Does this feel sustainable and exciting or does this feel performative?
Abi: It totally depends on the job. I know that answer is not super helpful, but actually, if you're staying late to work on something that you know is important, even after you get off at 8:00, you're pretty excited about the next day. Government isn't perfect. There are times where you might stay late for something that you know isn't important, and that's really draining.
The one thing I'd recommend to people exploring policy careers, both in government or out of government, is seeking informational interviews. I interviewed probably between 15 and 20 people early last year from different sectors just to find out more about what their companies and sectors were actually like. To get to 15-20 people, I probably emailed 50-60 people expecting most people to not respond. These interviews were very worthwhile because I was able to rule out which companies and which sectors weren’t as great as I thought they’d be - and it also helped me figure out which sub-fields in my target sectors wanted the skills I had. I'd say networking to find out company culture is really important. I don't think enough people do that.
Lynette: Can you walk me through how you did these interviews? Maybe what an email might've sounded like? This is a really hard thing to do to get useful information out of informational interviews and how to set those up and what research you're doing, all of that.
Sometimes I will just cold email or cold LinkedIn people, but usually only if I have two or three things in common with them like being from some semi-specific part of the country or having similar career patterns.
Sometimes I had nothing in common with them. In those cases, I might try to convey why I might be interesting to them or what specifically I admired about their career. I'm assuming that they get a couple of similar cold-messages a month or something, so I try to stand out.
An example email might be like, "Hi Susan, I came across your name because you're also part of the foreign affair women." "I saw that you went to X university. I was right next door at Y university." You’ve made clear that you spent time on this and care about their time.
Sometimes people will cold-message me on LinkedIn and I’m usually happy to help if their message conveys that they’ve done enough research that our conversation won’t be just saying things that are easily Google-able. Being honest and upfront about why you chose that person out of the sea of people also helps. I cold-messaged a woman working in tech policy telling her upfront my specific scenario and how much I admired her career trajectory. She agreed to meet me and even said, "Our career in tech is impactful. I'm glad that people like you are interested." The interaction was touching and empowering.
Other things that I do during the talks is ask “what kind of books are you reading to get to know what's going on in your field? Who are your top people that you follow? Who's the wavemaker that I should be reading about?” I don't ask “when are your openings?” I might ask “what are your hours” maybe, but that’s a little boring and one-dimensional. Afterward, following-up is super important. I’ll typically mention in my follow-up that I read or bought the books they recommended, to show my appreciation and the high value I put on their time and advice.
If an undergrad read a book recommendation of mine, I would be impressed and take that as a sign they’re serious about X topic and learning. I’ll be happy to help and the student would likely come to mind when I hear of entry-level positions seeking referrals.
Lynette: That's really impressive. Thanks for sharing. What other skills have you gained working in policy that you think would be really valuable now for a variety of things that you might do in that space?
Abi: We’re always taught to “think like the person above you.” For example, you might proactively ask to review another office’s draft project before your boss even asks. Getting involved earlier and proactively sometimes means that policy is done more efficiently and faster, rather than racing against the clock.
Policy drafting is actually quite messy. Behind the scenes, personalities, animosities, turf-wars, etc. can matter a lot. Someone with the skill of remembering that this person in this position really cares a lot about X project or Y pet project or whatever. That kind of knowledge can really help make policy more efficient. The people who keep track of these interpersonal details make policy run, as inefficient as that sounds. All over the world, diplomats’ notebooks are probably filled with information like this.
Lynette: What kinds of roles in government would be good for people who want to have an influence on EA type causes? Where could they start out?
Abi: The executive and legislative branch would be ideal. Topics of interest to EA are spread out all across the government since different agencies cover different angles. There's a lot of ways to improve the government’s method of approaching problems. Both high-profile policy jobs and subject-matter/technical experts are crucial.
Lynette: How would people go about trying to find what roles would suit them? Government is huge. Is this just a word-of-mouth thing? Are there websites or databases or people you can talk to?
Abi: Networking calls are helpful. To really turbo-charge a policy career search, I’d recommend visiting or even moving to DC (if you work remotely). Meeting people in DC is pretty easy with all the topic-specific happy hours, think tanks’ with public events, and the big EA community.
As you expand your network, you’ll know more people who might think of you next time they hear of an opening at a think tank, federal contracting company, federal agency, etc. You’ll also slowly develop greater clarity in how the government works from whatever part of the policy apparatus you’re working in.
Most of the people I know in government didn’t get hired by just submitting their resume to the main government jobs website (USAJobs) without knowing someone on the team.
Lynette: Got it. Okay. Is there any advice you would have for young EAs starting out in policy?
Abi: I'd advise, especially for women, to always apply for the things that feel out of your league. Make sure you're getting uncomfortable every couple of weeks, pushing yourself, applying for something that you think you'll lose.
One thing I have on my to-do list is to make sure I fail every month at something because then that means that you have been reaching your max. When I was applying for fellowships, scholarships, internships in policy and whatever, if I had looked at every single rejection as a failure rather than just “expected on my path to finally winning”, then I wouldn't be here. I messaged 10 people expecting to get one response - expecting failure was my system.
Also,especially in government, you need to toot your own horn and develop mentors who can tell how things actually work in big institutions. I actually went to a diversity talk yesterday and they were saying that people with mentors are much more likely to succeed in government, but people tend to mentor people who are like them.
Lynette: How did you develop your mentorships or one mentorship that was particularly meaningful to you?
Abi: Mentors take a while to develop. Typically, mentorships aren’t developed by explicitly asking for mentorship. I’ve developed great mentorships by asking questions, and sometimes coming clean about my total ignorance about a topic, tactfully. Without seeming incompetent, you can definitely talk about your vulnerability and knowledge gaps. For example, after some big meeting, I can tell that there's some background information that I'm missing, maybe an ulterior motive someone seems to exhibit. To know the whole picture, I'll privately ask a trusted higher-up for the things between the lines. People are often glad to teach others the ropes.
Lynette: It sounds like this process is more just you ask questions and if you find someone who's giving you useful information and seems happy to do it, you go back to them later and ask your questions. Jumping back where you said earlier, you try and make sure that you're acting on what they tell you and then showing them that.
Abi: Yes. Acting on their advice and informing them that you did so will really differentiate you. Sharing relevant things with them helps too.
Typically, they don't have time to do all the research or reading you're doing. I'll make sure to forward articles that are very relevant to certain contacts. It’s a nice way to stay in touch, and often useful to them. I might even add a note saying, "No need to reply" to prevent any pressure.
Lynette: What is the most important thing you do for your productivity?
Abi: I have a checklist and every day when I sign off, I email my boss with the status on all projects. It doesn't actually take me that much extra time because I do that for myself as well. This way, I don’t drop the ball.
I have a separate to-do list at home. When I was in college, I lived on a checklist. Every day I had the checklist that needed to be completed that day, which was reading all of the books, even the recommended reading.
I'll admit I'm struggling with my personal home checklist right now. I lack the sense of urgency I had in undergrad. I now have to do some inner questioning like, "Do I work well when I don't have something to fear?"
In general, making checklists is how I run my life. I even recently found my checklist from my freshman year of college when I had actually made a checklist of, "Be a president of five things or three things, and then get scholarships to a school." It was a mini reference of my larger goals. I had that one to inspire me.
Lynette: Do you make checklists now that have steps you can do on a smaller time scales? Is this like, "Here's what I want to do today."
Abi: Yep. I also even have checklists for checklists like a checklist for “workouts to try during the next strength workout”, “a Marie Kondo checklist,” an “expiring points like for airline programs,” “career opportunities to explore”. If I didn't have this in an app, like Evernote or Todoist, it just would be overwhelming.
Lynette: This sounds kind of like a getting things done system implemented in your checklist.
Abi: Yes, it is.
Lynette: Cool. Okay. I'm curious about the fear motivating you. Now that you don't have that, is it harder to get things done?
Abi: It totally is. My roommate switched rooms last week and his room is already pristine. Meanwhile, I moved in two-and-a-half months and my room still has things in boxes. I struggle more to meet self-impose deadlines when doing things just for myself.
External motivators, like the fear of not getting scholarships, was key. It's easy for me to ignore my own desires, my own wants, my own needs, and I think that's the case for a lot of EAs, especially when they want to just go all into making an impact.
I think in some way, in order to be attracted to altruism, you probably are fine with the idea of putting your own priorities or values into perspective for the greater good. People might be a little bit more prone than the average person to do the kind of things that I do, which is like, “if it's about me, we can just ignore it.”
Lynette: Do you have the systems for things that you don't feel that fear, that you could put in place and get yourself to do something? It's really depending--
Abi: I use Beeminder. It’s worked for me when I needed accountability to ensure I was sending cold LinkedIn messages. I still use it to cap my Facebook time and keep my unread inbox below 75.
Lynette: Cool. I know you've already spoken a bit today around some of the struggles that you had in getting to where you are. I'm curious if there's other ones, other things that you've had to deal with, and overcome whether they’re struggles in the outside world or internally that feel like things that other EAs might also deal with.
Abi: A lot of EAs are restless to be where the action is. Now that I'm in policy, I'm surprised at how quickly some policy is made. You can very quickly end up in a position where you almost can't believe the level of policy you're writing.
A good example of a very high impact job you can get at entry level is Congressional staffer, though you have to endure very low pay, very long hours, and short stressful deadlines.
I brought that up to emphasize that once you finish college and grad school, especially if you network, you can get a very impactful job quicker than you think. Maybe don't stress out about the fact that you're not impactful now.
Lynette: Okay. Given the earlier state where you don't really know what's going on, how possible is it to do little things, test it out and kind of wiggle your way to something impactful, even if you're not sure what you're doing starting out?
Abi: That's probably the story of my life in a way. You’ll probably have better results if you’re flexible about where and what to work on. By casting a wider net and considering various types of policy jobs, you'll make it more likely that you get a government job. Once you're in a government job, you’ll learn more about which teams are working on the topics you want to work on.
I would really tell people to not worry. Not being sure about what exactly you want is probably the best thing to do because then you're open to more opportunities.
Lynette: Just looking at your own experience. Can you tell the story of how you did some of these wiggles as in trying out something and then figuring out what you want to do based on the information you got there?
Abi: Oh my gosh, yeah. I've even interned in TV.
Lynette: Wow.
Abi: I interned in media (a radio station and a television station), as well as a civil rights project helping immigrants with asylum cases. There's a lot of value in figuring out what you don't want early on and pivoting to something else.
Learning from these internships only took two or three months. Testing these things also beefs up your resume. I was also a volunteer coordinator at my university and an intern at a law firm’s trust for women in trade. I really thought I was going to want to do nonprofit work, so I tested out very different facets of it.
Lynette: How about within policy?
Abi: Within policy, the best thing to do is develop relationships and learn to ask the right questions. Now, I don't have time to intern at various places, but I can talk to someone in that industry. That's how I solidified my decision to not go into impact investing or specific offices in government.
I hear many people say they’re bad at keeping in touch with people, though I think we don’t often realize that keeping in touch requires intentionality and effort. You can systemize it just like most other aspects of life. I use an Excel Sheet. I don't organize it very well, I admit. A friend has one that pings him every time he hasn't talked to someone for four months. He knows this is a worthwhile thing to spend your time on, though on any given day it doesn't seem urgent. People likely don’t do this enough because it might feel like making people into data points.
Lynette: Do you feel that's actually what it's doing?
Abi: No. Not at all. You might not remember to thank everyone who's helped you become who you are. Making a list doesn’t make them any less important to you. Also, you can tell when someone’s reaching out to you because they’re “supposed” to be networking, their questions tend to not be actually substantive.
Lynette: I know. I'm curious. What are the most egregious errors or failure modes that people make there? How would you advise them to fix it?
Abi: Never ask for a job and always make sure that the other person is doing most of the talking. Your primary purpose is to ask questions and listen. Maybe over time, you could develop a good enough relationship that they’ll tell you about job openings. But your near-term goal should be to find out more about the fields that you're considering.
As an egregious example, I had a student message me with what seemed like a canned copy-paste. He said he wanted to talk to someone working in international development or international relations." He didn’t seem to have done any research so any questions would likely be very superficial. I’m typically happy to talk to strangers who I seem uniquely able to help.
Lynette: I feel an important prerequisite to doing good networking is that you do enough background research that you have an idea of the layout of the land. Enough to know the jargon before you're ever reaching out to people?
Abi: Yes. You should do research before you start talking to people. Your networking call should be filling in very specific knowledge gaps to be a good use of both of your time.
Lynette: Do you have any recommendations for how to do good research? If I just put someone's name into Google, I can look at their LinkedIn, I can have an idea of what stages their careers went through. If they have a personal website or a professional one, I can take a look at that. I feel there's a lot about a person or even more if I'm researching a whole industry that I'm still missing from this. What additional to that, could I try?
Abi: Rather than focusing on one person, it’s focusing on the 20-30 people near you. If you're thinking of this internet as circles, you want to reach the end of your circle, the people who are thus most exposed to other circles.
Ideally, you'll already have someone who you can mention because you have someone in common. This becomes easier as you meet more people. Also, at the end of every call, ask for a recommendation of someone else to talk to. For example, over time I started to see what parts of the tech industry hired policy people or how non-technical people switched into product management.
Lynette: Do you personally do anything like backchaining or creating a theory of change to decide where you want to focus your efforts or is it mostly bottom-up of just looking around you for opportunities?
Abi: Mine's more of a bottoms-up. Yes. I think that's worked out better for me. At least for me and the people around me, your career trajectory is better when you're open to opportunities, especially in government.
Maybe that's different for other career tracks, like vaccine research. But in government, there's a myriad of avenues. Even if your dream job is to be a Chief of Staff, there's so many ways to do that.
Lynette: Got it. Cool. Thank you very much, Abi. This was fascinating and I really appreciate you taking the time.
Abi: Thanks, Lynette.
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