Ambassador Mark Green on Foreign Service, Congress, USAID, and the Future of America’s Role in the World

​Ambassador Mark Green has spent his career at the intersection of domestic politics and global development—serving as a member of Congress from Wisconsin’s 8th District, U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, administrator of USAID, and president & CEO of the Wilson Center. Before any of that, he and his wife taught in a small village in western Kenya, an experience that helped shape his worldview and his belief in empowering individuals rather than building dependence. In this conversation for The Pathway Blog, Green reflects on how a year without electricity led him to public service, what most Americans get wrong about foreign aid, how China’s rise is reshaping development, and what advice he has for students considering careers in diplomacy, politics, and international affairs.

​This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

​Getting Started in Public Service
BW: You’ve had a long and varied career—from the Wisconsin legislature and Congress to serving as U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, administrator of USAID, and then president of the Wilson Center.
Looking back, what early experiences or roles most shaped your entry into public service and the worldview that you bring to it?
MG: It’s an unusual path that I’ve taken. For me, it really started before the state legislature, when my wife and I were teachers in a small village in western Kenya. That profoundly shaped my worldview and, I think, my drive for public service.
Where we lived and taught, our home had no electricity. There was only one telephone in the entire village—a wind-up telephone mounted in a wooden box. You couldn’t do calls to the U.S. or anything like that.
What struck me was what I saw day in and day out: families in Kenya trying desperately to get a pale shadow of the education that, quite frankly, we throw away pretty quickly. That was inspirational.
Secondly, I had the luxury of time. Because there was no television and no electricity, in the evenings I read. I read every book I could find—every book at the local library. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read the Bible cover to cover, because that’s what they had.
At the end of the year-long program, I decided I wanted to get involved in public service and politics. I never thought I would run for office, but I knew I wanted to get involved, which is what led me, after Kenya, to go back home to Green Bay, start practicing law, and very quickly meet Tommy Thompson, the longest-serving governor in Wisconsin’s history. He became a mentor and an inspiration.
That’s what really got me going.
What pulled me into foreign policy work was something different. Right after 9/11—at that point I was in Congress—the Speaker of the House came up to me. He’d somehow learned about my time as a teacher in Kenya, and he said, “Mark, I’ve got plenty of guys around here who can catch and kill bad guys. I need some people to stop there from being more bad guys.”
He put me on the International Relations Committee, as we called it in those days. President Bush was in office, and we started to work on the PEPFAR HIV/AIDS initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and funding for basic education in the developing world. That’s what really got me off and running.
So it was an unusual path. And then beyond that, at the end of my congressional career, I was asked—through, then-Congressman (before he was Speaker) Paul Ryan, a very good friend of mine, and Karl Rove from the White House—“Does Green want to go to Tanzania?” They asked me to serve as ambassador.
That gave me a privilege that few people get, because I got to be an ambassador overseeing some of the very programs I’d created as a member of Congress—to go from the drawing board to implementation. Extraordinary privilege.
So that’s really what got me going. Each step of the way, it’s been good fortune. I wish I could say it was brilliance. It was good fortune more than anything else.

Representing Wisconsin While Looking Outward
BW: I’m really interested in the part you mentioned about your mentor, but I’m going to ask you about that a bit later.
First, I’m curious: during your time representing Wisconsin’s 8th District, you helped advance major global aid and development legislation. Did serving a domestic constituency influence how you thought about America’s role abroad or the purpose of foreign aid, which of course became extremely relevant to you in your later roles?
MG: The 8th Congressional District—Green Bay being the largest city in that district—is also where Joe McCarthy was from. So it’s not exactly, especially in those days, an area known for being outward-looking in terms of international affairs.
I don’t know that, if we hadn’t had the crisis presented by 9/11, it would have been as easy, politically, to craft some of these programs. After 9/11, I traveled to Afghanistan, I went to Iraq twice, and I also traveled a couple of times to Africa. I’m not sure I could have done that politically if not for what everyone saw as the great challenge of violent extremism leading to terrorism. That created political momentum for those programs. It would have been far harder otherwise.
No one runs for office on foreign assistance or foreign policy.
I also had an extraordinarily good constituent staff back in Green Bay—Appleton being the other big city in that district. Their work—on veterans’ issues, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security—that’s really the day-to-day of what a member of Congress does.
That good work, plus the national crisis of 9/11, gave me the comfort level and political mandate to take on some of the broader issues that maybe aren’t day-to-day concerns for many people, but that I viewed as very important to America’s future.

What Running for Congress Really Feels Like
BW: For me personally, I’m incredibly interested in political careers—ambassador being one of them. I’m specifically fascinated by foreign affairs, for many reasons, but it's in part because the idea of heading a campaign seems immensely strenuous and stressful, frankly: having that much scrutiny on your character, who you are, and whatever family background you have. My first reaction is that I'd much rather be involved politically without running a campaign.
What was that process like for you?
MG: Well, it was different than it is these days. We had conventional media, not social media. And to be honest, part of it was developing a relationship with the press—with journalists—such that, if something came up, they would give me the opportunity to present my side of the story.
These days it’s real-time, instant social media, and you lose control, quite frankly, of the ability to frame issues. We’re in a much more populist time than we were back then.
My first race for Congress—I ran in 1998, when I was elected—I was the only Republican in the nation to unseat a Democratic incumbent in Congress that year. It was a terrific amount of work; it was around-the-clock, day-to-day work.
It is daunting. But it’s also, quite frankly, inspiring. In a district like that, where a lot of it was small towns, small communities, rural areas, you move around and you see the character of America. You meet everyday working people, see what they do to make ends meet, and hear their view of America. That part was fun.
In my four campaigns, I did something like a hundred parades—everything from Polka Fest in Pulaski to Chocolate Fest down in Burlington, to Flag Day, to the Fourth of July.
Sure, it’s work, but it’s also fun meeting people and giving them a chance to kick the tires a little bit and ask you questions. So it is daunting, but it’s also very rewarding. That part was actually enjoyable.

Can Early Internships Box you in Politically?
BW: It truly is a unique experience, and something I'll need to give more thought to. I don’t know where my career will end up, but campaigning is something I’ll have to weigh seriously.
You mentioned being a Republican and taking a seat from a Democrat. In today’s world, you can track someone’s career so vividly online—through LinkedIn, social media, or what have you. I’ve talked to some of my politically-interested peers, and one of their main concerns in early career pursuits is: if they hypothetically intern for a Democrat this summer, but they are yet to fully decided their own political ideology or party alignment, does that risk boxing them in for the rest of their political career? What are your thoughts on that?
MG: I suppose possibly—but it really depends on the role they play.
I think being a Hill staffer is an extraordinarily rewarding experience, and I recommend it to anyone interested in public policy, whether international or domestic. You get to interact with people, and you also see in front of you a range of issues, ideas, and programs. That’s when you begin to formulate what’s important to you.
Doing constituent work, for example—which is often what an internship on Capitol Hill is about: answering mail, responding to constituent inquiries—develops a skill set more than it pins you to an ideological position.
So there is certainly a risk of being “boxed in,” but if I were hiring, I wouldn’t view it that way.
It’s a different thing if you’re committee staff. For every member of Congress, you have their personal office, which interacts with constituents back home. But they’ll also have staff dedicated to their committee assignments. On the committees, things tend to be more ideological, because you’re part of the team considering legislation or oversight matters.
So it really depends on the role. But again, my view is: it’s a rewarding experience.
I worked my way through law school as a part-time legislative aide in the state Capitol, and it was great—and inspiring. I remember my boss, my state senator (who has since passed away), was in the leadership.
In a group setting, he said, “Mark’s going to tell me how to vote on X.” And afterward I thought to myself: I’m 25 years old, and I’m going to be influencing how this person votes. It was inspiring. It was cool—pretty heady stuff.
So again, getting involved in the process, getting into the public arena—whether as an elected official or part of the team—is great. It’s really good work.

Finding Your Place—and Your Ego Check—on Capitol Hill
BW: I was listening to something recently from Scott Galloway, the podcaster and NYU professor. He was talking about how people are often concerned with imposter syndrome—feeling like they don’t belong in the room they’re in—when in reality, that can be a good sign. If you feel like everyone around you is highly talented and maybe ahead of you in experience, that means you’re learning.
MG: Right. So to win my first campaign for Congress was an amazing undertaking. The first poll that came out on the gentleman I eventually unseated—he was actually a friend of mine, a Democratic congressman and former TV personality who has since passed away—was pretty daunting.
When the campaign started, the guy who would eventually become my chief of staff came to me and said, “I have good news and I have bad news.” I said, “Okay, give it to me.” He said, “The bad news is you’re 40 points behind in the polls.”
And I said, “What the heck is the good news?”
And he said, “It’s only up from here.”
It was quite an undertaking.
When we won, I remember going out to D.C. for the first time with my chief of staff. We sat, just the two of us, in a room and said, “Oh my God. This is pretty cool. Whoa. This is cool.”
But you discover very quickly that members of Congress fall into two classes. There are those for whom getting to office is their lifetime achievement. It’s very important to them—their status. They want to be called “Mr. Chairman” or whatever it might be.
And then there are people who are there because they want to do what a congressman can do—good things. The late Henry Hyde, a name you may not know, was a congressman from Illinois who chaired the Judiciary Committee and, during his tenure, crafted many key foreign policy measures that passed. He was “Henry.” He wasn’t “Mr. Chairman.”
You very quickly figure out who needs the title for their ego versus those who are looking for a chance to make a difference. You gravitate toward and form friendships with the right people, and it’s a great experience.
It is heady stuff. You have lots of people around you telling you how good you are, because they’re looking for something—not because you’re really that great.
I was fortunate. There was a men’s accountability group. We used to get together every Wednesday morning in a different member’s office over coffee, close the doors, and talk about what was going on back home. They deflated egos pretty fast, and that was very important for me.
Because again: you’ve got a title, and people spend a lot of time telling you how great you are—but often because they want something.

What Americans Get Wrong About Foreign Aid
BW: As a veteran in the political sphere, I’d love to ask you a couple of policy-related questions.
First, what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding Americans have about foreign aid and international development? And second, how do you think USAID and diplomacy should evolve, especially in light of the political scrutiny and strategic pressures of the past few years?
MG: Those are hard questions to answer because everything’s in flux right now.
Traditionally, people’s misunderstandings of foreign assistance fall into two buckets. First, people don’t realize how small it is. The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition did some polling where they asked Americans how big a portion of the federal budget they thought foreign aid was. The most frequent answer was 25%. In reality, it’s less than 1%.
Then they asked, “How much do you think foreign aid should be?” People said 10%. And again, the actual number was under 1%. So there’s that.
The second big misunderstanding is how we do foreign assistance. The criticism is that we “give money to corrupt leaders.” In reality, we actually don’t give money directly to governments, with a few exceptions. We traditionally work through NGOs—non-governmental organizations—so money doesn’t typically go straight to governments and leaders.
Those are the traditional misunderstandings.
But everything is in flux right now. We’re in the process of rewriting how we do assistance. I think the administration has really jolted the development community, which is not necessarily bad. It’s going to force us to reconstruct things.
I’m a big believer in what I call the “journey to self-reliance.” We don’t want countries or people to be dependent upon foreign assistance. We want them to see it as a necessary evil—a step toward a better future that they themselves take charge of. I think the administration’s moves are forcing us to rethink how we get there.
Again, that’s not a bad thing. We really are in flux right now.

Development, Diplomacy, and the Challenge from China
BW: Given today’s global challenges—economic instability, climate stress, shifting power dynamics—what role do you think U.S. development should play in the coming decade? And if you were designing America’s foreign policy priorities from scratch, what would you elevate to the top?
MG: Boy—also a broad question, difficult to answer concisely.
Development and diplomacy—so-called soft power or smart power—are a crucial part of projecting American leadership around the world. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis famously wrote in a note to members of the Appropriations Committee in Congress: “If you cut foreign aid, I’m going to have to buy more bullets.”
That’s the way I think of smart foreign assistance. It works on addressing the conditions that often lead to despair. Poverty doesn’t cause terrorism, but poverty and destitution left unchecked can lead to despair, and despair is a condition that bad guys know how to exploit.
So addressing the drivers of despair is a way of keeping America safe and keeping the world more stable. It also helps create economic partners.
What I think is crucial is that we use our investments in other countries as the beginning of the relationship, not the end. We want to take those investments and find ways to help our partner countries mobilize their own resources and build their own capacity—to lead their own future. We want countries to be true partners in a brighter, more just, more stable future.
The biggest change—and this goes to your second question—is the rise of China. When I started in this work, I’m an Africanist by background, there was very little presence of China. Now China’s everywhere.
China’s foreign assistance is heavily financing-driven and loan-based. China is now the largest official creditor in the world. A recent study projected $2.1 trillion-plus in Chinese loans around the world, creating enormous debt.
We don’t operate like that. We operate much more through investments and traditional foreign assistance. But I think China’s presence and its ambitions will force us to rethink our approach to almost every relationship in the world.

Learning from Tommy Thompson and Jack Kemp
BW: As we close here, Ambassador, I want to turn back to some of your early experiences and advice for students. You were mentioning your mentor from Wisconsin earlier, Tommy Thompson. Was there any key advice or anything he said that really stuck with you and influenced you to pursue the career you went on to have?
MG: Former Governor Tommy Thompson—who went on to be Secretary of Health and Human Services—was a really inspirational figure.
Tommy was the guy who launched the welfare reform movement and expanded school choice. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the first major school district to have school choice, and Wisconsin was once at the heart of the welfare state.
Tommy’s relentless reforms, and his belief in individuals, individual empowerment, and reforming government so it doesn’t hold people back but instead becomes a launching pad for individual growth and opportunity—that inspired me.
When I got to USAID and reformed our foreign assistance framework, I saw Tommy and I said, “You know, I’m trying to do at the federal, international level what you did at the state level.” That was very inspirational to me.
Another gentleman I got to know was the late Jack Kemp, former congressman, former Secretary of HUD, a Republican conservative leader in the empowerment space. He too was inspirational. The notion of breaking down bureaucracy and empowering individuals to give everyone a chance at what we call the American dream—but really is a universal dream—mattered a lot to me.
So it wasn’t much of a step to go from domestic to international work, because the same principles applied—just in a different arena.

What Stands Out in Young Applicants
BW: When you were leading USAID and later the Wilson Center, what qualities in young applicants or people who wanted to work in that sphere really stood out to you? Were there common mistakes that caused otherwise strong candidates to fall short?
MG: I was looking for two things.
Number one, intellectual curiosity. You don’t have to have all the answers—you just need to be looking for them. That mattered a lot to me, because it’s like when you go to law school: people misunderstand and think you’re taught the law to memorize it. In reality, you’re taught a framework for analyzing issues, because the law changes. So I was always looking for intellectual curiosity.
Secondly, communication skills—writing skills. That is probably the greatest weakness I see in most candidates: the inability to put together a concise presentation of ideas, of a message. So I always tell people: work on your writing skills.
We’re living in a time where we all spend time on social media—brevity, shortcuts, acronyms. There’s no replacement, though, for the ability to think clearly and to present clearly and concisely.

Advice to 20-Year-Old Self
BW: Last couple of questions here. If you could sit down with your 20-year-old self—before Washington, before Congress—and offer one warning and one encouragement about a career in public service, what would you say? Would you advise him to change anything about how you got started?
MG: No. It has been a heck of a ride. I’ve enjoyed every moment—every twist and turn.
I haven’t always won, on any issue or cause, but I’ve taken lessons from every activity.
I think the biggest bit of advice I’d offer people these days is: don’t get hung up on stuff that really doesn’t matter.
I just finished up a fellowship at Georgetown, working with lots of foreign service students, and they were always worried about picking the “right” major. “What should I major in? What minor should I choose?”
My answer is: whatever you choose, be really, really good at it. Our engagement with the world is going up, not down.
When I entered this space, there were relatively few career opportunities that took you into foreign policy. Now there are relatively few career opportunities that don’t touch foreign policy. America’s invested around the world; the private sector and business need to open markets and develop partnerships.
So there is almost no major that won’t prepare you for foreign policy—but just be really, really good at it.

BW: I think your absolutely right, thank you for that. Finally, as is customary with this blog, I’d like to close by asking if there are any pieces of literature—essays, books, even poems—that you would recommend to people interested in pursuing a career path similar to yours.
MG: Two books.
My favorite nonfiction book is The River of Doubt, which is the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s somewhat ill-fated trip after the presidency, when he ventured into the Amazonian jungle. National Geographic put together a team for him to explore the source of a river. It damn near killed him and probably shortened his life.
It was inspiring to me because it’s about one person’s personal reach—but also about folly. It didn’t go as smoothly as expected. I’ve always taken lessons from that.
Secondly, an obscure book called Revolution in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, where I served as ambassador. It’s the story of a young foreign service officer—true story—on his first overseas assignment in Zanzibar at the very beginning of the Cold War, during what became known as the Revolution in Zanzibar.
He was the one who bucked conventional wisdom. The New York Times ran a front-page story talking about a “domino falling in Africa,” thinking of it purely in Cold War terms. And he was the guy sending cables back saying, “That’s not it. It’s ethnic. It’s essentially Africans overthrowing Middle Eastern slaveholders.”
It taught me humility in foreign policy. There are things we think we know, and we have to be prepared to take a new, critical approach.
So either of those books—and both together—teach you humility. We think we know all the answers, and in fact we actually know relatively few.

BW: Ambassador Green, I can’t thank you enough for your time. I feel like I’ve really learned so much in just this short period of time we’ve been talking.
MG: Well, you’re very kind. Go for it, right? I’m excited for you. You’re in a great place, and this is a moment to chase your dreams.