Variety is the spice of his life

Foreign Service Officer Ari Nathan '85 speaks to students USC Law students with a sense of adventure and love of travel may want to take a page out of Ari Nathan’s book. About every three years, the 1985 USC Law graduate gets a new job in a new country. As a Foreign Service officer with the United States Department of State, Nathan has spent the past six years living in Mexico, Colombia and Iraq. In the midst of his recent move from Iraq to Madrid, Nathan stopped by USC Law to speak to students about career possibilities as a Foreign Service officer. “It’s quite interesting work,” Nathan said. “It’s a secure job, but a pretty adventurous job.” The State Department employs 7,500 civil servants and Foreign Service officers worldwide. Some, like Nathan, are diplomats. Nathan most recently worked on an economic team in Iraq with $100 million in projects that included refurbishing hospital equipment, installing water tanks in remote villages and bringing together the public and private sectors. Other officers are responsible for protecting Americans traveling across the border and overseas, promoting American business interests abroad, analyzing foreign markets, or promoting peace and stability in areas of vital interest. The hiring process is fairly rigorous, Nathan said, and includes a standardized test, a writing test, an oral exam and background check that could take be completed in as little as a few months or take more than a year. Following training, Foreign Service officers are deployed to the country of their choice for a two- to three-year tour. (Tours in more hazardous areas, such as Iraq, are shorter.) Each tour brings new responsibilities and a new locale. “You get to live in a lot of places and have a lot of different jobs while having the security of working for the government,” Nathan said. “It’s a career, but it’s also a real lifestyle.” Though Foreign Service officers do not function as attorneys, the critical analysis tools learned in law school are invaluable, he said. Nathan got his start with the State Department doing consular work in Tijuana. After several months of intensive language training, he moved to the U.S.-Mexico border, where his responsibility was to “help Americans in distress.” He aided car accident victims, crime victims, arrestees and other injured people. “I got to visit all the prisons and all the hospitals in Baja,” Nathan said. “I also got to know more about the corruption there than I ever would have wanted.” Other consular work, which every Foreign Service officer must perform for one two-year tour, includes processing visas for those wanting to visit the U.S. “Sometimes you’re doing as much as 100 visa interviews a day,” Nathan said. “For you, it’s routine work, but for the person across from you, it’s often the most important thing in their life that year.” Nathan most recently moved to Madrid, where he’ll stay for the next three years working on climate change issues as an environmental sciences technology officer. For more information, visit http://careers.state.gov/officer/index.html. -Story by Lori Craig. Photos by Maria Iacobo.