State Department speaker visits campus

Fourteen years ago, Macon Phillips was shucking oysters in Alabama. Today, he is the coordinator of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Information Programs.

At “Connecting People to Policy,” an event organized by the USC Center for Public Diplomacy, Phillips spoke in depth about his career and how the U.S. government implements digital strategy. 

The Director of the CPD, Jay Wang, believes that individuals like Phillips provide valuable insight to USC students.

“We hope that students can better understand the skills required to do effective public diplomacy work in the digital age,” Wang said.

For Phillips, his exposure to international relations and domestic policy issues didn’t occur until he joined the Americorps VISTA and began working for an interim program in Vermont.

“This was when George Bush was sabre-rattling to Iraq and Colin Powell was shaking up the UN,” Phillips said. “Some of it didn’t make sense to me, and I later realized our world was run by human beings who have strong opinions.”

In 2004, Phillips started working on political projects at Blue State Digital, a web design firm. Though digital tools were in their infancy, they were growing rapidly.

“YouTube, Facebook, Twitter: none of that stuff existed in 2004,” Phillips said. “In the last 10 years, everything has changed. It’s an incredible time to be alive.”

In 2008, Phillips became a digital strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. When Obama was elected, Phillips took on a new role as the director of new media for Obama’s presidential transition team.

“On the first day, when the president was taking the oath of office, I was at a cubicle launching whitehouse.gov,” Phillips said.

At the White House, Phillips focused on fulfilling three goals: amplifying the administration’s message, making the administration’s work more accessible and creating meaningful opportunities for people to participate in different initiatives.

In September 2013, Phillips was hired as the IIP coordinator. He said the organization supports public policy efforts that shape the news of the day while simultaneously developing long-term relationships between different communities.

One of the notable projects IIP has been involved with is the Young African Leaders Initiative. The initiative originated as a traditional exchange program that soon became overwhelmed with applications. To solve this, the State Department formed a network that would connect the young leaders with each other and offer them courses in issues like women’s empowerment and climate change. Today, YALI currently connects 250,000 members, many of whom organize their own advocacy events, according to Phillips. 

The success of YALI, Phillips said, can serve as a model for future digital policy initiatives.

“We’ve developed a network that possesses its own energy. The U.S. government has catalyzed this group of young leaders,” Phillips said. “YALI is an example of a project in Africa that’s actually helping us with our diplomacy interests.”

However, Phillips recognizes that the government faces a number of challenges when trying to use digital strategy to stimulate public policy initiatives. The first is the state’s passivity.

Phillips explained that the state department has always just disseminated information to the world. Only a small group of officials had the agency to bring about policy changes. Now, with social media platforms and other tools, people are able to instigate changes themselves. The U.S. government, Phillips argues, must take on a more proactive role.

“In a world of connected and empowered non-state actors, we have to figure out how we can call people to action,” Phillips said. “My colleague once said ‘public diplomacy used to be about telling people what they need to know. Now it’s about telling people what they need to do.’ Individuals have more power; they’re able to organize themselves. Institutions like the U.S. government have to not just inform them, but influence and motivate them.”

Another challenge concerns how the state department shares and organizes information. 

“The State Department is a giant organization. As a result, we tend to share information inefficiently,” Phillips said. “We need to find ways to create a ‘default: open’ culture. So, we’ve broken down the walls in our offices, we’ve implemented tools like Slack. But that’s something we’ve got to keep improving.”

For Virana Khairunnisaa, a masters student studying public diplomacy, Phillips’ experiences will help her grow own career.

“I work as an officer handling digital diplomacy for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Indonesia,” Khairunnisaa said. “I think learning from other peoples’ experiences in the field is so much more helpful than learning theory.”