Today is International Women’s Day, so what better way to mark the achievements of girls who grew up to be powerful women than by interviewing one of our own most prominent diplomats, Faye Belnis, the head of press and public diplomacy and spokeswoman at the British Embassy?

In an article published in the Department of State’s Bulletin on November 7, 1948, entitled simply “The Voice of America,” Allen stated the purpose of the Department’s information activities, including VOA, the Congress had authorized earlier in the year with the passage of the Smith-Mundt Act

Sports diplomacy builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power,” embracing the use of a full range of diplomatic tools—in this case, basketball—to bring individuals together in order to foster a greater understanding of societal norms and cultures.

The world's nations achieved a U.N. goal of cutting in half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water five years ahead of the 2015 target...The water target was one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to reduce global poverty that government leaders, nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations have been working to achieve, with varying success.

Diplomats are increasingly using social media to promote their countries’ foreign policy. Leading from the front is the US Embassy in Wellington and its social savvy Ambassador. Ambassador David Huebner is all for embracing innovation in diplomacy or, in foreign policy speak, 21st Century statecraft.

Under the Obama Administration’s proposed FY 13 budget, the potential damage to...the Voice of America would be unprecedented...Such hemorrhaging must be halted if the free flow of information from America to the world is to be secured...for the Voice’s 140 million weekly listeners in 43 languages around the globe.

The priority of PD is set by one’s definition of it...Whether we decide to advocate for PD within or outside the bureaucracies of the U.S. government, they will undeniably affect us in one way or another throughout our careers in PD. The key will be to understand the interagency relationships and strive to remain nonpartisan in our approach to PD.

APDS Blogger: Lisa Liberatore

Washington, D.C. is a city of politics, power, and ploy. As the first delegation of Public Diplomacy Masters students representing USC to visit D.C., 18 of us set out to navigate the role of PD and meet its practitioners in this influential city. Our excursion led us to three very significant U.S. bureaucracies: the Department of State, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.