Article by Ambassador Charles A. Ray

During my 50+ years in government, 20 years in the military and just over 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, I have been privileged to have been assigned to a number of challenging leadership positions.

One of my assignments, as ambassador to Cambodia, involved going into an embassy that had been totally demoralized, with the mission to get them back on track. It took some doing, but within six months I had taken an embassy that had deteriorated so much, some of its consular functions had been taken away and assigned to the embassy in Thailand.