Career Conversation: Life as a Foreign Service Officer and scholar at the Middle East Institute

Join us for a casual career conversation with Ambassador Robert S. Ford and his wife C. Alison Barkley. Ambassador Ford is a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington where he writes and speaks about Iraq, Syria and North Africa. He is also a fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University where he teaches about Arab politics and diplomacy. Ford served thirty years in the State Department and Peace Corps, finishing his career as the U.S. Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014. Ms. Barkley served 25 years in the State Department retiring with the rank of Minister Counselor. She managed internal embassy operations in five countries in the Middle East, and spent the last four years of her career assessing and reporting on State Department operations in Washington and abroad for the Department’s Office of the Inspector General.