Session 471: America, Post-DEI

When Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley first proposed a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer role at the State Department, the response from HR was polite and dismissive. Years later, she came back and got the job done — on her own terms, with her own budget, her own staff, and a seat on the committee that assigns ambassadors. What she found when she got inside was not what most people assume.

Dr. Joy sits down with Ambassador Abercrombie-Winstanley — thirty-year diplomat, former US Ambassador to Malta, and the State Department’s first-ever CDIO — to talk about what DEI was designed to do, what it was never meant to be, and why so much of the backlash against it is built on a misreading. They get into the mechanics of how people really get hired and promoted in elite institutions — the secret handshakes, the drug deals, the posted job that was never really open — and what it looked like when the Ambassador’s office forced those positions into open competition. She also talks about the psychological toll of watching allies flip overnight once the political climate shifted, what she believes is still happening inside organizations even now, and how she’s thinking about the pendulum — not to minimize this moment, but to prepare for what comes next. The conversation closes with some of the most specific career advice the show has offered: how to run your elevator pitch until it flows, when to reach out to someone on LinkedIn and what to say, and why she tells the people she mentors to bring their best self to work, not just their authentic one.

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