Rachel Galloway, His Majesty’s Consul General in Atlanta, visited GC’s campus for a sit-down with GC’s own Harold Mock, the Director of Leadership programs at GC.
She visited GC on Jan. 22 to participate in the semiannual Usery Forum on Leadership. The forum focuses on leadership that brings people together and brings in new perspectives for the good of the public. The Usery Forum is named after the United States’ 15th Secretary of Labor, W. J. Usery, and has been funded by his descendants. The Usery Forum is open to anyone. Some students were encouraged by their professors to attend, and some were a part of the GC’s very own Leadership Programs.
“She [Galloway] was very gracious; I called and invited her,” said Harold Mock, the director of leadership programs and an assistant history professor at GC. “She gets a lot of invitations, as you can imagine, but I told her about GC and GC students, and she agreed. She said she would love to. She had not been to Milledgeville before, so this was a first visit for her. But she was very kind and gracious in agreeing to come here.”
GC students and faculty sat with rapt attention as Galloway spoke of her career and how she became a diplomat. She spoke of her time after college, where she graduated with a degree in political science, and how she spent time in multiple different job positions. Galloway worked for an IT help desk and decided to fill out an application for foreign service. She started her diplomatic journey as a parliamentary researcher at 24 years old.
This interview allowed students to hear the possible ways they can become diplomats and participate in policymaking.
“I was influenced by my Principles of Marketing professor, Professor Evans; she basically just asked some of her students to come tonight and just experience what Rachel had to say,” said Jared Smith, a sophomore marketing major. “I learned that the world of politics can be fun and that a couple of the careers are interesting to me. A lot of what she said just sounded interesting and kind of exciting.”
Mock asked questions about her first few weeks in Georgia after arriving in 2022, and she spoke of how, within the first five or six weeks, she had to deal with the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She spoke of how she had to work through this and the code name they had for the Queen, Operation London Bridge.
Her time in roles such as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of North Macedonia and Chair of the Mashrek Maghreb Working Group at the European External Action Service has taught her how to be patient in learning about different people and environments, as this could help create a stronger diplomatic relationship between the United Kingdom and other countries.
“We just thought it’d be a great opportunity to come and engage with the students as part of our kind of mission to reach out to different universities and different communities,” Galloway said. “We try while we are here to showcase Britain to different people who maybe do not always get the opportunity to have contact with foreign governments or international study programs.”
After faculty and staff heard her experiences and learned the different elements it takes to be a diplomat, she mentioned anyone can be a diplomat as long as you are willing to communicate with others and that you do not have to be a political science major to do so.
“She was a very impressive speaker,” said Axel Hawkins, a junior history major. “To hear someone speak as casually as she did about very tough topics that I have never even thought about in my life, it was great to hear that perspective on them. I think it’s a very important thing to go to. I usually go to all of them, and I wanted to hear Mrs. Galloway’s experiences.”
Galloway stressed this in her interview with Mock, as putting preconceived notions aside and being willing to learn about other people’s backgrounds can help you understand their stance on certain issues.
One of the questions pertained to how she handled the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
“It’s something we do prepare for,” Galloway said. “Anything in relation with the possible passing of the queen was called the Operation London Bridge. So, I wake up in the morning and saw the news she was sick, but it was done in a way I had never seen before. It was very clear to me that this is a very serious phase. So, I sent a message out to the team saying, ‘Everyone in my office, we need to have an Operation London Bridge meeting. If you do not know what that is, we will have to tell you in the meeting.’ The truth is, we were very well prepared.”
The Usery Forum helped bring together many different majors and introduce the U.K. government and Leadership Programs to GC.
“The Usery Forum is a very unique thing to GC, and people see that at UGA, they get senators and speakers of the house to come visit, and they think we don’t have anything like that at GC,” Hawkins said. “Well, we very much do. We have a lot of very important and high-profile speakers that give us a lot of wisdom that we wouldn’t get otherwise. So, I really encourage everyone to come to the Usery Forums.”
Mock hopes the students took away a great bit of information from this forum.
“I think the most important thing I would like for students to have taken away are some of the practical leadership and communication skills that she shared,” Mock said. “As a professional diplomat, she has to have lots of difficult conversations, conversations with people she does not know or does not necessarily have a lot in common with. But she gave a lot of practical advice on how to have conversations with people different from you or who disagree with you. I think that’s relevant to all of us regardless of what field we may be in or what work we may do.”
The next installment of the Usery Forum on Leadership is on Feb. 14 with Deke Copenhaver, the former mayor of Augusta-Richmond County, and all are welcome.
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MOCK “It was a nice conversation. There were a lot of things we could have talked about but I wanted to give time to the audience to ask and answer questions. I tried as much as possible to hit a little bit of every topic that she would be able to lend insight to, as you can tell that was a lot. It was very nice to interview her, I felt honored to interview her.”
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Axel H. “The Usery forum is a very unique thing to GC and people see that at UGA they get senators and speakers of the house to come visit and they think we don’t have anything like that at GC. Well, we very much do, we have a lot of very important and high-profile speakers that give us a lot of wisdom that we wouldn’t get otherwise. So I really encourage everyone to come to the Usery Forums.”
