Diplomat Susan Rice Joins Lynn Overmann to Discuss Public Service Careers at First-Ever Civic Tech Live Event Series

Trailblazing public servant and civic tech leader Susan Rice joined the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation’s Executive Director Lynn Overmann in conversation to kick off the center’s first-ever installment of its new Civic Tech Live series. Ambassador Rice—who previously served in various roles in the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations, including as a domestic policy advisor, national security advisor, and UN Ambassador—offered practical advice to students looking to pursue careers in public service and shared anecdotes and experiences that highlighted the role that government service delivery has played in her career. 

 

 

Ambassador Rice kicked off this inaugural event by describing her upbringing and background as someone “steeped in government and public service.” Growing up in Washington, DC, she found herself surrounded by people engaged in public service work, and even spent her summers working on Capitol Hill in high school. These early experiences nurtured her passion for public service and prepared her for the challenges she would later face in her career—including serving as the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of African Affairs within the United States Department of State at the age of 32 shortly after having her first child, and suddenly in charge of 48 embassies and more than 5,000 personnel. 

What keeps Ambassador Rice coming back to the work of public service, she said, is “the opportunity to really do things that matter to people.” She described the new focus on policy implementation and delivery in the Biden administration as transformational, highlighting key policy successes, including increasing annual refugee admissions to the U.S. tenfold. She also highlighted the exponential increase in access to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, eliminating debt for 871,000 public servants including teachers, firefighters, and other public servants since October 2021 . 

Ambassador Rice also highlighted the fact that successes aren’t always clear cut. She assisted in President Biden’s efforts to achieve a broad-based student debt forgiveness plan. After a long policy process, Ambassador Rice’s team created a program design that would help an estimated 40 million people and within a matter of months created a form that took less than two minutes to complete. However, within weeks, it was enjoined, and the argument over the debt relief program went to the Supreme Court where it was struck down. “Sometimes you can do all of the right things in government, and tackle the right problems, and it still doesn’t work,” Ambassador Rice said.

Looking ahead, Ambassador Rice discussed the places she sees opportunities for better service delivery, and how these might change. Above all else, she advocated for the need for a “one-stop shop,” for state, local, tribal and territorial governments attempting to access the federal resources or services available to them. On a local level, Ambassador Rice emphasized the need for the resources available to low-capacity counties to become more accessible or the ways to access them more transparent. On an individual level, she noted the headache of applying separately for each service needed for each person in a family, and stated the need for a “streamlined way for people to access these benefits.”

 

 

The event provided students an opportunity to interact with Ambassador Rice and discuss the critical skills and mindsets she believed were key to pursuing a career in public service and government. She offered many traits that would help in this field, including an analytical mindset and clear oral and written communication skills. But above all else, “be about the mission, not about yourself,” Ambassador Rice said. 

Civic Tech Live aims to bring together esteemed speakers with the Georgetown University community, offering students valuable insights into the intersection of government and civic technology. The series was inspired by Erica Pincus, a distinguished Georgetown University alum and former member of the White House Office of Social Innovation in the Obama Administration, who passed away in 2021. Erica’s career was a testament to her ethos of leveraging technology, data, and user-centered solutions to tackle humanity’s most pressing issues. Her parents, Holly and Cliff Pincus, founded the Erica Pincus Arabesque Foundation in her honor, and have offered generous support of this event series to connect the next generation of Hoyas to social impact and civic tech. The first event was also kindly supported by the Knight Foundation.