Diplomat to visit campus to share career advice, information

BGSU students will have the opportunity to meet with a senior career diplomat next week when the University hosts Sue Ford Patrick, consul general of the United States at Johannesburg, South Africa.
Patrick will be in Bowling Green from Monday evening (Feb. 17) through Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 19). During her campus visit she will meet with faculty, administrators and students and give classroom presentations.

On Tuesday (Feb. 18), Ford will give a talk about her career in the Foreign Service and career opportunities today in the international arena. She will speak at 7 p.m. in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Theater.

The insight and information Patrick has to offer will appeal to students interested in pursuing careers in international relations, foreign service, international education or international business, according to Celeste Robertson, assistant director and coordinator of the Multicultural Career Institute at the University and herself a former Foreign Service officer.

Patrick’s visit is sponsored by the BGSU Career Center and the Office of International Studies and is paid for by the State Department.

Patrick is currently on leave from Johannesburg while serving for one year in Atlanta as diplomat-in-residence at Spelman and Morehouse colleges and Clark Atlanta University, three historically African American institutions, through a State Department program that brings seasoned diplomats into universities and colleges as visiting teachers and mentors.

She is a career member of the Senior Executive Foreign Service (class of Counselor) and has been consul general at Johannesburg since June 1999.

In that capacity, she is principal officer at America's largest Consulate General in South Africa. Located in South Africa's economic and media capital, Patrick oversees a U.S. government staff of 78 people, including 24 Americans and 54 Foreign Service Nationals employed by five U.S. government agencies: the Department of State, Foreign Commercial Service (FCS), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and Voice of America (VOA). Additionally, the states of Florida and Illinois have each engaged a resident American citizen trade representative who leases office space at the FCS building, thereby bringing the total employee complement to 80.

Consulate General Johannesburg supports 17 other US posts in 14 African countries in labor, consular, immigration affairs and trade promotion.

In her long career with the Foreign Service, Patrick has served in posts around the globe, from Africa to Asia and the Caribbean. Before being posted to South Africa in 1999, she was political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti from 1996-99. She has also served as deputy chief of mission in Kigali, Rwanda, where her husband currently is posted.

Patrick received her bachelor of arts degree from the College of Notre Dame, Maryland, in 1967, and her master of arts degree from Boston University in 1982. She also holds a certificate of national security studies from the National War College.