She Was on the Last Response in Sudan. Then USAID Was Dismantled.

Tell me about what life is like for you right now and after USAID. What are some of the things right now that's sort of top of mind for you?

That's another couple hours. First off, I am angry at the dismantling of my agency and what my agency did for our country and how our country could be that

Yeah, I am too.

that nod to giving back in a really cheap way. So the humanitarian community right now, I'll focus on not the development side there. Like you can maybe read about sort of the different organizations within USAID. I focus primarily on disaster response and the humanitarian community, simply put. humanitarian community is currently going through what they call the reset and it has everything to do with US retrenchment. So what we're seeing is people are dying. Communities are forgotten and not forgotten by implementers like NGOs and locals or us leftover. but they are forgotten by organizations who would provide funding to enable those missions. So when you see a huge donor like the US pull out of a place like Sudan, and that was the last response I was on, that's when you start seeing the data of children dying in refugee camps in Sudan.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

my team, had a direct line of funding food assistance to those refugees. That was probably the hardest story I read early on when we all got doged, was the babies that we had specifically called out to say that we need these actual feeding mechanisms, food mechanisms to support infant famine. man, makes me really angry to know that these children are dying and they don't have to. And it's not just, of course, it's not just Sudan. We are talking everywhere from Burma, Myanmar, however you want to associate that toponym to Sudan and Gaza, of course, Gaza gets so much attention, appropriately so. But... the families in Yemen and Syria. I mean, even conflicts in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Those places are forgotten now by large donors because the US has pulled out. We are no longer leaders in that space. And we have ceded that messaging territory to other countries and other larger organizations. It's really awful. But I think you asked me about where I am right

answer to my question cuts deeper than any career because where we are right now is never just about a job ending or an agency changing. It's about identity, purpose, and what remains when that structure around us begins to fall. For Anne, that unraveling has become a chance to look at closely the fabric within her own story, the patches within the quilt of her life. Each patch tells a story, the daughter of Appalachian farmers, an educator, a mother raising two sons in a home her father built in 1976. Some patches are worn and weathered by loss, others bright with colors of community and service. But together they form a portrait of a life stitched with purpose. In this episode, Anne shares how she's navigating change with reflection and grace, finding strength in the act of piecing things back together. It's a conversation about rebuilding, remembering, and how sometimes when life feels dismantled, it's really an invitation to resew the meaning of who we are. This is my conversation with Anne. Let's get it.

Welcome to Life Between Titles. I'm your host, Savan. Today I'm joined by Ann Gore. Ann, how are you?

I'm great Savan thanks for having me.

I appreciate you being here. I know this was something that we sort of pulled together sort of last minute. And it's amazing to me how the world works in putting together things that are meant to be together. And you and I a little bit on the phone before getting on this session. And we talked a lot about a bunch of things, but the one thing that that did sort of stand out to me in our conversation was coming together to have conversations about things that are causing us to think about sort of where we are in our lives, especially like I think you and I are almost the same age where we're doing a lot of reflecting on our journey as adults and as humans and parents and brothers and sisters and all that. And I thought that was just simply amazing that two strangers two weeks ago are now sitting here having this conversation. So I appreciate you being here. I want to start off with some of the stuff that you'd sent me ⁓ over text message. And I thought it was simply amazing because the story that you sent me, your story reads like a novel. There's so many chapters there and there's so many things. But the one thing I wanted to start with was your grandparents and you opened up about this theme of I think you said displacement, which I thought was a very interesting word. Tell me a little bit more about that.

⁓ yeah. And that word has really stuck with me since I actually wrote it. Cause I wrote it just this morning when you asked me for a little tidbit. and then how it connects to today. It's so funny how the universe works. Okay. So my grandmother, she was the daughter of, I would say migrant farmers and, our home was here in. Appalachia in Virginia. And her mother and father would travel west to follow the wheat harvest in the 19 teens and 20s. And she was born actually in Saskatchewan, Canada, ironically, or weirdly, not ironically, on one of those travels west. So I have cousins and aunts and uncles kind of scattered all throughout. the United States, but our home is here in Virginia. And while my grandmother's parents were continuing that sort of lifestyle, she was, this may sound a little harsh, but this is the word that I'm using. She was sort of abandoned by her parents with families here in rural Appalachia and were raised by church member families.

Mm-hmm.

one particular family and, but we always had kind of our family home in a particular holler here in rural Virginia. And, I'm sure everybody kind of knows when Teddy Roosevelt really started the parks projects here in the United States, a little bit of history, that meant, eminent domain taking over by the government and people being.

Right. Right.

essentially displaced from their homes in places like what is now the Shenandoah National Park, which is I can look out my window right now and see the Shenandoah National Park. ⁓ My grandmother was a very young five-year-old gal when they were displaced from that hauler and ⁓

I'm It's amazing.

I find that those stories, because of eminent domain, obviously, they wanted it for the Shenandoah National Park. They wanted her family's land. They wanted everyone's land that was here in the national park area now ⁓ to claim as public lands. And these were privately owned, generationally owned farms, flourishing economies that you just... you don't really think about. There was a lot of smear campaigns, a lot of propaganda against the people of Appalachia, which I think still happens today. But they essentially became internally displaced people, as we would say in modern lingo in regards to like warfare or natural disasters. They were displaced people and they had to restart their lives in places that were foreign to them, in foreign communities, with foreign cultures. different dialects, norms, but the things that always kind of them together and kept that solidarity between families was each other's families and how they worked together in Appalachia. And then I would also say the church, which wasn't, it was a ritual that was beyond the dogma. I think it was a ritual that created ⁓ an opportunity for community in rural spaces. it wasn't as much, I don't know, growing up in these churches. Yes, of course there was scripture. Yes, of course there was that tie to some higher being God, Jesus, being the primary actors in that space. But what I always take away is it gave us a space to commune together.

Mm.

And so like growing up with her example of essentially losing her parents to constant work, losing her home, her like where she connected to the earth. And then to be, to had to, she had to revive herself, um, into a life that is really amazing. And she, she was always that softness in my life. And she was always that person who was the best listener as a child and as a young adult. And to have faced so many trials, like my grandfather going off to World War II, and they were just church friends then, and then they fell in love over letters. All of those things, just what an amazing quilt that she has. And to be displaced. as a young person, there are so many stories that we hear today globally about displaced children and those effects. It's really hard to disconnect myself from that sort of origin story of her.

Yeah, that's amazing. I've been thinking a lot about displacement myself, especially as I'm writing my own memoir with my family who we immigrated here from Cambodia in the very early 80s during the killing fields. And I think about the struggles that they had and the impact that those first... that first decade has on me and the rest of my family. And as I'm going through and writing, you know, this is my own memoir, think about, I'm thinking about community a lot and the impact that community has, the Cambodian community, especially, and how that's sort of shaped my life. Or for you, as your grandmother is being displaced and she's trying to find ways to survive, essentially. during these tough times, ⁓ what were some of the things that, you know, when you looked at her, you said, wow, like, I need to be like this, or what were some of the things that she taught you when you were younger?

Yeah, I mean, you can kind of break it up into faith. She's still teaching me things today, even though she's she passed away three years ago. ⁓ The things that she taught me when I was young was how to find a quartz crystal in a a in a river or in the creek. She taught me how to bake chicken. She taught me how to make

Mm-hmm. Nice.

Sweet Tea, she taught me how to make apple butter and like who has the right roles in those events, which were very ritualistic. She taught me how to be patient, even though I wasn't very good at it and I'm still practicing it today. ⁓

All right, aren't we all?

But, all of those things are things I still love to do. And whenever I do them, they are my ritual of honoring that part of her that I want to keep saying out loud. Her name is Lois, by the way. I feel like we should say our loved ones' names because it keeps them, it keeps them alive.

That's a beautiful name. I think you, that a phrase that stuck out to me, which was this quilt that she made of her life, which I absolutely love. And I think in previous podcasts, we talked about our journeys as, or Katie did as chapters in a book, but I absolutely loved the visual of a quilt of your life. just because my mom also made quilts when she was younger. And visually that resonates with me very, very well. If you were to look at your own life, when you were growing up, what were some of the big patches of this quilt for Anne as a young person growing up? did you grow up in West Virginia as well or what part of the world did you grow up?

I grew up in rural Virginia in a little town called Madison County. My grandmother was born, well, she was born in Saskatchewan, but essentially raised and stayed in Rappahannock and Culpepper County, which are just, we're about two hours south of DC. So I was born and raised on my mother's, my maternal side, a portion of that family farm. ⁓

Okay.

in a house that my mom and dad organized and built in 1976. And it was a very, very small community. my mom was the, she started many of the high school sports for girls, for young women ⁓ in my high school. And my dad was very active in a lot of the Lions Club. Ruriton Spaces service type organizations. And he was also a high school and collegiate referee for football. So sports and school were a lot of, that was a lot of element that that was a huge element of our lives. When I'm thinking about my brother and I, when I was nine, my dad passed away very suddenly and very unexpectedly. And

How old was he, if you don't mind me asking.

He was 41. I'm now 46. So to think I outlived my dad is really, that's sort of a moment I take pause in sometimes. I just watched the documentary about John Candy the other day and I recommend it. It confirms a lot of assumptions that I had about him, about what a good guy he was.

wow. Yeah. ⁓ I did see that one.

but also the kind of the struggle of balance of being who they want you to be and who you actually are and how he really held tight to his authenticity. I loved it. But that was something too, when dad died, he was kind of that John Candy guy in my community. And in the documentary, they say they closed down the 405 for his funeral. procession and sort of the same thing happened for my dad when he died that they closed down this like one little corridor of six miles so people could get from one church to the other. ⁓ Like that's a core memory that you have as a nine year old where you're like, and you know, I, feel like I'm also kind of.

Wow.

still to this day uncovering the mystery of who he was, because I knew him through nine-year-old eyes, but I get to hear stories, I get to hear about ⁓ bits of him and sew together his quilt of who he was and what he still is to me today. By the way, that is the son of my grandmother who I love so much, so she endured having to bury her first child.

Yeah.

at when he was 41 and she still came with softness and compassion and understanding and always like love. She always led me with love. What a lesson.

Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. And I often think about my own life, with my parents. So my parents immigrated here when they were my age and thinking about their struggles of being in a new universe, essentially, new language, new everything, and the lessons they had to learn there. And, you know, for for you,

Yeah.

as a parent now who's a little bit older than your dad when he passed away. How has that influenced how you're approaching life now? Are there things that you're doing now that you may not have done when you were in your 20s? You know, relative to, how you invest your time or emotions or thinking about the types of people you engage with?

Yeah, ⁓ sure. And like, I could break it down like internally and externally too. Like internally, of course, like there isn't a day that my boys don't wake up by me to, you know, good morning, I love you. Like the first thing that they hear and the last thing that they hear from me is good night, I love you.

Yeah, yeah, we'd love to hear it. Right. Right.

whether they're with me or when, or with their, at their father's house. that is a consistent thing because I want, I want that connection no matter how I have to get it. and really just trying to maintain that presence because I know what it's like to have that presence kind of stripped away. And just so they feel it. Like it's one thing to say it, but acts of believing in them from their, you know, this week is this hobby. Next week is that hobby. I want to go all in right now. We are all in on boxing for Mason and we're all in on golf for Owen. And these are like really becoming things that they really love. And so being interested in every. reel they share with me every little tidbit of gear or check out this, you know, this putt or this jab, just being there to hear them. And I don't know if my grandmother's generation would love this, but I want them to be seen and heard, not just seen and not heard where we were kind of raised. because I feel like there are so many things we're overcoming today as a society of young men who have been seemingly unheard. And so I want to raise heard, validated, and also ⁓ resilient young men who've been frustrated. How do you deal with that? Instead of like lashing out aggressively, I want them to be able to communicate that. So, just being an open space for them to practice that. And my dad was such a great example of that to me from my nine-year-old eyes. Like he was always there to listen to, you know, whatever my imagination had to share, following him everywhere, which was probably exhausting.

That's it. I agree with you. I was having a conversation with a friend and she had listened to one of the segments that we recorded and we were talking about getting kids, especially, in elementary school, middle school to be better equipped to handle emotional situations And I don't think we teach them that in school. And I know, from house to house, I'm sure it varies tremendously. But it's a skill set that they don't teach you in school, you don't learn it in college, and you definitely don't learn it at work. The thing that she said to me that that really stood out was, she said, and she's the therapist, too. And so she said, if we just started to approach kids, like human beings versus people that just listen to your orders, it would go so much further in how we actually engage with our kids and how much they will appreciate you in terms of understanding and

That's right.

I fully agree with that. think, you know, when Samantha, my youngest, she talked to me about video games or whatever, like, I don't know anything about some of stuff that she's doing, but it's like, okay, so what is this thing? Like, how does it work? And just being genuinely curious about what they're doing will help, at least in my opinion, lend the way to being able to have those tougher type of emotional conversations where you do need to actually like,

Right?

build that skill set and you do need to do that a little bit earlier on. So I completely agree with you and every single thing that you said.

Yeah, I mean, to me, this is my most important job to be a mother. And also, I would say from the time of my kind of, don't know, maybe when I actually felt super comfortable in my career and the boys were a little bit older, I started to really dive deep into what does it mean to be a mother?

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

a lot of time focused on the richness and the opportunity of motherhood or fatherhood, but I feel very connected to the term mother. How can I make that as rich as an opportunity for myself, which I think will be richness for my kids and then like the kids that they interact with or my girlfriend's kids. And so they have... a space where they know is soft and safe and is, you know, come to me with the hard things.

Yeah. Speaking of space, you'd mentioned to me that you are now living in the house that your father built in 1976. Tell me about that. How did how did you end up living there?

So I left my work ⁓ in the Hampton Roads area where I worked for a command within the Department of Defense and it was amazing. That work was so fun. It was almost like a craft. I get to do my hobby every day. And it was so, so incredible, but they started to make some personnel shifts that

Right.

were limiting on ⁓ if I could keep my job, because I was a contractor at the time and they were changing all of our jobs to GS and I didn't have a veteran's preference. And that was a really important element of your package, like getting through. So I knew that I had no way of keeping my job that I had had for eight years, which was really wild.

Yep.

And so I had done a number of, I had participated in joint task forces in disaster response since, gosh, 2005, Katrina. And I had made some friends in that industry along the way. And so I started applying for jobs with USAID, OFTA, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. And I got it. but I didn't have to live in DC, which was really great. So I could come back to my home, my home place. ⁓ I could have my kids go to a smaller school in an environment that I thought could benefit from us being here. And also we would benefit from it, from what this culture has to show.

Yeah, absolutely.

my kids and I. I was also going through divorce. My mom was sick. We were trying to figure out some things with her medically. so it kind of made sense for us to move back. I in no way would have thought almost 10 years later, I would still be living in this house. I thought maybe I would build a house, but we all know how expensive things are these days.

Right? Right. yeah. yeah.

But what's been so amazing, so at first I stayed in my childhood bedroom, which is now Owen's bedroom. But I have started to like tend to this place and almost ⁓ heal some of the those like teenage almost like overblown hurts to

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

⁓ some adult nurturing in this space, both physically and then allowing myself to, to kind of have that empathy of decisions that, we don't necessarily have when we're kids to our parents about why certain things happened a certain way. Why did my mom choose this? But having that understanding, I think in this house is almost, It is naturally healing for me. And also like being able to tend to an old house is healing for the home too. Like new floors, new AC units, new appliances, all of those things go into like making sure a house stays alive and I'm happy to do it.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I you know, when we when we were growing up, we lived in South Seattle. And my parents had bought this house, I in like 1990 or 91. And when they decided to move on, I ended up living in the house and buying it from them. But my wife and I when we got together, she had two kids just two kids from her previous marriage that ⁓ you know, they were four and nine and now they're, you know, in their twenties. So you do the math. ⁓ but we grew up in that the same house I grew up in. And then when my daughter was born, we made sure to stick around there for, for her to at least be in that house. And we thought that was, was very important. and, know, I think there are so many things about a physical place that

Yeah.

is interesting, especially one with a ton of history, personal history, because you do think about all the things that you've experienced the joys and the pains of living there. And, and then you try to figure out, okay, like, how is this going to translate to my kids and what that looks like for your boys? As they're growing up in the same place that you grew up in? Do you feel like they are taking away any lessons that you learned there? Or how do you think their experiences are different than when you were a kid in that same sort of physical space?

Yeah, I definitely think that they, I think probably the biggest lesson for my boys is the, I think they have an earlier connection to the appreciation of what we actually have here and having family land and what that actually means. Because I, you know, I talked to them about the

Hmm, interesting.

the weight of how families have to pass down and segment large portions of land, which is like, that's a whole nother topic, but to see how compromise has to be made and how you're going to, there will be things that you have to let go of that may be really important when it comes to compromise. So appreciate the little, like the bits that we have and, And that gratitude, I don't think that I had when I was 18, driving out of the driveway to go to William & Mary and saying, I am never coming back here again.

Yeah, I did the same thing. I don't blame you. I did the same thing. I did the same thing. ⁓ You you touched on land and and I find it highly interesting the set of hobbies and things that interest you that you sent to me. So you are an avid outdoors person, it sounds like gardener nature and you like sewing and crafts.

⁓

How did you get into You know, were your parents sort of like naturally there as well?

Yeah, so my dad and his dad were amazing gardeners. Of course, both sides of my family were agricultural based families. We had a dairy farm on my mom's side and beef cattle on my dad's side. And those farms still exist. Right now on my mom's side, we lease out the property to a local dairy farmer. ⁓ But we were always outside working. In the winter, we were cutting wood and the you know, the spring we were planting the garden and the summer we were picking in the, you know, in the fall we were getting ready. We were picking potatoes out of the ground. we were right there along beside the adults working on the land. not in the same way that I would ever say that my mom and dad did when they were young, but those lessons were still there and the how to's were still there. I was also the the daughter, so I had to learn to sew. I had to learn to do sort of the gender appropriate skills. And my brother does too. he has an amazing skill set when it comes to sewing that is actually pretty nuanced and very cool. But we all kind of watched and learned. And when it was time to be told to be a part of something, you know that you have to pay attention really well to learn that skill so you can replicate And so my mom was also, she was an earth science teacher and all of our trips when I was a kid and into my teen years, we always had the roadside geology books wherever we went and we would be looking for particular rocks. We would be looking for, you know,

Mm-hmm.

different kind of land formations. And so that connection to the earth and how it shows us who it is, maybe that's not how she thinks about it, but maybe a little bit of ⁓ my more, I would say, witchy ways, I like to kind of see how those things kind of manifest themselves.

Yeah. Anne, tell me a little bit about what young adulthood looked like for you.

⁓ this was a young adulthood is probably my. my maybe my most underserved place that I've tended to in my life. It was, you know, there was a lot of discovery of who do I want to be? Why, why do I want to take this role? And also putting on a mask a bit. My mom, after my dad died, and I will tell you that their, their relationship and their love story was very, Romcom like very They had an amazing relationship and and I never questioned their love for one another ever a bit after my dad died I think my mom was getting a little bit of attention from some of the single men in the county and she didn't feel really comfortable with that, but she felt more comfortable with a female friend And that female friend came to live with us and in rural Appalachia, that's pretty damning. And it was way different. And I would say that no matter how maybe my mom wants to communicate that, the reality for me is that they were a couple and they were together.

Yeah, it's different. Mm-hmm.

And I had two

Mm-hmm.

moms for more of my life than I had a mom and a dad. And that was not easy. also, my mom's partner at the time, I'll use that term, I don't think that she was ready to be a parent. And navigating her almost rejection of that, is I think about that and it's very painful, especially being a mom today and knowing the opportunity I have to nurture and love and lead with compassion. And that was not really where she acted from. And my mom was really still so vulnerable and hurt from my dad dying that I have compassion for that woman.

Thanks.

for knowing that. yeah, she couldn't do it alone, but she didn't know if she had the strength to say you aren't the right person that I should be doing this with. So there are a lot of that quilt, that part of my quilt, that square of my quilt would be the crazy quilt square. And it would be the painful bits. ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah, that was probably, I said it before, like when I tend to myself, when I need to look inside and go, who's actually hurting, who's actually reacting in this space, it's that teenager Anne.

Yeah. Do you, do you think now that you're older and you have kids of your own, do you look back at parts of your life back then and maybe second guess or like what was happening? I do that all the time where, I look back at arguments I've had or things that have like really upset me and I try to put the adult hat on my adult hat on now. And I'm like, wow. I was really a jerk ⁓ or wow, maybe my parents didn't know everything and they did it wrong. you know, I, ⁓ I tend to do that a lot more now that I've been in more situations as a father than, than I've had previously. But for you, what did that experience look like as you're now an adult? are you using a lot of that to help base

and

how you move forward with your own kids.

Ooh, this is a conversation of worthiness. And as a teenager, I was the peacekeeper. How do I keep the peace? And when you said that you were maybe a jerk in those moments, I... Peacekeepers aren't jerks. Peacekeepers are quiet, compliant, go with the flow.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too. Me too.

to everyone and make sure that everyone else's needs are met. And as an adult, looking back at those patterns that I had, this is the time in my life where I'm like, damn, I wish I would have said, fuck you, you're not gonna talk to me that way. And be able to practice boundaries in a way that

with them. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I did not get, because there was a lack of me being able to practice that skill. Like you said in school, like schools aren't teaching kids these skills. And school was my outlet. I'm like, I am flourishing in this space. But when I would come home in a place where I was supposed to feel the safest, that was not the place to practice skills. where I was really good at saying, questioning my world geography teacher about how she pronounced a certain tribe in Africa. I would have never, never ever questioned anything in this house. I would have just been like, yes ma'am, yes ma'am. And make it done as quickly and quietly.

Yeah.

and passively as possible, regardless of what energy was being shot my way.

Yeah, I tend to do the same thing as well where I try to avoid confrontation. And ⁓ it's a skill that I'm still trying to work through where I'll do anything at all costs to avoid confrontation because it puts me in a place of anxiety and stress and I don't generally like being in that place. And so I try to avoid it.

Mmm.

at all costs. I think I agree with you, I think, the the roles that we have at home over the years are things that have been constructed over our entire lifetime. And to undo a lot of that stuff is significantly hard, especially when you have to have the ability to have the opportunities to undo them, but also the skill sets and the knowledge and the support to get you to that place. And And like all that stuff is significantly hard. And it bleeds into your professional life as well, right? Like how you sort of approach situations at work where two people are yelling at each other, they don't agree and you're stuck in the middle of it. And you're just like, all right, let's figure out how make this work as fast as possible.

Right? And that's real. And it's so funny how, I don't know, that whole idea of, you I leave my work at work and my home at home, that does not exist. That world does not, that is such trash. And to have the expectation that you are asking this person to come in as half themselves.

That's bullshit. That's bullshit. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

to work in your workplace or to be a parent or a participant in a home, like that is, that is unachievable.

Yeah, especially for people that feel stuff very easily. It easily bleeds into your home life. Like you have a hard day at work or something happens, it's very easily bleeding into, you treat your loved one and your kids and your pets and everything, right? Like they all are going to feel it at some point.

That's right. And I don't know if you as a parent have read any of Dr. Becky's books. And I only know her as Dr. Becky because that's how she presents herself. And she talks about how there are no bad kids that they just have, they make maybe bad decisions or something. And she has like this whole kind of reshape of how kids can have bad days too. And and being able to navigate those spaces with skills, not only your skills as a adult and parent, whether you're a parent or an aunt or a neighbor to how do you practice these skills with your kids? I think it's so, so critical. And you're like practical.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Dr. Becky. I don't know who she is, but she sounds highly fascinating. think like I said this on earlier segment, but my therapist, she told me that there's no right or wrong answers. There's just an answer, right? You're just choosing something and that something will materialize into something else. the reason I try to, the reason I get my own head is I try to always choose the right answer. where we all know that that that is not true. That is a fallacy to have a right answer for everything. But I think naturally as a person going back to sort of like the pleaser mentality, I always want to have the right thing done, whether it's work or at home. And a lot of times that stifles me and paralyzes me at times. And it's very fucking hard to get out of that cycle.

It so is. And the right decision, how I will say us as people pleasers, we aren't necessarily thinking about the right decision for ourselves. We are trying to think about the right decision for maybe even the person who would benefit be the beneficiary of me saying yes, but it benefits me negatively. And, like, Those like aha light bulb moments are the hardest lessons because they usually come at a cost.

I agree. Anne you've got so much history and experience ⁓ growing up through the years, know, great things, hard things, displacements, and your professional years, you've worked in crisis response, which I think is almost a perfect job for you, given your history of things we've talked about. Tell me a little bit about how you got there from where you grew up.

What a journey. And if you would have asked 18 year old Ann if this is, if what is in my bio, what have been in my bio, I would have said, you are nuts. Also, I want to acknowledge too, the place of displacement that you, I hope that people who listen to this podcast, understand what your parents left and how they. Like this is a really good segue to my current work or my past work now. We like to fantasize and change a narrative in regards to warfare, no matter how it manifests, and the choice your parents made to come to the United States.

Mm-hmm.

It is very moving to me that they had that courage because they saw hope in you and your siblings and to make that. to make that journey is so selfless. ⁓ Sorry. mean, these are...

Yeah, I agree. Agree.

your parents were very courageous. So I hope that like, sorry, I just, there are so many stories that are happening today that have connective tissue, even though it's from different pieces of geography, that we are all just, we are all so similar and it's really hard to. It's easy to hate from far away or to make assumptions from far away, but when you're up close to see how there's so much connective tissue is incredible, which I think is maybe another reason why you and I have met because there is.

Right.

It's so, it's, I want to hear more about your story when we have time. ⁓

Maybe you could start a podcast and we can do the role reversal.

⁓ But crisis response, started for me. I was a high school teacher right out of college. That's what I thought I would be for the rest of my life. And I taught geography and human geography. ⁓ And they were my loves and I taught ancient history in the Virginia public school system. And I... was like working my way. was about to be nationally board certified and my friend, she's like, she heard me talking to somebody about using GIS in my classroom and no other teacher was using GIS and everyone was like, my God, why are we doing this with these kids? This is so much stuff. But she heard me and she's like, Anne, I work at a military command and we need a GIS analyst. Would you be interested? I'm like,

Mm-hmm.

I don't even know what that means, but sure. I gave her my resume. was like the end of May. So the school year was about to end. And so I was kind of calculating my head like, okay, we'll see where this goes. Like the school year is about to end anyway. She passed her resume to my soon to be boss. He reads it. He's like, meet me at the burger King at, you know, four o'clock across from your school. And let's have that.

What? Right.

So basically he just said, hey, I see your resume. I think you'd be great. Here's what I can offer you. And it doubled my salary. I was living in an apartment where my car was being stolen. it was not the best neighborhood. My students were protective of me, which was really sweet. But I also knew this was all I could afford and that having that salary would be a life changer. And I grew up single mom poor. So it's like, okay, I'm going to try it. It's June. If I hate it, I can always go back in August and teach. Perfect. So I got to my command and they gave me my book of like things they wanted me to like analyze and look at and this, that and the other. And I finished that very quickly. And then I get pulled in by some of the leadership because I had maybe ran my mouth a little to them in inappropriate ways because I did not understand chain of command at that time. And they're like, Anne, we want to make you a planner. And I didn't really know what that meant, but what that did is it launched me into a career trajectory where I was attending courses with men and women who were battlefield leaders who were, you know, about to be generals and admirals. And I was in conversations where I was able to study and, and, and shape a craft in strategic and operational planning.

Yeah.

but also learn what their dollop of intuition would bring to the table and how that influenced decisions. And just to get that as a 24-year-old woman to the point where I was actually teaching these colonels and lieutenant colonels and the naval equivalents at the joint level, every service, I was always joint. Those fundamentals and how to... to navigate that intuitive decision-making process. ⁓ It was really incredible. And I got to go all over the world. I got to plan at strategic and operational levels from JTF Haiti to Ebola in Liberia. And of course, looking at peer adversaries that we know of today and how do we think about that under national security strategy and policy. I got to be involved in all of those conversations. But I always came back to, I love to be at that operational level where we're tending to people. So when I made the shift from the JEC, which was the last command that I worked for and came to USAID OFTA, that's when it really like thrust me into this crisis response space because I didn't have this shield of, ⁓ this is how the military does it. I was so, I loved that part so much and it was so easy for me. but what I got to see is a veil lifted of what the military kind of almost hid from in that space and how they projected with their helicopters and their ability to move lots of food and plastic sheeting and the sexy things to the really hard questions. are we really going to accept these pallets of baby food and have them sit on a tarmac with no cover and and not have and then pass them out to families who wouldn't even know how to use them. So things that would be like easy solutions for us, after a flood in Helene or four spires in LA, those answers are not the same internationally. And and it was I was able to kind of awaken a bit in the space of Okay, now you get to learn a new level of craft and nuance and decision space with people really as the beneficiaries as the center, not how is the commander going to say yes or no.

I absolutely love that. ⁓ One of my last projects that I worked on when I was at Defense Digital Service was Operation Allies Refuge. And for those that don't know that are listening, it's essentially the evacuation of Afghanistan after being there for 20 plus years. ⁓ And the thing that for me, that made it very personal was, and I mentioned this in this memoir that I'm writing is I am now the person on the other side of the fence. But when we immigrated here from Cambodia as refugees, somebody in America was typing something on a typewriter, invisible faces, and all of a sudden, ta-da, like you're here. And somebody's vouching for you. now like, fast forward that 40, 40 plus years, I'm now sort of that individual face, up being families over there, hopefully come to America. And ⁓ while we were going through that work, I just remembered being so stressed out and being so overwhelmed at times because I knew that like if we fucked up, or we missed something like that's impacting people and families and livelihoods. And it took me a long time to sort of like process it and get over it. And I think even today I'm still sort of like trying to process what that looks like. And for you as you're doing this, working with people and trying to help them through these crisis, crises, how do you... or take yourself out of out of the emotional sort of like being emotionally overwhelmed to say, okay, like, I've got to do these five things. And these are the five things and keeping focused so that you can actually execute on your job. Because it's a really fucking hard job. And there's a lot at stake if you mess up. And it's all very overwhelming. But you've done it very well for so long. how did you? How did you do that? What was your secret?

So first off, it has nothing to do with me as an individual. It has everything to do with knowing you don't do anything alone in this space. And I would argue that's probably in every job. ⁓ And knowing that is probably your first success factor. I became the beneficiary of institutional practice and that it was very well documented about how how we approach these, each of these different problem sets and different pieces of geography with some very standard. starting points. They are standardized and we practice them through discussions and through just going out and doing it because disasters were happening all the time. remember my first disaster was a flower storage bin in Benin blew up and it and like it wasn't in the news but the government of Benin they requested US support with some medical supplies and maybe some surgeons because there were a lot of people who were burned. And they requested $50,000. And we had to employ that $50,000 and identify who in Benin or who within the region or who within the NGO network could provide that expertise with that money for $50,000. And I was like, holy shit, I was writing strategies three months ago about how we would interact in a adversarial space over a piece of geography in the UConn theater. Now I'm trying to find an NGO who would be accepted into a community, who would ⁓ have the employability to provide immediate life-saving support to these people. who were affected by this flower explosion. And the way I was able to do it is know that I had to be able to enable the people above me and in the country to make the decision to know that they've been informed enough with the information that I'm providing to move forward with that course of action. So it's kind of using the same kind of uncovering the information.

Mm-hmm.

to say, here's the information I have, and I recommend this course of action or this decision. But it wasn't just me by myself.

Yeah. How did you approach having those conversations? Because I think one of the hardest things that you could do in any government job is to influence. And it's exceptionally hard to influence leadership or people above you. And it sounds like one of the things you did very well, because it hopefully was eventually successful, was influencing those people. What did that look like for you?

So USAID, especially OFTA, which became the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance in 2020, right in the midst of COVID, it was a very, ⁓ the chain of command was not like it was in the military. Everybody called everybody by their first name. It didn't matter if you were the country team leader. It didn't matter if you were the disaster response team leader. ⁓

huh. huh.

Everybody was first name basis. So everyone was very approachable. But what you had to almost do is like you did in college and you were writing a paper, you had to know how to formulate information to make those people in leadership positions feel comfortable with their options and know that they had options that it wasn't just a yes or no binary. And then to be able to come to them with something that would show immediate results. and how can we do it fiscally, conservatively, and with immediate impact was often the most challenging. And then especially when you would have big bears like Department of Defense who wanted to get involved and they wanted their ship to be seen or their airplane to land or the ambassador of that country wanted to see those things too. How did we... how did we get to a yes with still staying true to our fundamentals as ⁓ sort of the keeper of the humanitarian principles when we would work ⁓ in disaster spaces? So we were like protecting these ideas and also enabling the affected population to be served appropriately. But then we had to kind of balance and coordinate all of the actions. with the big US government. So being able to communicate options was always important and remembering that ⁓ I was worthy to be in that space and that I wasn't, I belong there for a reason. They wanted in my experience, they wanted my understanding for a reason.

Yeah, you belong there.

was what amazing work.

No, I completely agree. it's one of the things that I find so interesting because you're doing a shitload of work in a very silent way at times, but it's producing so much good for the entire world. And, I think the drivers for certain people for success is this glory of saying, hey, like I've done these things, come pat me on the back. But you know, like organizations like USAID, you naturally have to have that disposition of humility, and just saying, fuck it, we're just going to do it because it needs to be done. And these people need help. And I just find that so interesting to, to, to be in an organization like that for so long. What do you think working there has changed about you as a person? And how do you think it's impacted you, the person now?

Um, well, first of all, I think it was the most meaningful work I ever did aside from being a mother. It was a culmination of the skills that I learned from DOD, which I so, I so treasure that, that time. I think it was to allow me to level up to get to, to aid. the, what aid, that time in aid taught me is. there actually is a way to bring a bunch of different disparate rice bowls together and make an amazing meal. ⁓ Yeah. And like we always talk about rice bowls in government. like, thanks for working with me with that analogy, but there were so many different, so we worked in sectors, humanitarian sectors.

Yeah, amazing fried rice dish. Yeah, I know. Mm-hmm.

or how the UN calls clusters. How do we bring all of those clusters, a cluster together to actually have space to positively impact people's lives? And so weaving that, sewing that quilt together professionally was so important because it allowed me to... to pause and to look and see where was that connective tissue between those, all of those clusters. But what I found that I love today, even in my current employee, weird employment state is it all came back to team. It all came back to how well the team is working together, how the leaders in that team saw and heard the people on their team.

Mm-hmm.

because everybody had something valuable to provide and to, to really connect a skill to a human being that they aren't two separate things in this space. That's where the magic happened. you know, I did, was many, many times what's called a deputy manager for operations. That doesn't translate the corporate anything.

Okay. Yeah, tell me what that is.

That's so the way that all the translators want me to reply or say that it's the director of operation. So I'm kind of enabling logistics to happen, administrative tasks to happen, staffing to continue to make sure that we are manning this ⁓ and resourcing this appropriately. And then a part of that too was managing the relationship with DOD. and, so I had a lot of the, like the tangible things under my umbrella when I was a DMO and I really, I loved that, but I was always kind of aching to see, you know, how are we communicating this to Congress? How are we communicating this in our UN forums and our interagency forums and our NGO forums and, and, and what it really came down to is I had to be curious because I could be very comfortable in my role as a DMO or as a civil military affairs coordinator. ⁓ But unless I ask the questions about, you know, why not this food or why not this, ⁓ why are we not funding this organization? If I didn't ask those questions to those other subject matter experts, I would have never been, ⁓ I could have never come to my other teammates as a DMO and say, I see you. Do you want to talk? Let's, let's have a five to 10 minute coffee talk, just to tell me, me what you're feeling. and so it always comes down to team first and knowing what your team is doing to enable them either. like just a quick personal touch point or enabling them to maybe ask this question. Maybe my question spurred curiosity from them to dig a little deeper on something else. I don't know. I don't want to give myself a lot of credit, but what I always know and I always hold onto is when I would, we would have kind of rotations as members of responses. When I would roll off a response, I would get messages from a lot of the young people saying, you know, I really felt seen by you. I really felt heard. Thank you for being team focused. And, and I really loved that.

mean, you should take credit for that. is that is I know we talk about team a lot. And we talk about being a part of a great organization. But I think when you do something fantastic, and people can feel it, and you're the one who's actually executing on it, yourself on the back, right? That's something that you've committed time to, and you've made an impact. And I think there's many times where Especially with personalities like yours and mine, we sort of gloss over that. And we don't take a step back and take time to ourselves and be like, man, I did a fucking great job. Like that was amazing. And that's helped so many people. And I should feel good. And I'm going to go eat an ice cream bar now.

Yeah, I used to, love Thanksgiving and not because of the idea of Thanksgiving and American history and that, but I love the idea of coming together and having a meal. And it also reminds me of my grandmother, because she would make like her Thanksgiving was the best. But recently, it doesn't have to be Thanksgiving, but

Yeah. Yeah.

not doing it all and being able to say, can you bring a little bit of this? Can you bring a little bit of that? And we bring it all together instead of me having that control over, are they going to like this meal where we all are a part of the meal and we all like it because we all feel connected other than just consuming. Like that's kind of like having a big family Thanksgiving meal was like, and getting to that point. ⁓ Those were those magic moments when we would be on a dart or RMT with USAID.

Amazing. Tell me about what life is like for you right now and after USAID. ⁓ What are some of the things right now that's sort of top of mind for you?

⁓ That's another couple hours. First off, I am angry at the dismantling of my agency and what my agency did for our country and how our country could be that ⁓

Yeah, I am too.

that nod to giving back in a really cheap way. So the humanitarian community right now, ⁓ I'll focus on not the development side there. Like you can maybe read about sort of the different organizations within USAID. I focus primarily on disaster response and the humanitarian community, ⁓ simply put. humanitarian community is currently going through what they call the reset and it has everything to do with US retrenchment. So what we're seeing is people are dying. ⁓ Communities are forgotten and not forgotten by implementers like NGOs and locals or us leftover. but they are forgotten by organizations who would provide funding to enable ⁓ those missions. So when you see a huge donor like the US pull out of a place like Sudan, and that was the last response I was on, ⁓ that's when you start seeing the data of children dying in refugee camps in Sudan.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

my team, had a direct line of funding food assistance to those refugees. That was probably the hardest story I read early on when we all got doged, was the babies that we had specifically called out to say that we need these actual feeding mechanisms, food mechanisms to support infant famine. ⁓ man, makes me really angry to know that these children are dying and they don't have to. And it's not just, of course, it's not just Sudan. We are talking everywhere from Burma, Myanmar, however you want to associate that toponym to Sudan and Gaza, of course, like Gaza gets so much ⁓ attention, appropriately so. But... the families in Yemen and Syria. I mean, even conflicts in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Those places are forgotten now by large donors because the US has pulled out. We are no longer leaders in that space. And we have ceded that messaging territory to other countries and other larger organizations. It's really awful. ⁓ But I think you asked me about where I am right now. ⁓ Of course, I got my termination letter on February 25th of this year. And my last official day was March 10th. ⁓ January 21st, I lost all access to my computer because DOGE came in and basically locked down our systems and started doing whatever they did.

Yeah. How long were you at USAID

I started September 5th, 2016, and this was going to be my ninth year, and I was so excited because there were a lot of cool things that were starting to really shape. I was on an operational planning team, and we were just about to publish a doctrine that we wrote that I really nurtured and loved to really standardize how we think about problem sets and prepare.

and what

And to see that kind of come to fruition was so exciting, but it all just evolved like the day after the inauguration. was so heartbreaking. And to see my friends and colleagues, we were all kind of suffering together. It was really, it was really wild. ⁓ So, I've, I've tried to in, in, that space since February, March, I've tried to find a space for me that still is in service, but is still viable for me as a single mom to raise my children and to... not be dependent on social systems that are so fragile in the US, you know, thank God for the American Affordable Affordable Care Act. That's how I was able to have insurance. Thank God for SNAP Thank God for ⁓ WIC. Because there are a number of us women. and men who have children and we've had to use those benefits through this process. And we have skills and we are college graduates and we are not in the stereotypical grouping of people who just wanna milk the government for what it's worth. That really wasn't where we were coming from, but so grateful for those programs. And of course like,

Yeah, absolutely.

My job was finding the work, finding work, ⁓ which has turned into a lot ⁓ of gigs, a lot of piecemealing, another quilt together. ⁓ And I have landed a full-time position, but I will say that a month and a half in, you know whether that's the place for you or not.

Yeah. I mean, we've been around the block enough times, I think with our experience, I'm saying we as an you and I being relatively the same age, you know, the things that really get you excited that have a sense of purpose makes you want to get up and be challenged every day. And I don't think those things will change. I don't think those are things that

Yes.

you know, any job will come in and be able to appreciate some of those desires that we have. ⁓ Anne what, what were some of the first things you did after you found out about DOGE and you know, what they were doing with USAID? Like, how did you react to that?

Have you ever seen those videos of elephants circling around babies to like protect those babies?

No, but definitely maybe I'll put a link in to the description of one.

So. Me and a friend Denise, went into immediate, maybe mama bear is a better way to kind of describe it. We went full mama bear and we like created a signal group and like we actually called it mama bear, but then it turned into all of the people under our kind of hiring mechanism. USAID, we had 17 different hiring mechanisms. So the group of us in our particular hiring mechanism, created a group and it was myself, Denise, and another friend Pui. And we had weekly calls, you know, we were doing everything we could to organize, to understand like our legal rights, because we were talking to lawyers, we were talking to organizations that could support us, we were trying to start. like a nonprofit to be able to help people like if they needed money for food or a place to live because once you got DOGED once you got terminated and say you were in Budapest, you no longer could legally live in Budapest. You had to, even though that was your home of record. So like, how do we get these people home legally and safely? And these were Americans.

Yeah. Wow.

A story that I hope gets told one day. ⁓ So we started this group and we just kept talking to one another and protecting one another and helping the youngers and the olders. We were like that. We were the cream in the middle of the Oreo cookie, like keeping everybody kind of together and they felt safe. or at least informed when somebody had information, everybody in the group would know. also like individually helped people with resumes. One particular young lady, Chelsea, who is now flourishing, really working with her, coaching her from like soup to nuts with resumes and everything from headshots to, what do you want to do? What do you really want? it like you have an opportunity here. I know this feels very crushing and daunting, but what do you want? And talking to like peer mothers like Sam Alfmont, who's now she's a response director for World Central Kitchen and like killing it. And so like keeping that connective tissue for me and that ⁓ was really important and to be able to help other people. through this because not everybody had had lost anything before. had, there are so many people who had never had a death in the family. People who had never grew up poor. They got to go abroad in college and backpack through Europe, which was like, I didn't get on the airplane and go anywhere really until I was an adult.

Yeah.

There are people who had never had to think about those elements of where we were at financially, professionally ever before. So just kind of being solidly there for them was, ⁓ I was really called to do that. And I still am maintaining some of those conversations, which is really nice.

Yeah, you know those conversations are so important because the minute you leave your job or you get fired or you get laid off or whatever that is your world almost overnight goes from this massive place to very small very quickly in that if you're let's just say a single person you go from meeting and talking to people all day to now you're sitting within yourself in your own juices and trying to figure out what the hell to do now. Same even if you have a family you go from meetings all day people telling you what they need from you to the quietness which I talk about of yourself and it's just so freaking hard some days and I think one of the great outlet is connecting with people but

Yes.

I've found over the last couple of months that connecting with people is something that I love doing, but it's also very taxing for me. Like I can't do it all day, every day and not think about what I need to do for myself. How do you, how do you balance that?

Yeah. Like making the right decision. Am I going to hurt somebody's feelings by saying no? That has been a practice. Like, no, I don't have space right now to say that. Four months ago, would have been like, my God, do not say that you don't have time for that person. ⁓ Now I am. I think I reached the point of maybe like exhaustion to go, you have to, Anne, you have got to carve out.

Yeah. Yeah.

time, I have amazing girlfriends who are really good at helping me protect that space and they understand all of that. I have a workout group who it's all virtual like our leader and my friend Kelly, she's in Okinawa, her husband's a Marine, but and we all meet desperately and we have a book club. And so we have different mechanisms of like tending to ourselves, but also together. And you can kind of do it on your terms and on your schedule. That's incredible. I have a partner who supports me. have, like carries a load that is invisible that he sees it and he does it. And it's like, Thank you so much for seeing that. It was in the back of my head. I knew I needed to be done, but thank you for doing that ⁓ to include helping with the boys. But it took kind of a meltdown to get to the point where you were like, okay, you've got to, you've got to think about yourself here for a little bit. Cause the same, like if I go out, say trivia night or something.

Mm-hmm.

Like I'm done with all of that and I love trivia. But when I'm done with that, I'm that was exhausting. And my 20 year old self would have been Ann, oh my God, we used to rage

haha

but trivia night. ⁓

man. Yeah, trivia gets me. Trivia gets me. Anne what do you think as we look forward here? What do you think would be the perfect job for you if you could wave a magic wand and you could make up any job you want in the world? what does that look like?

I knew you were gonna ask this. And I've been thinking about it. So first off, I always know that my perfect job is something in service, in service of people and being a helper. I know Howie said that in his podcast. He sees himself as the helper. I actually, I took a personality test, the Eniogram test, and I'm a two, which is... categorized as the helper and I'm like, okay, that makes sense. ⁓ but if I had my, if I could create a dream job, I would love to be the coordinator of all of those sectors that I used to work in internationally for the region that I live in right now, because I am in, I am in a rural space that is influenced by DC and Charlottesville, Virginia. which is where the University of Virginia is. But the problem sets of our rural community do not equate to the solution sets coming from Charlottesville and DC. And to be an advocate ⁓ and a communicator of that story and how that nuances the need for food, water, shelter, medical care, that would be incredible. And it's beyond emergency management. It's beyond... ⁓ these sort of like tactical skills. But my favorite teacher in seventh grade, Ms. Doreen Brown, she's the executive director for the free clinic in Orange County, which is just on the other side. But then we have a food pantry here in Madison that serves the underserved here in Madison. How do we bring those efforts together to create an even greater impact? Creating that job would be a dream.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. I wonder if there's something like that out there right now. Who knows?

I don't know. think we had some models. Yes! Please. I'm here for it.

If anybody listening knows of one, shoot us a DM. Yeah, me too. ⁓ Anne last question, and feel free to take your time and think about this, but if your sons were listening to this episode, 10 years from now, what do you think they'll get out of it?

I, so I'll say what I hope that they get out of it and then I'll say what I think they'll get out of it. I hope that they see that, I hope that they'll see that I lead with them first, that, you know, they are my motivators to be better, to be better and to be curious and to be kind and, and I don't mean kind, I mean thoughtful.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

like thoughtful in my approach to learning and thoughtful in my approach to how we interact with human beings. And what I think that they will get out of it is that... their mom had a lot to give and finding that right place to kind of plant is hard, but she's still trying to figure it out and to be, she wants us to be proud of her.

Yeah, I know they are. I know they are. You've done some amazing things. Anne thank you so much for sharing patches from your quilts of life and your parents and your grandparents' quilt. I am honored and I appreciate you coming on and I wish you well, my friend. Thank you so much.

Yes. Well, the honor is all mine. Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing back from you.

All right. All right. Take care. See ya.

See ya. Bye.