Congratulations to our 2024 Linda Duttenhaver Distinguished Alumni Award recipient Leslie Gerson!
Without realizing it at the time, Leslie Gerson began her long international affairs career in 1968, when she participated in the UCEAP program at the University of Bordeaux. She graduated from UCSB in 1970 with majors in French and English and a minor in History. She spent the next year getting her Teaching Certificate from UCLA and was immediately hired to teach both English and French in the Los Angeles-area parochial high school that she had previously attended. During that time, on a dare, she took the exam for the Foreign Service and began a 43-year-long relationship with the Department of State.
She served initial tours as a consular officer (visas, passports, deaths, arrests, and other thorny problems involving American citizens) at the U.S. embassies in London, Belgrade, Port-au-Prince, and Antigua; taught consular law and practice to new recruits at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington D.C.; and coordinated budget, staffing, infrastructure, and management issues for consular operations in the Western Hemisphere. She served as a Senior Watch Officer at the Department of State’s 24-hour Operations Center where it seemed to her that most of the major events involving the fall of the Iron Curtain, not to mention the U.S. invasion of Panama, happened as soon as her shift began.
From 1990-1993, she was Consul General at the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador: one year of war, one year of cease fire, and one year of peace. A remarkable time and a tour of duty to remember forever.... After a year of study with a group of 30 representatives from several foreign affairs agencies designed to reconnect them with U.S. domestic realities, she was assigned to the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva, initially as the Deputy Chief of Mission and subsequently as the Chargé d’Affaires. That tour of duty saw a focus on the Rwanda massacre and the ensuing outflow of Hutu refugees to then-Zaire, the initial Bosnian peace talks hosted at the U.S. Mission, human rights concerns around the world, environmental issues, UN politics, negotiation with 100’s of counterparts representing UN member countries on every imaginable issue, and a U.S. government shutdown in the midst of it all.
Following Geneva, Leslie served in a series of Washington assignments while waiting for an experimental bone marrow transplant. She served on the Board of Examiners reviewing aspiring candidates for the Foreign Service, was an office director with the Bureau of Oceans & International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and finally became the Principle Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In 2001, once more able to travel abroad, she became Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs in Ottawa, Canada – overseeing consular operations at the seven diplomatic offices in Canada.
Retiring officially in 2007, she has remained employed with the Department of State’s Office of Inspector General – inspecting U.S. embassy operations overseas as well as Department of State offices and programs in the U.S.
To read more about Leslie and past recipients, go to the Distinguished Alumni Award website.