Foreign Service Officer (U.S. Diplomat)
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC

Meet Esther Joe, a dedicated Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Department of State. She is learning Thai at the Foreign Service Institute in preparation to be the deputy spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Joe began her diplomatic career as a public diplomacy officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, and then served as a consular officer at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. After two overseas tours, she returned to Washington, D.C., as the Philippines desk officer in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, where she developed and coordinated U.S. policies toward the Philippines and laid the groundwork for the first-ever U.S.-Philippines-Japan trilateral leaders’ summit. She also served in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, where she relaunched a new civilian security and justice sector capacity building program with the Palestinian Authority.

Joe earned a master’s in Development Practice from Emory, where the program’s focus on contextual understanding and field-based training prepared her for a career in diplomacy.

When she’s not working, Joe loves to spend her free time gardening, traveling, hiking, journaling, getting cozy with a good book and a strong cup of coffee, and discovering new horror movies. She finds fulfillment in representing the United States overseas, promoting peace, supporting prosperity, and providing assistance to American citizens abroad. She values the challenging and impactful nature of her work, whether it involves negotiating peace treaties, fighting human trafficking, improving trade relations, or engaging youth and opinion leaders.

She says her Emory education equipped her with useful skills in monitoring and evaluation, organizational management, project design, and gender analysis.