Alumni

Public Service: For Alumni, It's a Calling

MARSHA E. BARNES ’69
U.S. Ambassador to Suriname

Marsha Barnes loves what she does, although the neighborhoods she has worked in during the past 30 years have been far from her native Kentucky.

As the United States’s current ambassador to Suriname, she says, “I have found that the Foreign Service offers a wonderful combination of what I think most of us want: adventure and security,” says Barnes, who first worked for the service in 1973. Before she settled in the Caribbean for her current assignment, her work had taken her from Guyana to Soviet Russia to Cold War-era Berlin.

As a result of spending two of her high school years in Lausanne, Switzerland, Barnes came to Lake Forest both interested in international relations and able to speak fluent French and some German.
She pursued her interests during her sophomore year at Lake Forest by spending a semester in Dijon, France. The Vietnam War was in full throttle, and Barnes heard frequent denunciations of Americans during her time in France. “Somehow the picture that was painted of my country as an evil war-mongering nation wasn’t one I recognized,” she remembers, adding that her presence in a foreign country helped her present the United States to others outside the U.S.

Although she did not realize it at the time, Barnes says living through Lake Forest’s winters prepared her for her later assignment in Moscow. Barnes moved to the Soviet Union in 1983, after serving as vice consul to the U.S. mission in Berlin and as special assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State’s office.

Living in Moscow during the early Gorbachev era allowed her to meet dissident Elena Bonner as well as the daughter of Joseph Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva. “There [was] something surreal to driving by the Kremlin and having [Alliluyeva] say, ‘That was my window when I was a child,’” Barnes recalls.

Barnes admits that her present position as ambassador to Suriname has its advantages, among them 85-degree weather in February and an attractive riverfront home. Suriname’s varied architectural styles provide her ample opportunity to apply architectural knowledge taught to her by emeritus art professor Franz Schulze, whose class she credits with helping her look at buildings in a more critical way.

But in her role as ambassador she also must discuss potentially sticky issues such as narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and the country’s HIV/AIDS problem. While engaging in those conversations, she remembers the importance of “trying to speak candidly, trying to write accurately, and trying to be sure of the facts before you launch off” — traits she learned while at Lake Forest.

More than three decades after she first started her career as a public servant, Barnes says her years abroad have taught her about America’s virtues. “No matter how irritated you might become about some particular policy, don’t ever lose sight of what a great and good nation ours is,” she says.

Barnes remembers the importance of "trying to speak candidly, trying to write accurately, and trying to be sure of the facts before you launch off" — traits she learned while at Lake Forest.