Welcome to One CA Podcast. Today, we welcome Diana Parzik, Major in the Army Reserve, to discuss the role and capabilities of the USAID Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation.
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Transcript:
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Our primary role is that we are USA's primary point of contact with the Department of Defense.
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Hi, welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined with Diana Parzik. She's staffer now at USAID and a major in the Army Reserve Civil Affairs, former company commander down in Virginia Beach, Virginia, now at the 353KCOM, and recently promoted at USAID. So Diana, welcome to the 1CA podcast.
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Hi, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. So we've known each other for several years now,
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known each other for several years now, and you used to be the I used to work in global health engagement and then more recently as the civil military coordinator for AFRICOM at USAID. What are you doing now?
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It's interesting that you mentioned this. As of this past week, I took on a new role as the acting division chief for policy plans division within the office of civil military cooperation. You mentioned I was the AFRICOM civil military coordinator. I've been with USAID for two years now, engaged in, and I'm also actually in a dual role capacity too. So not only am I in that supervisory role, That is looking at not just AFRICOM, but also INDOPACOM, SOCOM. It falls under my portfolio as a SOUTHCOM. All the different combatant commands and our civil -military relationship with all those different combatant commands across the interagency.
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So could you talk about the Office of Civil -Military Cooperation? You had a bunch of experience there. What's that office all about? What's its mission?
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Our primary role is that we are USAID's primary point of contact with the Department of Defense. And the way that what our objective there, you know, is that we are aimed to align our development and defense objectives and to leverage unique capabilities and our skill sets on both sides of USAID and DOD. So, you know, what that means, and, you know, I'll look at AFRICOM from. in my experience right now. We have a senior development advisor at AFRICOM and we have our deputy development advisor at AFRICOM. We actually have a USA person who also sits in the J5. With AFRICOM's, you know, approach and looking at the continent is in support of development and diplomacy objectives. And our colleagues that currently reside within the combatant commands really aim to put USAID on the table there in conversations. In a reciprocal relationship within USAID, we also have a number of military LNOs that reside within our office. So from all the different combat commands, we have a military LNO. I sit right next to my colleague who coordinates on AFRICOM and is a green suitor.
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a reciprocal
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Could you talk a little bit about those LNOs? What branches of the military did it come from? Does it matter in your opinion? Or sort of to the value of? of the office, what backgrounds they bring.
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We have had quite a variety, and so I think that the diversity in our office of not only services but of skill sets has really helped to enrich our conversation within USAID and teach USAID about what kind of skill sets the military has. So, you know, we've had Navy personnel, we've had Army personnel, we currently have Air Force personnel, we have folks that are, many of them actually are civil affairs. Both active and reserve component civil affairs have provided LNOs to help support this mission. And we have skill sets outside of that, foreign area officers and what have you. And I'm not even touching on the number of other military fellowship programs that are offered throughout the agency, too, that help to really inform USAID about what the military, their skill sets, their background, and how to coordinate with military.
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and how
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When I came into the Army, it was a steep learning curve for the lingo and all of the acronyms and the alphabet soup of what I had to try. And I'm still learning it, right? It never stops. And I would imagine it's a different world, a different language for someone from the military to come over to USAID.
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Absolutely. So I mentioned already for you to say, I've been with USAID now for two years.
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Right.
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And, you know, I can't. I can't tell you. There's, you know, every day that I'm learning something new and, you know, sometimes it's not just a definition, a new acronym for USA, but, you know, DOD has a different acronym and sometimes they have different acronyms that have two or three different meanings within the DOD itself. And, you know, and so you're constantly having that conversation and trying to translate. between the two languages. And I find myself in the middle oftentimes of having to train, you know, I, Now that I've been here for a little while, I feel like I almost speak two different languages within the two different agencies. And I often offer as like a translator. So there's another thing I think that I'm discussing a little bit later, but there's some different courses and stuff that we offer in USAID. And one of the courses is often taught with a foreign service officer who's had that technical experience in the field.
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often offer
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And I turned around when I got to teach civil affairs communities and I turned around and I was like, so this is what this means for you. And to really make sure that the conversation that it's a desk officer, a foreign service officer has a meaningful impression on the military community. And there's a. there's a connection there and there's something that really resonates and how, you know, that can make the military be more effective or enlighten them in another way that will provide them a more informed decision, you know, about USAID and what USAID brings when they're working together in the field.
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That's good to hear. I don't know how long it's been going on, but I think it's a... It's a no -brainer now. People would probably wonder, like, how could we get along without talking to each other and sitting in the next office or next cubicle and working together the way that AID and DOD have been doing for years. Diana, I would think that your previous work, and we mentioned global health engagement, and then your role as civil affairs officer, would really help to enhance what you do now at USAID. How would you say that previous work set you up for success?
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Yeah, so prior to coming to USAID, I worked with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs in the Office of International Health, and then I went on to work. That was another office in transformation under the Defense Health Agency and then Global Health Engagement very briefly before I took the job with USAID. And I think that my prior work there really helped me understand the way that duty policy is drafted. It helped me to understand the impacts of policy and when you're going through a capabilities -based assessment, what that means. At the time, we were involved in looking at the global health engagement as a piece that initially came from DODI 3000 .05, and then the health community came in and drafted their own DODI. policy on support to stabilization for the military health system, which then kind of morphed into global health engagement. And what does that look like? And what are the skill sets that are needed across the Army, Air Force, Navy to achieve this new mission set, this new capability within the medical community? And we know we've been doing it for a very long time in the DOD. But, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of skill sets, you know, and we got quite invested for a while in the .milpf process. So the doctor and the organization training, material leadership, education, personnel, and facilities, and looking at do we have the right skill set to achieve this engagement at, you know, at the combatant command level. And I think that... Like I said, it helped me to understand the policy level. But then I come here, and I'm working with USAID, and there's areas in which we intersect that are policy -based, like 3000 .05, again, stabilization. And there's other ones, too, on humanitarian assistance or foreign humanitarian assistance that, you know, it really has helped me to be able to, once again, translate. what DOD policy, how DOD policy works and how, you know, that, that takes effect into developing, you know, a capability or, you know, how that, how that translates down the road at the more tactical level for, for someone who's in the military.
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Do you find that your colleagues, if there's a question that's global health or health exchange related, they turn to you as the internal subject matter expert?
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Not anymore. And the reason why we actually have a person within the Office of Civil and Military that continues to... have that interchange with global health. And I mentioned one of our, you know, we have a number of LNOs. One of our LNOs is a military, is a Navy LNO, and that's, her background is in health. And so we have, we definitely have that piece of it covered down. And I think that USAID realizes that there is some overlap there with the DoD and global health and, you know,
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And so
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there is some overlap there with the DoD and global health and, you know, global health engagement.
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know,
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I can't speak to the most recent ways in which they've been engaged, but I know that that's a continued conversation that we have with the DOD.
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That's great. So what has surprised you about the work of USAID?
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You know, one of the things that I think that surprised me most about the agency was about how many technical skills that we have. It's really like, you know, we are an inch wide and a mile deep. And the number of people that we have in this organization that have PhDs and multiple, you know, master's degrees. And, you know, you can really talk to some people that have some very interesting subject matter expertise in agriculture or health or what have you. And it's always impressed me, you know, that this agency. that they have all those people from the field that there's questions that come back in Washington, that they have people that can offer them the most up -to -date research and what's going on and what the best practices are. And so I've really found that piece of it to be in our agency very interesting and sometimes very intimidating as well. Yeah,
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you're surrounded by a bunch of brainiacs.
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Yeah. That's good to hear, though, that you can draw on a lot of expertise, and the well is pretty deep. So I want to talk to you about the collaboration that happens between offices of civil cooperation and DOD. You know, the office touts using personnel exchanges, policy development, and training. I want to break those down a little bit and discuss each aspect. What are some current examples of personnel exchanges? I guess you'd mention the LNOs.
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Yeah. And I really think that's one of our strongest. One of our strongest aspects of our office is that we have, like I mentioned, our senior development advisors, our deputy development advisors, who reside at the combatant commands. And then sometimes we have more military personnel, like in Africa, and we have someone also in our J5. And then there are military LNOs that reside here. We also have folks that reside in the Pentagon. And really the point of this is that we make sure that our development objectives are lined with DODs and vice versa and making sure that our equities are represented in those conversations.
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And what would you say are policies jointly developed or routinely shared between AID and DOD?
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I mentioned one of the policies already, the DODI 3000 .05. I should also just mention, too, that USAID has a policy on cooperation with the Department of Defense. And then there's other policies, too, that CNC has worked on. One has been a memorandum in the past. About a year and a half now that it's been signed by our administrator, Mark Green, of mission civil military cooperation officers. And so each of the missions, each of our missions, now has this new, what we're referring to as an MC2, that is the point of contact for the Department of Defense, you know, on that level of engagement on the ground. So, and this is, I should also caveat and say this is outside of the humanitarian assistance. piece so there's they have there's someone else also at the mission the MDRO relief officer the mission disaster relief officer would handle disaster -related things. But this individual, if you want to collaborate, coordinate with USA on some sort of a MedCat, for example, or if there's radio towers or something like that, this is the person that is the point of contact within that mission to... really navigate through the mission and figure out who the best plans to contact are. So I mentioned previously, this kind of ties into the technical subject matter expertise that we have in the agency.
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So I
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matter expertise that we have in the agency. And, you know, a lot of times we don't, you know, coming from my DOD, my military experience as a CA officer, we don't know. who the best point of contact is. And it sometimes, you know, might not be the health person. It might be a program officer. It might be a person in education or what have you based on what you're,
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not be the
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or what have you based on what you're, you know, what you are interested in doing