Contributions by Nevadans in the Foreign Service

Born in Reno, Elizabeth A. Burton entered foreign affairs in 1949 as a statistician in the Central Programming Office of the European Recovery Program, working to implement the Marshall Plan in a Europe devastated by World War II. She was later assigned to the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), where she secured agreements with foreign governments to allow OPIC to insure U.S. business investments against loss due to expropriation, civil unrest, or war. Read the rest of her story in ADST’s collection.

Spending part of her childhood in Las Vegas, Betty Crites Dillon was drawn to international affairs when she worked supporting communications at the United Nations Charter Conference in San Francisco after World War II. Dillon was the first woman to serve as a Peace Corps country director, in both Tunisia and Sri Lanka. After earning her pilot’s license, she became involved in international air travel negotiations with the Civil Aeronautics Board and went on to become U.S. Chief of Mission at the International Civil Aviation Organization, the first American woman to serve as a resident permanent representative to a United Nations agency. Read more about her career in her ADST oral history.

Philip C. Habib was a sophomore in college when he met his future wife in Reno. Fate brought him back to Reno and to her when the U.S. Army sent him there as a young private before his eventual deployment to Europe in World War II. He joined the Foreign Service in 1949. In positions ranging from Ambassador to Under Secretary, he became a prominent peace negotiator, playing roles in negotiations to end the Vietnam War, maintain stability on the Korean peninsula, and bring peace to the Middle East. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982 for his role as mediator to end fighting in southern Lebanon. Read his oral history in ADST’s collection.

Due to his father’s job with the Southern Pacific Railroad, William B. Milam spent his early childhood moving between Wells, Carlin, Elko, and Reno. He joined the Foreign Service in 1962. When he was Chief of Mission in Liberia in the 1990s, fighting broke out in Monrovia and Milam offered shelter on the Embassy compound to American citizens and other endangered expatriots and arranged their evacuation, potentially saving nearly 3,000 lives. Milam also served as Ambassador to Bangladesh and Pakistan. Read his full story in ADST’s collection.

Spending part of his childhood on a cattle ranch near Rowland, E. Michael Southwick joined the Foreign Service in 1967. As Ambassador to Uganda from 1994 to 1997, he promoted democracy in the midst of the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency and oversaw programs to address the AIDS crisis. Read more about him in his complete oral history.

Steven Thomas Stefani IV earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Nevada – Reno and worked with the U.S. Forest Service as a rangeland management specialist in northeast Nevada on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Stefani then joined the Foreign Agricultural Service and volunteered for service in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan. He was helping farmers renew depleted soil, improve harvests, and modernize cold storage facilities when he was killed by a roadside bomb on October 4, 2007. His goal of building a playground for Ghazni children was completed by his family after his death.