Jim Hazeltine-Shedd: Insight into the Changing Role of Today’s Foreign Service IMS

Jim Hazeltine-Shedd, currently an Enterprise Coordinator in the Bureau of Information Resources Management with the U.S. Department of State, entered the Foreign Service as an IMS in fall 2012. His first tour in Zambia was in a small Embassy where he became the acting IMO only four months into the tour. Like “drinking from the fire hose,” Jim says, he had to do everything and he learned a lot. While there’s no “typical” day in the life of an IMS, Jim describes the myriad responsibilities of an IMS. He tells an interesting story about preparing for a visit from a U.S. presidential visit during the Obama administration. Jim closes his interview with insights into the changing role of the IMS as information technology moves into the cloud. There is a growing need for skills, such as communications, writing and project management, that will facilitate putting technology solutions into the hands of front-line diplomats to help them do their jobs.

To read the article from this interview, click here.

Subscribe to the FAIT Fellowship YouTube channel! Click the YouTube button below.