About Me

About this. This blog collects pieces of, perhaps, memorabilia as I continue my career and life transition. Yes, memorabilia we shall call it, pieces of the old, pieces of the new, and pieces of the transition. Might be a bit tricky...

About me is easier.

Post-retirement, I completed a graduate degree in library and information science at Catholic University and landed a great job as a reference and instruction librarian at Western Carolina University. Circumstances forced my return to the DC area. I worked for two years part time as a reference and instruction librarian at American University before getting bit by the archivist bug and returning to CUA to take the archiving sequence of courses. Meanwhile, I moved to a position as program analyst at the DC Office of Public Records, DC Archives. I left DC Archives after a year to devote myself fully to teaching a course I had developed, The August Wilson American Century Cycle, back at AU. After completing the course for the first time, I took a position as Town Archivist in a small Maryland suburb, Garrett Park. When an academic archivist job opened up, manuscript librarian at Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, I traded up. Since COVID, I have worked a variety of remote jobs as a consultant.

I was born and raised in Greensboro, NC, where I attended F.D. Bluford Elementary School. My favorite teacher there was Mrs Lillian J. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy loved poetry and dance, and she passed that love on to us. From Bluford we went to Lincoln Street Junior High School, also in the neighborhood. At Lincoln the Anne C Stouffer Foundation found me and sent me to Woodberry Forest School. Later, I attended the Governor’s School of North Carolina, a summer enrichment program for the state’s top-ranked high school students.

After three years at North Carolina A&T State University, where i bounced back and forth between majors in electrical engineering, biology and economics, I enlisted in the Navy Nuclear Power program. Following engineering training, I reported to the Sturgeon-class fast attack submarine, the USS Hammerhead (SSN-663).

Fifteen months and several operational patrols later, I volunteered for the pre-commissioning crew of the USS Michigan (SSBN-727 (B)), and served there from 1982 to 1985. At the end of my enlistment I applied to and was selected for Naval Science Institute in Newport, Rhode Island, where I completed coursework, then on to the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) unit at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, FL. There I earned a reserve Naval commission and a B.S. degree in Economics (summa cum laude, Distinguished Military Graduate).

Following graduation and surface warfare training in Newport, RI, I reported to the USS Luce (DDG-38), where I completed division officer tours in engineering and weapons systems. In 1990, while still on active duty, I took and passed the Foreign Service written and oral exams, and joined the Foreign Service in May, 1992. Later, while assigned to Embassy London, I completed an M.A. at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). I met Filomena Pinto Pereira in London and we got married and lived happily ever after.

My last foreign service assignment, capping a 20-year foreign service career, was as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Near East Affairs bureau (2011-2012). I am a MIT Seminar XXI fellow and a former member of the Warlord Loop. I served overseas in Guinea-Bissau, London, Angola, Ghana, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria and retired from federal service in 2013.