Ask Me Anything about life and work in the Foreign Service, civilian assignments in conflict zones, and the road from literature to diplomacy.

Jared Banks is a U.S. Foreign Service officer most recently working overseas at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Banks was previously assigned to Afghanistan, Brazil, Poland, and Washington, D.C. He completed a BA in comparative literature at Brigham Young University and a PhD in African studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2001. Banks was a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique and served an LDS mission in São Paulo, Brazil. He is married to Laura Lefgren (also an alumnus of BYU and UW–Madison).