When seasoned diplomat MaryKay L. Carlson was nominated by President Joe Biden as envoy to the Philippines in 2022, she was so thrilled, saying it was beyond her “wildest dreams.” And, so far, it has been a thrilla’ in Manila for this “Woman of Style and Substance” 2023.
By Joanne Rae M. Ramirez
Photography by Mark Chester Ang
There really is such a thing as the luck of the draw. But what you do with your luck, good or bad it may seem at first, determines your fortune — or misfortune.
The former MaryKay Loss of Little Rock, Arkansas was a freshman at Rhodes College, a small liberal arts college in Memphis, Tennessee at a time when students drew numbers before they could choose their classes.
“Unfortunately for me, I drew bad lottery numbers. So, by the time I got to choose my classes, the courses I had wanted to take were full. And so I ended up taking the ‘Politics of Latin America,’ and ‘Lesser-known plays of Shakespeare.’”
The latter did not change her life, but the course on Latin American politics charted her future.
“(It) is what set me on the trajectory to become a diplomat,” says MaryKay, now the US Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay L. Carlson.
Her professor Dr. David Likes launched her on this trajectory by carefully mentoring her.
“He just exposed me to that whole career that I had no idea even existed. And he was a mentor. He took me under his wing,” she shares.
“If it had not been for him, I would not have learned about the career and would not have taken International Studies. I then became a double major: Spanish and International Studies, thanks to that bad lottery number and my professor.”
It was a trajectory that took her around the globe, armed not only with diplomatic skills, but language skills. Ambassador Carlson has studied Latin, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swahili, Mandarin Chinese and Ukrainian. Next to English she is most fluent in Spanish.
She previously served as the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prior to her assignment to Argentina, she served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in New Delhi, India, and held the position of principal deputy executive secretary for the Secretary of State in Washington, DC. A Foreign Service officer since 1985, she has served at US Diplomatic Missions in China (twice), Ukraine, Hong Kong, Mozambique, Kenya and the Dominican Republic.
When she was nominated by President Joe Biden as envoy to the Philippines in 2022, “I was so thrilled. It was beyond my wildest dreams.”
The reality of living and working here have met her expectations. It has so far been a thrilla’ in Manila for her.
“You can imagine what it feels like as an outsider to come to the Philippines and feel so connected so quickly. And it’s not just Americans. You ask any of my fellow diplomats, they will say how amazing it is to be posted here. How wonderful it is because of the people.”
Married to retired diplomat Aubrey Carlson (“extremely wonderful” is how she describes him) and with two adult daughters, Ambassador Carlson concedes that US-Philippine ties have had their ups and downs, but as often said in speeches of either the Philippine president or the American president, remain, “ironclad.”
“You know, I think we’ve been through some ups and downs over the course of our history. Certainly, the pandemic period challenged every relationship, made us step back and reassess ourselves as individuals and as countries and what was important to us. But absolutely, I think our relationship is as strong as it’s ever been,” she says.
“We do say a lot that our alliance is ironclad. Ironclad literally means clad or coated with iron, and originally referred to warships. But over time it’s come to mean something that’s so firm and secure as to be unbreakable. That’s how we see the alliance.”
She believes China is not, should not, be necessarily in the equation of US-Philippine ties.
“My point is that the US-Philippine alliance stands on its own. It has existed for a very long time, before the so-called rise of China. So, to see the relationship only through the lens of the PRC, I just think is unfair.”
#FriendsPartnersAllies
That hashtag encompasses the vital, ironclad threads of Philippine-American relations, and it has over 1,000 posts on Instagram.
“We use that hashtag a lot, #FriendsPartnersAllies. When you think of friends, that’s all the people-to-people ties, the scholarship programs, the travel and tourism and family connections. And then partners would be the economic aspect, trade investment and also development assistance. We have a lot of scientific exchanges that build into that partnership as well. And then allies, you think of it in traditional military terms. I think this is probably not a coincidence that we list friends first because really, that underpins everything else that we do — our strong people-to-people connections. I have never been at a place where I have felt the connections to be so tight and so meaningful as they are here in the Philippines,” she says.
She is “excited” about a forthcoming presidential trade and investment delegation that President Biden had announced during the visit of President Marcos to Washington last year. It will be composed of top-level CEOs from US companies.
“I think there’s a lot of interest in the Philippines by US investors and we are very excited that we’ll be welcoming here the first-of-its-kind presidential trade and investment delegation.”
The date of the visit is not yet set, but Carlson thinks it will be in the first quarter of next year.
Music Diplomacy
In her commitment to US-Philippine ties, she’s willing to go the extra mile — or song. Carlson once said she would never do karaoke, but after being posted in Manila, well, that vow proved not ironclad after all.
“It just really goes to show the depth of my commitment to the bilateral relationship. That I’m willing to embarrass myself,” she says with a laugh. “I actually enjoy watching other people sing. I just feel self-conscious. I know I’m not a good singer.”
Her go-to song? “I usually sing Louis Armstrong’s ‘A Kiss to Build a Dream On’ because there’s a long interlude. And it’s also a song that — when my parents were young and we were little, they would play that on the record player.”
Her parents and the warm and stable — and disciplined — home she and her three younger siblings were raised in prepared her to take on the world, literally.
“I had a wonderful childhood, the oldest of four children in a Catholic family,” she shares. “My father, unfortunately, just passed away in September. But my mother is still in the same house that we moved to when I was 10 years old. So, we had a wonderful neighborhood and had summers playing hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids. We could walk to school.
“Going home in the evenings, Mom would always say, ‘How was your school day?’ Even though she had worked all day, she was very good about practicing vocabulary words or spelling words with us. She was always involved in our education. And consequently, I came to be a diplomat. My sister’s a vice president of a company. I’ve got one brother who’s a liver and kidney transplant surgeon, and the other is a lawyer at a high-powered law firm in New York. And that’s because my parents really fostered a sense of learning in us.”
Her mother remains a role model to this day.
Asked about the most famous son of Arkansas, former President Bill Clinton, Carlson noted his “ability to connect to people.” She also lauded his wife, diplomat and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for being “so smart and so focused.”
Diplomacy, Ambassador Carlson believes, is “making connections, establishing relationships of trust in order to pursue common interests based on a value system that you share.”
It is not necessarily a “feminine art,” as the late former US Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce was once quoted as saying. “But women can certainly be outstanding diplomats. We’ve had a lot of good examples of them. I think women in leadership roles, whether it’s diplomacy or anything else, approach leadership differently. At least in my experience, there can be very outstanding men who are great leaders. But I think women pull together as a team. Women leaders appreciate teamwork more, in part, because it takes a village to raise a child — there are a lot of women who run the household. So, they’re used to working as a team,” Carlson believes.
“My husband’s very supportive. We were what they call a tandem couple. So, we were both getting joint assignments and we were lucky to be able to serve together until he retired when I went to take the deputy job in India.”
When she’s not tending to alliances, treaties and walking the tightrope of diplomacy, what is MaryKay L. Carlson like?
For one, she likes decorating cakes and cookies. Just the icing on the cake, not the baking of the cake, mind you. She also doesn’t think attending socials is a chore.
“When I get invited, I love to go to receptions or dinners or to the ballet because you meet new people, you meet and see something different. So, in that sense, I’m willing to forego my traditional pastimes in order to expose myself to more interesting things that are happening here. I just like meeting new people all the time and learning new things.”
Diplomacy may not necessarily be feminine, but the feminine MaryKay L. Carlson thinks the world of diplomacy and her world, at the moment, is in this archipelago that has welcomed her with song.
Art direction by Dexter Francis De Vera
Hair and makeup by Floe Tapayan
Styling by Mike de Guzman and Geo Palmiano of MGP
