Aaron Williams served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970. Since that time, he has served as coordinator of minority recruitment and project evaluation officer for the Peace Corps in Chicago, a senior manager at the U.S. Agency for International Development and executive vice president of the International Youth Foundation. He was awarded the U.S. Agency for International Development Distinguished Career Service Award, and was twice awarded the Presidential Award for Distinguished Service. The Chronicle’s Ciaran O’Connor sat down with Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams before his speech at the Sanford School of Public Policy Thursday afternoon. The video of the interview can be viewed in its entirety below.
The Chronicle: What first drew you to Peace Corps, and can you tell me a little bit about the Dominican Republic and your work there?
Aaron Williams: Well, I think I was inspired, even though I was very young, by what I heard from President [John F.] Kennedy in his speeches. I was about to start a career as a high school teacher on the South Side of Chicago, and I said, let me see if I can think about going to a place where I could learn a new language, where I can experience a different culture, and so I decided the Peace Corps was the way to do it. When I told my family and friends about this, they said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ The one person who thought it was a marvelous idea was my mother. [In the Dominican Republic], I was a teacher trainer. I was assigned to work with a large group of rural schoolteachers who were in a program whereby they were going to gain a high school diploma and at the same time improve their overall teaching techniques. They gave up their Saturdays during the school year and gave up their summers during vacation so that they could improve the way they taught their children in their classes—pretty amazing group of people.
TC: As Director of the Peace Corps, do you have an agenda? Are there any specific policy changes that you’d like to see implemented?
AW: I have three areas in terms of my priorities for the Peace Corps. First of all, we want to have growth. We now have received a significant increase in our budget because of strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress. We’ll grow by going into new countries... and building on successful programs in countries where we now serve, in education, health, microfinance, environment and agriculture. The second priority is innovation. We’re going to create an office of innovation in the Peace Corps and take a look at all of our operations: how we recruit volunteers, how we train volunteers, improve ways of training our staff, improve and modernize our information technology platform to be more innovative and more interactive with our volunteers. We’re going to look at our finance. Finally, I want to engage with this wonderful community of 200,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers who are leaders in all walks of life, in medicine, in education, in business and engage them in ways that will help the Peace Corps enhance its profile here in the United States and encourage more people to join.
TC: How do you specifically plan on bolstering recruitment, especially on college campuses, with young people?
AW: Well, one of the great advantages we have, such as is the case here at Duke, is that we have a large cadre of returned Peace Corps volunteers and they’re our best spokespersons actually because they’ve lived the experience and they’re enthusiastic about the Peace Corps.
TC: What about the Peace Corps in crises? Do you ever do things with natural disasters, like the earthquake in Haiti for example?
AW: In terms of natural disasters, it depends on the country where this occurs. If we were in that country, and there’s a natural disaster, you can be assured that Peace Corps volunteers respond. In the case of Haiti, we did not have a program in Haiti. We left Haiti in 2006 because of political turmoil. But in fact, we have a small group of Peace Corps staff working in Haiti as part of the U.S. government’s interagency relief efforts.
TC: Why do you think you were chosen as Director?
AW: First of all, I have always had a lifelong love for the Peace Corps because the Peace Corps changed my life forever. I never imagined, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, that I was going to have the opportunity to have a career in foreign service, that I was going to become an international development professional and at sometime in the future have the opportunity to lead the Peace Corps. And I think it’s a wonderful thing for a former volunteer to have the chance to be the lead person at the Peace Corps. I will be eternally grateful to President [Barack] Obama for giving me the opportunity to serve.
TC: Did you know the President before you were nominated?
AW: Well, I had been one of his supporters from the time that he ran for the Senate, but we really had never worked together. I left Chicago way before he came.
TC: When you were in the Dominican Republic, I thought it’d be interesting to ask, what’s one experience there that really stood out for you and solidified the Peace Corps as what you think of it today?
AW: When I got there and started working with a group of 15 rural schoolteachers, I was only 20 years old. I had just graduated from college. I saw that they were dependent on me to help them move through this course to attain their high school diploma. When I saw the level of sacrifice and the fact that they saw me as being an integral part of what they wanted to achieve personally and professionally, it was just overwhelming commitment. I was determined to work 24/7 for the two years that I was there to really try to make a difference, and that was an extraordinarily amazing learning experience. For a young person at the age of 20 to have this responsibility in a complicated and complex situation—it’s really an experience that will change you forever.
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