426: How to Break Into Foreign Policy Speechwriting w/ Dr. Andrew Imbrie, Center for Security and Emerging Technology [Espresso Shots]

Andrew Imbrie is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology and teaches foreign policy speech writing and rhetoric at Georgetown. He previously worked as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a senior advisor to Visiting Distinguished Statesman former Secretary of State John Kerry.  Prior to that, Andrew served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, where he was a speechwriter for Secretary of State Kerry and was primary author of over 300 of Secretary Kerry’s speeches. Andrew graduated from Connecticut College in 2006, where he studied the Humanities. He received his M.A. from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and his Ph.D. in international relations from Georgetown University. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE: How Congress, the private sector, philanthropies and all levels of government offer opportunities to get a start on a career as a speechwriter (3:20) Why it’s important to have kindness and good communication skills as a potential speechwriter (5:57) Why you can come from any educational background and still become a speechwriter (11:05) Why having a graduate degree and some previous job experience is helpful if you want to work in foreign policy (12:53) How living overseas in Europe shaped Andrew’s perspectives on foreign policy (14:49) How to move beyond feeling demoralized if/when you hear that a speech you wrote simply wasn’t good enough (21:42) Why there’s no end to what you can accomplish if you’re willing to give someone else the credit  (24:27) How The West Wing and Einstein’s Dreams (27:55) Why it was so much fun, for Andrew, to work as a team of writers when he was a foreign policy speechwriter (30:28)