I am a 56 year-old, free-thinking individual whose life value is seated in relationships and experiences (not things!). Growing up as a “Foreign Service brat,” I moved every two to three years, with African furniture, Asian art, and other artifacts in our home; all the while thinking I was normal and other kids were not. Dropping out of Florida State University in my freshman year, I joined the US Army Special Forces where I served for over 16 years. Following this unique and humbling journey (to say the least) serving in both the US and Germany, I transitioned to a second career in the Foreign Service, working and living in the US, Bosnia, Estonia, China, Rwanda, and Poland. I retired in 2015 from the federal government, but continue to work intermittently as a contractor, volunteer for our employee association, and mentor up and coming Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). I am married with no children. My wife is the most selfless person I know and directly or indirectly responsible for virtually every success in my life since we met.
Date: July 14
Episode: 9
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Matthew Shedd, a Soldier, Global Security, Risk Management, & Business Continuity Professional.
Subtitle: Life working abroad in the Foreign Service
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/09-matthew-shedd/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Matthew Shedd, a Soldier, Global Security, Risk Management, & Business Continuity Professional.
He is a seasoned international security and business continuity executive who enables strategic goals by providing balanced advice to organizational leadership, building effective teams across business units and with external partners, and solving problems with simple, cost-effective solutions. With over 30+ years of global experience shaping policy, safeguarding assets (personnel, intellectual property, material, and reputational), mitigating risks, and minimizing business interruption.
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Matthew 0:00
I used the term before about opening one’s aperture. I think this is the type of podcasts and medium that allows people to do that when they’re exposed to different views, different perspectives. It helps shape your world to you and make you more understanding of other people.
Norman 0:25
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell is a bell?
Hayden 0:54
So dad, who do we have for this week’s guest?
Norman 0:58
Well, you remember it Isabella, she was on a couple of weeks ago, she was that serial entrepreneur from where she originally came from Romania. I mean, you can’t forget her. Well, this is her referral, Matt Shedd. So I didn’t know much about Matt when she first mentioned his name, but I did some research and wow, this is a character who has been involved with special forces. He’s been all over the world. Anyways, I can’t wait to talk to him about his experiences. I think everybody’s gonna just love what he has to say.
Hayden 1:32
Great. Let’s get started.
Norman 1:34
For those people out there that don’t know about you. Can you give us a little bit of your history?
Matthew 1:40
Sure. As a preface to the intro here. I would say I think this is a great concept for a podcast because I listen to podcasts pretty much every day. But the idea behind this where you start talking to what I consider everyday people, their lives are a combination of a tremendous amount of contacts and experiences and so when you ask me now it’s my first inclination was no I this isn’t my thing. But then when I started thinking about the concept I was like this is really smart. This is a great idea. So to answer your question, I’m in my mid 50s. I was born into foreign service family. I was born in Japan. And my family moved every two to three years because of my father’s work. I was graduating high school in England in the early 80s. My intent was to stay in Europe and experience it some more. I wanted to actually go out and work on an oil rig in the North Sea, instead of going to college and my father wasn’t on board with my plan, despite having planted that seed in my head about six months before. So he pretty much convinced me to go back to the states with them and start college. The problem was I was transitioning from London, England, to Florida where I didn’t grow up. I’d lived there years before as a kid. And I was looking to get some distance between me and my parents. I love them to death. But it was at age that I needed a little bit of independence. They knew what I wanted to do and didn’t want to go to college. So I picked a school that was farthest from Miami, but still in state, so I wouldn’t be wasting too much money because I was paying for half of it. So I go to Florida State University. And of course, it’s all parties and drinking and which was no big deal for a kid that spent his high school years in Europe nor was I that into it, but after about three weeks of this partying and I looked at my roommate, and I said, Please tell me there’s something more to the next four years then this. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Tallahassee, Florida. But it’s not exactly the cultural mecca of the United States. And having been living in London metropolitan city for three years, I figured I can’t spend four years here. I didn’t have any interest in going to school. I had certainly had nothing in common with the kids there who were all born and raised in Florida. I had a little bit of reverse culture shock. I know that sounds funny coming from England, to cultures that are very alike, but I listen to different music and have different interests in sports wise and things like that. And my high school had 100 students in it my graduating year that was grade eight grade 13 for Canadian students. So I went from a score of 100 kids where the average class size was four to a school that had 32,000 students in 1982. Some of my classes had upwards of 300 people in a tiered classroom. So, one of the other things my father kind of pressured me into doing or strongly suggested is that I joined ROTC, which is reserve officers Training Corps. So that when I got out I would have a job. I didn’t have any interest in going in the military. But then when I got there, they had these different groups that one of them was like a scout, they call that scout.Try to get you interested in doing things like infantry type stuff. And I had two instructors. One was from the Ranger Battalion, which is an elite infantry unit and US Army and the other one was from the fifth Special Forces Group. And I was quite inspired by these guys and I thought to myself, I started doing some homework. I thought to myself, This is what I wanted. I want to leave school. I’m going to drop out and I’m going to join the army. My parents came up for parents weekend, and I sprung it on him, went over like a lead balloon. My father tried to do some psychological operations on me to use military terms. He took different approaches because he realized now as a legal agent, I could do whatever I wanted. So he kind of talked me off the ledge and said, Listen, just finish out the semester, come home and talk to your three older brothers. So I came home, I did that and I came home for Christmas. And they all gave me a canned speech that my dad told him to give me to try to get me to stay in school. I said, Okay, I’ll go back to school. I go back next semester. Again, within weeks. I’m like, I don’t want to be here. So in the second semester, I dropped out of school. My father goes, Okay, just come home. I’m not going to try to talk you out of it. I told him I was gonna stay in Tallahassee and do everything up there. It’s about eight hours from Miami. He goes no come home. From the secure platform of our home. You don’t have to worry about a paycheck, a roof over your head or meals. I will talk you out of it. I’ll leave you alone. So I did that. I joined the army. My intent was to go. Sole intent was to go into the Army Special Forces and get back to Europe. My first tour after training, I went up to Massachusetts. I spent just over a year and a half there. Then I went to language school in Monterey, California for a year to learn Polish. And then I went to southern Germany. I spent a couple years there re enlisted, which wasn’t my intent. I was going to get out and go back to school, but I met my then girlfriend now wife of 32 years. We moved to Berlin for a special assignment. The Wall came down, we were there when the wall came down. That was fascinating. And at the time I was in a special unit that was doing. We were operating in East Germany, there was a special agreement after the war that allowed an unarmed contingent to do oversee reconstruction. At least that was what we told each other but it was kind of an open license to watch over each other.
Norman 8:01
What was that like? Sorry for interrupting but what was it like being there? I remember, we’re similar age and when that started to come down, it was crazy. What was it like being in Berlin at that time?
Matthew 8:14
Berlin at the time as a close city, my girlfriend didn’t want to move up at the time because she’s from the Alps. And she said, “We had gone up there on vacation for like a week, and we enjoyed it.” But when we left, she goes, “I could never live in there just the psychological effect of being in a closed city.” But you never knew that if you ever went to Berlin before the wall came down. You never knew that you were in a close city. They had lots of parks and forests. And so living in Berlin was great. Working in East Germany was an incredible experience. Both watching the Soviet military and also the East Germans. It dispelled a lot of myths about what was going on there, but also reinforced some other thoughts.
People there had a very high standard of living in terms of the communists, the East bloc. Everybody had a job, whether or not it was necessary or not. People had homes, they had food. But it was a police state. They couldn’t trust anybody. They couldn’t trust your family. And so when the wall actually came down, and my wife and I went to the clinic, a bridge that night, I was working in East Germany that morning. I came back early in the morning, listening to the German news, my German wasn’t that good. But I’m listening to German news. And I said to my partner, I said, I think German East Germans are coming across the border. And he goes, Yeah, I just got a phone call. And so that night, I was off and my wife and I went to the clinic or bridge, if you’re familiar with that. That’s where they used to do the spy swaps. It was between West Berlin and Potsdam in the southwest portion of the city. My wife and I went down there and I was a young sergeant, I had this German girlfriend, and I just re-enlisted. So I had some money. I bought a Saab 900. So we go down there, we’re standing on the bridge, and people are coming across. And they didn’t know that when they came across the bridge there that they were not walking into the middle of West Berlin. They’re walking into a forest. And it was miles and miles until you got to the city. So they’re pouring across on foot thinking they’re going to walk downtown, and it’s not going to happen. So my then girlfriend and now wife and I said, Hey, listen, why don’t we pick up a young couple and drive them into the city so they can see what they think they’re going to see. So we did that. We picked up a young couple, and we’re driving and the first question they asked is, “Whose car is this?” And I said, It’s mine. And they could not believe it. I mean, that was at the time. I was 27 years old. My wife was 26 and they were our age. Anyway, we took them downtown and walked them around. We got him back to the bridge. And then a few weeks later, it was just before Christmas, we invited them to come back. And we met them in the city and told them to bring their kids and we’d given them some small gifts for the kids and all that and we took them to the zoo in West Berlin. And they opened up and they told us a lot of things about life in East Germany, not favorable things but it definitely reinforced. How good we have things in the West. And then my experiences working after that. I mean, each time I would go into a store or something I would at least in East Germany, I would ask the people working there. You know how they felt about what was going on. It was a very difficult time for them. It was a very confusing time for them. I recall going into a store that sold music boxes. I was going to buy a music box. And there were four women working in a store that would be run by a high school student in Canada or the United States. And it was that small, but they had four women working there because everybody’s got to have a job. And there were three older women and a younger woman about my age. So I got her side and I asked her what do you think about going on? How do you feel? Are you happy and she broke down in tears. And I said, “What’s the matter?” She goes, “I’ve never been more confused and all my life.” She goes, “I was scared before the wall came down.” But she goes, “that one thing was clear. I couldn’t trust anybody. I couldn’t trust my family. I couldn’t trust my colleagues. I couldn’t trust anybody. Now I’m being told I can trust some people. But I still don’t believe it.” So there was a transitional period for most people of young adult age up to older age. It’s very difficult for them to trust anybody. Younger kids obviously transition easier. It was difficult to convey capitalist concepts to them. I ran into a guy in a in a gas station and an older gentleman and I asked him, you know what he thought and he was all pissed off because he’s like, “I never know what’s gonna cost me because I if I go here, a liter of gas cost a mark and a half and I go here, it’s two marks. He goes, What’s that all about?” Well I said, “the ship comes into port in the Baltic and if you get it right there it’s gonna be cheaper, but then then they have to hire a driver and pay insurance and drive it down towards the Czech border. The farther away it gets from the port, the more expensive it gets, because there’s more costs involved.” And he just looked at me like I had a third eye. It’s so try to, no matter how logical it seems to us, this was a guy who was elderly in 1989, or 1990, who had been under this system for 45 years since the end of a war who simply couldn’t grasp that concept. So it was a real education for me, a very positive experience. I did go back several times afterwards and saw things change dramatically. And it was just probably one of the pinnacles of my career from an experience standpoint and life experience.
Hayden 14:29
So you witnessed a massive change in culture at that time. I think people get comfortable and what they do day to day and with the current laws, but has that experience affected how you would try and influence people here and maybe seeing that there’s ways of changing policy or there’s different political paths that we can take. But it kind of takes a leap of faith to actually achieve that. I’m not sure if I’m Making sense, but
Matthew 15:02
Wery actually, a great question. I think in a larger context, the most defining aspect of my life has been travel when I say travel is not for vacation but I need living in other countries and other cultures meeting other people, we’ve lived in the three countries that have had the most recent genocides, we live the Rwanda we live in Germany, we live our Bosnia, we lived in Germany and Poland. So World War II, the Bosnian conflict with the genocide in Rwanda. There are things in those cultures, particularly Randa, which we can talk about separately if you want, defy everything that we understand or that we believe in this country. So it’s definitely shaped my worldview. I like to believe it makes me more compassionate. I try to always put myself in somebody else’s shoes, or walk by on their shoes or to prompt other people to do the same before you rush to judgment. Why don’t you think about why that person thinks the way they do and it was funny because you brought up politics here and I don’t want to get all political. But during the 2016 election cycles, actually, the night of the election there was an outpouring of feelings on both sides and and I wrote a Facebook post, I’m not a big Facebook person or try to remain political on it. But I wrote something that said before you judge a person about the way they voted, ask yourself why. Disregard the vote itself and ask yourself what has happened in that person’s life to make them vote one way or the other? And you don’t know what that influence is. I’m not justifying their vote, or their feelings. I’m just saying, Do you really know that much about the person? And if you do know the person, why are you judging them differently now as opposed to 12 hours ago or 24 hours ago because they’re the same person. And I said they may have watched somebody’s kids, when those people are in a pinch. They may be active in their church or synagogue or mosque or they could be extremely charitable and compassionate people. They voted a certain way and I don’t know why. And, frankly, it’s none of my business because that’s their vote, not mine. And so, to go back to the earlier point, I think about all my experiences, this one in particular, where I was a young American working in a communist country. It reinforced some values, but it definitely made me maybe not questioned values, but it made me question some misconceptions. Or maybe slow down judging people. I went in, we had a representational house in Potsdam. And we had an East German staff there. And I went in one day and the cook who was a very nice woman, an older woman, she was in tears. So I said, What’s the matter? She said, “I took my entire paycheck and I bought oranges.” And she goes, “my family can’t eat them fast enough. I can’t give them away. They’re all going bad.” And I looked at her and I was like, why would you spend your entire paycheck on oranges? This is right after walking down. She said, of course, they went from having fruit that was only through the eastern supply chain. Now they were getting things from the west. And she said, “I didn’t know if they’d be there the next day.” And I looked at her and I said, they’ll be there every day for the rest of your Life. This is a change. I said, I know it’s confusing. But those products, as long as somebody’s willing to pay for them, they will be there for the rest of your life. Things aren’t going back to the way they were before. But here I was a young American. I’m like, Why in the world would somebody go spend their entire paycheck to buy oranges? But again, she had grown up in that system, or one way of thinking one way of doing things. And at times, there was scarcity. And she figured I’m gonna buy these things, because I may never see him again. In some ways, it was very sad, but again, I hear I’m a young American, I’m like, How fortunate am I? Right yeah, made me stop. I had to be critical of myself and why would I immediately question this woman’s actions before I took a pause and go, listen, I’m working in here. I see what’s going on. It should have been obvious to me. Maybe not obvious, but maybe should have paused a little bit and done a little thinking before I asked you that question.
Norman 20:06
During that time, especially when you were at the bridge and all these people were coming across the bridge, it must have been very emotional if you’re taught not to trust somebody. And I know people that have come from this sort of environment before. It’s very hard to adapt the other way. And you’re right, like, if you’re an older couple, you might never get to the point where you trust people fully, and then even it’s kind of funny, but walking through a forest, they’re thinking that it would be a city and then all of a sudden, you can just imagine what their first thoughts are.
Hayden 20:43
Yeah. Such a poetic image. You have the east, west, and then also the forest in between.
Matthew 20:49
Yeah, I mean, crossing over and that’s why we wanted to drive them into the city because that’s what they were expecting to see. As beautiful as the fourth was, they had that on their side, too.
Norman 21:01
The Berlin Wall comes down, then I know I interrupted you. But what happens next? Where do you go from there?
Matthew 21:09
So our unit would know that with this happening, which was totally unexpected, that there would be some kind of downsizing or withdrawal from Berlin eventually, but we thought that we were going to be the last unit there. We were actually the first one deactivated. And so I had a choice I could have stuck around with not a lot of purpose because we couldn’t keep doing our job. Or I could go back to my old unit, which was down south in Bavaria. So I chose to do that so I got out of there, went down south shortly thereafter. It was the first Iraq war. Our unit didn’t go but shortly after we got sent into a Kurdish refugee camp for what they call Operation Provide Comfort. So it was a follow up to the Iraq war after it ended, there was a displacement of Kurdish refugees. Along the Turkish border, they cry, they’re crossing over the Turkish border and the Turks didn’t want them in there. So they basically stopped them from entering. And so you had this, these large congregations of Kurds. And so we broke up and we had three companies, we went to different camps. And when we arrived, when my company arrived at this one camp, there was a Turkish shelling farm outpost and there was the Austrian Red Cross at Turkish Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders. And they all were trying to do things but none of them could provide security. The church was only keeping the current from coming in. The others could provide medical support, but there was no security and no control of what was going on. The US and Germans we’re doing air drops, but the problem was they weren’t accurate, because it was a mountain ridge that separated the two countries that border was right along the mountain ridge, the Turks would take control of the supplies and then sell back to the Kurds. And if the Kurds got them, then the Turks would take control of them and sell back the record. So then we went up and established some security in there and some, we developed a landing zone where we could drop stuff, a little depot so that things that were coming up the mountain by truck could be stored. We started helping the doctors, inoculate kids and things like that. And so that was another life experience that was really defining for me, from an education standpoint, I sent you some notes about dropping out of college. That was when I really kind of got interested in going back to school because I wanted to study emergency management and crisis response because that’s what we were doing in essence. It was an unfortunate situation as there were approximately 120,000 refugees there at the end of winter. When we arrived, there’s about 100 people dying a day. A lot of them were kids or died. And elderly people are dying from dysentery because there was no sanitation. So they were people littered all over the mountainside and tents or makeshift tents. And they would, they would go to the bathroom right next to where they were eating. And so we had to establish restraints and try to tell them, hey, listen, you can’t do this. Because that was the main cause of death at the time. But it was again, there was a power dynamic, it’s very tribal culture. And there was a very small Christian contingent and then there was another small contingent of soldiers who would fall for Saddam Hussein who were ostracized in that camp. And so when the supplies came in we could we started controlling them and tribal elders wanted to take control and distribute themselves. And we said, No.We got data from Doctors without borders and the Red Cross. And we figured out based on percentage, we would divide things up accordingly and make sure that the minorities were fed, even the officers that had fought for Saddam Hussein, they were, they were no less a refugee than, than the other people. So we made sure that everybody was treated equitably, regardless of their status or their religion or ethnicity.
Norman 25:43
I’m not sure what to say about that. Like, I’m just trying to see how I would react. And like you started talking about the tribal leaders. I remember I was in China once. And I like when I think about racism, I think about what’s happening or in the States, or what we see up in Canada, I was in this bar in Taiwan and the bar owner started screaming at these two people that were with a Canadian teaching group, but they were Thai. And they were just on the bottom of the pecking order. They weren’t allowed into the bar. So they kicked them out. And I’m thinking about these tribal leaders, and the refugees, and yet, you’ve got this pecking order, where like, you just said, the refugees, why can’t they be on a level playing field, they all need help, why is one different than the other? And I know this goes back centuries and centuries of just the way that you’re being brought up in your mindset. But what a crazy story, I mean, that’s and what ended up happening there?
Matthew 26:58
Well, eventually The weather got better because we’re moving into the spring the death rate dropped dramatically because we got some sanitation in there and more supplies we got there on the front end of the crisis. And so there were a lot of supplies coming in and eventually, we moved the people from that camp back into northern Iraq and to urban centers, where they could begin to head back home. They go back to the earlier point, it was one of the things that was challenging for me. And it’s obviously a cultural thing and I know we have our own debates and battles in the US about gender discrimination, things like that. But we were brief before we went in that these are educated people are a lot of professionals from urban centers on and on and on. So we got up there and it was very frustrating because what we saw were only women standing in line to get potable water to include elderly women, grandmothers that were going collecting firewood and walking down the mountain to get firewood. While a lot of males sat around and played cards and smoked cigarettes. It sounds judgmental because it is I mean, I try to be open minded. I’ve traveled all over the world. But it was very difficult for us to go in there where we were working all day, every day and to watch how women were treated in the camp. And let’s just say it tested my respect for people.
Norman 28:43
Right? Yeah. And what was it? I hate asking this question. But you’re in a camp like that. People are dying. Tons of kids like you were just saying out of the hundred a day. I mean, that just must have taken an emotional toll on you. How did you survive that?
Matthew 29:06
I mean, it was a long time ago, it’s been 29 and 30 years ago. I don’t think it’s easy for anybody to see. I think you take some satisfaction or pride or whatever word you want to use and the fact that you improve the situation. It’s a reality of life. Doesn’t matter where you go in the world, they’re unfortunate situations, people die. I mean, I’ve been to some of the poorest countries in the world. And people have asked me the same question when you see people starving kids in the street, or people who are don’t have a place to live. Or if they don’t have their freedom. And isn’t that a depressing thing? It is and then perhaps it’s a mental safeguard that you just tell yourself, hey, I’ll make the difference that I can. And I’m grateful for what I have. You don’t take things for granted. That’s one part. And the other part is that I’ll try to do my part to make things better.
Norman 30:22
I’ve never thought about this, but you’re in the Special Forces, you’re going to see things that will haunt you. Do you get trained to have an emotional block? There’s got to be something that you’re trained in. So you’re going to see things like you just saw. Are there classes that you take that help you with what you’re going to see? Is your training?
Matthew 30:49
I’ll try to answer the question. Let me preface my response by saying this. I served in more or less a peacetime army. I enlisted in 1983 and I got out and In 2000, all my friends who were past that most of them ended up going to Iraq or Afghanistan. I never served in any of those places now, not to say I didn’t see difficult situations in the peacetime army as well, one of them being in the refugee camp. So I just want to clarify that because I have not been exposed to heavy direct combat, like my peers who served later. I think now, and I’m merely speculating, because I’ve been out for 20 years, I think now, there is more training, in more pre deployment training to sensitize people to some of the things they’re going to experience. And I think there’s better I’ll be at not perfect, better transitional or post deployment type debriefs and things like that to try to get people to deal with what they’ve seen. So there’s that but still we have an incredible amount of physical and psychological trauma. My wife and I just watched a movie last week called “No Greater Love” and if you haven’t seen it, I think it’s either on Netflix or Amazon Prime. It’s about a unit of the hundred first Airborne Division in Kunar Afghanistan back in 2010. A really moving film, somewhat depressing but it addresses a lot of what you’re asking about now. The other thing is this, I think the more experience and more maturity a soldier has, I don’t want to say the easier it is to deal with, the better equipped they are to deal with it. It doesn’t mean it’s not difficult. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easier to process. But just like anything else in life, you’re better equipped to deal with the crisis, the more life experience you have, because maybe you saw it with somebody else, or maybe you have a different way to look at things, or you can process it differently. So I think there’s that. And then at the risk of saying something that may be controversial, I saw a documentary about the seals once and there was this retired senior enlisted seal. I don’t know if it was him being macho or stating things because everybody’s different and you get some very different diverse personalities and special operations. But he said, I’ve been asked this question a million times and he goes, for the record. I have killed people before he says, I don’t draw satisfaction out of it, and I don’t get remorse from it. He goes, I am tasked to do a job and he goes, I cannot be emotional about it because it impairs my judgment when I’m doing it. And he goes, all I know is that when I do this, I am facing an adversary who is trying to kill me or one of my teammates. And he said, I have to be basically locked in and do my job the best of my ability. That’s why I cannot allow this to affect my judgment.
Norman 34:34
Is it that easy? I doubt it.
Matthew 34:38
Is he speaking to the camera or speaking sincerely? I also don’t know. Right? But I can’t see that as and maybe it’s that mindset that he uses to deal with it.
Norman 34:53
Now that you’ve been in Bosnia, now you say Rwanda, that must have been crazy there as well. You went there in peacetime, but the whole thing that happened in Rwanda I mean, you get over there, and what was it like?
Matthew 35:17
So, my wife and I moved there in 2011. So the genocide was in 1994. So, okay 17 years later, every year, it happened in April of 94. It lasted roughly 100 days, and they killed between 800,000 and a million people in 100 days, depending on whose estimates you go by and Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, one of the poorest countries in the world. It’s approximately the size of the state of Maryland. So if you can imagine a million people, let’s say 800,000 to a million killed in 100 days in a landmass the size of the state of Maryland. That’s eight to 10,000 people a day. So I look at Maryland, which is just the next state over from us near Virginia, that eight to 10,000 people were killed a day, mostly by machete, not by my guns. It’s almost unfathomable. The other thing is that there’s been other genocides and somewhat more protracted. But this is probably one of the more intense acts of genocide. The culture there is very much focused on the well being of the community, not in our belief system is very much predicated about individual rights. So what happened in Rwanda after the incumbent government, which was actually the one carrying out or supporting the genocide after they were displaced by the current president and his his followers, Paul Kagame is that he told people, “the only way we’re going to survive this as a country is through a policy of reconciliation.” So similar to a person who reconciles with somebody who murders or family members, they go to prison and they reconcile with this person, which you see sometimes in the West. But we find that very difficult to grasp. Because, although we say that whatever your faith is, that you should forgive people is easier said than done. Well, in Rwanda, that was the national policy of reconciliation. So there were so many people who committed an act of genocide that they couldn’t try them all. So they had the UN set up the International Tribunal for Rwanda. Much like the model that’s a good one for Yugoslavia (ICTY) The International Criminal Tribunal for one ICTR, and though people who are tried there were people who were guilty of conspiracy. So they conspired with other people to commit acts of genocide. For another person who committed a contributing act like they just killed somebody, they were told to kill somebody and they kill somebody or they did it on their own. They weren’t a conspirator per se, they acted individually on their own. They were tried through a community core called gacaca and it’s an old system where you go before the community, the community sits out the village will sit out there and you can say your part. The victim’s family or the victim can say their part. Anybody in the community can stand up and speak for against. And then there’s a group of people from the community who will make a judgement. And so that’s how they handle the individual cases after the genocide. Some people went to jail, some people were found not guilty, and were allowed to continue living in their communities. Now, for me, it was almost beyond comprehension. I read several books before I was stationed there. But then as I lived there, although again, perhaps I can’t change the way I think but at least I can appreciate where they’re coming from, and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because I think Kagame is right, you can’t continue down the same path and expect the country to somehow come out of this bazi had repeated genocide. So did Rwanda, actually, there’s more than one genocide if you go back in their history. And so clearly, the back and forth hatred and retaliation isn’t a path to success or a path to come out of it. And so the reconciliation they feel is the only path to break the cycle. And it was funny because after living there for a couple years, you understood that sentiment, and you saw the communities trying to do these things, but then we would have people come in temporarily. And when they were exposed to this, they simply didn’t understand. And I got a couple minutes of a funny story about it. It’s a somewhat funny story if it can be funny. There are people who committed immigration fraud to get to the west. They committed immigration fraud, because they lied on their immigration application about being involved in the genocide. We had specific questions on our immigration applications about being involved in a person who said I had no involvement. Then they immigrated. And we found to the contrary, later on, we would prosecute them for immigration fraud, not for genocide, because that’s an international crime. It’s not something within our jurisdiction, and then we would imprison them for immigration fraud. So for these trials in the United States, we had federal agents that came over to Rwanda and they would pick up witnesses and bring them back to the United States to testify and then they would bring them back. And in one case, they brought people who are already in prison in Rwanda as witnesses and when they returned, our people had them in shackles because that’s what you do. It came on on a charter flight with agents under protection of all that. They got off the plane and from their local prison, there was one prison guard with a truck. That was it. They don’t shackle the prisoners, they’re anywhere in the country whether they’re in prison or whether they’re at a work party out on the road. The first time I saw this, I’d only been in the country for about a week. And I was driving around getting familiarized with the area with one of my local security guys. And we drove by a work party, orange jumpsuits and they’re out there working and there’s one guy with an AK-47 on the side of the road. He’s not even paying attention. And the guy says to me that’s a prison work party and I go yeah, I got that. They look the same in the States. But they all have machetes and they’re cutting grass down and I said, “should there be more guys watching them? I mean, they’re not shackled, and aren’t they worried about these guys running” and he goes, “Where they’re gonna run to? He goes, There’s no way to write the communities are so tight in that country and there is a social network, which can double as a police state network in the community that one person is responsible to know what three families are doing. And then you go up and one person above them is responsible for knowing what those three people are doing. It builds this pyramid and it goes up to a village elder. So if you ever want to know something about about someone in a village, you go to the village elder, and you asked him, Hey, do you know about this person, he’ll be able to tell you if the guy’s got a drinking problem if he beats his wife doesn’t pay his debts or what? And that was one of the most reliable sources of information we had when we were doing background checks on people. But the other thing is, I told you before that the country is so densely populated, no matter where we went in the country, you were never outside of a person so if you’re driving out in the country, often the distance you could see a village and if you looked in your rear view and they’re looking over your shoulder, there was another village. Most people don’t have cars, everybody walks on the road. So you are never out of sight of a person. And so when he said, Where are they going to run? They’re always going to be inside of people. And if you walked into a village, and you weren’t from that village, somebody was going to ask what you were doing there. And they were going to tell somebody who’s not from here, is walking through the village. And so and so when he explained this to me, I was like, Wow, that’s pretty effective. No wonder why they only have one guy watching them and they don’t shackle them, there is nowhere to run. So anyway, going back to the early story, so we go out to the airport to meet these guys at five o’clock in the morning. And they get off the plane and one of the US Marshals comes up to me because I was a law enforcement officer from the embassy and I had my local investigator there and then there was the prosecutor. His deputy and the Rwandan prosecutor who had in prison these guys and my investigator was Tootsie, and the two prosecutors for tipsy. And these guys were hooked to the prisoners. So they come off, and they were all in prison for acts of genocide. They came off the plane and the marshal came up to me and he said, are the Rwandans going to put their own shackles on them? Are we going to exchange shackles? Or do they expect us to leave ours on there and just so they can have them? That’s fine, but they want to exchange them and they just want us to leave ours on there. And I looked at him, I said, you can take them off. They don’t use them here. And he looked at me again, like I had a third eye. He’s like, What are you talking about? I said, don’t worry about it. Just take them off. They’re not your responsibility anymore. I go, that’s the chief prosecutor. That’s his deputy. That’s my investigator. And that’s the prison guard right there. That’s gonna be Take them back to the prison. And this guy was baffled. He goes back and he tells us other marshals, they come up. He takes the handcuffs off the first guy, and again, who to prisoner. And there’s my investigator who had lost family members, many family members in the genocide. He greets him. He welcomes him home and he hugs him. Then the Hutu goes over to the prosecutor, same thing, Deputy Prosecutor, then the prison guard, then the guy gets in the back of the truck, and that was repeated each time a prisoner got off and had the shackles in them. So that is a Rwandan tradition. When someone has been away and they come home, you welcome them back home doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. So I knew that. So it didn’t seem unusual to me. If I was a foreigner, it was something I was familiar with. So I’m looking at the reactions of the US Marshals and I can tell they don’t know what to think. So after this is all taking place, I’m not going to take these guys to their hotels, they have to spend the night before they fly out the next day. And so it’s about a 15 minute drive. And so we get in the vehicle and we’re driving. Now it’s only 536 o’clock in the morning still, and it’s dead silent in the vehicle. Then finally, one of the guys goes, What the hell was that all about? And so I started laughing I said, Okay, I said, Listen, I don’t think you guys are gonna get this, but I’m gonna explain it anyway. So I explained a brief history of the country and what just happened culturally, and they were just like, they just could not believe it. I said, you don’t have to understand it. You just have to accept it. Right? It’s their culture, not ours. And that’s the way it is. I said, if we apply our mindset to what they do, you’re never going to be able to reconcile the two. Not our country, not our culture. And I always remember it because it was a really, if that had been me stepping off the plate, I would have the same reaction. But at that point, I’d been there like a year and a half, much more sensitized to the environment, and the culture and the history and it just as tragic as this, the details of what was going on were just the difficulty of those US Marshals grasping the idea and what had happened was just somewhat humorous.
Hayden 48:59
I’m curious from what you saw there, I mean, that seemed like the system of reconciliation wasn’t working, because how could that still not kind of be under the surface of the culture there?
Matthew 49:13
I always question if the policy is effective or will be effective. It had the same issue in Bosnia, and I was trying to figure out how in 1994, or I’m sorry, in 1991 to 94 or five. How could this happen in Europe? Yugoslavia was very progressive in terms of the East bloc, well traveled. The country had been integrated for a long time Tito had somewhat forced that integration and made them one people. And so I struggled with that when I was in Bosnia. I was like, How could this happen? And I used to try as I got to know people I didn’t want to hit him up on that first time I met them, but I got to know people, I would try to get to know them as much as they were comfortable to talk about the war and could it happen again? And then I try to just look at the culture and see how this is possible, and we have a very transient culture, people grow up and they move for work. It just seems to be that we seem to live in more transient cultures than than a lot of Europeans. And when I looked at the average spazzing family, you could see three generations in one house or sometimes four. And so, what people heard about previous acts of genocide or atrocities wasn’t something they read in a textbook or something they saw in a movie, it was passed down in their household so trying to break that that chain that of hatred, whatever you want to call it, it’s very difficult when your grandfather grandmother says so and so was raped by a fill in the blank whatever the ethnicity was or nationality was, because it’s a lot more personal then especially if you have pictures of those people in the house, or they were killed. I think a lot of them grew up with that in the home with firsthand stories being told to them by their grandparents or parents. It takes several generations between things like this, but if you go back in history, you see that there hasn’t been enough time for that break to occur before another incident happens.In Rwanda, it’s difficult to tell I mean, it’s a national policy It’s not a we should, it’s you will. And although he has managed to keep the peace since 1994, President Kagame is under a lot of criticism for modifying the constitution so that he can run again. Still a police state by most people’s measure. They’re criticized for a lot of human rights violations. So we’ll succeed? I don’t know. I always wonder even if people have that in their cultural fabric, people are still people. And if someone killed your family member, is it that easy to forgive and forget? I don’t know. It’s very difficult to comprehend. They’re everywhere you go in the country, there are memorials. Every April there’s a three week mourning period where they don’t do anything. We don’t schedule any meetings. We don’t celebrate anything. And the atrocities that occurred there. It wasn’t just the scale, it was the type. I mean, it’s the same thing in Bosnia, the type of things that were done to people are just beyond comprehension.
Norman 53:15
I know in Hawaii they have this thing called Ho’oponopono. Have you ever heard of that? It’s making things right. And it sits very similar, like I was thinking about it when you were talking about the person going into the village and standing there and the family would talk, very similar to that. You make it right if you’ve done something wrong, it’s the ability to make it right. And they implemented this into a prison in Hawaii. And there was a lot of fighting and violence in this prison. And sorry, it was outside of the island. And anyways, the violence had dropped by about 80% by bringing in these types of princ. Just your history. That’s the podcast. This has been fantastic. So what did you do after Rwanda?
Matthew 54:18
We moved to Poland. And that was our last tour in the Foreign Service, and we were there when the Russians invaded Ukraine or annexed Crimea and then forge one what many people feel as a proxy war in eastern Ukraine. So that was an interesting time to be there as well. My wife and I also previously served in Estonia when there was a controversial incident where the
Estonian government relocated a Russian war Memorial from one part of the city to the other, which set off three days of riots and then a DDoS attack on Estonian cyber infrastructure. If you go back to 2000 I think 2007 is one that occurred. So, yeah, Eastern Europe is an interesting place. always has been and always will be. But yeah, so after Rwanda, we went to Poland for the last couple years and great people really enjoyed being there. But that was the end of the road for us in terms of Foreign Service. We’re ready to move on and semi-retire, I guess.
Norman 55:48
So you provided us with a quote, and I was wondering if you could just get into that right now.
Matthew 55:56
Yeah, so the quote is from an essay called Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. And the quote is “In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts.” They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. I read that essay when I was in high school in London, among others, I had taken a semester of American literature, which certainly wasn’t my thing at the time. I was not academically inclined, I wasn’t into literature. But that definitely resonated with me with those types of essays, and sentiments. Because I was, I guess, somewhat of a, maybe a typical kid or I wanted to do things out of the norm. I had teachers in that school, they were very inspiring, they wanted people to be creative, innovative, follow their own path and I thought that was what that was. I thought that was very noble. Not to just do it anything, it has some direction. But the quote is very true. But how many people go through their lives and see something where they had contemplated it before and rejected it simply because it was their own idea. And they didn’t give it any validity or credibility and somebody else had the confidence to move forward with it. And so I don’t remember a lot of quotes from that period, but that one really stuck with me.
Norman 57:33
So are there any success stories that we haven’t discussed yet that you want to get into?
Matthew 57:42
I sent you some comments. Maybe I and you actually, you address it in the beginning of the podcast, you said that you use those terms to try to help frame things for people when they’re thinking about the podcast and and I told you that I don’t look at events in my life as successes or failures. It’s more of a journey. However cliche that may sound. I’ve failed at many things in my life and made a lot of mistakes more than I can recall. But it was part of a process, it was part of a journey and I like to believe I’m a better person for them. More so than failures than successes. I’d like to believe that I turned the failures, if again, I hate using that term, but I like to believe that I turned them into a positive by persevering and eventually succeeding at whatever I was trying. I think probably if I were to pick one thing, I think it would be pursuing a path of mentoring other people. I get a lot of pleasure out of that, but I think I was afforded a lot of opportunity Now given a lot of encouragement when I was young primarily by my parents, and by my brothers, and then further on in my life by some of my colleagues and definitely my wife. And so the older you get, you tend to reflect more and feel that you have to give back. And I think one of the most impacting things you can do is help other people out. And I think that’s probably true of what you do. Where you’re helping people pursue their dreams and succeed and you’re giving them the tools and the advice to do that. I try to do that and however small I can help people learn from my mistakes or show them things that they may not may not be exposed to or may not think of otherwise because they’re marching down the path at a very quick pace and you’re walking by a lot of opportunities. I try to do that so that there is somewhat of a legacy. I think that gives me a sense of purpose more so than pursuing a specific achievement, let’s say whether it’s a credential or or degree or some other type of milestone I’d rather give my time to try to help other people succeed. And then when I see them succeed, there’s a lot of satisfaction in that. And I think if I were to reflect on my life, I think maybe that would be what I feel is, quote, “success if people have somehow benefited from that advice and made their lives better.”
Norman 1:00:40
There’s a lot of people I hear talking about mentors. They have a mentor, or they’re mentoring people. For people who don’t know how to find a mentor or to get the benefit from a mentor can you get into what a mentor can do for a person and then how do you find a mentor?
Matthew 1:01:07
Um, that’s a good question. And I should probably clarify that that term is probably pretty subjective. There’s a spectrum upon which the duties and responsibilities fall. What I have done, I was asked to get involved in a mentor program years ago and my agency. And I did and it was very, despite the fact that it was supposed to be very structured, it wasn’t structured at all. They were just pairing people up. I went through another process where we’re supposed to do virtual mentoring, where it was very structured and you had scheduled meetings and certain milestones and what’s not. And what I did is I reached out to people and said, “Hey, what do you want this to be? Because we can do this formal thing. I can do that. That’s very easy, or we can do informal things and you can tell me what you need, and I can offer some advice.” And almost without exception, people said, I want an informal mentor, I want to be able to ask you questions. I don’t feel the need for whatever reason to be too busy or I don’t want to meet for the sake of meeting. They chose to do it informally. And that means different things to different people. Sometimes I’m talking to people every week. Other times I hear from them once a year when they need help with their evaluation. But I push stuff out constantly and I content, if you will I send emails out say, “Hey, listen, here’s a great article I think you should pay attention to here’s where I think the relevance is to your job or our field.” Or “Here’s a job opportunity you may not think of because it’s outside the normal career track, but it’s available to you.” And I’ve had people come to me and talk to me about strained relations. The supervisor appears subordinate. So, I think that being a mentor can mean a lot of different things and can also be a very strict path and in relationship to get a person to accomplish very specific goals alone a timeline. I don’t want to do that if people don’t want that. People seem to want an informal approach so that’s what I do. I give them unsolicited advice, like I said, in different forms, whether it’s a podcast I listened to, or an article I read, or something like that. And I encourage them to seek out increased responsibility, professional development training inside and outside of our agency, just to read, to listen to podcasts. In the information age, it’s phenomenal. The amount of free information out there. And there’s a lot of trash out there. But there are a lot of incredibly smart, capable people putting out important information, or something is innovative is what you’re doing that prompts people to think a different way. And that’s what I like. I want a person that I’m dealing with and in that relationship, I want them to think differently than everybody else they’re working around. Because it is a very bureaucratic system. People continue to do the same thing over and over again, regardless of the results, it seems like. And I just want them to take a step back, take a step left or right, look at it from a different perspective, and try something that nobody else has tried. If you fail, you fail, but you learned in the process, right? And so I really try to get people to look at things from a different perspective and challenge the status quo. I mean, in a professional way, I suggest ways that they can question conventional thinking and try to get their peers and their supervisors to look at things a different way as well. That’s a challenge in the US government, but it’s not insurmountable. You asked how you find a mentor? I think, again, in the information age, it’s oftentimes not difficult. There’s always a lot of people willing to offer their advice, whether it’s wanted or not. But I know I dabble in real estate investing as a novice and, and now it’s very easy to find a mentor, you can go to a real estate club or you can go to a certain webpage and you can ask, but you have to do your vetting to just like in a professional setting where you don’t just want a mentor. You want somebody who’s credible, who’s not in it for the wrong reasons or, or somebody who has a genuine genuine interest in your progress. I think also there’s mentors naturally tend to kind of stand out in some cases. And so it’s easy for a person to look at somebody whether they are quote, unquote, a mentor. If you see somebody at work, and you say, wow, I respect the way the person handled this situation, or that person is a strong communicator, I could learn from them. You seek them out and ask them to say,” Listen, I really admire the way you fill in the blank. Would you be willing to teach me how to do that? Or would you be willing to help me in that regard because I’m weak in that area, or I want to develop that skill.” And I think in most cases, when a person hears that flattery is pretty effective but I think people generally want to help other people. And when they hear that providing the circumstances or right, they will, they will help that person. That’s an informal mentorship relationship by a mentoring relationship. But I think that’s probably oftentimes the most effective way to see somebody that’s doing something that you want to emulate and then ask them for help.
Norman 1:07:21
One of the things I found out I, I tried to do some mentoring myself, and I talked to other mentors out there. And I’ll get people asking me, they’ll ask me questions, or they’ll ask if I can help them out, but what I find, excuse me, is that a lot of the time, a lot of people expect me to do the work for them. I love building up people and seeing them succeed but what drives me absolutely crazy, is you give the knowledge or you point the person in the right direction. Like you were saying, and then it’s like, Okay, well, can you not? You help me out with that? And it’s funny like I read those people out right away. But there are those people that are a mentor for guidance. It’s not so much.Yeah, you want to be like a consultant and a mentor, I think are two different things.
Matthew 1:08:25
One’s compensated the other ones not. Right,
Norman 1:08:27
exactly.
Matthew 1:08:30
I’ve dealt with the same thing and I’m probably a bit of a knucklehead because I entered more than I should. One of the very not unique to our organization, but one of the most unpalatable parts of the job is doing your annual evaluation. A big part of it in the US foreign service is writing a narrative and contrary to what people believe themselves, most people do not write well. They get into this process and the evaluation process is unnatural. it’s counterintuitive to the way we learn to write in school. Because it’s so compressed you have, you don’t have much space, and you have to draft a very impacting statement. And so even if you do write well, you’re an effective writer, you have to change the style. I kind of broke the code early, not that I was a great writer, but I had the benefit when I joined the Foreign Service and I had been in the army but still a branch of government for 16 years, so I understood the rules. I understood policies. When I joined, even though I was an entry level employee, starting at the bottom again, I spent my time and a lot of people were complaining about all the things they didn’t have or didn’t get or whatever, and I buried my head in books and regulations and policies and got smart, because that’s what you had to do in the army if you wanted anything. So I kind of broke the code and realized, okay, you have to write differently for this, and this is what they want you to do. And I did everything I could. I asked for advice and people who wrote Well, I got to the point where I wasn’t bad at it, I would say I was great, but I wasn’t bad. And I think I was effective. And then I volunteer to review other people’s both formally through the agencies, processes, and informally for friends and colleagues. So I get more experience. So now many years later, I do this every year, and sometimes it takes up an inordinate amount of my time. And some of the people I’ve been dealing with, for years, are no farther along than the first time I looked at one of their evaluations and, and I bleed on him like a lit professor. And I said, “Listen I think you should take a writing course. And here’s a free course you can take that they’ll pay to go to mean you’re going to get your paycheck and you can go to this one week course and they teach how to write the way they want you to write, or I think what you can do is you can, you can write reports, we’re not big in our, in our specific field, we don’t do a lot of reporting. But we should.” And I said, “This is a way for you to develop your writing skills. Write something on policy, you’ll get people’s attention, not just in your office, but externally as well. you’ll develop your writing skills, and you’ll get your name out there. Or maybe you can write a speech for an ambassador he’s gonna go give a speech at an event that’s related to our office, volunteer to write the speech. He’s got a speech writer, but you ask if you can do it, and then you can have the speech writer tweak it and massage it a bit.” And then three years, five years on, I’m looking at an annual evaluation report where they haven’t taken any of the advice. They haven’t done any of the training. They haven’t written any cables. They haven’t written any speeches, they’ve done nothing to develop that skill. And they get frustrated and criticize the system. And I’m like, it’s not the system, the system isn’t going to change. I think I told you one of the examples I’d given when I was doing some soul searching about my transition from the military to foreign service where I had a problem with verbal communication. And the problem wasn’t them. It was me and when I figured that out, I realized that I joined them. They didn’t join me and they weren’t going to change for me. So I had two choices. I could either adapt to my new environment and my new culture or I could find another job. So I adapted to my new culture and organization and it was good. It was an education. It was an evolution and a little bit painful at times, but clearly I was the one that needed to adapt to the organization.
Norman 1:13:01
Do you have any closing remarks or statements?
Matthew 1:13:08
I don’t think I have anything dramatic or impacting to close on. Unfortunately I wish I did. I would reiterate my thanks for having me do this. It’s definitely been fun. It’s nice to reflect on some of these experiences and realize how fortunate I’ve been in my life, how many things I’ve experienced and how fortunate I am, along with my family. And yeah, I think moving forward, I applaud what you’re doing and I think it’s a great way I used the term before about opening one’s aperture. I think this is the type of podcast and medium that allows people to do that when they’re exposed to different views. Different perspectives. It helps shape your world to you and make you more understanding of other people perhaps. And yeah, I think I’ve had a privileged life no doubt. I’ll end it on that note.
Norman 1:14:17
So hey, Matt, if anybody wanted to contact you, how would they go about it?
Matthew 1:14:24
Anybody who does want to reach out to me you can contact me by email. My email address is matthewshedd@hotmail.com. That’s my first name and last name no spaces@hotmail.com. Contrary to popular belief, a few people still use Hotmail. I’m a tech dinosaur, not ashamed of it.
Norman 1:14:50
Me too. I am so glad that you were able to come on. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories. My mouth was hanging. I guess at this time, we have one thing left to do. And I passed the torch to you, Matt Shedd, Do you know a guy?
Unknown 1:15:14
So I Know this Guy, his name is are you ready for this? Tomislav Separovich (?) Toma and Toma is a former colleague of mine from when I worked in Bosnia from 2003 to 2005. He is not only a former colleague, but he’s a very close friend and I consider him a mentor. And a great example for all the things that he’s done in his life in a post war Bosnia to help his community, help charitable causes, and to show through his actions and his accomplishments, that anything is possible if you set your mind to it and I look forward if you do a podcast with him, I can’t wait to hear that podcast.
Norman 1:16:06
I’m itching to get him on the show now. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to pronounce his name but Toma, I can do Toma. All right, Matt. Well, thanks a lot for sharing your time with us today.
Matthew 1:16:22
Thank you.
Norman 1:16:24
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