Two SKHS Alumni Sworn Into Foreign Service

It’s not often that two South Kingstown High School Alumni are sworn in as members of the same Foreign Service Officer class with the U.S. Department of State, and much less in the same class.

Doreen (Vaillancourt) Maroney (‘95) and Ehren Schimmel  (‘96), were sworn-in with the 161st class on Friday, July 1^st along with ninety-two others. Maroney will serve her first tour as Desk Officer for Spain and Portugal in Washington, D.C. while Schimmel will serve his first tour as Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Having both grown up in South Kingstown, they still consider themselves Rhode Islanders at heart even though they don’t live here anymore. 

“South Kingstown is a place that I always want to go back to and southern RI is definitely where we want to end up, eventually,” Maroney said. 

Schimmel says that he will always be back here from time to time. 

“I’m definitely a Rhode Islander and I grew up in SK since I was three; I taught at URI and spent a lot of summers there even after I moved from the area,” he said. 

Both Schimmel and Maroney thought it was interesting and coincidental that they were both from SK and in the same foreign service officer class. 

“We didn’t even know each other during high school, we only had mutual friends; it’s a small town and you think you know everyone but I guess you really don’t,” Maroney said. “I was so proud when I found out that Ehren was in my class too...I mean, two kids from SK; it speaks really well of southern Rhode Island and the education system here.”

Schimmel says that his interest in foreign policy and relations began when he served with the Peace Corps in Romania in 2001. 

“I really enjoyed representing the United States and the face of America in the town where I worked and the schools where I taught,” Schimmel said. “I taught about American foreign policy, history, culture, and civilization to students from the fifth grade to University level.”

Maroney’s interest stemmed from the fact that her husband has held a position with the foreign service for eight years. When her husband was serving in the Dominican Republic, she worked in the embassy.

“I absolutely loved it and I always thought I wouldn’t be qualified to be a foreign service officer because I thought they had to have P.h.D.s or something,” she said. “But I was willing to learn whatever I needed to complete the testing program with a high score.”

Both say that being a American diplomat is an interesting and very rewarding job. 

“As a diplomat, basically you are managing the flow of information between the American embassy and a foreign country's embassy,” Maroney said. “We are facilitating the relationship between the United States and another country.”

To Schimmel, the most exciting thing is being able to represent the United States to foreign countries and to conduct and support American foreign policy overseas. 

“It feels like we are really doing something important,” Schimmel said.

Maroney sees her biggest reward as the places and things her children will see that they never would were they to live in the United States all their lives. 

“Its a lot of fun to live overseas and to see how other people live their lives and for me the biggest reward has to been to see the opportunities that have been presented to my children,” she said. “They are four-years-old and and 16 months and they have seen a lot of interesting things; my son doesn’t even care if he can’t communicate with his friends in English...they have fun despite the language barrier.”

Though there are many rewards, there are also hardships that come with the job. Both Maroney and Schimmel agreed that the hardest thing is living somewhere for only 2-3 years and then moving on. 

“You meet some really great people and make great friendships but since you only spend a few years in one place, you have to leave those people eventually,” Schimmel said. “Its a negative but also a positive because then you get to meet more great people and experience awesome new things.”