Friday, April 10, 2009

Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is arming her diplomatic efforts with a new set of tools including Facebook, text messaging, and YouTube. The State Department has hired Eric Ross, whose job will be to "blend technology with diplomacy in an attempt to help solve some of the globe’s most vexing problems on health care, poverty, human rights and ethnic conflicts."

Ross is an unlikely Washington operator. He commutes to the District from Baltimore, where he settled more than 10 years ago as a Teach for America volunteer working at a middle school on the city's economically troubled west side. He grew up near Charleston, W.Va., where unemployment was ever rising. He named the first of his three children Colton, a play on "coal town," as a "shout-out" to his roots, he said.

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