Minister of Economic & Trade Affairs Yifat Alon Perel has been working at the Embassy in Washington for two years, where she deals with trade policy, promotes Israeli business, and works with international financial institutions. We sat down with her about her work and what makes a good diplomat.
1. What is your role here at the Embassy?
a. I am the head the Trade and Economic Mission, which covers a
number of different areas. First, we promote Israeli trade policy vis-à-vis the
U.S., dealing with everything under that roof including customs, trade agreements, regulation and the like. Second,
we work to assist Israeli companies in getting business here in the greater DC area,
either with private companies or the U.S. government. And third we work with
the International Finance Institutions, i.e. the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank facilitating knowledge and expertise sharing.
2. How long have you been working here?
a. Exactly two years out of four, sometimes five years at this
post.
3. What does it take to be a good diplomat?
a. I have to be honest, I don’t think I’m trying to be a good
diplomat. I think of myself more as trying to promote Israel’s and the Ministry of Economy’s goals in the best way possible, gaining a mutually beneficial result for Israel and the US.
Obviously, yes, one has to also
be a good diplomat because you have to say certain things in a more delicate
way, and we are always in some sort of negotiation. In that sense I am of course a diplomat, I am always thinking of what I
am going to say, I prepare myself, and I’ll try not to hurt anyone’s feelings
even if I need to say hard or difficult things in order to gain the things that
I need for Israeli industry. But this is not a goal for me, this is a mean.
4. What motivates you to make a difference?
a. Make a difference itself is definitely one of the things that motivates me in my work. But what does it mean it to make a difference? The Israeli industry is at stake all the time because of global and local competition, and my goal is to represent it in the best way and find the win-win situations. There are so many ways that the Israeli and American economies and industries are complimentary, so that is an easy task, but sometimes finding the right way to present it is a little more difficult.
Another motivation is having the ability to sit
here and to meet with people on a personal level. That’s also part of being a
good diplomat. That you are not in your home, you are elsewhere, and there are
just things that you cannot gain from working at a distance. So for me, the
fact that I can meet with people, engage with them in a very direct way, is
much, much easier than doing it from far away, and it’s also a lot of fun. I
love sitting with people, I love having meetings, I love talking about Israel
and seeing the spark in their eyes. It is really motivating to go to the World
Bank and talk about Israeli water history and see that spark. The same goes for
talking about cybersecurity, an area that I highly promote here in the
U.S. These things are really worth
waking up in the morning for.