Sydney Kamen ’15

A Diplomat on a Mission

Georgetown Days Magazine, Spring 2024

This summer, Sydney Kamen ’15 found herself representing the United States at a United Nations conference in Ethiopia discussing how to finance sustainable development around the world. 

Sydney, a Senior Economic Advisor for the State Department, had little previous experience with the UN, her days competing on GDS’s Model UN team notwithstanding. At 27 and only a few months into this latest Foreign Service assignment, she said with a laugh, “There’s nothing senior about me.” 

Working as a U.S. diplomat lately has felt like having to learn to swim–quickly–in challenging waters. “If you learn how to swim, you can swim anywhere,” Sydney said. “You just need to be confident in your ability to swim…I’ve been swimming in really choppy water lately, but I’ve also found a way to really love it.” 

An Open Heart and a Curious Mind

Sydney has wanted to be part of the U.S. diplomatic pool since high school, when she participated in a State Department language immersion program in India. She had absorbed the curiosity of her journalist father, Jeff Kamen, and the caring humanity of her psychologist mother, Cynthia Putchat. 

Growing up, her parents (who divorced during Sydney’s high school years) used to joke that she was the family diplomat, helping to smooth over any tensions. At GDS, which she attended from pre-kindergarten through high school, she enjoyed building friendships across social groups. 

“That’s what I think so much of diplomacy is,” Sydney said. “It’s all about relationships. It’s about bringing people to the table and building understanding.” 

Both GDS and Sydney’s parents instilled in her a sense of compassion and service, whether it was making sandwiches in kindergarten for people dealing with food insecurity or reading with children in other DC schools. Barbara Buonora, Sydney’s pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teacher at GDS, recalled her insightful questions and empathy toward other children. “You could tell she was a deep thinker, even as a 4- and 5-year-old,” said Barbara, who retired in June after three decades at GDS and has stayed in touch with Sydney over the years. “She asked deep questions and had an open mind. Isn’t that what a diplomat does?”

The Teen Who Did What?

In high school, Sydney became keenly aware of poverty and extreme disparities around the world, particularly a lack of basic sanitation and health care, and she grew determined to do something about it. 

As part of volunteer medical trips during summers and school breaks, she shadowed dentists in Haiti, volunteered in an HIV clinic in rural Uganda, and backpacked through the Himalayas as part of a traveling medical clinic. 

“I went to an incredible private school in Washington, DC; I grew up in Georgetown,” Sydney said. “I had a very sheltered, privileged upbringing. It was incredible to realize that the rest of the world didn’t live the way I did. That really opened my eyes and started changing my perspective. I wanted to learn more.” 

During a summer trip to Thailand after ninth grade, she first learned how many public health problems stemmed from lack of access to soap and water, which left people unable to wash germs and bacteria off their hands. She founded So Others Are Protected (SOAP), working with communities in Southeast Asia to recycle leftover bars of hotel soap for people in need. The program recycled more than 50,000 bars of soap before it shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“How do you expect people to go to school if they’re sick?” Sydney said. “How do you expect people to work and support their economy if they’re sick?” 

As an adult, she’s amazed–and grateful–that her parents let her travel the world as a teenager. She remembers hearing other parents ask hers incredulously, “You’re going to let your kid do what by herself?”

Her parents supported anything that “benefited society or resulted in my growth and ability to serve humanity,” she said. Their courage to let her go, she said, left her feeling comfortable and confident throughout the world. And though she was “never a 4.0 student,” she said, she left GDS feeling “like I can do anything and that there’s a way to make a positive impact.”

Going Where You’re Most Needed 

At Dartmouth College, Sydney studied geography, global health, and international development and participated in Army ROTC, among other activities. She took five and a half years to graduate because she carved out time to study abroad and volunteer overseas while earning multiple awards.

Dr. Lisa V. Adams, Dartmouth’s Associate Dean for Global Health, remembered Sydney’s humility and her resourcefulness in digging up volunteer opportunities abroad, including in Tanzania and Rwanda. “She always stood out but in ways that didn’t seek the spotlight,” Adams said. Sydney’s acceptance into the U.S. diplomatic corps seemed like a natural fit. “She came to us with that sense of ‘I can’t just shrug my shoulders and say: Oh, that’s how it is in these countries,’” Adams recalled. “She wanted to engage in a meaningful, sustainable way.” 

After Dartmouth, Sydney earned a master’s degree in public policy and international and global affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She then joined the Foreign Service in 2022 to work on the kind of government policies that could help solve the problems she’d witnessed around the world. “I wanted to be close to, and have a hand in, those conversations,” she said.

With her deep interest in global health issues, Sydney first requested a posting in East Africa. Asia wasn’t high on her bid list because, while she speaks six languages, none of them would be of use there. 

Her assignment: Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Though disappointed at first and tasked with eight hours of daily Vietnamese language training, Sydney also began to reconsider what it meant to serve her country. 

“I think there’s the romantic idea of service, where we find ways to serve exactly in the ways that we want to and are comfortable in,” Sydney said. “And then there’s the kind where you really surrender to the true notion of service and go where you’re needed.”

Grieving and Growing

In August 2023, two weeks before she was scheduled to leave for Vietnam, Sydney’s State Department path, and her life, took a painful turn. Her mother learned that the uterine cancer she’d been battling had spread. The State Department approved Sydney’s request to remain in DC, where Sydney could help care for her. 

Her mother died in April, and two weeks later Sydney started her job at the Bureau of International Organizations in the State Department’s Office of Economic and Development Affairs. She has remained in DC as she mourns her mother and oversees her estate but hopes to get back to a foreign posting soon. 

Meanwhile, she meets with U.S. and foreign officials about economic issues, writes speeches for ambassadors, and represents her country at UN conferences around the world– all while deep in grief. 

“Do I have really, really hard days?” Sydney said. “Yes, this has been the hardest period of my life. But I am nonetheless showing up and rising to the occasion every day…There’s a responsibility, a sense of duty. There’s a sense of honor, too, to have this job and be a part of this mission.”

The waters run deep. But Sydney keeps swimming.