Liz Schrayer remembers members of the U.S. Congress bragging that they didn’t own a passport.
She said it was in the mid-90s when she created the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition — a network of over 500 businesses, nonprofits, and others focused on strengthening U.S. development and diplomacy. At that point, once the Cold War ended, much of America had begun to turn inward.
“A lot of our fellow citizens said: ‘We won! We don’t need these tools of the State Department and Peace Corps and USAID,’” Schrayer said. “This is going to sound familiar — but there were attempts to cut all the tools of development and diplomacy.”