Page 260 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

FELLOWS AT WORK

only a week after he returned to Washington from his desert mission, a
massive earthquake struck Guatemala, killing 23,000 people and injuring
76,000. “This was an opportunity for my principal, Dan Parker, to
demonstrate the value of U-2 photography in disaster relief, so he got per-
mission from President Ford to have a U-2 photograph the whole coun-
try,” Carter recalled. “I went out to California to Beale Air Force Base
and brought 800 pounds of U-2 photography back to Washington, and
then we got some more of these light tables and photo interpreters, and
we went to Guatemala. The earthquake was so big that the central gov-
ernment didn’t know the extent of it in the countryside. So that tech-
nique worked very well.” Next, Carter was off to the western African
nation of Mali for yet another project, this time to extend the application
of technology to basic developmental problems, which was cutting-edge
stuff in 1975.

SLEEPLESS IN URUGUAY
One Fellow whose work earned nearly as many frequent-flier miles as
Carter’s was Diane Yu (WHF 86–87), who called her work assignment
under U.S. Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter a “unique, never-to-be-
equaled experience.” In only her third week on the job, Yu found herself
on Air Force Three with the country’s top multilateral trade experts, jet-
ting to the largest successful trade round to date, the Uruguay Round of
trade talks under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now known
as the World Trade Organization.
Yu spent “a week characterized by tantrums and teamwork, ‘deep
throat’ intrigue and side deals, confrontation and conflict, cold weather
and sleepless nights.” Her specific role there was one she invented and
offered to do: serving as the note taker for all the one-on-one meetings—
six or seven each day—that Secretary Yeutter, who headed the U.S. dele-
gation, conducted with the trade ministers from other nations. Since he
was the head of the U.S. delegation and the chief negotiator, it was impor-
tant for other members of the American contingent to know what he was
doing. The problem was that Yu couldn’t take notes at the meetings for
fear that it would inhibit frank dialogue. Instead, she had to memorize the
conversations, including who said what. “It was the most challenging writ-
ten assignment I’d ever had,” Yu recalled. “When the meeting broke, I’d
race to the computer, which I had only learned to use the week before, and

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