Linda Thomas-Greenfield

Throughout my career, from Jamaica to Nigeria, Pakistan to Switzerland, I've learned that effective diplomacy means more than shaking hands and staging photo ops. It means developing real, robust relationships. It means finding common ground and managing points of differentiation. It means doing genuine, old-fashioned, people-to-people diplomacy.

The fact that I made it to where I made it, when I look at where I came, I think is a message to the world and it's also a message to other young people who come from diverse and underprivileged backgrounds, that where they come from does not necessarily have to define where they are going.

Those of us who experience racism cannot, and should not, internalize it, despite the impact that it can have on our everyday lives. We must face it down, every time, no matter whom it's directed towards.

I think countries are now, leaders are now more conscious of the importance of having women engage in their country's development plan. Because again, and I say this over and over and over again, when we invest in women they invest back in their families, they invest in their communities, and they invest in their countries.

The more we elevate people's lives - the more we treat people with dignity and respect and honor their rights and freedoms - the more we discourageand even preventterrorism.

It is unconscionable for Russia to force Ukrainian citizens into Russia, and put them in what will basically be concentration and prisoner camps.

In so many of our communities and countries, racism is endemic. It's built in, like a rot in a frame.

For technology to be a force for peace and food security, we must widen access to reliable and affordable Internet, accompanied by training in digital literacy and cybersecurity.

Our country is not perfect but our country embraces its diversity. You can be different in this country. I have traveled around the world. I've been in countries where people are not allowed to be different.

At the beginning of my career, I visited a Sudanese refugee camp in Uganda and saw a two-year-old girl die before my eyes. The technical term for what this girl experienced, when you are too thin and malnourished for your size, is childhood wasting. And it was, indeed, a waste. A young life - with all its potential - gone forever.

You have to work with people you don't like. You have to work with people who are working against your interests to try to bring them around. If you don't talk to them, you end up in the same place. And you never achieve anything.

I sometimes think that the reason I was mistaken for a Rwandan is because other countries don't expect that an American diplomat is black.

No one should have to go to bed hungry. It really is a moral issue that we believe the Security Council has to pay attention to. It's about international peace and security.

You know, I never walk into a room feeling as if I'm in the room as a Black woman. When I walk into the Security Council, I'm the U.S. Permanent Representative to the Security Council, and that's what I tell young women when I meet them.

You cannot ignore 50% of your nation and think that your country is going to grow.

Africa's youth are probably one of its greatest resources. There's a tendency to see youth, for example as a problem. But for the continent of Africa, youth are an opportunity, and they are an opportunity that the continent needs to take advantage of.