U.S. ambassador to Malawi explains how MU education set him on his career path

As a journalism student at the University of Missouri in the 1980s, David Young didn't know what the State Department was.

Even after his diplomatic career started, he said he thought he would remain in the field three or four years. That has become 34 years as the 61-year-old Young finished his career as U.S. ambassador to Malawi.

He spoke Monday in Stotler Lounge in Memorial Union at MU to a public audience. An hour before that, he spoke with two reporters.

He has a bachelor of journalism degree from MU, which he earned in 1984. He covered local politics and the courts and Mizzou basketball during his student stint at the Columbia Missourian.

"The skills I got from J school have been amazing for my career," Young said, speaking with reporters.

A big part of being an ambassador is emotional intelligence and using active listening, he said during interviews.

"I've helped lead embassies in five, six countries over the last 10 years," Young said. "And it's just been a tremendous honor. I love building teams. I'm a servant leader and I'm committed to getting people to work together. And that's been a very, very special part of my public service."

Malawi is peaceful and stable so it doesn't get attention among the conflicts in several areas around the globe, Young said.

"There's the quiet desperation of extreme poverty," Young said.

The poverty rate in Malawi is 70% and it is the eighth poorest country in the world, he said.

Young was introduced in Memorial Union by Enoch Ng'oma, professor of biological sciences, and Ellen Mazalale, doctoral student in biological sciences, both from Malawi.

"Malawi is such a tiny country in the southeast of Africa," Ng'oma said. "We look at the U.S. as our truest friend."

The landlocked country is the "warm heart of Africa," he said.

The slogan at the U.S. embassy says a lot, Mazalele said.

"Americans and Malawians are brothers and sisters truly," she said, translating the slogan.

"He's popular and a beloved figure in Malawi," she said of Young.

He posted a hip-hop Christmas song on YouTube. He got on his hands and knees to make mandazi, fried bread, she said.

"I'm inspired by our national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many, one," Young said. "The center doesn't always hold. The divisions in our country sometime pain me."

He spent a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where he studied compartive religion and peace and conflict studies.

"It oriented me to start thinking about the world in new ways," Young said.

He later went to seminary at Boston University, where his hero Martin Luther King Jr. got his doctorate.

He took the foreign service exam on the advice of a professor and passed, he said.

He gave three examples of how the foreign service matters.

Boko Haram and the Islamic State group were active in Nigeria when he was there.

"We basically have gotten to the point that Boko Haram no longer exists," Young said.

When there were presidential elections in Zambia two years ago, the current longtime president was threatening to jail his opponent. Young convinced the president the move wouldn't be good for his democratic credentials.

The president didn't arrest his opponent. The president lost the election and left office voluntarily, Young said.

In Malawi, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, has kept a million people alive in Malawi and 25 million in Africa. It was started by President George W. Bush and has continued.

"It literally turned around the AIDS crisis in the world," Young said. "What we do through the PEPFAR program is profound."

There is reason to be hopeful, he said.

"The future of the world is Africa," Young said.

The continent's population is 1 billion and will be 2 billion in about 20 years, he said.

"So 60% of the young people in the world in 20 years will be African," he said.

He cited a recent New York Times piece on the idea that the world is becoming more African.

"China's population is very dramatically graying," Young said.

Though organizers appealed to the audience to stick to questions about Malawi and Africa, a few audience members asked about China's influence in Africa and how the U.S. could counter it.

"We are not surrendering the battlefield," Young said.

A U.S. Critical Minerals Partnership will help prevent the minerals from becoming monopolized, he said.

"We are not stepping back," Young said. "We are competing hard."

He acknowledged his status as an old, white guy, but said the State Department is making strides to diversify. Around half of diplomats are women, he said.

He has tried to exhibit humility in his role, eating fried grasshoppers and getting on his hands and knees to fry mandazi, he said.

"We want the foreign service to look like America," Young said.

He also talked about the role his faith has played.

"I take my sacred beliefs and translate them into a secular space," Young said.

Malawi needs economic development, he said.

"Malawi's economy is not growing, but its population is," Young said. "We're all intertwined in the world we live in today."

The country's economy was reliant on tobacco exports, but diversity is needed, he said.

"Gandhi once said poverty is the worst form of violence," Young said.

He encouraged students to consider careers in the foreign service, or with a global focus.

"I would like nothing more for one or two or three of you to find careers with a global focus," Young said.

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573=815-1719. He's on X at @rmckinney9.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: David Young returns to alma mater as U.S. ambassador to Malawi