Matt McMahon\u2019s office walls prominently feature a Team USA pennant, a baseball card of Masanori Murakami (Major League Baseball\u2019s first Asian player), and the front page of the Boston Globe after the Red Sox won the 2018 World Series. Appropriate decor, for a man who helps run the State Department\u2019s Sports Diplomacy Division.<\/p>\n
As the department\u2019s deputy director in its Office of Citizen Exchanges,\u00a0McMahon \u201989 (CLAS), \u201994 MA\u00a0facilitates international meetings, events, and mentorship programs between Americans and foreigners in five primary areas: sports, culture, technology, youth programs, and global leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve burned through four or five diplomatic passports over the years,\u201d he laughs, listing nations he\u2019s visited including Australia, China, and Egypt.<\/p>\n
Go Huskies<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Vernon, Connecticut, native keeps up with his Watson Hall roommates to this day. During the Huskies\u2019 men\u2019s basketball national championship game in April, \u201cwe had a text message chain going during commercial breaks.\u201d<\/p>\n Sports has been a throughline of their friendship across the decades. \u201cWe used to go out on the quad and play tackle football during the first snowfall of the school year.\u201d In 2017, they reunited for the UConn-Boston College football game at Fenway.<\/p>\n A political science major, McMahon says it was study abroad in Granada, Spain, his junior year that spurred his desire to work in international education and exchanges professionally.<\/p>\n After graduation, he spent a few years working for non-governmental organizations focused on international education and exchanges, which is where he met his wife. Although she graduated from William & Mary, McMahon brags that he converted her to UConn sports fandom.<\/p>\n After returning to Storrs for a master\u2019s in international affairs, McMahon moved to Washington, D.C., for a job at the Asia Foundation and eventually landed at the State Department … the month after 9\/11. \u201cIt was just surreal, but you definitely had a sense of purpose,\u201d he says of that tension-filled autumn. \u201cIt was very meaningful. And [Secretary of State] Colin Powell was a great leader for that time.\u201d He had a knack for making every employee feel needed, McMahon says. \u201cI recall him talking about the custodian who looks beyond the menial tasks of a job description to see how their work can create the environment and conditions for others in the organization to succeed. At a time when I was just starting out at the State Department, he made me feel that even I had an important role to play in accomplishing U.S. foreign policy goals, and it\u2019s stuck with me ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n