JEDDAH, 14 December 2007 — Kate Rudd is a tall, clear-eyed blonde, easy of manner, with an effervescent personality. At 30-something she is the very model of a modern British diplomat of the new-style policy entrant scheme that the UK Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been running for some years. The FCO recruitment targets high-flyers with private sector experience for the modern diplomatic service. “The new face of the FCO is about entrants with business and management skills,” Rudd commented.
First the obvious hurdle; young blonde female in a conservative male-oriented society? Rudd was prepared and ready. She served as head of UK Trade and Investment in Baghdad for a year before being appointed to Jeddah and frequently left the relative safety of the “Green Zone” on business to Baghdad ministries in the “Red Zone” and the north.
“There were absolutely no issues there,” she said. “I made contact at the highest level and worked with two ministers in particular. I anticipate being treated here as I was there on what I do. I don’t see any issue here at all. What it will do is give an opportunity to engage with part of society that a male counterpart would not be able to and that will be interesting.”
Rudd’s academic and — perhaps more importantly in terms of her brief vis-a-vis the business community — her commercial experience will, she thinks, enable her to engage with the Saudi business community on grounds of mutual understanding and interest.
She joined the diplomatic service four years ago from the private sector, having joined KPMG through their Japan desk as an account executive managing accounts in the telecoms and IT sectors and concentrating on Japanese clients.
“My work at KPMG gave me good insight into business, what the problems are and what tool-kit you need to resolve them. It’s about diplomacy as well. I bring that experience to my commercial work here at the consulate.”
Her career path to Jeddah began un-extraordinarily in Plymouth, where she was born and brought up in a small family, went through the state education system and university from which she graduated in English literature and later with distinction in International Business. Along the way though, events set down several waypoints for her future in diplomacy.
The first was at university where Rudd took up an exchange studentship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for a year, partly because it seemed like a good idea at the time and because the Orient and Middle East had long been a source of interest to her. In Hong Kong, she studied Cantonese, met Japanese and Americans and discovered the Japanese Exchange and Teaching (JET) program which proved to be the second waypoint in her journey.
She decided that if the diplomatic service was to be interested in her she needed to have a “hard” language, so she studied Japanese while at JET in night school. “The diplomatic service choice was the result partly of the JET program and meeting other people like me who were doing much the same thing — talking about what we were going to do after JET.”
During a successful period at KPMG, she used her experience to complete her M.Sc. in International Business as well as doing full-time work. Solving problems and making money had its charms, but after a couple of years the elements of abroad and doing the same interesting and productive work for the country came together. Waypoint three. “Japan was the tipping point. It was fascinating working abroad but not ultimately satisfying because I was not working for my own government, not for the UK.”
Rudd happily says she is a patriot, but not in the chauvinistic sense. “I am a patriot and a realist,” she said. “Ultimately, the UK health and education systems are unique in the world and should be preserved, even though there are faults in them.”
She said that the UK had cutting-edge private sector business, good government business, good government systems and checks and balances. “There are lots of things that are flawed, but there are also lots of things that are fundamentally good about how we do things in the UK that we can be proud of and I feel good about that. Moreover, to secure a way of life in the UK it has to be done within the framework of an international environment.”
In the coming three years of her tour of duty, Rudd expects to “continue to support British business through our chargeable services, to deepen our relationship with this very important trading partner, to continue to provide a world class consular service and parallel quality visa service.”
Since the new service started in early November, it has averaged 80 a day. There have been only two complaints about the new system, making that a lot less than one percent of customers. Rudd was pleased that the quarterly visa customer satisfaction survey returned very positive feedback.
Rudd noted it was always positive to have good relationships with the local community as they are a rich resource of local experience and knowledge. “Should difficult times occur, if you know the people you are interacting with, things will be a lot smoother for all.”
One of her personal ambitions is to leave Jeddah with a good command of Arabic. “My experience is that it’s possible to make some inroads using English but you really make the connections, get the understanding and make the real inroads when you put the effort into learning the language.”
That would mesh well with her desire to travel all over the Kingdom, desert and town alike, indulging in her love of camping, the outdoor life and scuba diving. “I was inspired particularly by the book ‘Daughter of the Desert’ about Gertrude Bell,” Rudd mused. Could this possibly be intimations of waypoint No. 4?
