Dave Moo '00

Moo met Lynne Wymore ’99 his first week on campus and they got married four years later. Now, with three children, they are currently living in Budapest, Hungary. Dave's job as a foreign service officer has taken them all over the world, but Knox is their foundation.

Why did you choose Knox?
When I was applying to colleges, it basically came down to either Knox or Michigan State, a small or a large campus. I decided that I wanted to be at a place where I would have good relationships with my professors on a small campus.

I came in with a love for studying math and I enjoyed the more theoretical aspects instead of practical. But I didn't particularly want to be a teacher or a professor, which seemed like what most people who wanted to study pure math do. So I added a computer science major to get a job. But in the end, I ended up getting a job out of college that used math. I became an actuarial consultant in St. Louis and later moved to Shanghai, China, with that company doing consulting on retirement programs. 

Tell us about your route to the U.S. Foreign Service.
When I was at Knox, I did the Budapest semester in mathematics, and that showed me how much I really enjoyed living abroad—not just traveling abroad, but actually living abroad.

When I was working as a consultant, I was looking for opportunities to do that. After seven years working in St. Louis, I got the opportunity to go to Shanghai. After a few years in Shanghai with my job, I started to get restless. The work was interesting and I enjoyed the people I worked with, but I didn't feel like it was serving a larger purpose that I cared about. So a few people recommended that I look at the foreign service. I met with some people at the consulate in Shanghai and started the process. It took about two years start to finish.

Right now, I’m a political and economic officer in Budapest. I do some economics analysis, but I basically do political and economic diplomacy. I cover issues ranging from trying to promote a strong rule of law and the fight against corruption to analyzing broad macroeconomic trends in Hungary.

What other countries have you served in?
My first job was in the State Department in the United States, covering human rights for the China desk. 

Then I went to Venezuela. All officers spend some time at the beginning of their careers in the consular section helping with visas and American citizens’ issues. So that's what I was doing in Venezuela. But I was either in the right place at the right time or in the wrong place at the wrong time, because we hosted a meeting of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and others that the government didn't really like, and they kicked us out. As a result, I was declared persona non grata in Venezuela.

Later I went to Jakarta, where I did a little bit more visa and economic work. Then we went to Mumbai, India, where I did almost pure economic work for three years. I returned to Washington and spent a couple of years in our European Union office, working on digital economy issues, and then we moved to Hungary. Along the way, I’ve had to try to learn Spanish, Indonesian, and Hungarian.

What are your favorite memories from Knox?
I remember lots of great professors and really enjoying taking classes outside math and computer science. I had the opportunity to do an Honors project on the connections between philosophy and neural networks that drive artificial intelligence—working under a philosophy professor with computer science and biology professors weighing in.

Kevin Hastings, Rothwell Stephens Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, helped me get my first job. I told him I wanted to work with math but didn't want to be a professor or go on to grad school. He encouraged me to take the actuarial exams. I kept his statistics textbook on my shelf for a long time.

I was on the club volleyball team and that's where some of my best friendships were formed. Some of the guys on that team were the ones that had done the Budapest program and encouraged me to do that. I also lived with the same group of classmates throughout my time at Knox—we bonded from the beginning and stayed close through our four years there and beyond.

I was on Honor Board, and I like to think that I was contributing to Knox through that, but I think I got more from the experience of working with other people and how we had to learn really interesting ways to think about some of the issues that came before us.

What advice do you have for anyone considering a career in the foreign service?
A job like the foreign service is perfect for a liberal arts major. Every job I've done has been in a different context with different backgrounds, and it helps to be well read and understand how to approach new situations and be comfortable in different environments with people from all over the world. Those are things that I first started learning at Knox, and I've been able to build on those skills through my working experience.