Keith Mines Mines

I did my undergrad in history at BYU and served a mission for the LDS church in Colombia. Did four years in Army Special Forces, based at Ft. Bragg, with deployments to Grenada and Central America. Did grad school at Georgetown's Foreign Service school, got married to the former Cecile McGuire from NYC and started a family. Joined the Foreign Service in 1991 and served in Israel, El Salvador, Haiti, Hungary, Canada, and Mexico, with short tours to Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Darfur. I published a book with some of this -- Why Nation-Building Matters: Political Consolidation, Building Security Forces, and Economic Development in Failed and Fragile States. I retired from State in 2019 and spent the next five years as VP for Latin America at the U.S. institute of Peace. Retired definitively in 2025 and continue work on Haiti and Venezuela.

I now realize I was much less involved in school than I should have been, academics, sports, school government. Oh well, somehow muddled through the rest of life.
I do appreciate now the extraordinary team of teachers and administrators we had. Do I remember right that our school district was one of the top 20 in the country? I can still remember many of them and the things they taught on politics, history, life. They conveyed very strong civic values throughout, as did the school in general. It was a tremendous grounding for everything that came after.