Gail Randall

By Kristin Bjornsen ('05)

No matter the profession, "the person who communicates the best wins the day," alumna Gail Randall ('87) told a class of CU journalism students on Feb. 25.

Randall is the U.S. education attaché to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

"Whether you're a legislator, lawyer or run a business, if you can summarize a memo the best or come up with ideas and put them into words the best, that's nine-tenths of the battle," she said.

As one of the diplomats in the U.S. Mission to UNESCO, Randall, 50, lives in Paris with her 10-year-old daughter Molly, and she meets regularly with delegates from the 191 member countries. Documents are produced in six languages, and, depending on the level of meeting, languages translated could range from the two main ones – English and French – to six.

Randall's experience as a journalist helps her generate ideas and communicate them to Washington, D.C., and to other delegations, she said. Her background has had another effect, as well:

"I end up on a lot of drafting committees," Randall said. That's not necessarily a bad thing, she added. "If you're the one doing the drafting, you can also influence policy."

UNESCO's top priorities are to improve education and increase literacy in developing countries, a formidable task in its own right, but the Asian tsunami that struck last December has made the job even harder, Randall said.

"Everyone was dealing with money issues already, and then the tsunami hit. You get this much done and then get knocked back by Mother Nature," she said.

Although she and other delegates at UNESCO sometimes work 80- to 90-hour weeks, the end goal of increasing literacy is worth it, she said.

"The first rung of the ladder is literacy. You can't learn until you can read and write," she said.

Randall interned at UPI in Washington, D.C., and Newsday in New York. After she graduated from CU, Randall worked as a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Anchorage Daily News.

"My favorite dateline was The Toilet Bowl in Alaska," she said. "It took us eight hours by car, foot, boat and helicopter to get there."

Randall's passion for journalism began when she was in middle school and would type her own "Vietnam dispatches" on an old manual typwriter. The life of a reporter appealed to her because it was "never boring" and "every day was different," she said, adding that she also enjoyed getting to talk to a variety of people.

"I loved the stories. I was always fascinated by people's lives," she said.

After working for eight years as a journalist, Randall – by then living in Austin, Texas – took time off when daughter Molly was born. Afterward, "the glut of unemployed journalists" in Texas from the closure of the Dallas Times Herald and the Houston Post made her start rethinking her options, she said. In 1995, George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, asked her to be his speechwriter, and she accepted. His staff had read her news articles and liked her style, Randall said.

Being Bush's speechwriter had its perks, and they spilled over to Molly, who would attend Christmas and Halloween parties at the governor's mansion.

"I always tease her that she has been kissed by history because she has been able to meet so many historical figures," Randall said.

In fact, she said, Molly has ridden bikes with Lance Armstrong, met Lady Bird Johnson, grown up in the arms of Laura Bush, appeared in TV ads with then-Gov. Bush and was kissed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

Molly's opportunities to hobnob with the famous increased further when Randall followed Bush to the White House to work in the communications office. On Sept. 11, 2001, she recalls watching the attack on the World Trade Center on television from her office. The phone rang, and a co-worker's boyfriend told them smoke was coming from the Pentagon. "That was when we first realized this was bigger than we thought," she said.

Two years later, Randall became the education attaché to UNESCO. The United States withdrew from the organization in 1984 because of concerns regarding corruption, she said, but rejoined in 2003 when reforms took hold.

Working as a diplomat and interacting with the press regularly, she said, have given Randall insight into what it's like to be the one written about.

"Now I've seen what it's like to be on the other side," she said. "People can mishear or not understand what you said, and it can ruin your career to have the wrong interview."