Chantale Wong Becomes America’s First Lesbian Ambassador

February 8, 2022 – Today, the United States Senate confirmed Chantale Wong as U.S. Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with the rank of ambassador. With a vote of 66-31, the United States has finally confirmed its first open lesbian ambassador.

An extraordinarily qualified professional, Ambassador Wong has dedicated her life to public service in federal government and has, in fact, previously performed this very job as Alternate Executive Director during the Clinton Administration. Her combination of over 30 years of experience and expertise in international development, finance, the environment, and technology make her incalculably qualified for this role.

The Council for Global Equality is anxious to see Ambassador Wong take up her post at the ADB in Manila because of the important process under way this year to update the agency’s “safeguards” for development projects in the region. Numerous gender and LGBTQI rights organizations have come together to request a new, stand-alone safeguard for gender and SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics) to ensure that LGBTQI communities benefit from – and are not harmed by – ADB projects.

This safeguard process is important not only for this extremely diverse region, where the range of social inclusion for LGBTQI people runs the gamut from marriage equality rights in Taiwan to the use of forced anal exams and regular imprisonment of gay and trans people in Uzbekistan. But it is also an important precedent for the entire sector of international finance institutions, which invest billions of dollars every year in development and infrastructure projects. That funding should be guaranteed to do no harm to LGBTQI communities. Establishing safeguards for acutely vulnerable LGBTQI people in the ADB and in other international financial institutions is a goal the Biden-Harris Administration, as articulated in the Presidential Memorandum of February 4, 2021.

While the Council for Global Equality applauds the Biden-Harris Administration for Ambassador Wong’s historic confirmation, the nomination barely dents the stunning underrepresentation of LGBTQI people of color, lesbians, and trans people in the foreign affairs arena generally and especially for top diplomatic posts. The foreign affairs sector has historically been very male dominated, but the cumulative 23:1 ambassador ratio of senior gay men to lesbians is unconscionable. It has been almost 30 years since our nation’s first openly gay male ambassador (James Hormel) was nominated by President Clinton. The Senate has confirmed five additional (extremely talented) white gay men for ambassador roles so far in this Congress, joining nearly 20 white gay men confirmed in prior administrations. It took an exceptionally qualified – dare we say over-qualified – lesbian to finally break this lavender glass ceiling for women.

It shouldn’t have to take exceptionalism to break glass ceilings. The full spectrum of American diversity, including diversity along the lines of gender and race, should be celebrated, and reflected in the lives of those who are supported to take senior diplomatic posts. By nominating more ambassadors who, through their lived experiences, possess a deep understanding of the fundamentally linked harms of racism, sexism, and homophobia, we can promote an American foreign policy that meaningfully upholds the full humanity of all persons. That this nomination took 30 years to arrive is evidence of how very far we must go. 

We celebrate and support Ambassador Wong today as she embarks on the life-saving work of genuinely inclusive development at the Asian Development Bank. We also wish her the company of more lesbian, trans, and gender diverse ambassador peers – and soon.