The stereotypes do come with the profession: tight-lipped, stodgy, stiff. Even Laure Beaufils, the British ambassador to the Philippines, says she misguidedly entertained some of them. “It’s funny because when I was younger, when I started in foreign policy, I had this image that I had to be this very posh person, probably this white guy of a certain age in a striped suit.
Thankfully, the sprightly ambassador nixed the idea. “I was trying to be someone I was not, and obviously, I was not doing very
