More than 40 people nominated Michelle for the Tragen Award in 2023. This huge number illustrates the impact of her volunteer advocacy work on the many EFMs serving as Domestic Employees Teleworking Overseas (DETOs).

As we learn about Michelle's fight for fair pay, she highlights the importance of research, building a team, and advocating for systemic change.

In discussing her career history, Michelle explains how government contracting helped her get her foot in the door, and how she later figured out how to create a job share arrangement to improve her work-life flexibility.

Michelle also shares how teleworking helped her slip back into a familiar role and feel connected to her "before" self when everything else was in flux as she first moved abroad for her spouse's job.

BIO

Michelle Neyland is a Civil Service Officer and Domestic Employee Teleworking Overseas (DETO) currently based with her family in Bucharest, Romania.

She started working at the State Department in 2009, spending 10 years as a digital communications officer at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and then a congressional advisor at the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

In 2023, at a ceremony at the State Department, she received the Eleanor Dodson Tragen Award from the DACOR Bacon House Foundation for the advocacy she did to address a pay inequity and secure locality pay legislation for Civil Service DETOs across the entire U.S. federal government.

Read more about Michelle's DETO advocacy work in 2 Federal News Network articles:

• https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay/2023/01/hundreds-of-federal-employees-teleworking-overseas-set-to-receive-pay-bump-under-ndaa/
• https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-report/2023/12/feds-teleworking-overseas-got-a-pay-raise-state-dept-honors-an-employee-who-made-it-happen/

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