Countywide : Protocol Office Will Mark Its 10th Year

From her corner office on the ground floor of the county Hall of Administration, Gayle Anderson, the county’s official diplomat, fields calls from foreign ambassadors, makes appointments to meet royalty, and chats with foreign businessmen interested in Orange County.

Anderson’s volunteer work as chief of protocol is all part of a 10-year effort by the county office of protocol to change the county image from that of sidekick to Los Angeles to one of haven for international investment.

The privately funded office will mark its 10th year Saturday with a gala fund-raiser in Newport Beach. The $150-per-plate affair features champagne, salmon, baked Alaska and the chance to hobnob with more than 40 foreign emissaries.

“It’s now the international social event in the county,” Anderson said.

Since its inception, the office of protocol has been successful in forging a close relationship with foreign diplomats by hosting them at fancy dinners and tours of the county.

One of the major functions of the office has always been to introduce members of the consular corps to the county, a tradition started by Mary Bonino Jones, who left her job as an executive with Disneyland in 1985 to become the county’s first protocol chief.

Just last week, Anderson whisked the consul general of France, Jean-Maurice Ripert, on a tour of McDonnell Douglas, Fluor Corp. and the Performing Arts Center. Anderson averages 25 such tours per year, with most diplomats wanting a look at high-tech industries, she said.

The office of protocol also is host to more than 300 yearly visitors sent by the United States Information Agency. The number of visitors has grown steadily since 1986, when the office greeted 32 foreigners.

The office is almost entirely self-sustaining and uses no government money. The 350 members of the Protocol Foundation pay annual dues ranging from the student rate of $50 per year to the corporate rate of $5,000.

Membership dues and fund-raisers pay for two full-time staffers and a budget of about $130,000 per year, and the county donates office space and telephones. The main perquisite for members is the chance to meet foreign dignitaries.

“A lot of people join us because they want to meet interesting people from all over the world,” Anderson said, noting that there are far more individual memberships than corporate ones.

This emphasis on mingling with the international elite is one of the things that Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who helped found the office in 1984, would like to see changed.

“The concentration has been more on the social side--entertaining--and that is not why I started it,” Wieder said.

“We need to improve the trade and working relationships with other countries,” she said.

The office has begun to make efforts in that area, Anderson said.

In October, Anderson and representatives of two small Orange County businesses traveled to China to visit various government officials.

“It’s very difficult for a small company to get into China and do business,” Anderson said, but she hopes the trip and others in the future will open lines of communication between county businesses and foreign markets.