[citation needed] In 1967, she also earned a master's degree in International Affairs at Columbia University.

She then completed a two-year assignment as a Senior Seminar member at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, VA. She then returned to Japan, where she served from 1987 to 1990 at the Tokyo Embassy.

Ambassador to the country, and the first female African American Foreign Service employee to rise to the senior ranks.

She was handed the challenge of reducing the tension that had arisen between Kenya and her predecessor, Ambassador Smith Hempstone, while still pressing for economic and political reform.

The Moi government threatened to expel Time, Newsweek and The Washington Post journalists from the country, and even briefly detained Brazeal herself.

[7] Brazeal then became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, a position she held from 1996 until 1998, and which involved sharing her knowledge of the region with Congress as the U.S. treaty with the Marshall Islands came up for review.

At the same time, she held appointments as Distinguished Visiting Ambassador and Diplomat-in-Residence at Howard University.