“I’ve picked up skills about how to present a complex policy, how to study a language in a very specialized way, and how to manage the people who will help me do my job. Openness to culture, both the State Department’s culture and a foreign culture, really set you off on a great foot when you come into the Foreign Service.”

“I am passionate about sharing U.S. values and culture through exchange programs and other artistic and cultural programs abroad. Despite my disability I have been able to open a world of opportunities for foreign students to study in the United States.”

“You really are the representative of much more than yourself – and how you carry yourself and how you conduct your business often means more than just for that immediate situation. It means everything from how our relationship with a country will be, to maybe even the future of our foreign policy.”

“When I go abroad meeting people from other cultures as they form their ideas of what an American is like, I’m representing my mother, my father, my high school friends, the people I went to college with…I’m there making sure that they’re well-represented in whatever country I’m in.”