I’m an immigrant who came to the U.S. on a lottery visa as a young teenager from Cairo, Egypt. As a Christian Arab from a middle class family, it was bizarre to think I could enter government or participate in policymaking — much less for that to be considered a form of "service." It just was not in the realm of possibilities. The highest form of service I could dream of was to become a doctor, and that was my pursuit when I started my undergraduate degree at Yale University. But once I began taking different classes, meeting fellow students who intend on working in foreign policy, I realized how many other opportunities I had to seek change in a region that mattered so much to me. Growing up, my mom had worked for years as a locally employed staff (LES) at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. She still considers it one of her life’s greatest blessings. It’s crazy to think I grew up accompanying her to work as an Egyptian boy, before immigrating to the U.S., and then becoming naturalized when I was a senior in high school.

I graduated from a top university, worked in the Senate Armed Services Committee, used my new blue passport to see the world, and am now in Daniel Kurtzer’s diplomacy workshop, who was the U.S. ambassador to Egypt when my mom worked in the embassy. A full circle in many ways. But these are the typical immigrant stories we take for granted here. I grew up as an Egyptian kid, but who knows … maybe one day I’ll be the American diplomat with LES working under me.