If you can see it, you can be it

Credit to Billie Jean King and/or Elizabeth Marvel for this quote. It’s truly the inspiration behind this website and my motivation to support others by doing what I do best: keeping it very, very real.

So in that spirit, here is my non-resume. It’s the true, messy, unpolished version of the path I’ve traveled, and I share it with absolute pride.

I spent every Saturday morning in the 1990s and early 2000s sitting at the kitchen table participating in social and political discussions with my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and that experience is worthy of its own post, but I will say here that it absolutely shaped me, being surrounded by interesting debates over current events and having the opportunity to participate. My family is loud, sarcastic, and opinionated, so I developed a strong will, a quick wit, and a general irreverence, purely as a means of surviving family functions. It’s carried me far.

In high school, I became really interested in politics, and somehow (I really have no idea how) I received an invite to visit Washington, DC with this program called Presidential Classroom, through Georgetown University. Maybe lots of people got these invites? No clue. All I know is that my parents used their tax refund to send me on this trip and it changed my life.

I applied to the George Washington University early decision because I had to get back to DC and I had no concept of student loan debt. I transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill my sophomore year because GWU was too expensive and my boyfriend was at Duke. I’m cringing a little bit writing that but I promised myself that I would be totally candid. In my 19-year-old mind, this was a good reason to transfer (it’s not). However, it worked out, because UNC provided me with a fabulous education and the quintessential college experience, and they made it affordable. I also met my husband there, and his partnership is among the greatest gifts in my life, so I guess sometimes you can make the right decision, even for the wrong reasons.

Skip skip skip ahead because no one is going to keep reading if I don’t fast forward a bit. I graduated from UNC and was shocked to discover that I wasn’t a shoe-in for the foreign affairs jobs I wanted, so I went to work – first as a worker’s compensation claims adjuster (worst job I’ve ever had) and then as an immigration paralegal, because it was global-esque. That job allowed me to work part-time for 6 years, way before it was en vogue to do so, and I am thankful every day. It allowed me to contribute to supporting our family while I had not one, not two, but three babies. It allowed me to work at night, which was a privilege and also absolute torture at that stage in life when sleep was so scarce. It gave me tons of experience managing a caseload and communicating with people with diverse backgrounds, needs, and anxieties about the immigration process. I realized that I loved the interpersonal aspects of the work and I thrived in situations requiring empathy. I unenthusiastically but expeditiously filled out the forms and learned to write in legalese.

All the while, I was home with my kids, and I will always be thankful for that time.

I want to pause here to say that I receive lots of positive feedback about my willingness and ability to pursue my career goals while raising three young kids, and I appreciate that. It was indeed an act of feminism to pursue a career. It was also an act of feminism to choose to stay home with my kids for many years, even while working part-time, and I’m so thankful it was a viable option. [This, by the way, is a clear example of how flexibility directly contributes to opportunities for caregivers and supports gender equality.] The point is, it’s an act of feminism to embrace authenticity and do the things that are right for you at any given time, full stop. No one else gets to define that for you.

So, I left the immigration firm when my third child was born, and when he was one year old, I went back to school to finish my Master’s degree, which I’d actually started 5 years prior but then dropped because it was too expensive. My Master’s program was fully remote and asynchronous by design, which worked out really well because I started it in January 2020, and you all know what happened two months later.

Picture this: My husband on back to back work calls in our home office; my 5 and 6-year-old kids attending virtual Kindergarten and first grade 6 hours a day when they have never in their lives used a computer and don’t know how to click a mouse; my one-year-old running naked through the house, shrieking and passing by multiple cameras; and me, writing a paper on WMDs. It wasn’t pretty, and it got even tougher when I decided to take advantage of my very last opportunity to complete an internship and ended up with two at once, neither of which I could afford to refuse. This time was pure chaos, but we did it together, and in May 2022, I graduated with my Master’s degree in International Security.

Quick note on my internships: I completed a full-time (but remote, because #Covid) 10-week internship with the State Department’s Student Internship Program and a part-time (always remote) internship with the Virtual Student Federal Service program, also at State. I would not recommend doing two internships at once, but this was one of those rare times when I decided to go full tilt because I was a 33-year-old intern with a rapidly expiring student status. It was only possible with the scheduling creativity and support of my husband and my Mom.

I worked hard, built my network, and fulfilled my vision of graduating with a job offer in hand. That was a classic case of opportunity = preparation + luck.

You’ll notice a few things I didn’t say. I didn’t have a family member or mentor who could provide specific guidance – I was the first in my family to graduate college. But I did have the relentless support of my loved ones, and I’ve collected the most unique and wonderful assortment of mentors along the way.

I didn’t do any prestigious scholarship or fellowship programs, but I did network and self advocate and humbly seek advice from social networks supporting women in my field, and I ended up where I wanted to be.

I didn’t sacrifice the other things I wanted in life for the sake of a career – things like my kids, my friendships, my inner peace and personal boundaries – and again, I still ended up where I wanted to be.

But this is important: Betty Friedan and/or Madeleine Albright said, “You can have it all, just not at the same time” and I would generally agree. Maybe you can have it all, eventually, but don’t expect to pursue it all at the same time. Don’t expect to make progress across all areas of your life evenly. We have front burners and back burners for a reason – use them! And don’t be afraid to throw something on simmer when you need to.