I want to introduce myself to all of you who are newly following this page. Covering politics and policy demands transparency. I hold myself to that standard. I’m an open book, and always do my best to respond to messages and comments whenever I can, so don’t be a stranger.

So I was fired at my first week in the US State Department. Me in hundreds of thousands of other civil servants. And for me to get in that room, for me to take upon that job was anything but straightforward. We would joke when I was a kid that our family was the actual modern family. I grew up in a multicultural, multiracial, sexually diverse working class family. I grew up in California, the first half of my childhood and then moved to Iowa for the second half. My mother was a teacher and my father was many things, but mostly he was a contractor. My parents were immigrants. My grandfather was raised in the orphanage in Canada and through his own hard work and his military service, was able to become one of the most successful car salesmen who got to see the world. I had a lot growing up, but I also knew what I didn't have. I started really working at 12 years old. When high school came along, my family fell into hard times. At this moment, I became more interested in checking out sports, working, making money. For a little bit there, I didn't think and most didn't think that I would graduate high school. So what I had to do was give myself an escape dream. And so what I did is I decided I was going to travel to China the moment I turned 18. And luckily for me, that dream was enough. And I graduated early from high school in my last year at a 4.0 and then I went to China. At the same time, I applied universities all over. And in doing so, despite scholarships and local tuition, I knew I had really two paths forward. The first, go RTC, join the military, go to American University. The second, study abroad, where I could actually afford tuition. I knew I wanted to be of service. I just didn't know how I wanted to be of service yet, and I had no idea how I was going to get there. What I chose to do was my bachelor's in the Czech Republic, and very quickly I began working as a journalist. Then by kind of luck, I got offered a fellowship in the US government. And at the same time, I got offered some of the best advice of my career. A New Yorker journalist told me if I wanted to work in the field, I wanted to work in. I needed to learn the people that I was reporting on, not just the substance of what I was reporting on. And what this meant was learning the lingo, learning the ins and outs of how they move, how they behave, all their mannerisms, understanding their field as if I'm one of the contemporaries in it just like them. This sent me on a quest to understand the decision-makers that I wanted to report on. But very quickly, I realized that I was not one of them. You see, the world of international affairs is full of jargon and insider speak. And that's the case because the world of international affairs is primarily occupied by privileged white men. Pale, male, and Yale. That was the old saying of the State Department that I learned when I finally made it into those rooms. And to get into those rooms, I hustled. I chose paths that at times I couldn't afford. But I knew I had to do what it takes to get there. I did my masters in Spain. I worked in the US Congress. I worked in think tanks and Brussels. I worked in consultancies. Everything and so on. And it all led me to getting one of the most competitive US government fellowships. There is the presidential management fellowship. My peers became the elites. And then after three years of recruitment and background checks, I finally moved to DC to start my job. At the same time, Donald Trump came in office. I spent years trying to get into the rooms where I could affect change as a working class kid. Trump pushed that out. Now I understand that that was a blessing. Because Trump led me here back to where I started doing journalism. I said the difference is that now I actually understand what the elites are doing in the rooms that we all don't see. Anyone who is like me, and there are people like me who don't come from these circles that make their way in, they are all well aware that there is a massive disconnect between what our policy makers are thinking and doing and talking about and what we normal people think want and do. So that's why I'm here. That's why I'm making content. I intend to do my part to close that gap.