I spent over 10 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, serving overseas, serving in the Middle East. And let me tell you, if you're a terrorist and you want to come to the United States, the worst possible way to do it is as a refugee. You'll go through a year and a half to two years of vetting.
I had already been approached to do modeling, but in the beginning, I didn't want to hear of it. Then, after two months of delivering pizza, I changed my mind, and I presented myself at the agency.
I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science and then get my Ph.D., then go aboard and work in the European Space Agency.
We have got this Damocles' sword of Standard and Poor's hanging over us, with the commitment they have made to review Britain's credit rating in the summer of 2010 after the general election. Everybody in Britain has a vital interest in ensuring that the triple A credit rating agency is maintained.
I've learned that it's important to listen to employees at all levels, to engage them, to empower them. Whether you're a first-line supervisor or the head of an entire agency, you should be asking career staffers, 'What do you think?'
Every election, a presidential candidate inevitably proposes a new cabinet agency. The idea is that this is the only way to solve a particular problem. Just create more government.
We were bemused, I guess, when we got the call from Hollywood. We didn't know anything about the entertainment industry or even what a casting agency was. But I thought, 'What do I have to lose?' It's not every day a great opportunity presents itself.
I do have a Twitter account, and there's a woman at my agency who got that all set up for me. I don't know how many followers I have. It's not one of those things I check on a regular basis.
The power of a label and radio and a booking agency and all that - you never know until you experience it the first time, but being able to have a song on radio, but then go play a show for people that have heard the song on radio, and having it sung back to you, is - I don't know how to describe it.
My dream was to have my own advertising agency by the time I was 30, and that was before I got into movies.
I am committed to finding new revenue so that state agencies, like the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, can continue to provide essential public safety departments to Alabamians.
I'm completely taken and impressed by the planning authority of Singapore and its Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). It's the most cutting-edge agency in the world. They have very effective guidelines for development, and they review design as it evolves.
My mom was an actress, so I got with her boutique agency back in 2001 and started booking a few commercials. She's like my co-manager.
When you're directed by social media, I think it's very easy to lose a sense of agency. And you can see it when you go to any subway station, you walk down any street in a city, you will see 70-80 percent of people staring into their phones as they walk or stand.
I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.
I wanted to get that Division I scholarship and play ball and go to school for free, and I was always about getting to that next step... I was always ahead of myself in some way, shape or form, and trying to envision how to get further along and closer to fulfilling that dream of being free and having creative agency, so to speak.
When I finished grad school, I sort of fell into journalism. Someone mentioned that there was an entry-level job at the Reuters News Agency. I applied, and, to my amazement, I got the job.
I always looked up to great actors and great films. A lot of my family would be like, 'Come on, you should get into these plays that are going on.' I'm like, 'Nah, nah, music's my thing.' I just fell into it. I moved to Atlanta, got with an agency out there, started doing little voiceover commercials, and it started getting kind of fun.
FinCEN directs financial institutions to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) to inform law enforcement of certain types of cyber-enabled crime. As the agency charged with protecting the United States from financial crime, FinCEN's guidance does not deem financial institutions who process such transactions to be involved in a criminal activity.
I worked at Military Media, an advertising agency for military-base newspapers. Don't ask, I won't tell.
It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.
Medicare's top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system.
My dad was a theater actor, so he had an agent, and he brought me into his agency when I was maybe four years old. That was how I started. I started modeling, and it progressed from there.
I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition.
We think there should be a better countering-violent-extremism effort, that there should be a lead agency tasked to handle that.
Red Interactive, the digital advertising agency, is a real, systemic kind of business, as opposed to a one-off thing. We can help advertisers frustrated by old media find clients they can work with.
Women often find great roles in revolution, simply because the rules fall apart and everyone has agency, anyone can act.
We must aim for a zero-tolerance approach to hospital-acquired infections; we have to be clear about who's in charge at ward level, so there's proper accountability, and we need to reduce the reliance on agency nursing staff.
One day, I went to meet a film producer and entered the wrong flat. It was a casting agency, and they suggested that I audition for a four-hero Telugu film. I was confirmed a month later. Interestingly, it's not easy down South for a newcomer to bag positive roles, but I was adamant.
This change for creating a better world will not come from the government or an outside agency; it will have to be internal. We blame the politicians for everything, but if I give equal respect and rights to the women of my family, I have taken the first step forward.
God gave us our agency. He taught us a way. He showed us what to do. But he gave us our agency and left us free to act as we choose to do.
The CIA's drone campaign is extraordinarily effective, and the agency is getting progressively better at targeting senior leaders and disrupting their networks.
From the very start, I thought there were four key principles that the agency should focus on: driving private investment, driving innovation, promoting competition, and protecting consumers.
When I was asked if I supported merging SBA into Commerce, I really wasn't focused on SBA or Commerce; I was focused on the concept of merging agencies, or reducing duplicative programs, so that we could reduce those costs. I am a firm believer that SBA needs to be a stand-alone agency.
By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.
What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.