Former Senior Foreign Affairs Officer, Counter-Terrorism, U.S. Department of State

"I have a one-year-old and a seven-year-old, and I felt like it would be very hard to tell them that their father got fired. It's hard to explain because I've been trying to shelter my kids from a lot of the difficult nature of the world around them. I wish there was a course to teach parents how to talk to their children, because I struggle with the right terms and verbiage.

My wife and I are completely stressed. She is still a government employee, and we're concerned about retaliation for me speaking out, or her losing her job, or them deciding to move her agency somewhere else. So it's complicated, but the kids do feel the tension. They feel the anxiety, and that's unfortunate.

I worked on terrorism prevention. I was inspired by the September 11th attacks. The reason I joined the State Department was so that Americans and other people would not be impacted by terrorism. I was deeply concerned not just about the heinous nature of the attacks on America, but also the xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic reaction that a lot of people had. I felt like it's not just responding to the security side of protecting America, but it's also ensuring that we understand other cultures and why people would be motivated to do such heinous acts.”