My early childhood was spent living by the Pacific Ocean. I carry with me something imprinted by that wide, limitless horizon, which I learned connected us to different people and cultures, including my own family's origins in the Arab World and Northern Europe. I understood early that my world was only a small part of a much larger one. That captivated me.

The Koran says the killing of an innocent, the taking of an innocent life, is tantamount to killing all of mankind.

A more just world is possible. In most of the global issues, and also in so many of the development issues I'm involved in in our region, the young people that I am working with are seizing the tools at their disposal and trying to use them well, for issues far larger than their immediate personal benefit and concerns. That's what gives me hope.

In some extreme cases, women are constrained by what can only be described as pre-Islamic, misogynistic approaches to the role of women in society. That continues to be a challenge.

The idea of public service was instilled in me by watching my father, who shared that he was far more fulfilled in his public service than by his former lucrative corporate jobs.

In the poorest countries...it is women who are the key to breaking out of poverty...and preparing another generation for...leading their countries into real security.

When my father began to work with President John. F.Kennedy, we moved to Washington, D.C. I was fortunate in my pre-adolescent years, as my social and political consciousness was developing, to live at the epicentre of that dynamic, idealistic, and inspiring moment in U.S. political history, with its ethos of personal and civic responsibility, summed up so succinctly in his exhortation: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country."