Background: "Born in the United States but raised in Kuwait, Sarah Abushaar has always had one foot planted in the East and one in the West. The daughter of a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother, Abushaar spent her childhood roaming the hallways of a Sheraton hotel in Kuwait City, where her father worked, surrounded by visiting political dignitaries from the West. It was there that at age 7, upon meeting George H.W. Bush, she dutifully informed the former president that she planned to take his job someday."