My family never took vacations growing up. It just wasn't a thing.

When we were growing up, the only person we saw on TV that vaguely resembled us was the Iron Sheik - the pro wrestler whose signature move was the 'Camel Clutch.'

In the writers' room, the challenge is always to tell interesting stories in unexpected ways, so we try to never limit ourselves in how we accomplish that.

When you're writing a pilot, unless you already have an actor attached to the project, you're writing it with all the voices sort of in your head. Once you actually cast it, the actors become the voices of the characters, and you start to write for them and their strengths.

I couldn't think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow's leaders.

Neoliberalism became the leading economic ideology in the U.S. and in the U.K. during Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's mandates. In this way, the leaders of the free world offered a viable solution to the economic crisis at the time: competition, deregulation, outsourcing, to name a few buzz words that have since become common place.

Our basic assessment was that if America keeps going down these rabbit holes in the Middle East, we're just going to put ourselves out of business as the world leader because we're just draining resources and diplomatic bandwidth, and we're not producing outcomes.

I found a great mentor early on in my career, Dave Duffield - a legendary software innovator, great individual, and a wonderful leader and human being.