Amber Enriquez

I really contribute my success to the mentors that I've had throughout my career. I see these faces pop in my mind right now, the women who were just strong, and I took something from all of the leaders who I've had, who've poured into me, and that I respected. I took the good pieces that I've liked and implemented them into my style of leadership and my style of being part of the team. The parts that I don't like, I notice them and take note of what you don't want to be, and move forward and kind of determine what type of person you want to be, what type of leader that you want to be.

Don't be afraid to go for things. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. You're gonna be put in situations that are not comfortable, and being comfortable with that is important. I've been thrown into certain situations, even like teaching classes and things that I'm not comfortable in at all, but just being able to face your fears and take risks and go for what you want is probably the biggest thing in my career. When I saw something that I wanted to do, I just went for it, and having good sound judgment and people having a good support system behind you has been really helpful.

I would strongly suggest they do some interning first to see if it is the type of work that they are gonna be committed to and enjoy doing. It's not for everybody, and it's very fast-paced. Whenever I've hired somebody, I've been very transparent about what we do in our office. It can be very high stress and very go with the flow, because things are always changing and pivoting, and being able to pivot and be flexible is huge. I would say do your research about what it's like working in the federal government and in the FOIA industry. We had over 100,000 requests last year, so it's very demanding. Just knowing what you're getting into, and knowing it's something that, if you're up for the challenge, you can be very successful at it. So don't be afraid, but just be informed.

The biggest challenge is the risk mitigation when you're reviewing high-sensitivity documents. Because of the line of work that we're in, we deal with a lot of sensitive documents to include investigations, anything that has to do with the White House and overseas - all of those requests come through our office at Headquarters DHS. We have to ensure that we have attention to detail and pay attention to what we're looking at and be accurate when we're reviewing these documents. It's a very high-paced, high-stress atmosphere. I've just learned to not break my cool and just to always stay calm and collected in those situations. I don't take anything personally unless I have to take responsibility for something that I've done. You kind of just have to go with the flow, be very, very flexible and resilient, and when something doesn't work out, you just gotta get right back up, dust yourself off, and move on to the next. Facing the challenges and the conflicts and all of that in government can be challenging, and keeping a calm, cool, collected face is really what matters, because you can't break down. It's not an option.

My anthem word for the year is resilience. I don't know how many times I've come into an obstacle and thought, okay, well, that seems too hard, or that didn't go the way I expected. You have to be able to just pivot and move forward and find what is - okay, where do I go from here? Resilience is huge. Picking yourself up from challenges, dusting yourself off, and moving forward. That's the only way, I think, that you can be successful anywhere that you go. You get knocked down, you have to pick yourself back up and move on. I definitely think that communication is important. And honesty, truthfulness - I mean, you have to be your authentic self, be authentic, and just stay true to yourself. Your values are everything. If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything they say, so I would say just knowing what you believe in, and being honest and being true to yourself.