Richard Engel graduated from Stanford University in 1996. He wanted to be a foreign correspondent and knew that the Middle East would continue to be a hot spot for breaking news, so he moved into a poor Cairo neighborhood and learned “street” Arabic by talking to his neighbors. After a few years reporting for the BBC and other news outlets, he moved to Jerusalem to gain perspective on the other side of the Middle Eastern conflict. By the end of the Gulf War II, he was NBC’s main on-air war correspondent and one of the few American journalists who filed reports from Baghdad for the duration of the war.