Fatima Mohamud has launched a thousand internships. And, even after all of those successes in the past nine years, the senior program administrator for the Washington Center finds the ultimate challenge in placing interns, whether it's getting the chance for a future veterinarian interested in pandas to work at the National Zoo or an art history major to intern at the Hirshhorn Museum. She's a woman who has learned to merge two cultures: that of her Somalian childhood and the American culture she fell in love with as a 13-year-old American Field Service student in Tempe, Ariz. In fact, Mohamud, the daughter of the commander in chief of the national forces and No. 3 man in a former Somalia government, and her 10 siblings have all made the cross-cultural leap. A UC Davis graduate with a degree in physiology, Mohamud first started work on campus in 1989 as a program coordinator with the Women's Resources and Research Center where she remembers working with "literally the whole campus" on one program or another. She left Davis in 1990 for Washington, D.C., to help start the new UC Davis Washington Center with political science professor Bruce Jentleson. It has since become a "micro-university" for up to 45 UC Davis students a quarter. "I always thought the philosophy of the center was beautiful -- to combine internships with an academic program," Mohamud says. "Even though students learn a lot in their classrooms and from their professors, D.C. is the center of the world. There are so many activities, policies in the making and renowned people -- I think it is a wonderful place for our students to experience." This past May, Mohamud, who prefers to remain far behind the scenes, moved really far -- back to Davis to carry out her responsibilities from this side of the continent as the senior program administrator. She has settled in on the second floor of South Hall in the Internship and Career Center where she helps students land that perfect internship in the nation's capital. What's your most inspirational experience? The milestones my children reach -- they are always paving the way, and I'm always amazed by what they do. My son has a condition called immotile cilia syndrome. What it is is his "cilia" doesn't beat: cilia are the little hair-like things in our throat and in our nose. They beat upward all the time and act like a filter. He gets upper respiratory problems and then lower respiratory problems. He will get really sick and miss days of school. But because he wants to succeed, he is so persistent about things. That kid will work, work, work and make it. In one year he had nine hospitalizations with pneumonia and bronchitis and a 3.7 GPA and played with the high-school basketball team! Who's the living person you most admire? This is really boring, but it is my father. His eldest three were daughters in a country where men are admired and are expected to "make it" and women are housewives and take care of the family. He always said when we were growing up, "If you wait until you can stand up on your own two feet financially, mentally and physically and you can be equal to that man, you'll have a good marriage. So wait to get married. Get a good education." And I've been in the states all these years and met people who say they are feminists, but I think he is the most feminist man I've ever met. What is your life philosophy? Because I have gone through all kinds of life's changes that weren't caused by me -- it was always an external force -- on a daily basis I say tell your loved ones how much you love them and how much you care, because you don't know what tomorrow will bring. What's something about you that people would be surprised to know? When the all-out civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, I was elected by my family to go back and rescue the rest of my family. Actually the majority of my family was in Somalia at that time -- my father, my mother, 60 percent of my siblings, aunts, uncles. One day we were talking to them, the next day the phone lines were dead. No transportation, no airlines going in, no airlines going out. So I was elected. I felt like I was in the midst of a Mad Max movie. I was right there with guns and bazookas all around me. At one point I had a man hold a rifle to my forehead because I wanted to enter the port. I found all of my immediate family and brought them out to Kenya. I didn't do this alone: I had extended family and all of my siblings. We pooled our money, our resources and energy. They were on the phone, tracing the family by talking to anyone who got out of Somalia. Then they passed the information on to me. What's your pet peeve? That people are not direct with each other. Your idea of perfect happiness at work? That I found that perfect internship for a young student who didn't know what she wanted to do. We talked it through and I found that perfect fit. Utter misery at work? Feeling behind, feeling overwhelmed -- that's when I'm utterly miserable. If you were this year's commencement speaker, sum up the message you'd like to convey to our graduating students? You've made it: You are UC Davis graduates. And from the experience of working with thousands of internships in Washington, D.C., and getting the feedback from these internship sites, I know that they have had great ambassadors before them that paved the way, and that they will be great ambassadors that will pave the way for others. They are strong, they are capable, they are hard working and they are bright. When I think about UC Davis graduates, that's what I think about.