My background is a humble one, which I have come to appreciate as valuable for gaining perspective in life. Born in California, I grew up in a mobile home in Oklahoma, where my parents worked hard to provide for the family. After high school, I worked for a while in retail sales while taking evening classes at a community college, until one day I made the big decision to leave Oklahoma to study history and classics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Robert Houston, 2015 Fulbright Fellow to Singapore

I became the first in my immediate family to complete an undergraduate degree, and just two weeks after graduation, I was the first in our family to enlist in the U.S. Army National Guard. Public service is important, and I am proud to have had the opportunity to serve. In time, I completed Officer Candidate School and accepted a commission as a U.S. Army officer while working and attending law school in the evening program at Georgetown Law. I met a young French neuroscientist while boarding a train in the D.C. Metro system one day, and we married and started a family. When our first child was a year old, my National Guard unit was deployed to Egypt’s Sinai Desert in support of the Multinational Force & Observers peacekeeping mission. I was honored to serve as the U.S. Battalion’s Communications Officer during the deployment. After returning from deployment and having earned the U.S. Army’s Meritorious Service Medal, I went back to work and law school with a renewed interest in international dispute resolution. Studying international arbitration led me to complete the Juris Doctor degree at Georgetown Law as well as the Master of Economic Law degree at the Sciences Po Law School in Paris, and to work with some well-respected international arbitration practices in Paris. I also have worked with the Sciences Po Law School’s Human Rights Clinic on their initiatives to advance international human rights, and have supplemented my legal education with the study of Philosophy at the University of Maryland–College Park. In 2014, I resigned my military commission as a Captain to accept an assignment as a representative of the United States to Singapore in the U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright Program. The purpose of my current research in Singapore is to study the potential of Singaporean arbitral practice to serve as a model for regional dispute resolution in Southeast Asia. My wife and I currently live in Singapore with our three daughters, the youngest of whom, Rose Valley, joined us early this year. My weekly blog at http://www.DestiniesDiverse.com is based on my own reflections, and does not in any way convey the views of the U.S. State Department or the Fulbright Program. Please have a look, and consider leaving a few thoughts of your own.

R