[3] She initially planned to study hospital administration, majoring in health policy at the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, but after the September 11 attacks, she changed course.
[3] In April 2013, she was appointed to the position of a deputy chief of the national security and cybercrime section in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
[3] The New Yorker related: Ahmad's specialty is counterterrorism, her subspecialty "extraterritorial" cases, which means that she spends a great deal of time overseas, negotiating with foreign officials, interviewing witnesses, often in prison, and combing the ground for evidence in terror-related crimes against Americans.
A former supervisor of Ahmad's told me that she has probably logged more hours talking to "legitimate Al Qaeda members, hardened terrorist killers," than any other prosecutor in America.
[3] Ahmad is a Muslim, and says that "the primary relevance of my ethnic background to the work I do is its irrelevance", citing the rejection of terrorism by "the broader American-Muslim community".