and trekking across the continental USA. Early life and education Fauziah was born on 26 March 1955 in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The youngest of nine siblings, Fauziah grew up in a household with a stay-at-home mother and a civil servant father. She studied International Relations at the University of Malaya (1974–1977), l'Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne)/L'Institut International d'Administration Publique, Paris, (1985–1986) and the University of Kent at Canterbury (1994–1996). It took her only 18 months to complete, and be awarded, a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury. Career Fauziah Mohd. Taib joined the Malaysian Civil Service in 1978. She began her career as an Assistant Director at the Implementation Coordination Unit of the Prime Minister's Department, handling national development and women issues. In 1983 she joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was assigned to the Europe Division before being posted to the Embassy of Malaysia in Belgium in 1988. It was during her three-year stint in Brussels that she witnessed the establishment of the European Single Market and the fall of the Berlin Wall. She returned to the Ministry in 1991 and was promoted to Principal Assistant Secretary in Economic Division, where her work took her to participate in numerous United Nations and other multilateral meetings, including that of the UN on Women in Development, UNCED Prep. Com. Meetings and the Earth Summit in Rio (Brazil); the UN General Assembly; the Non-Aligned Movement, the Summits of the Group of 15 Developing Countries (G15) and ASEAN Regional Meetings. By 1993, Fauziah was co-ordinating East Europe affairs at the Ministry and monitoring Malaysia's participation with SFOR and UNPROFOR during the Bosnian crisis. She attended numerous UN meetings for the Reconstruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Brussels) and visited Bosnia-Herzegovina several times during the reconstruction period. In September 1994, Fauziah took a two-year sabbatical to continue her post-graduate doctoral studies under the sponsorship of the Federal Government. Upon her return with a PhD in August 1996, she served the Prime Minister's special envoy on a mission to the Sudan and South Africa. Fauziah's passion for training and developing young minds led her to an appointment as the Director General of the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR) where she began the painstaking process of revamping the diplomatic syllabus to fit the needs of a new diplomatic world. She continued publishing books while at IDFR and opened the