Your international company located in New Jersey is sending and expatriate to China for a three-year assignment to staff up and run a new branch of its Industrial Products Division. The main Chinese customers are using the product in their Middle Eastern and North African petroleum operations. You are the chair of a selection committee, have extensive overseas experience, and presently serve as VP, Human Resources. There were 12 international people interested in the position, and your committee has narrowed this to the final three candidates who want this assignment. Here are the candidates:

Tom is a middle-level finance manager with stellar performance reviews. He has no foreign experiences and would like to develop his career in this direction. He is single, has an MBA, and has been out of school for 20 years. His background is in finance at the undergraduate level, which he studied at Ohio State, only 50 miles from his hometown. He is involved in the local Council of Foreign Relations and is an accomplished athlete.

Firdaus is a deputy VP of Human Resources at corporate. Her family emigrated from Yemen to Chicago when she was in grade school, and she speaks, reads and writes Arabic, both classical and the Yemen dialect. She is married, with 2 children. Her husband George is a professor of History and does not speak Arabic. She has a PhD in Engineering, joined the company on the operations side, and has made the mid-career transition to HR successfully. She finished her PhD at the University of London before she began with the company and is now early mid-career. She encountered an incident at the company