Prior to joining Babel Street, Farid retired from the National Security Agency as a member of the Senior Executive Service cadre. In his last position with the government, he led the Video, Image, Speech, and Text Analytics (VISTA) effort. Having guided language analysis teams for the counterterrorism target set in the post-9/11 era, he developed a deep appreciation for human language technology and its role in prosecuting the mission. Over the past 15 years he drove the development of several VISTA service capabilities, empowering over ten thousand analysts within the U.S. Intelligence Community. Farid was a two-time keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Lincoln Lab biannual Human Language Technology Applications conference. He is a recipient of the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Rank
