London (CNN) During her box-office testimony at the impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill earlier this week, Fiona Hill, a non-partisan Russia expert, made a claim that has caught the attention of the press here in her native Britain.

Hill, a US citizen since 2002, explained that her affection for her adopted home was in part down the opportunities the US granted her compared to back in the UK.

"I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement," Hill said in her opening statement. "This background has never set me back in America."

Hill's statement was right and she could have gone further. Even now in 2019, the upper echelons of government, the private sector and the civil service are largely still dominated by people from backgrounds very different to Hill.

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