She graduated when she was twenty-two, majoring in International Studies. Her first job was an internship with a diplomatic friend of her father's, who was stationed in the US Embassy in Spain. That job was pretty easy, consisting of paperwork and meetings where her job was to be charming and pretty and hope it distracts them enough that they don't realize the social sleight of hand the important people were doing. When the diplomat she worked for retired from his job, she returned back to the US, she was at loose ends until she got recruited into the FBI. Sort of. They told her she'd be awesome at it, and she went okay! and applied. She got in through the Intelligence Critical Skill program, survived her basic training, and was assigned as a probationary Special Agent to a team that works in a variety of undercover operations, such as human trafficking.
Amata herself did not undergo as many undercover missions as she potentially could have; her father was still a US Senator and she was well-known for being his daughter. That ruined one mission in a spectacularly embarrassing way, and after that all of her undercover missions were information-gathering in low-risk areas. For high risk missions, she was relegated to monitoring the bugs/cameras or covering the exits.
For possibly the first time in her life, she was taken seriously. Not perhaps as seriously as she could have been, but she was expected to do her part and pull her weight without excuses. She was probably the most innocent of her team (the most badass went to her supervisor, who she had an epic but horribly inappropriate crush on because he was a) supervisor and b) much older and c) had many issues), but was quick and the most socially apt. If they needed to charm in their way anywhere, they put her out in front and let her smile her way in.
She was a Special FBI agent for about seven years, sticking with her same basic team the whole time. Two died in the line of duty (and she had actually replaced someone who had also died), another one was transferred to another unit, but the core four consisted of her, her supervisor, and the two people who trained her in. She pined after her supervisor in a wonderfully subtle way (except mostly not), got over it, and married at thirty to a charismatic, handsome, and all around awesome man who did lots of awesome international business things.
Things were great for about a year, and then they stopped being great and started to be horrible and then ended in a very messy divorce. Thank god there were no children (on her side ... one of the reasons for the divorce included a rather adorable son of her ex-husbands that was most definitely not hers and born while they were married), or it could have gone on for years. Amata went grrr at all relationships and put her focus back into being a workaholic (and once again fighting said supervisor crush that never entirely went away...).
Which was great until she was abducted while on a routine undercover mission she wasn't even a part of (she was covering one of the exits). They left her beaten and in a coma, about twelve hours later, in a suspiciously public area that didn't notice anything (in theory). The resulting investigation lead to her husband, who had (very suspiciously) disappeared a week earlier and no obvious trace to where he ran to.
Amata wasn't in a coma for long, thankfully. Most of the damage that she received was also fixable, with one major exception: the eyesight in her left eye was entirely shot. They saved some of it (blurry blobs of color instead of completely blind), but there wasn't any more they could do. The hearing in her left ear was also affected to a lesser degree (with some hope of it being restored over time), but the eyesight alone meant she no longer qualified as a FBI Agent.