Sydney is depicted in the series as being strong both physically and emotionally. She deals with some significant trauma over the years: the death of her fiancé, the death of her best friend, the realization that her mother was a former KGB spy, the estrangement of many of her friends and russian ladies sydney constant activity and changes that she must endure from being a spy on a regular basis. Sydney Bristow was born April 17, 1975. However, her father’s work with the CIA kept him away from home much of the time.

Note that this is a retcon as it was previously established that Sydney did not meet Arvin or Emily until Sydney had already started working for SD-6. When Sydney was 19 years old and a freshman in college, a man approached her and told her that he worked with US intelligence and that they wanted to interview her because she fit a profile. She declined at first but then decided to join them. After meeting with an organization she believed was the Central Intelligence Agency, she signed “dozens of non-disclosure agreements” and was offered a job.

They had Sydney take a job as an office assistant on the twentieth floor of Credit Dauphine, a corporate bank in downtown Los Angeles. She assumed that the bank was somehow affiliated with the CIA. When she told her father about her job after about a month, he ordered her to quit because as a double agent within SD-6, he knew the bank was a front. Eventually she was told that she was ready for the transition, which involved eight months of training.

It was during the training that Sydney first heard the term SD-6. At this time, she believed that SD-6 was affiliated with the CIA, that it was a black ops division of the CIA, funded by the CIA’s black budget. The transition ended when they made reference to SD-6 headquarters. They told her they would take her there.