Sami’s vision for Abara grew out of 15 years of work at Ciudad Nueva Community Outreach. Sami is a global citizen with vast experience in refugee and immigrant communities. He spent the majority of his childhood and young adult years in the Middle East. He's lived in Jordan, Cyprus, Egypt and then India - before completing college in the United States.
Sami has a BA in International Development from Wheaton College. And he holds an MBA from the University of Texas at El Paso. Sami serves on the international board of directors of Micah Global and on the global connections committee of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) – networks striving for flourishing communities free from poverty and injustice. He helped form a number of local and regional groups focused on poverty alleviation and bridge-building in the business, community development and faith sectors. Sami’s driving motivation is to join others, close and far, in bridging divides and moving toward reconciliation with God, his neighbors and the rest of creation.
Sami loves to learn more about his neighbors and the border region, walk across the border into Ciudad Juarez for tacos, go on backpacking trips into the mountains, visit the small farm that he and his wife are long-distance partners in, dream up new entrepreneurial and job-creation schemes, help lead trips to the Middle East, or discover back alley coffee/tea shops in unfamiliar cities across the world. He and his family live in the Rio Grande District, a beautiful community in the heart of El Paso, TX.