April 20, 2021

Presidential Leadership Scholars Featured in Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants

Mark Haidar ('19), Sumera Haque ('19), Alfia Ilicheva ('19), Dilafruz Khonikboyeva ('19), Roya Mahboob ('19), Thear Suzuki ('19), Tina Tran ('18), Ezinne Uzo-Okoro ('18), and Mariam Memarsadeghi ('17).

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President George W. Bush’s new book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants, features 43 four-color oil portraits of individuals who exemplify our proud history as a nation of immigrants. Nine of those portraits are of the following Presidential Leadership Scholars:

Mark Haidar, Class of 2019

Sumera Haque, Class of 2019

Alfia Ilicheva, Class of 2019

Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, Class of 2019

Roya Mahboob, Class of 2019

Thear Suzuki, Class of 2019

Tina Tran, Class of 2018

Ezinne Uzo-Okoro, Class of 2018

Mariam Memarsadeghi, Class of 2017

The powerful portraits and their accompanying stories will be on display at the George W. Bush Presidential Center through January 3, 2022. For more information, please visit: www.bushcenter.org/immigration

For more photos of the exhibit, please visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/georgewbushcenter/albums/72157719026354095

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Mark Haidar

Class of 2019

Raised in a mixed refugee area in Lebanon, Mark Haidar discovered technology at a young age. With aspirations to create a better world through technology, Mark co-founded multiple tech companies in the USA including Dialexa, Vinli, Robin, & Rosy.

During PLS, Haidar created a foundation to address global peace by helping youth in high-conflict areas. The foundation has two main pillars. The first is empowering youth through access to online education and skills training for sustainable economic development and job creation. The second is enabling people impacted by war to regain their identity through sharing their stories globally.

Sumera Haque

LinkedIn

Class of 2019

Health Care

A physician from Pakistan, Sumera Haque is also a social and women’s rights activist. She has experienced firsthand the gender discrimination issues faced by women in developing countries and has dedicated her life to advocate for women’s rights and equal access to healthcare and education.

During PLS, Haque focused her work on launching the first Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Women’s Health Center in Washington, DC. The center will be providing integrated, coordinated services with a team-based approach to ensure that women’s health care needs are met. The center serves as a hub for academic training and teaching for other women’s centers in developing countries and provides new opportunities for collaboration and partnership between women’s health leaders and advocates.

LinkedIn

Alfia Ilicheva

LinkedIn

Class of 2019

Other (not filled)

Through her passion of business transformation, Alfia partners with C-suite executives and management teams of Fortune 500, private equity backed portfolios and venture-backed startups to accelerate commercial growth, with a specific focus on launching new products and services, building internal innovation capabilities, and developing talent, culture and new operating models.

During PLS, Ilicheva focused on taking Women in Innovation to its next phase of growth by streamlining operations, identifying tools to measure impact, and recruiting a Board of Directors. The organization has a global mission to close the gender gap in the innovation industry.

LinkedIn

Dilafruz Khonikboyeva

LinkedIn

Class of 2019

International Policy, Foreign Affairs, or National Security

After years of studying and working with the complex social, economic, and political realities of fragile contexts through the lens of media, government, aid, and organizational development, Dilafruz Khonikboyeva is a dedicated advocate that conflict is a perceived divergence of interest that can lead to transformative change if addressed.

During PLS, Khonikboyeva focused on creating a campaign to empower Americans to have difficult conversations towards transformative change informed by dialogue tools and tactics, peer to peer training, and a digital toolkit designed by PR experts, grassroots event’s organizers, and conflict resolution practitioners.

LinkedIn

Roya Mahboob

Class of 2019

Roya Mahboob is an entrepreneur and the CEO and President of Digital Citizen Fund, Bright Citizen (Coffee & Tea), and EdyEdy. Her primary goal through this work is to build digital literacy for women and children in developing countries, and to bridge the gap between education and job markets by offering practical skills for women, increasing women’s technological literacy, and providing employment and educational opportunities for girls and children in evolving countries like Afghanistan.

During PLS, Mahboob developed the curriculum and structure for the first school of STEM in Afghanistan. She also began building and equipping a top technology (STEAM) high-school and innovation center for Afghan students from the ages of fourteen to seventeen in Kabul, Mazar, Jalalabad, and Kandahar.

Thear Suzuki

Class of 2019

With over twenty years of experience building high-performing teams in the consulting profession, Thear Suzuki has a passion for developing purpose-driven and courageous leaders to tackle our world’s biggest problems.

During PLS, Suzuki created a leadership program that provides deep awareness and learning about invisible gender differences in the workplace and inspires action to solve the gender equity issue. This program will empower male/female executives to lead their companies more inclusively, which will lead to the retention and advancement of women into leadership positions at a faster pace.

Tina Tran

LinkedIn

Class of 2018

Technology and Information

While Tina Tran has built her career developing strategic partnerships and negotiating business development deals in the video game and tech industry, her passion has always been centered around building confidence in youth and providing youth access to education and mentoring.

During PLS, Tran leveraged her role at Oculus to focus on developing high quality educational virtual reality content to transform learning and help students gain new perspectives of themselves and of the world. She continues to use VR to empower and help youth prepare for the future of work, as well as connect more deeply with lessons that aim at building empathy, lifelong learning, and curiosity.

LinkedIn

Ezinne Uzo-Okoro

LinkedIn

Class of 2018

Science and Technology

After years of contributing to complex space missions, Ezinne Uzo-Okoro set her sights on implementing her childhood dream of improving global stability through food security.

During PLS, Uzo-Okoro’s organization, Terraformers.com, deployed an online platform to help anyone with a black thumb grow affordable and fresh produce at home through easy access to local garden experts. The organization takes an entrepreneurial approach to global food security by facilitating the installation of backyard edible gardens to reduce food deserts and improve nutrition through access to clean and healthy foods.

LinkedIn

Mariam Memarsadeghi

Class of 2017

Civil Rights, Social Action or Advocacy

Mariam Memarsadeghi has been working to provide civic education to individuals living in Iran and other parts of the Middle East through live e-learning and open access educational resources delivered through social media, satellite TV, and a mobile application. Mariam is now scaling up this secure provision of civic education and civil society capacity-building to Russia and China.