A COMMUNITY OF CARING
THE IMPACT OF A UW DEGREE
From Iranian immigrant to voice for refugees
SOMEIREH AMIRFAIZ, ‘89 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR REFUGEE WOMEN’S ALLIANCE By Jon Marmor Someireh Amirfaiz, ’89, knows first-hand about the struggles of people who are new to this country—and how her education at the University of Washington helped prepare her for a career helping some of Western Washington’s most needy people: refugees from foreign countries. Amirfaiz calls herself a “displaced person,” having fled her native Iran during the Iranian Revolution to relocate to the United States, first in Michigan and now in Washington. For the past 10 years, Amirfaiz has been the executive director of the Refugee Women’s Alliance. Headquartered in South Seattle, this multi-ethnic, community-based organization provides a wide range of services to refugee and immigrant communities throughout King and Snohomish PHOTO BY ANIL KAPAHI counties. Amirfaiz’s success story of going from immigrant to leader of one of Western Washington’s most important social service agencies came about because of her appetite for education, flexibility and ability to embrace change. She came to the UW after starting out at a community college in Michigan. She began studying building construction and architecture but found her calling in the humanities after she took a psychology class. Her transition to the UW was a challenge, given the enormous campus, classrooms with hundreds of students, and the fact that English was not her first language. But her years at the UW proved to be extremely valuable. “Higher education prepares you for life,” Amirfaiz explains. “It teaches you discipline and how to think outside the box. You find ways to overcome challenges. We need skills for whatever life throws at you. “I learned how to focus, how to study, how to overcome deficiencies and build on my strengths.” Money was a big challenge for Amirfaiz and her siblings. As a foreign-born student, she was ineligible for scholarships, and the only job she could get was on campus, working in the health library. “Once, between the four of us, we had $5,” she recalls. For Amirfaiz, there was also the big cultural adjustment. In her native country, women became doctors, lawyers or engineers. Talk therapy was not embraced. But at the UW, she earned a B.A. in psychology and a master’s degree at Seattle University, and did clinical counseling for refugees before ascending to become an administrator of an organization with 11 offices and 140 staff members who speak 37 languages and dialects. “The University of Washington has a history of producing successful individuals who were not born in this country,” Amirfaiz says. “When I arrived here, at first it was intimidating. But I had to find ways to excel. I was embraced by other students and it was a very good experience.” Jon Marmor is editor of Viewpoints
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