iForeign Born

We first met Mr. Carlos Fernando Villa Gomez at the end of June at the summer networking event put on by the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce at Barroco in Lakewood and were very impressed with his accomplishments. He is a professor of marketing and as well as a consultant to various companies both in Colombia, his native land,…

We first met Ms. Yeamelake Aklilu, full-time staff volunteer at the Interreligious Task Force on Central America (IRTF) on Saturday, January 14th at a spaghetti dinner that was put on by the IRTF to raise money to finance Ms. Aklilu’s to 10 day trip to Central America starting on February 17th. As the notes on the fundraiser flyer stated, “to…

Meet Quenan E. García Martín. He’s a Spanish foreign born living in United States and founder of Lion IQ Solutions, Inc., which does credit consulting for individuals and firms. Quenan said he liked Ohio from the first moment he arrived here as an exchange student attending Buckeye High School in Medina during his junior year (2010-2011). His host family was very…

Ms. Shirien Muntaser describes herself as a lifelong learner and hopes to become an even better person with each passing day. Along these lines, she thoughtfully contends that all of her experiences, even those that were negative at the time, contributed to fashioning her into the person she is today. In our opinion, this is truly exceptional as she is…

We looked forward to interviewing our good friend, Mr. Pierre Bejjani for “I, Foreign Born” because we have known Pierre, who first came to the United States from Lebanon in the early-1980’s, for years and cannot think of anyone else who better embodies the immigrant experience of coming to the United States from a place of unrest and making the…

Recently, our good friend Mr. Pierre Bejjani, the Executive Editor of Profile News, suggested that we sit down and talk with Mr. Husein Rabah, a respected member of the Middle Eastern community here in Northeast Ohio. We had honestly never heard of Mr. Rabah before Pierre told us about him but we were excited to meed him. Pierre agreed to…

When Akron City Councilperson Zack Milkovich immigrated to the United States from Croatia with his family in 1967, Zack was only two old. He recalled being told by his family that when they first arrived in New York City, having disembarked from the cargo ship they spent the previous 18 days on, they had no idea what to do next. …

On Saturday, January 12, we interviewed Ms. Chansy Siboura at the Thai 999 Express, an authentic Thai restaurant on Johnnycake Ridge Road in Concord. The restaurant was established about two years ago by her husband, Bamrung, who is a very respected chef specializing in Thai cuisine. Although Chansy mostly performs management duties, she is no stranger to cooking; in fact,…

Mark Owens first came to the United States from Derry City in Northern Ireland in 1998 as a beneficiary of the Business Education Initiative program created by the Northern Irish government. At the time, Mark was in his junior year at Belfast Metropolitan College studying production management in the fashion/textile industry. He had never planned on leaving his home of Derry, never mind…

So much has already been written about our friend, Mr. Asim Datta, that we when we sat down to interview him for “I, Foreign Born,” we wondered if we could add anything more! Asim smiled and said that if we wanted to, we could just have a pleasant conversation between friends and see what came out of it. Indeed, we…