Our Founders
Maura Stephens
IRAQIRAC (Iraqi Refugees Assistance Connection) cofounder Maura Stephens is a professional writer, actor, editor, and educator, and for most of her adult life she has been an activist for peace, human rights, justice, sustainability, democracy, and media reform. Maura is the editor of ICView, the magazine of Ithaca College (IC), and she also sits on several committees, lectures in classes in several disciplines, and mentors student interns at IC. She lives near the small city of Ithaca, New York, with her husband, George Sapio, a playwright, director, actor, and photographer. In 2003 they both traveled twice to Iraq, before and after the invasion, publishing a book about the Iraqi people (Collateral Damage) in that same year. A member of the Iraq Speakers Bureau, Maura has spoken out about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq in scores of invited presentations and media appearances.
After two years of increasingly frustrating efforts with U.S. government bureaucracy, during which her Iraqi interpreter friend Dhia and his family were subject to threats and violence, Maura succeeded in getting the family to safe resettlement in Ithaca on special immigrant visas (SIVs). Soon after, Dhia’s colleague Hayder and his family arrived in Ithaca as well. It was around this time that Maura and Rosemary began working together, and formed the idea of creating an Iraqi refugee assistance connection.
Since the first Iraqi families arrived in Ithaca, Maura has continued to help them, and she and Rosemary work to help new arrivals and to bring other endangered translators to safe haven outside Iraq.
Like other humanitarians working on behalf of refugees, Maura and Rosemary find their frustrations with bureaucracy mounting, seemingly exponentially, once the Iraqi SIVs (SIV holders) get to the States. Their deep fears are sometimes realized when, in frustration, the Iraqis who left their homeland because of the danger opt to return because they are unable to find a viable way to live and work in the USA. But fortunately, many individuals and organizations have pitched in to welcome, orient, and integrate the Iraqi families in their new communities. If it weren’t for these grass-roots expressions of love and caring, many more Iraqis (and new immigrants from other countries) would be forced to flee once again.
Maura has written extensively about human rights, justice, international affairs, sustainability, and peace issues for various publications including openDemocracy. She has also written many policy papers on Iraq as well as on Burma and sustainability. She is a theater actor-director-producer who generally chooses projects for their social-justice themes. She is currently working on her first play as part of her full-time graduate school studies in the creative writing program at Goddard College. Maura also studied horticulture and landscape design in graduate school. She spent eight years as an organic farmer, growing or trading with other farmers for almost all of her family’s food. From 2003 to 2007 she was vice president of the board of TheocracyWatch, serving as well on their speakers bureau. In 2004 she helped found the International Campaign for Freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma and served as their chief policy strategist and U.S. spokesperson until 2008. She is an active member of Finger Lakes Progressives, Democracy New York, and Sustainable Tompkins.
Maura’s wishes for IRAQIRAC are to find new partners in individuals, businesses, and organizations to help create welcoming communities and jobs for Iraqi refugees, and to help the Iraqis lead fruitful, fulfilling lives in their new homeland.
Rosemary Nuri
Rosemary Nuri, cofounder of IRAQIRAC, grew up in North Carolina and received her B.A. degree in philosophy from UNC-Chapel Hill. Rosemary and her family made their home in Baghdad, Iraq, for 13 years (where her Iraqi husband was a professor at Baghdad University), living for two of those years in Algeria. She speaks Iraqi Arabic and has worked most of her life in multicultural, multilingual environments.
While in Iraq, Rosemary worked for two prominent Iraqi architectural/engineering firms and at the international school. Since returning to the United States, she has held a variety of positions over the years with academic, scientific research, and engineering employers, most jobs involving administration and technical editing and writing. Before retiring seven years ago, she spent 16 years as the technical editor and administrative manager of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC) at the University of Georgia, a large basic research center of 15 faculty, and 120 students, staff scientists, and administrative staff from some 20 countries. She was directly involved not only in visa processing but also in assisting multinational staff adjust to life in the United States. While at the CCRC, she worked over a period of several years coordinating the manuscript for a five-author book on plant cell walls.
After her retirement she worked for several years as a certified preschool teacher in Massachusetts. She has had a lifelong interest in international cultural understanding, Middle Eastern culture and politics, early childhood education, and education reform and is widely read in these fields. Rosemary and her husband, Walid, have three adult children and five grandchildren.
Rosemary is dedicated to the basic principle that one-on-one grass roots work and modest but direct financial assistance is the key to permanent improvement in the lives of the less fortunate around the world. She is working to help in particular Iraqis living in unspeakable conditions—people who have lived for so long in an environment of despair, war, deprivation, and hopelessness—to initiate and implement their own solutions. These ideas are the bedrock of IRAQIRAC.
Rosemary firmly believes that the great spirit and intelligence of the Iraqi people, along with their steadfastness, bravery, and love of their country, will guarantee the resurgence of Iraq as an important and stable nation, and perhaps help it become a model for other countries around the world.