Helen Samhan (Katie LN)

As Shannon said, Helen Samhan did not really discuss leadership directly. However, she did discuss an issue, which affects leaders and really anyone on a basic day-to-day level. It is important to talk about who we are and how we impact the people around us and how they impact us, which seemed to me was a large part of her discussion. Also, it is beneficial, to everyone, when we learn about cultures and beliefs other our own. From the very involved discussion we had in class, I think people were learning from this and definitely benefiting from.
It was interesting to hear the different statistics she gave about what American’s want & value versus what Arab speaking person’s want & value. While I was not surprised by the information, I can see how many it would surprise so many people. Finally, watching the film was really interesting. It was good to see the different the perspectives the women had.

She was by far my favorite speaker. It was really interesting to hear the history of how the Arabs migrated to this country. I did not realize that the earliest immigrants likely had an easier time adjusting to the American lifestyle, compared to later immigrants. One would think that with more knowledge about other countries and better means to communicate, it would have been the other way around. However, it made sense considering a majority of the earlier immigrants were not Muslim.