Editor’s note: “My Story” is where business executives share their personal and professional backgrounds and journeys that have made them who they are, in their own candid words, from the challenges of confronting stereotypes to the glory in overcoming them. Amid calls for racial justice, we can only make real change with greater awareness and understanding — and the ability to learn from each other’s experiences.
My story begins in the spring of 1978 when we noticed military planes flying over Kabul. My older sister and I were both eight months pregnant with our second children, and little did we know at the time that the Soviet Union would be invading Afghanistan in 1979, forcing millions of Afghans to flee the horrors of war and upending our lives forever.
My parents sent us to stay with my grandmother outside of the city to be safer because many people were being arrested by the Communist secret police. My husband also had to leave his job at an American-owned hotel and…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
