Nour El-Youssef

Nour is a first generation American. Her mother is Belgian and her father is Syrian. She grew up in a multilingual and multi-faith household. Despite vast geographical distances, her family was fortunately able to maintain very strong ties with her family overseas. She frequently spent summers with family and even completed a year of high school in Brussels. This fostered a curiosity for the unknown, and a familiarity with the culture shock that comes with navigating cultural and linguistic differences. She pursued my undergraduate study at a small Quaker school outside Philadelphia, where she discovered many of the guiding values of Quakerism married well with her own upbringing and further fostered a commitment to community, social justice, and global citizenship. This led her to work for many years as a case manager for a public interest law firm in Philadelphia. This window into social work, non-profit care, network building, and community empowerment continues to be a guiding influence in her life and profoundly shaped her understanding of how advocacy functions to disrupt predatory and hostile systems that criminalize poverty. Working with families, she realized that she missed working with children and youth the most, so she was galvanized to pursue her long-seated interest in education. After observing a public Montessori school in Minnesota, she knew progressive public education was the right path for her. She has been an educator for over 10 years. Children bring curiosity, wonder, and joy into life everyday. Their resilience and flexibility is inspiring; their solution-oriented minds are a constant reminder to her to shed some of the rigidity that settles in adulthood.

B.A., Cultural Anthropology with a concentration in Africana Studies; M.A., Teaching, National Louis University