Good luck finding someone more ideally qualified to help Viterbo’s international students feel at home and be successful than Raghad Al-Khazraji. She knows what it feels like to be an outsider, a stranger in a strange land, and she has a history of success in the face of challenges.

Luck might seem to be a factor in Al-Khazraji being back at Viterbo after earning a master’s degree in business administration in May 2020. For Al-Khazraji, it goes beyond luck. It’s more like divine intervention.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Al-Khazraji’s family left the war-torn country in 2003, moving to Syria before settling in Jordan when she was 11. After earning a bachelor’s degree in telecommunications engineering at the Princess Sumaya Institute for Technology in Jordan, Al-Khazraji started working at an IT job, but she realized that though she’d lived in Jordan many years, she was still not considered Jordanian and never would be, she said.

She had long dreamed of going to college in the United States. Growing up, she had perfected her English skills with some help from watching American TV shows (“Friends” was her favorite), and six months after earning her engineering degree, she made the leap to follow that dream.

Al-Khazraji met Kenneth Felts, Viterbo’s director of international admissions, at a college fair in Amman, Jordan, and after she had decided to come to Viterbo, Felts was there to greet her at the airport when she landed.

After earning her MBA, she moved to Illinois and began working in telecommunications sales for a giant corporation. By the end of the year, though, she’d had enough and left that unfulfilling job. On a snowy Tuesday morning in early January 2021, Al-Khazraji made a snap decision to drive to La Crosse for a quick visit with friends she’d made at Viterbo.

During that visit, a chance conversation led to her getting a job in the La Crosse area, and months later to the decision to pursue another graduate degree at Viterbo.

“The fact that I woke up that day and knew I had to go to La Crosse, I just know that God wanted me to be in that place in that moment,” Al-Khazraji said. “It made so much sense. Everything changed from that moment.”

In addition to working on her Master of Arts in Servant Leadership degree at Viterbo, Al-Khazraji works for the university as a graduate assistant for the Multicultural Student Success and Global Engagement program. The program has a bold vision statement: “To create a socially just and equitable world for everyone to be their authentic selves.”

Education, of course, plays a key part in achieving that vision, but so do little things that acknowledge and affirm cultural differences — even something as simple as a poster about Ramadan, an Islamic tradition akin to Christian Lent on steroids that involves 30 days of fasting from dawn to sunset.

“Speakers and events and training are all great, but if people don’t also see it in the small things, you’re not going to create that feeling of inclusion,” Al-Khazraji said.

Al-Khazraji grew up observing the traditions of the Islamic faith and has fond memories of family gatherings for the Eid al-Fitr celebration that ends Ramadan. This year, observance of Eid al-Fitr begins the evening of May 2 and ends the next evening.

Although she wasn’t fasting for Ramadan, Al-Khazraji recently organized an evening meal, called an iftar, held at the Sr. Thea Bowman Center that houses Viterbo’s campus ministry offices. For those observing Ramadan, she explained, it’s best to break fast with other people, so they get together for iftars.

The iftar at Viterbo included homegrown staff and students as well as students from Jordan, Nepal and Bangladesh, and they feasted on a Middle Eastern salad Al-Khazraji made as well as chicken curry, saffron rice, roasted potatoes, naan bread and an Arabic dessert.

Viterbo’s campus cafeteria, by coincidence, offered a wide array of international cuisine last week in observation of Diversity Week, serving dishes from many of the countries that Viterbo’s international students call home, including Ivory Coast, Portugal, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Bangladesh, Nepal, Jordan, Iraq, Venezuela and Trinidad.

During her first stint at Viterbo, Al-Khazraji worked as a graduate assistant in Residence Life, and she said she was amazed at the sense of belonging and empowerment she got from that experience. She was not set apart for different treatment because of where she came from, and in her current role at Viterbo she works hard to ensure that the university’s international students have the same sense of inclusion.

"Viterbo is a better place because of Raghad. We've grown because of her," said Melissa Giefer, a Viterbo colleague who helps international students with their English skills. "She's had such a crucial role in leading our new international student orientation. They really see her as a resource, as someone who is like them, a role model to emulate.”

Viterbo Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Marlene De La Cruz-Guzman said Al-Khazraji plays a vital role at the university, modeling her commitment to inclusion inside and outside the classroom.

“With a strong academic background and a myriad cultural and international experiences to enrich her program design, Raghad delivers quality programming that is transformational for our students and campus organizations, De La Cruz Guzman said. “She has an impeccable work ethic and balances gracefully working on her second master’s degree with her graduate appointment and her own commitment to infuse a wide variety of cultural enhancements into daily campus life and our greater La Crosse community.”