Genevieve Rahim, Director of Refugee Resettlement

Genevieve Rahim hails from Portland, Oregon. She received a dual bachelor’s degree in Arabic and Linguistics with a minor French from the University of Oklahoma (OU). As a student in the OU Arabic Flagship Program, she spent a capstone year living, studying, interning, and immersing herself in Middle Eastern culture in Alexandria, Egypt. In 2016, Genevieve received a Master of Education in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with a focus on World Languages from the University of Oklahoma. Genevieve specializes in how culture and language intertwine, bridge gaps, and dynamically form a push and pull to the social structures that we currently know. Genevieve furthered her research studies as a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar in Amman, Jordan, where she completed an Arabic dialectology project among Jordanian university students. While in Jordan, Genevieve volunteered for a Syrian refugee nonprofit, working with a group of approximately 75 Syrian children who had suffered gaps in schooling, social isolation, resource deserts, and poverty due to the Syrian civil war. 

Genevieve’s work with the refugees in Jordan spurred a desire to develop and encourage growth in making resources accessible and attainable for refugees arriving to the United States. Her passion has always revolved around building systems to better meet the needs of the most vulnerable, through strong community partnerships, hard work, and compassion. In 2019, Genevieve began working with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma in their remote Tulsa office, resettling approximately 100 refugees each year to the area. During the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021, Genevieve volunteered for 1 month at several safe havens for Afghan evacuees before returning to Oklahoma to resettle 800+ Afghan arrivals to the Tulsa metro. Before her employment with The Synagogue, Genevieve worked as the Community Sponsorship Manager for the International Rescue Committee in Denver, Colorado. She is thrilled to return to her true home, Tulsa, Oklahoma to continue working with refugees through shared values of community engagement, human rights, and empathy which she sees embodied in Tulsa’s Jewish community.

Genevieve is a published author of the book The Complexities of Learning Arabic in the 21st Century (2018). She is fluent in English, Arabic, and French and is currently working on her Zomi language skills. Genevieve lives in Tulsa with her two rescue dogs, Vixen and Leila, and enjoys cooking, brewing cold brew, hiking, and listening to live jazz or blues.