Candidate Profiles
MAGIS Candidates, 2009 - 2011

Maryam Alaeddini

Maryam’s childhood coincided with the Iran-Iraq war, and she was raised among working classes in a small city in Iran. During school, one of her classmates passed away due to poverty, and Maryam suffered since she could not do anything for her classmate at the time. She groped for an answer to questions like: “What accounts for the difference between her and other classmates?” and “What is the reason for poverty?”

During high school Maryam passed workers who would stand waiting for hours to find a part-time job. These people didn’t have any job security or health insurance. She also began to consider the lives and hardships of those unemployed workers. By the time Maryam reached womanhood, she’d also seen much gender inequality in the culture around her. During a stay in France, she met with women who were illegal immigrants from Morocco and Algeria, and like many immigrants looking for a better living standards, they came to France due to their desperate prior conditions in the hope of a better life.  Remembering all her personal struggles and her observations of suffering caused by poverty, labors problems, gender-inequality and immigration issues, she found herself asking, “What I am doing here in Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a fantastic place where many celebrities reside?” Maryam eventually found the Global and International Studies program at UCSB, and knew this program offered what she was looking for to help prepare her for helping solve these inequalities.

Maryam interned in Washington D.C. with Relief International (IR), a non-profit organization that provides emergency relief, rehabilitation, development assistance, and program services to vulnerable communities worldwide. For IR on her internship, Maryam researched relief issues concerning the Middle East and South Asia.