Mentalla Ismail

Activist, public speaker, and founder of Refuge Collaborative, Mentalla Ismail has been a change-maker since her first years in Cincinnati. Mentalla’s work is inspired by her own family’s immigration from Egypt to Dayton, Ohio, and the unique needs faced by young immigrants and refugees. Currently a Doctor of Public Health candidate at NYU School of Global Public Health, Mentalla has plans to return to the Queen City.

“Wherever my career takes me, I want to end up in Cincy,” she says.

Mentalla and her family arrived in Dayton when she was in middle school. In 2015, she moved south to attend University of Cincinnati, where she would go on to receive her BS in Biology and Neuroscience.

The first years in the country were uncomfortable. Mentalla was still learning English, and got bullied for her accent. She tried hard to hide it, to assimilate to the culture. With little to no diversity around her, no community of fellow immigrants to connect with, she felt she had no other choice.

“I was like, there’s no way it’s gonna work,” she says. “There’s no room for me to be this Muslim Egyptian.”

Cincinnati brought great relief. For the first time since arriving in the states, she saw people who looked like her. She met other Egyptians, Arabs, and Muslims, finding a community of diverse backgrounds she didn’t have in Dayton. Bolstered by diversity and inclusion, she had the space to figure out who she was, what she wanted to do with her career, and how she wanted to serve her community.

“I felt like I could flourish here.”

Early in her undergrad, Mentalla began volunteering at a local mosque, tutoring adult female refugees from Syria. Through her work, she grew aware of the universal need for mentorship and education accessibility among young refugees. Mentalla decided to do something to create education equality for refugee students.

In 2017, still in her undergrad, Mentalla started Refuge-UC (later changed to Refuge Collaborative), a non-profit that pairs high school students with college-age mentors to support their higher education journey. Since 2017, the program has provided over 1,250 hours of mentoring to over 90 refuge and ESL students across three campus chapters.

The goal of Refuge Collaborative is to make resettlement easier, not just through addressing education barriers but through providing community and mentorship for navigating social and cultural differences. Mentalla wants to provide what she needed as a student in Dayton—that feeling that there’s room for everyone.

“[We’re] trying to create a community where folks who have been displaced from their homes, fleeing violence and war and persecution, can have a welcoming community and have access to education,” she says.

As a symbol of this sentiment, Mentalla wears a Palestinian keffiyeh to protests, a gift from a friend from Gaza. For her, this headdress signifies the work she does with Refuge Collaborative, and her mission to help displaced families and individuals feels safe, supported, and empowered.

“Assimilation should never be the goal,” she says. “There’s so much that you have to offer coming into the space, to this community. And everyone around you wants to learn from you. You have so much to give.”