Refugees succeed against the odds with a little help from friends

Khatera Nazari, a refugee from Afghanistan, graduated in May from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee with a bachelor’s degree in data science. She is now a data scientist with the Fortune 500 company Northwestern Mutual Insurance.

Khatera Nazari was 18 when she received Hanan Relief Group’s Dr. Ahmad Nasef Scholarship in 2022. A new refugee from Afghanistan, months earlier, she made a harrowing escape on the eve of her homeland’s fall to the Taliban in August 2021. On the way to the airport, Nazari prayed as she prepared to die, she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2022.

Nazari graduated in May with a Bachelor of Science degree in data science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s College of Engineering & Applied Science and is now working in a job she loves. 

Asma Osman came to the United States with her family in 2015, as refugees from Myanmar (aka Burma). Like most Rohingya refugees escaping genocide, her family experienced trauma and loss unimaginable to most. They struggled to make a new life here, learned a new language and culture, and worked to help other relatives still in refugee camps get by financially. The 2023 Nasef Scholarship winner is now a senior at UWM and the first member of her family to pursue a university degree. 

Nazari served as emcee and Osman as a featured speaker Saturday at the Dr. Ahmad Nasef Scholarship Dinner at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee—West, where the Hanan Relief Group announced the six 2026 Nasef Scholars in the presence of the Nasef family and dozens of supporters.

Small but mighty – Dr. Ahmad Nasef Scholarships’ impact

Hanan Relief Group created the Ahmad Nasef Scholarship in 2021 in honor of Dr. Ahmad Nasef, an early champion and lead supporter of Hanan’s Wisconsin Chapter. He died at 52 in January 2021 of advanced kidney cancer. Each year, HRG gives $1,500 scholarships to as many winners as donations allow, said HRG community outreach and logistics specialist Helima Yasin Aichoune. (Aichoune encourages everyone to ensure the continuation of the Nasef Scholarship by contributing here.)

In 2022, Khatera Nazari, received a Nasef Scholarship from the Hanan Relief Organization. She posed with Charlotte Nasef, wife of the late Dr. Ahmad Nasef, a champion of refugees in whose name the scholarships are given.

Nazari and Osman agreed the impact of the Nasef Scholarship was significant, despite the relatively small dollar amount. “The Nasef scholarship helped me pay for textbooks and school supplies, easing some of the financial pressure of being a university student,” Nazari said. She also found it encouraging that the scholarships were earmarked for refugees and immigrants, letting them know they are not forgotten. 

“I would encourage people who have money to invest in the younger generation,” she added. 

“You are changing someone’s life,” Osman said. The Nasef Scholarship “is a little, single act of help that is specifically for refugees. It won’t pay for an entire education, but it helps. It definitely covered my textbooks, transportation and other expenses. I’m really grateful.

“It also means a lot because it’s Dr. Nasef’s legacy,” Osman added. “Education is life-changing. Not everybody has the privilege of going to school, and college is a dream for a lot of people.

Khatera Nazari’s passion for problem-solving

In Afghanistan, Nazari was among a group of young women pursuing studies at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh. The university arranged a flight for the women’s escape, but getting past the crowds and checkpoints to the flight was a horrifying ordeal, Nazari said.

 After saying goodbye to family and friends, and finally reaching the airport, they flew from Kabul as Afghanistan fell to Taliban control. Nazari and seven other students ended up in Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin, and finally in Milwaukee, where they studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Nazari began with one semester of intensive English at UWM.

“All praise belongs to God … the one who said seeking knowledge is an obligation for both female and male,” Nazari said on behalf of the 2022 Nasef Scholars at the second annual award ceremony. “I am from Afghanistan where the Taliban is proudly and publicly erasing millions of women from public life.”

Anonymous sponsors paid their tuition at UWM and Nazari started with a semester of intensive English in 2022. “My family is very pro-education,” she noted. “My siblings and I started studying English with private courses from around 10 years old.

“I always liked technology,” Nazari said. “I knew I would do something in engineering and tech. Back home, if there was anything wrong with the TV or any device, they would always ask me to check it. Whatever it was, they always asked, ‘Can you fix it?’ And I would.

“I love puzzles and problem-solving. But I didn’t know about the field of data science until I did three bootcamps during my freshman year—“Women in Tech, Zambia (at Arizona State University) and MKE Tech Hub Coalition, an AI bootcamp. That’s how I ended up in data science. I explored it a lot and loved it. By my sophomore year, I decided I would do data science.”

In the summer of 2025, between her junior and senior years, Nazari secured an AI internship at Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company, a Fortune 500 mutual insurance organization headquartered in Milwaukee. 

“The work is amazing. I love my team. I love the project that I’m working on,” she is quoted as saying in an article about her internship on UWM’s website.

After the internship, continued with Northwestern Mutual part-time while she completed her degree. Nazari accepted a full-time position as a full-stack data scientist with Northwestern Mutual after graduating in May. 

“Basically, I’m a data engineer, a data analyst and a data scientist,” she explained in an interview this week with Wisconsin Muslim Journal. “All three of them together—that’s a full stack data scientist.” 

She likes working in data science because “we help businesses and people do their jobs in easier and hopefully better ways,” Nazari told WMJ.

In the future, Nazari aims to continue to progress in her career, eventually moving into administrative work in data science. She plans to pursue a master’s degree online at Georgia Tech through a program offered to Northwestern Mutual employees. 

She also wants to be helpful to Milwaukee’s refugee and immigrant communities, helping them solve problems with technology.

“There are a lot of things I want to do,” she said. “I definitely want to create a foundation that helps girls and other people in Afghanistan, Syria, Africa. I have a lot of dreams. I guess I’ll work on them one at a time.

“I’ll start with the Afghan families I know and the Hanan Relief Group, if they need technical help. I would love to be a volunteer with them and the Muslim Women’s Coalition. (She has volunteered for both before.)

“I also want to encourage more women to be in STEM and data science. I’d love to talk with them about data science. I’m a nerd at heart.”

Asma Osman’s gives back 

“Surely with hardship comes ease,” Asma Osman told those gathered Saturday to recognize the 2026 Dr. Ahmad Nasef Scholarship recipients. “This verse has carried me through challenging moments. 

“Allah provided ease through this scholarship and through this community that believed in me before I believed in myself,” she said. “One of the ways I’m giving back is working as an intern with Hanan Relief Group … alhamdulillah, I am now able to give back to the very community that once invested in a student like me.”

Asma Osman and her friends celebrate their graduation in 2023 at Milwaukee School of the Arts.

Osman, a Nasef Scholarship recipient in 2023, will be a senior at UWM this fall. She is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in social work and a minor in criminal justice. 

She serves as a volunteer with Sea Literacy, as a member of its engagement team. That organization has helped her since she was a new refugee from Myanmar in 2016. Its tutoring services helped her learn English and complete assignments that were baffling to her at the time, she told WMJ. 

She is also serving Hanan Relief Group as a volunteer intern. “Asma is passionate about supporting the refugee and immigrant communities, promoting educational access and advocating for individuals and families,” Nazari said when introducing Osman as a featured speaker.

“Throughout my life, I’ve met really good people who have been very helpful to me,” she said. “Seeing these people makes me want to help others more. I’m studying social work because I want to help others. Social work is very broad. I’m learning many different ways to help others, grow in the community and give back.”

She added her minor in criminal justice after taking a 101 class. “I really loved it,” she recalled. “I am learning the policies of the criminal justice system.”

She also wants to help her family, she said. As the first in her family to go to a university, “I know it’s a privilege to be able to learn. I want to figure out what needs to be done to help in the family and community, and learn how to do it.”

Osman experienced a refugee’s journey as her family traveled from country to country seeking safety, until finally having the opportunity to immigrate to the United States in 2015 “and live the American dream,” she said. 

She fled Burma with her mother, sister and younger brother when the genocide there began, Osman said. (Her father and two older brothers had already traveled to Malaysia for work.) They went to the border of Thailand, where they hid until they were able to travel to Malaysia and the family could reunite. Not allowed to legally stay in Malaysia, they applied as refugees with the United Nations.

Her father and brothers received papers allowing them to immigrate to Australia, but declined them with hopes of moving together as a family. “They reapplied and everything took time,” she said. Osman was 12 or 13 when the family arrived to Milwaukee and was placed in 6th or 7th grade, she said. 

School was a challenge since her education had been disrupted throughout the family’s journey, Osman said. Being a student here “was definitely a difficult struggle,” she said. “You always have to do triple the work, just in order to understand one simple assignment. Everything is in English. I had very supportive people in the community and resources like Sea Literacy that provided mentorship and tutoring. They still give me advice.”

Osman graduated from the Milwaukee School of the Arts in 2022.

When she graduates from UWM next May, Osman hopes to go to graduate school for a master’s degree in social work. “I want to be able to get a job, have financial stability and help in the community,” she said. “Most of all, I’d like to help my family and help relatives back home. They are really in need.”

 The Nasef family and the Hanan Relief Group posed with the 2026 Dr. Ahmad Nasef Scholarship award winners. From left to right, Omar and Mohamed Nasef (sons of the late Dr. Ahmad Nasef);  awardees Shofi Ullah, a South Division High School graduate who will attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Yasin Zohar, a Sheboygan North High School graduate who will attend the Milwaukee School of Engineering; HRG co-founders Helima Aichoune and Charity Ramirez Bektesi; awardee Nur Khatizah Rahimullah, a graduate of Salam High School who will attend Alverno College; HRG board member Maysoon Ahmad; awardee Anabia Farooq, a graduate of South Division High School who will attend UW-Madison; Charlotte Nasef, wife of the late Dr. Ahmad Nasef; HRG board members Hashim Zaibak and Dr. Manzoor Mirza. Not shown is scholarship recipient Ta Eh Mu, a graduate of Ronald Reagan High School who will attend Marquette University.