[Music]
if everything had gone as planned my
life would have been completely
different my mother was the daughter of
a prominent businessman in Damascus
everyone in my family says everyone in
Syria wanted to marry your mother she
was well educated and widely known as
one of the most beautiful women in Syria
and her future was all planned out
she had an arranged marriage to my
father a handsome young talented doctor
they moved to the u.s. to an affluent
suburb of Washington DC where my father
started his medical practice and my
brother and I were born and raised from
the vantage point of my family in Syria
it was a storybook American dream at
least at first
my earliest memory is of a night at home
with my family I was very young and I
remember we had a few people over and it
felt like a party people were laughing
and talking it was a fun night after
they left I was sitting on the floor in
the hallway playing and from where I was
sitting I could see the back of the sofa
in the living room where my parents were
sitting and talking I continued playing
and when I looked back up at my parents
right at that moment out of nowhere my
father hit my mother so fast and so hard
she immediately covered her eye she got
up and she ran over to where I was
sitting up close I could start to see
the blood running through her fingers at
some point during all of this she must
have called an ambulance she frantically
started getting ready to go and she
asked me to get her shoes so I did I
found one that she loved she wore it all
the time
but I couldn't find the matching shoe I
remember so desperately looking for this
shoe but I couldn't find it my mother
wore two different shoes to the hospital
that night and that was the last time we
were in my childhood home we didn't pack
a thing I didn't take my favourite toys
we just left and as young as I was I
remember a very clear sense that it was
time to go my mother in that crisis was
faced with two hard choices stay in a
familiar dangerous world or leave with
nothing not even matching shoes as an
adult I look back now and I think of how
scared she must have been leaving for an
uncertain future in an unfamiliar
country alone with two little kids who's
to say which choice is harder but I'm
proud of her for making the choice that
she did
she was determined to raise us in the US
so she worked hard and she raised us as
a single mother and that experience
taught me that life is full of tough
choices choices that are made even
tougher when there isn't a plan in a
safe secure way out when crisis hits in
2013 I found my mother distraught again
she was watching a video it was a video
of her father's business in Syria being
demolished by the military the business
that my grandfather had built from the
ground up was gone
conditions in Syria continued to
deteriorate gas attacks neighbors killed
friends missing and my relatives started
thinking more seriously about leaving
like my mother all those years ago they
were faced with the same hard choice
stay in a familiar dangerous place or
leave staying meant risking their lives
leaving meant an uncertain future in an
unfamiliar country and where would they
go to a refugee camp with no running
water food or electricity and no safe
way to get there in the first place my
mother asked if there was anything I
could do to help and I wanted to help in
any way I could but I had no clue where
to start so I began learning about the
options available for civilians in
conflict and the more I learned the more
I realized that there was no clear right
choice go to a refugee camp and live in
squalor stay home and manage the risks
or apply for a visa some of which could
take years none of which were guaranteed
I became consumed and I reached out to
every person and organization I could
think of starting with my congressman's
office I called and I asked
what type of visa my family might be
able to apply for I was told that a
tourist visa would be the fastest way
out but that it wouldn't apply in my
relatives case a tourist visa is to come
see the Washington Monument not to
escape a war so I asked well what type
of visa is for escaping a war and they
said that one didn't exist but maybe I
could petition Congress I continued
reaching out and I got as far as the
Secretary of State in the end my
relatives had a signed letter of support
from John Kerry but none of it mattered
none of it worked I had been more
resourceful than I had ever been and
ultimately there was nothing I could do
to help them and I've never felt so
completely powerless or like more of a
failure every day I would watch the news
and I would see images of people that
looked like me dying because there was
no clear choice I would read about
refugees that put their children in
rafts to escape when they were asked why
they said it was because they didn't
have a better option that the water had
become safer than the land and I found
incredible irony and that so many people
were losing their lives not because of
the conflict but on the way out I
learned that when it comes to refugees
we're improvising there was no plan to
handle a refugee crisis of this
magnitude my relatives were just a few
of more than five million Syrian
refugees because there was no plan
people were torn between impossible
choices that no person should have to
make and there was no excuse this didn't
happen overnight I became distracted at
work at the time I worked in business
development for a global technology
and I wanted to quit I thought maybe I
should go work full-time as an advocate
for refugees but my boss encouraged me
to take some time and think and then one
day I got an email how big data is
transforming the cheese-making
industry and I was livid I could not
believe that this was how we were using
technology I knew that for businesses we
could predict things like what people
wanted to buy or what they wanted to
watch there seemed to be a secure
pathway to profit but not to safety but
it made me think what if we could get
ahead of the next migration what if we
could apply predictive technology to a
refugee crisis and I had this vision
that if we could predict it we could
enable government agencies and
humanitarian aid organizations with the
right information ahead of time so that
it wasn't such a reactive process we
could develop and reinforce secure
pathways undermine human traffickers
prevent human rights violations and make
policy decisions early so that when
people need a way out they have one so
that even if I couldn't help my family
maybe someone else's family would have
better choices so we built a prototype
we tested it and it worked in the same
way that we consider wind speed
temperature and barometric pressure and
determining a weather forecast we can
now make predictions about populations
in crisis by looking at things like news
weather social media and GDP and we can
conduct what-if scenario analyses so we
can better understand and visualize the
impact of policy decisions we can ask
and answer questions like what if we
close a border or what if transportation
is unavailable and we can respond to a
refugee crisis proactively
I just recently learned that we're going
to be deploying our refugee and
migration predictive analytics solution
with an organization to support refugees
in Denmark and next year with an
organization to help prevent human
trafficking
[Applause]
I believe that the way we currently
respond to a refugee crisis makes an
already difficult situation even harder
if we don't predict the next crisis we
will once again find ourselves backed
into a corner reacting to what feels
like an emergency
and rather than thoughtfully responding
will make fear-based decisions that
influence our policy and are not a true
representation of our values and people
will lose their lives because they
weren't given a better choice my
relatives eventually made it to safety
though not in the US and not because of
anything I did to try to help them over
the last few years I've watched as
almost my entire extended family in
Syria have become refugees I've learned
that sometimes you can do everything
right and still fail I know there will
always be people and governments that
won't use this technology but we have to
make sure that the people who want to do
the right thing who want to help have
the tools and the information they need
to succeed and those who don't Act can
no longer hide behind the excuse that
they didn't know it was coming thank you
[Applause]