Finding Home
6,000 Miles Away — Sara's Story

Sara Haddad landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport on a Tuesday afternoon in September 2022. She had one suitcase, one carry-on, a lease for a basement studio apartment she had signed without ever seeing it in person, and the name of a JANA chapter volunteer — someone she had exchanged exactly three WhatsApp messages with.

"I remember standing outside arrivals, jet-lagged, and just thinking: I don't know anyone here. Not a single person." She had come from Aqaba, a city of 150,000 on the Red Sea. Toronto had 6 million people and it felt like every single one of them was rushing somewhere she wasn't invited.

The First JANA Event

The JANA volunteer, a second-year master's student named Omar, met Sara at a welcome gathering three days after she arrived. It was a casual potluck — twelve people, mostly Jordanian and Arab students from different Toronto universities, in someone's living room in Annex. People brought dishes from home. Someone had made mansaf. Sara ate two plates and cried in the bathroom.

"I was so overwhelmed," she says, laughing now. "Not because I was sad. I just hadn't realized how much I needed to hear Arabic, to smell something familiar, to be around people who understood what I was going through without me having to explain it."

Building a Network

Over the next year, Sara became a regular at JANA Toronto chapter events — study nights, career panels, Eid gatherings, and a joint trip to Niagara Falls with Arab students from four different universities. She made friends who are now colleagues, flatmates, and people she calls at 3 AM when things go wrong.

But the most career-defining moment came at a JANA professional networking event in March 2023. JANA had organized an informal dinner with Jordanian and Arab professionals working in Toronto's finance and tech sectors. Sara sat next to a senior manager at Deloitte Canada who had come originally from Zarqa.

"We talked for two hours," Sara says. "She told me about how she built her career in Canada, what to focus on in a Canadian MBA or analytics program, and at the end of the dinner she said: send me your CV." Sara did. Four months later, after two rounds of interviews, she had an internship offer. That internship became a full-time position she started the month after graduation.

Giving Back

Sara now co-organizes the JANA Toronto chapter's professional events alongside two other alumni. Last year, she helped plan the annual career networking evening that brought together 40 students and 15 professionals. "I think about the woman who sat next to me at that dinner," she says. "I want to be that person for someone else."

She also mentors two current students through JANA's formal mentorship program — a first-year student from Amman studying computer science, and a student from Zarqa applying for post-grad positions in data and analytics. "I meet with them once a month," Sara says. "Mostly I just tell them the things nobody told me. The small things. Where to look for apartments. Which professors to connect with. How to introduce yourself to someone you want to work for."

The small things that, when you are 6,000 miles from everyone you love, turn out to be the largest things of all.