Week 21: Preserving History and Culture Online Gathering

On Tuesday, May 25th we learned about efforts to preserve Palestinian history and culture. Our guest was Faisal Saleh, chairman and founder of Palestine Museum US.

More about our guest:

Faisal Saleh was born in 1951 in El-Bireh (Ramallah, West Bank) to a Palestinian refugee family with 10 children.  Originally from the village of Salamah (Jaffa), the family was displaced in the aftermath of the 1948 Nakbah. Faisal grew up in the West Bank and attended public schools through 11th grade when he came to the US to pursue further education. He received a scholarship to complete his senior high school year at George School (Newtown, PA). Faisal later attended Oberlin College and received an MBA from the University of CT.

Faisal’s professional field is employee benefits. He began his career working at the Travelers Insurance Co. and held other related positions in the service and corporate employee benefits industry. In 1979 he began publishing a magazine on employee benefits serving as editor and publisher for 13 years. In 1985, Faisal started a software company (BeneSoft, Inc.) to develop benefits administration systems for use by corporate clients. In 1998 the software company morphed into a benefits administration outsourcing firm (Aliquant Corp.) In 2010 Aliquant, which at the time served 85 major employers and employed 200 professionals, was acquired by the global HR consulting firm Willis Towers Watson. Since then, Faisal has been a half owner of the Washington DC boutique consulting firm Hager Strategic which advises major corporations on benefits and HR outsourcing strategies and vendor management.

In addition to the HR field, Faisal is currently involved with businesses in real estate, Aviation, and more recently in a medical hi-tech startup, Plasmotica, that is dedicated to developing portable diagnostic devices based on advanced fluidics technology.

 Read a full profile of Faisal Saleh here.

Activism Time

Activism Time slides available as PDF here.

Full Kumi Action at:
https://kuminow.com/preservinghistory/#kumiaction

From the Presentation/Chat

•  I am also hoping people interested in the arts will support the rebuilding efforts of Dar Jacir Center for Art https://darjacir.com/About-Us in Bethlehem which was looted and burned by Israeli Occupation Forces in the period leading up to the present time. The fundraiser can be accessed here: https://fundrazr.com/dar.jacir?ref=ab_7fhWWtfLSo27fhWWtfLSo2
• You can watch ‘The Present’ here https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thepresentfarahnabulsi It is also available in much of the world on Netflix. 
• You can join the mailing list at https://www.palestinemuseum.us/join-our-email-list 
• Palestinian Museum at UCLA: https://idep.library.ucla.edu/palestinian-museum 
• There is also the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington D.C.: https://mpp-dc.org