Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Survivor of war, discrimination, assimilation to speak at PCC graduation

Photos and story by James Hill

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Few people have ever had a month like Miral Rezayee Bessed in May. She was named a Ford Foundation Scholar and met billionaire investor Warren Buffett. But maybe her biggest honor is that she was named graduation speaker for Portland Community College’s commencement on Friday, June 11, where she will get to speak to thousands of people about her amazing story.

“I got the message at work and told the lady that I spoke with, ‘Are you kidding me?’” said Bessed, a resident of Sherwood. “She said, ‘No, I’m serious.’ And from then on I couldn’t stop smiling. I announced it to everyone at work right there. It’s not every day you get that kind of audience who can feel where you came from and understand you. I get to share with them my experiences and what I learned along the way. Hopefully, I can leave them slightly inspired. I am incredibly excited.”

Bessed, 29, is completing her Oregon Transfer Degree and plans to enroll at the University of Oregon or George Fox University to major in broadcast journalism. She’s excited that once she completes her four-year degree, she’ll move on to get a master’s. She’ll have plenty of help as, last week, she was named one of 11 national Ford Foundation Scholars from PCC and she’ll receive $25,000 in grant money. That, came just after she learned she was selected to be PCC’s speaker at graduation.

For details of the 48th graduation ceremony, visit the story.

From bombs to discrimination, Bessed journey a rough one

Her story covers surviving a war in Afghanistan, discrimination and harassment in Pakistan, acclimating to a new country in the United States and finding her identity at one of the country’s largest community colleges.

As a kid, Bessed survived five rocket explosions in her hometown of Kabul, Afghanistan, and her family escaped the violence by traveling across the border into Pakistan in 1992. Pakistan wasn’t much better. Her family endured extreme poverty and discrimination commonly directed toward Afghan expats and, being a woman from a liberal family, was the target of sexual and verbal violence.

“Discrimination against women is a huge problem in Peshawar, Pakistan, especially immigrant women who came from Afghanistan,” she said. “There is a lot of hate out there and the equality line is very blurry. But I was able to survive it and still had the chance to get an education because of an open-minded family, who put education first, so I’m lucky.”

In 2000, Bessed moved to Portland to be with her husband and immediately had to fight another battle – assimilation.

“It was absurdly hard,” Bessed added. “My first time away from my home was coming halfway around the world as well as flying in an airplane for the very first time. Considering this, can you imagine having to hop four flights to get here? It was a horrifying experience, but, hey, I made it. That is part of what has helped me be who I am today.”

Bessed turns to PCC to start working toward dream career

Her husband happened to be a PCC student and he encouraged her to enroll. Bessed said she remembers clearly coming to the college’s Sylvania Campus and taking the placement test in 2001. Because of the language barrier and not being strong at math, she placed all the way at the bottom in Math 20 and Reading and Writing 90. But like all challenges in her life, she didn’t let low first scores stop her.

“I had to work myself up from there and completed a lot of pre-requisites,” Bessed remembered.

A lay off forced her husband out of work and her into it. College was put on stand-by as she became a professional Jeweler for Ben Bridge Jewelers in Clackamas. She was so successful selling diamonds and luxury timepieces (more than $1 million in total sales) that she was recently honored at a luncheon with billionaire investor Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. Bessed accomplished this feat despite going to PCC full-time while working full-time starting back in 2007.

She is now well on her way toward being a journalist, a profession that she said seems a good fit for her. It’s a career that can help her in her quest to shine a light on women’s rights back home and it’s an issue she feels she can do a lot of good for as a journalist.

“It is in my blood,” said Bessed, who is fluent in four languages. “My father was a journalist and my uncle too. As an Afghan with strong ties to Pakistan and to America, I can relate to the bicultural issues of discrimination, oppression, religious domination, and assimilation that is often forced. As a woman, I am well positioned to see gender inequity, particularly when it is coupled with my ethnicity. I so far have been successful at everything I have started. So on my way up, I want to lift other women with me to proof the fact that success doesn’t have limits of ethnicity and gender. That is my main source of inspiration.”

PCC staff, instructors and a billionaire make the difference

She credits her husband of 11 years, family and especially PCC instructors for giving her the support she needed to excel in her studies and become a big success at the college.

“Most of my PCC instructors’ help has been invaluable,” Bessed said. “Three people stand out; Michele Wilson, in a women’s studies class evoked the feminist in me while enriching my knowledge about issues of inequality. Heather Guevara, instructor in social science, has supported me in many different ways. And Michael Morrow, who everyone knows at PCC, has supported me unconditionally with obtaining scholarships and getting to the schools I wanted to get.”

Now, the only challenge left is what to tell all of her fellow graduates and their families at the Memorial Coliseum in June. But she has even overcome that hurdle and credits Buffett, the billionaire investor from Omaha, Neb., with solving the problem.

“At the luncheon, I asked him ‘What is the one thing you learned in life you want everyone else to know?’” Bessed recalled. “He said, ‘The true measure of your success of where you are is by seeing how you lived your life and what your focus was. If I were to tell you how to get to success, it would be to focus on what is right in your life rather than what is wrong.’ That is when the light bulb went on – I had found my theme for my speech. This is what I’ve been doing all my life. All my experiences have shaped my identity today. I am a successful woman because I learned from my struggles to value relationships, love, opportunity and the life itself.”