S5E6: Lorna Solis

Lorna Solis is the founder and CEO of Blue Rose Compass, a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving gifted young refugees the opportunity to develop their talents.

The first student Solis helped was Abbas, a Somali refugee who attended Princeton in 2005, but her mission has become harder to fulfill since the war in Syria has changed the public perception of refugees — a word that, she says, that has been distorted:

Refugee is a status, it’s not your identity. You have a refugee status and then it’s gone the moment you are resettled or you are in a new society and you have the right paperwork. But politicians have made it that it’s become someone’s identity.… I mean, it is a branding issue. That they’ve taken it and just abused that word.

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