Dayton Docket

By Carole Judge

“Just Your Average Mohamed?”  Hardly, but that’s the title Mohamed Al-Hamdani (JD ’13) gave the TedX Talk he presented last fall where he challenged the Dayton audience to re-think their perceptions of immigrants and Muslims.

As the Chief Legal Deputy for the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts, and recently elected member of the Dayton Public School Board, Al-Hamdani’s career trajectory is as circuitous as his life’s journey – one that began in war-torn Iraq.

After his father participated in the uprising against Saddam Hussein, his family was forced out of Iraq and into refugee camps in Saudi Arabia.  Once they were granted asylum in the United States, they eventually arrived in Dayton with his family because it’s the city where they were “sent.”  Ten-year-old Mohamed, knew three words in English, boy, girl and window.

Al-Hamdani says, “The experience made me who I am but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. We didn’t really have a choice to come to Dayton, but I think we were lucky.”

More than 25 years later, Al-Hamdani considers Dayton home and is now giving back to the community he believes embraces immigration and welcomes people from all backgrounds and faiths.  It’s the city where he learned English, attended Dayton Public Schools, Wright State University and Dayton Law. 

And although he did not feel racism or anti-Muslim sentiments as a child and during his teens at Colonel White High School, his undergraduate years were marred by the attacks of 9/11 that he believes sparked a noticeable change in attitudes.

“It was a turbulent time to be in college with my name and my background,” explains Al-Hamdani who felt people started to look at him differently, although he spent years aiding the United States military.

Following college, he was recruited by a government contractor to be a linguist, but he did not find that kind of work appealing.

“I wasn’t interest in that, but I ended up serving the Department of Defense by training Iraqis so we could get out of the war,” Al-Hamdani clarifies about his work providing cultural immersion training to Marines preparing for deployment to Iraq.

No stranger to conflict, being a school board member often finds Al-Hamdani in emotional meetings and circumstances involving contentious issues often facing urban school districts, like the closing of schools.  

“I understand those emotions,” reveals Al-Hamdani whose own high school, Colonel White, was torn down and replaced.  “So, serving on the school board is my way of giving back to the community,” he adds.

It’s also a means of putting into practice what he learned in law school where he interned with Dayton Public Schools for two years and was honored with a Cali Award (highest grade) in his Education Law class. 

“Law school really forced me to think differently and see the world in a new way.”

If Dayton Law prepared Al-Hamdani for his future, it also set the course for the rest of his life.  It’s here he met his wife, Carin, with whom he now has two sons. 

“What do I do in my free time?” he laughs.  “What free time?”