Wedad Schlotte
Community Organizer, Selection Committee Member – San Diego Arab Film Festival
Wedad S. Schlotte was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and relocated to Kuwait when her family was forced to leave due to political conflict. She came to the United States in 1980 to study electronics engineering, and worked for design engineering firms for 4 years. In 1989 she became a U.S. citizen and joined the Department of Navy as a civilian until she retired.
Her education and upbringing inspired her to pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion. Throughout her life, she advocates for underrepresented communities. As a community organizer, she partnered with Math Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) to inspire and mentor underprivileged students to succeed.
She also served on ‘People Power’, a grassroots group within the ACLU and is the former coordinator of the Iraqi-American Democratic party. In 2003, she was honored with the Emerald National Award for community service by the Women of Color in Research Sciences, Technology, and Engineering.
She retired in 2014 and is now a full time community organizer. Currently, she serves as a teacher and translator to refugees for the “Teach and Learn Literacy” program, is an Assembly District 78 California Democratic delegate, is on the selecting committee for the San Diego Arab Film Festival. She’s a member of the Democratic Women’s Club of San Diego and Point Loma, serves on the board of the ACLU, and is the Vice President of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. She continues to collaborate on redistricting with ‘Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans’ (PANA) for true community representation.
Wedad lives in Mission Hills with her journalist husband and speaks Arabic, English, Spanish, and some French and Italian. She’s an advocate of punctuation and enjoys boogie boarding, reading, hiking, cooking, dancing, movies, and music.
Learn more about Wedad, here
