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Naila Paul
Director of Education
Naila is an educator, program leader, and creative problem solver, skilled at building personal connections across cultural lines and creating opportunities for educational exchange that bring each individual's strengths to light. At the Refugee Response, she directs the Home Mentoring Program and Teen Response after-school program, serving the educational needs of resettled refugee youth and families on the near west Side of Cleveland.
Prior to joining the Refugee Response in 2015, Naila worked as a private language instructor of English and Spanish to immigrant families and visiting business professionals from around the globe with IOR Global Services, offering in-home, office-based, and virtual language coaching. She first entered the world of refugee education in 2013 as an ESL instructor to preliterate and Level 3 adults at the Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, a refugee resettlement agency in Houston, Texas. At the same time, she served as a mentor to a refugee family of nine. An enthusiast for learning languages, Naila both studied with and worked at a number of foreign language immersion camps and served as Teaching Assistant for the Oberlin College Arabic Department.
AWARDS
In 2012 Naila was awarded the Paul Patrick Rogers Prize for Hispanic Studies. That same year Naila was selected for the Oberlin Shansi Fellowship, through which she obtained her TESOL training.
EDUCATION
Naila graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelors degree in Hispanic Studies and Comparative literature, and minor in Middle East and North African Studies.
EXPERTISE
Refugee Education
English and Foreign Language Teaching
Adult Education and Literacy
Youth Program Development
Volunteer Management and Training
Education Resource Development
Program Management