Abraham Path Fellows

Leon McCarron is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and trail designer from Northern Ireland. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a fellow of the Abraham Path Initiative, the Philadelphia Geographical Society’s Explorer of the Year for 2022, and is known for long-distance expeditions and immersive multimedia storytelling. He has walked across China, crossed the Empty Quarter desert on foot, kayaked along Iran’s longest river, and ridden on horseback across Argentine Patagonia. His most recent journey took him along the full length of the river Tigris. In the past decade he has traveled over 30,000 miles by human power, and is currently based between Iraq and Ireland.

Leon is the author of three books. His most recent, Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilisation (Corsair, 2023) was a Sunday Times Book of the Week, New Statesman Book of the Year, and is shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Award. He has bylines in Smithsonian, National Geographic, New Scientist, Noema, and Geo. Previous books have been shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Book Festival award, and his journalism has won the gold medal in environmental reporting from the American Society of Travel Writers. His TV shows have aired on National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and theBBC, and he has lectured all over the world to schools, businesses, and societies. Leon has 10+ years of experience in trail design and development, with a particular focus on the Middle East, Central Asia and China. He is the co-founder of the Zagros Mountain Trail in Iraq. For more information on Leon McCarron, please visit: https://www.leonmccarron.com/

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, living mostly in the Middle East and Europe before coming to the United States to study art at Syracuse University, earning her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Lebanon. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, US Consulate, Vancouver, Canada, American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Barjeel Art Foundation Collection. Her paintings are also included in the DC Art Bank Collection and she has received the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship award each year since 2015.

Her work has been included in Art in Embassy State Department exhibitions abroad, including Abu Dhabi, Brunei, Nicaragua, Mauritius, Iraq, Belgium, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sweden. Helen has served as Cultural Envoy to Palestine, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. The John F. Kennedy Center/REACH, in Washington, DC, has selected Helen for the 2021-2024 Inaugural Social Impact Practice residency.

A note from Helen: "My work is ultimately about creating empathy. Creating a shared space for introspection and dialogue. I ask the viewer to see through someone else’s eyes, to walk in another’s shoes. To accept the “other.” To reject divisiveness. To promote acceptance and understanding and to reject violence and subjugation of anyone anywhere. To give voice to the voiceless, to heal, and to reflect in our shared humanity."

You can learn more about Helen and her work on her website: https://www.hzughaib.com/

Mohanad, a Palestinian-Swedish filmmaker, journalist, and writer, brings his expertise to this groundbreaking initiative. As the founder of Sunbird Films, Mohanad has an impressive portfolio of acclaimed works including: Letter To Obama (2013 short film), The Witness (2014 documentary), The Tyrant’s Friend (2015), The Swedes Captive in Gaza (2016 documentary), Beauty and the Dogs (2017 drama), Tal Al Zaatar: Revealing Secrets (2018 documentary), The Assassination of Elie Hobeika (2019 documentary). He’s currently working on several documentary projects, including: Water Night, Why Did We Plant Roses, The Apartheid Backyard, Searching for Lost Cinematic Memory, and The Prince. 

Beyond his work behind the camera, Mohanad has participated in film festivals and media events worldwide, most notably: the Malmo Arab Film Festival (2017, 2018), the Palestinian Film Days Festival in Malmö (2018), the Palestine Cinema Days International Film Festival (2018, 2020-2022), the International Kolkata Short Film Festival (2021), and the 5th Slemani International Film Festival (2021). 

Mohanad’s career reflects his passion for storytelling, heritage preservation, and amplifying the voices of local communities. His partnership with the Samaritan filmmakers is the latest chapter in his dedication to showcasing untold stories. 

Alison Tanık is a poet, playwright and performer who lives in the English Midlands. She returned to the town of her birth, Derby, after spending many years working and living in North Africa and the Middle East, including 7 years in a Kurdish village, Yuvacalı, in southeast Turkey. While living in Yuvacalı, Alison became involved with the Abraham Path Initative, helping to introduce hundreds of visitors to the hospitality of the region, before leaving to return to the UK with her two children in 2012.

Since returning to the UK, Alison has developed her interest in writing while working in education and raising her children. She is currently studying at Manchester Metropolitan University for an MA in creative writing. Alison performs her work widely at venues across the UK and is an Associate Poet for the Derby Poetry Festival 2023.

Daniel Maissan has been a freelance photographer for over 15 years. His fascination for people, the inequality in the world, and the strong belief that people are in essence all the same, made him change careers in his late twenties. Having been a bartender and an avid globetrotter, Daniel then started working for magazines and businesses as a freelance photographer.

Daniel finally ended up capturing the work of NGO’s and foundations, while creating personal projects in which he captures the dynamics of every-day life in different countries, cultures, and communities. What started out as a change of careers has developed more and more into a lifestyle in which he travels the world studying, framing and documenting his own outlook on the world around him. Daniel often shares his work on Instagram.

David Landis is an international trail development expert who has pioneered innovative and comprehensive methodology for creating community-based trails from idea to reality. David is the founder and CEO of V2V Trails and publishes adventure travel guides through his company, Village to Village Press. David has over 17 years of experience developing hiking trails and providing consultation and technical assistance to trail development organizations. He has led trail development projects from idea conception to international market readiness standards, including all aspects of trail development, organizational development, sustainability planning, marketing, public relations and tourism business development.

David has deep knowledge of the community-based trail approach for hiking and cycling routes. David oversaw the implementation of a $2.3M World Bank grant for developing the Masar Ibrahim trail in Palestine and has performed high-level consulting on strategy and leadership for USAID-funded projects in Jordan and Palestine. Village to Village Press guidebooks reach more than 12,000 hikers annually, helping them plan long-distance walking trips globally. As cofounder of the Jesus Trail, his marketing and tourism business development acumen has resulted in a tour company which was profitable from its first year and now has over 1,000 clients per year. He is the founder of the TransVirginia Bike Route, a gravel bikepacking route across Virginia. His projects have been featured in media such as ABC News, the New York Time, the Washington Post, and National Geographic. Learn more on David's website.

Emily Garthwaite is an award-winning photojournalist, a Forbes 30 Under 30, and Leica Ambassador focusing on humanitarian and environmental issues. She has walked over 500 kilometers through Iraq, documenting positive stories of resilience and women’s empowerment. She co-directed The 40th Day, a documentary covering Arba’een, the world’s largest annual pilgrimage that takes place in central Iraq. Emily has walked and photographed the Arba’een twice. She has also documented the refugee crisis and land mine clearance efforts in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Emily has a Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the University of Westminster and is founder of WomenTranslate. She is a Member of the Frontline Freelance Register and former Fellow of Abraham Path Initiative. Emily was selected as the 2023 International Nominee for the Goldziher Prize for Journalists. Kintzing Agency represents her. Emily lives in Iraq and the UK.

Hannah Stork is a PhD candidate at Yale University specializing in religions of the late ancient Near East and Syriac Studies. She also teaches Syriac every summer at Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute and serves as associate editor of Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. Her research focuses on premodern perceptions of language change and multilingualism, as well as the role of language in the construction of religious identity.

Prior to her graduate studies, Hannah worked for API in the Middle East for a number of years, exploring the trails, landscapes, and cultural heritage of the region and its people. It was these explorations that led her to research the countless layers of local history more fully; and it is those same explorations that motivate her now to incorporate experience of the modern Middle East into pedagogy of the ancient world.

Lisa Dupuy is a freelance journalist, editor and researcher, and made her way to journalism via conflict studies. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences in Maastricht and graduated from King’s College London with an MA in Nonproliferation and International Security.

Lisa is interested in conflict and the ways in which it shapes history and politics, marks our landscapes and (un)ties us to geography, and becomes entrenched in our thinking about the world and in the human psyche. She has written and/or produced stories on resource wars, conservation, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the worldwide arms trade. Lisa spends a lot of time in the newsroom of the Dutch national newspaper NRC. You can also find her on Twitter.

Ömer Tanık is a Kurdish Turk who has lived in Turkey and the UK, and currently resides in Şanlıurfa, in southeast Turkey, where he owns and runs a guest house. He has worked in tourism and sustainable development for many years, being one of the founding members of the Turkey Culture Routes Society. He has been involved with the Abraham Path Initiative since 2010, bringing visitors from all over the world to walk in southeast Turkey.

Stephanie Saldaña wrote a feasibility paper on the concept of the Abraham Path while completing her MA at the Harvard Divinity School even before the seminal walk from Urfa to Hebron in 2006. The Texas native now lives outside Jerusalem with her husband and three children. A consummate researcher and storyteller, and educator, Stephanie focuses on preserving intangible cultural heritage that is imperiled by war, oppression, natural disasters, and climate change. She listens to refugees and internally displaced people from Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, becoming a vehicle for the transmission of folk music, poetry, recipes, embroidery, and memory.

As an Abraham Path Fellow, Stephanie undertook years of cultural heritage research with Iraqi Christians and Yazidis in Erbil and Mosul, Iraq. That research is being compiled into her third book, Anwar’s Clementine: What Refugees Can Teach Us About Hope, Compassion, and Our Common Humanity. Her stories are also published at Mosaic Stories.

Stephanie was a Fulbright Scholar in Damascus and is a Journalist Fellow with the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at UCLA. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times.