Shiva Sarram knows what it’s like to live during wartime.
Sarram was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War. Her family fled their home in the early 1980’s when she was in the third grade. They lived briefly in Europe then settled in a suburb of Philadelphia. Sarram graduated with a degree in international relations and economics from the University of Pennsylvania and worked on Wall Street. Ten years ago, the New Canaan resident and mother of two children created the Blossom Hill Foundation, an organization to help children affected by war in the Middle East.

In Iran her father worked as a nuclear physicist, her mother for the children’s television network and as a children’s author.
“Dad left first. We went weeks later,” Sarram said. “It was a very long time ago. We left in very much an overnight fashion,” Sarram said, recounting with some detail what it was like when she, her mother and younger brother had to leave Iran to rejoin her father. “We came home. We packed our bags and we left,” Sarram said. “We thought it was temporary. It turned out not to be temporary. Living through a revolution as a child is upsetting. It leaves marks a very long time. It’s a lot of instability in your life. We left with $200 and a couple of suitcases.”…read more here