Nayre Stefanian is a newly hired accountant in Mission East. She has Iraqi roots in an Armenian family and is delighted to be able to help those in need in Armenia, Iraq and other countries who need help.

Nayre Estefan Stefanian is a Danish Armenian from Iraq. She is as multicultural as one can be. And she will need her cultural competences as a new accountant at Mission East’s head office in Copenhagen. Here she keeps in touch with the finance departments in the organization’s 10 working countries to the east and south.

Assistant to Ambassador

Nayre Stefanian has extensive experience in accounting and administration. She comes from the business world, including experience  keeping accounts for LeGrand Scandinavia and Paytech A / S. Prior to that, she was an assistant to the Egyptian ambassador in Copenhagen.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Business Economics from Baghdad University, converted to a Danish bachelor’s degree in the same degree and graduated with courses in economics, management and communication from the IBM Institute in Berlin.

Dream came true

Nayre Stefanian is an Orthodox Christian and comes from Basra, Iraq, where her father was an engineer in the oil industry and worked in Kuwait during the Gulf War. The whole family fled to Europe in 1997, and Nayre ended up in Denmark. After a stay in the Sandholm Asylum Camp, language school and supplementary education, she finally received a permanent residence permit in 2007.

The same year she was employed as an accountant in the Sankt Lukas Foundation in the Copenhagen suburb Hellerup, where Mission East is headquartered. Here she discovered that Mission East’s activities include  working in Iraq and Armenia. “Imagine if I could work there!” she said to herself.

Today, that dream has come true.

Checking that the money arrives

– I am so happy to account for Mission East and check that the money reaches all the way to our offices and partner organizations. It is great to know that money from foundations, associations and private donors is helping the poor, refugees and displaced people in our working countries. Of course, I am particularly pleased about the help to vulnerable people in Iraq and Armenia, says Nayre Stefanian.

She speaks Danish, English, Armenian and Arabic. The last two languages in particular are an advantage:

– The ice is broken and there is contact immediately when I call and greet our Armenian partners in Armenian and our Iraqi staff in Arabic, she smiles.

In addition to Iraq and Armenia, Mission East operates in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, North Korea, Syria, Tajikistan and Ukraine.