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Mansour is not only an
attorney, she is also a lifelong advocate for issues related
to social justice, issues at home and abroad. For years that
advocacy has led her to engage in numerous local, national
and international organizations and to travel the globe to
far flung corners such as the Middle East, China, Austria,
among others, to discuss topics such as cross border trade,
cultural awareness and diversity.
Mansour has led
fact-finding delegation of American women leaders to the
Middle East to examine the U.S. military and economic role
in Israel’s apartheid and the violations of Palestinian
human rights.
“We must speak,” she says
of her drive to advocate for the underdog. That drive is
deeply ingrained in this daughter of a Palestinian
immigrant.
“My dad left Palestine in
1948 and came to America to become a physician,” she
recalls. “My mother was kicked out of her home then, a week
after her father and brother were killed by the Irgun, a
Zionist extremist organization.
Her family’s experiences
in Palestine certainly planted the seed of Mansour’s passion
to campaign for social justice. “My cousin was imprisoned
there for 12 years because he was in a car in the wrong
place with the wrong color license plates,” she says of one
such experience.
Mansour would grow up in a
various places – the U.S., Europe and the Middle East – and
become trilingual (English, French, Arabic), attend law
school, serve as the United Arab Republic resident associate
in charge of Sidley & Austin of Chicago (President Obama’s
former law firm) before returning to Toledo to establish her
practice.
And through it all, she
has never lost that passion to fight for human rights as
nations around the world continually sanction, exclude,
punish and even slaughter their racial, religious and ethnic
minorities.
“It’s happening all over
the world,” says Mansour. “I can’t take care of the whole
world but in my backyard and those from whose heritage I
come.”
As Mansour views that
backyard, and the world for that matter, she is saddened by
the lack of collaboration among those who see the problems
of inadequate social justice but seek redress by themselves.
“We are so siloed, so cut
off from each other,” she observes. The inability to
connect, she adds, renders so many causes ineffective. “What
happens now in the Black community is so related.”
Mediation is high on
Mansour’s list of ways to bring opposing sides together to
solve their differences. She has been a facilitator for both
commercial and family mediations and arbitrations referred
from the courts for decades and has been active in labor
relations, tripartite arbitration panels. She was appointed
a judge at the Willem C. Vis International Commercial
Arbitration Moot Court Competitions in Vienna, Austria.
Here at home Mansour is
convinced that the path forward in the struggle for social
justice must include a responsible approach by businesses
and government agencies. “More and more businesses have to
recognize their role in social justice,” she says.
We do see some recognition
in certain instances – the sporadic corporate responses to
the D.C. Capitol riots on January 6 or the murder of George
Floyd over the last year, for example – but the recognition
is anything but all-embracing.
Businesses speak out, more
often than not, when speaking out brings a positive impact
to the bottom line. Unfortunately, governments are not as
consistent in their messaging which makes Mansour’s struggle
for social justice that much more complicated.
The YWCA’s recognition of
Mansour for her body of work has earned her gratitude, not
just for herself but also for the women, now and in the
past, that the Y has honored for their commitment to social
justice.
“Women involved in grass
roots and social justice issues are to be acknowledged,” she
says. Mansour has certainly earned that acknowledgement.
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