“RISE helped me learn what I needed to know to work with food in Utah — which is different from working with food in Iraq.” She points to Utah’s increasingly global food scene as evidence of what’s possible — her own restaurant, Saffron Valley, among them. She then found work at the Salt Lake Chamber, helping women launch businesses, an experience that inspired her to open her own restaurant in 2018. “Now that I have my certificate, I have two job offers: one at a restaurant and one cooking food for events,” she says. And while you’re here, subscribe and get six issues of Salt Lake magazine, your curated guide to the best of life in Utah.