Shery Luke is our Woman of the Week. She was nominated for her work as a development fundraising manager at Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation and for her doctoral research into Coptic women leaders in the US. You see her here on a mission trip to Kenya. We asked her to tell you about her background and how she came up with her dissertation topic:
“I’m from Cairo, Egypt, and I love history, so I studied Egyptology for my bachelor's degree. I also studied Japanese for four years so I could work as a Japanese tour guide in Egypt.
“My church is the Saint Mary church in an area over the Nile called Maadi, where Saint Mary and the holy family came and stayed a few days and then took a boat to Upper Egypt. My church has a small chapel for Saint Mary where we have a big icon and a Bible that we found floating in the Nile.
“God showered me with many blessings. One was my church; it was like home. In my growing-up years, I didn’t just go to attend liturgy or Sunday school and then go back home. We went in the morning, and we got back home by 10. So it was a full day. We would meet friends who became not only friends but sisters and brothers. Our teachers became our leaders; some were like mothers and fathers for us.
“Even now, our church is known for having Saint Mary; even Jesus was there. Visiting this small chapel of Saint Mary was part of my daily life. I would go to this chapel in front of Saint Mary without thinking. Whatever I had in mind, I talked to her about it like a mother and asked her to talk to her son about everything. We also had the Bible, which had been found in the Nile. We put it in a lovely box, and it was open on Isaiah, the verse that said, “Blessed are my people in Egypt.” So it has a prominent place in our hearts.
“It's an old, old church. It's decorated with ancient icons. This is how my eyes got to know the iconography, get used to it, and love it. Eventually, I started doing a few classes and online classes, and I'm hoping to continue because I love art, and I love that it tells a story, not just putting colors together.
“I immigrated 13-14 years ago with my husband. He's a physician. He continued his medical studies, and I worked in the nonprofit field. In 2000, I finished my master's degree at Masstricht School of Management in Holland. In 2017, I started thinking about doing my PhD and learned about Carolina University. They accepted me to study leadership. When it came time for my dissertation, my professor told me, “You have to do it on something unique and original.’ I said, ‘I want to do something about my church.’ When I was reading other dissertations, I saw that Coptic women were rarely discussed. Scholars discussed social issues, the Church itself, and the foundation of the Church. But discussion of our struggles, as first-generation Coptic women immigrating to the US, was extremely limited. So I told my department chair, “I want to write about the first Coptic women attaining leadership positions in New York.” And she asked me, “Who are the Copts?” I told her the Copts are the Christian Egyptians. She said, “Egypt has Christians?” I said, yes, we used to be 15% of the population. But after what happened in 2011, now maybe we are only 10%, because like me and my family, many, many thousands and maybe millions of Christians immigrated to Australia, Europe, Canada, the US, and elsewhere. I decided that someday, when someone is doing a Google search about Coptic women, she or he can read about our struggles and how we were able to succeed.”
Axia!
Our Woman of the Week is Shery Luke, nominated for her doctoral work studying Coptic women leaders in the US. You see her here on a mission trip to Egypt and with some of the women she studied to celebrate her new degree. x We asked her to tell you some of what she learned in the course of her research:
“I got help from my church in identifying 15 or so women. I started during the COVID lockdown, so it took me two years. After I had done preliminary interviews with them by phone, I conducted separate in-depth interviews with eight women, all first-generation women who had attained leadership positions in the State of New York. Their age range was 45 to 65. I was surprised to find that they all agreed on several points. I learned a lot from them.
“One of the biggest points they agreed on was what they had gained from being raised in the church. It had a huge impact on them, even more than their dad and mom did. They all emphasized, ‘Everyone at work knows we are honest and dedicated to our responsibilities. We learned this from church. Yes, our mothers and fathers were great people, but the church raised us to be like this.’ Most of them told me, ‘We were willing to work extra hours without asking for extra money,’ which was a new experience for their bosses. The boss would say, “If you need to ask for extra money, let me know.’ But each woman I interviewed would say, ‘I'm OK, I just want to get the job done. I want it to be done perfectly.; That’s how they got promoted: because their boss loved them and felt they were really different.
“In the beginning, they felt that language made them stand out, not always in a good way. As soon as a Coptic woman speaks, everyone can tell she is not American; sometimes they put her aside because she doesn’t sound skilled enough. But with hard work, each woman felt she could prove she was proficient enough to do her job.
“Another important point: they each found good mentors or teachers at work who believed in them and believed in their qualifications. Their mentors helped them and pushed for them to be promoted. They told me, ‘They told us we were hard workers, smart enough to make sure the work got done perfectly. Our supervisor liked this and helped us to learn more.’
“The next critical point was their spouses. Seven of them were married with children; one was a single mother. The married ones acknowledged that their spouse’s support helped them enormously because they often had to be at work for many hours. Two of them were doctors, and they told me their husband would come and ask them, ‘What's your schedule?’ He would then arrange his schedule according to her schedule so he could be home with the children Their husbands would come home and say, ‘Ok, you do your studies–I'm taking care of the children.’ One of them mentioned that when she was newly married, her husband said, ‘No getting pregnant before you finish your exams. If you get pregnant and have a baby, you will never complete your exams. I want you to be a doctor because this will make you happy, and I want you to be happy.’
One woman who worked in information technology said there was a challenging exam that only 20 people worldwide have ever passed. She had just had her third child and didn’t think she was smart enough. Her husband convinced her to study for the exam and offered to care for the children. ‘He believes in me more than I believe in myself,’ she said. She told me that she did no work at home except study for six months–and she passed.
The single mother told me her father had a lot to do with her success. She's a physiotherapist who owns two clinics. She's very successful in her business. She said, ‘My dad took time to teach me about business. Wherever I have a problem, I could call him, and he would discuss it with me point by point.’
“This is how we were raised. If we face difficulty, if we face a problem, we have to learn what to do, knowing there will be bad times and good times. In the end, each of them they reached a top leadership level. They present a different facet of what an Orthodox woman can be. People may say we are conservative, that we belong to the old church. Yes. But they also see that we deal with everyone with gentleness and kindness. They all said, ‘We love teamwork. We are not competitive. We work to get the job done, so that entire department can succeed.’
“It was lovely that they all said, ‘It's always God’s grace.’ They said, ‘Of course there were fights, challenges, and struggles, but we are covered with grace. We know when some doors are closed, it's because God is opening another one. We say: Whatever you want us to do, we will do.’
“It's leadership without ego.”
As always, we asked Shery Luke, our Woman of the Week, about her morning routine. You see her here in one of her favorite reading spots, where she loves to relax with a biography and a cup of coffee, and at Axia’s recent Healing Beauty retreat. She is also sharing her icon corner with you:
“I work from home. On my desk, I have an icon of the Pantocrator. This is how I love to see God: in control of everything. I have it over my desk and on my desk, so that wherever my eye goes, I see him and I see that he is in control.Looking at Him,I can say, “You do whatever you want.”
I also have a Russian icon of Saint Mary holding Jesus, but he's 4 or 5 years old. Her eyes are very gentle, and she has a very light smile on her face. She gives me peace and the feeling that my mother is here, that I am the daughter of the one who decides everything. So no worries, everything will be good.
“I'm dedicating 2025 to read everything St. Paul wrote. I'm a visual person. So I printed a picture of St. Paul reading scripture and framed it. I put it in front of me next to the Pantocrator. I pray to him to help me read his letters at a deep level.
“After the Axia retreat on Healing Beauty on September 21, I had healing oil on my mind. I was thinking about the five wise virgins holding the oil. Someone sent me this picture either on Facebook or Messenger of a Coptic icon of the five wise virgins with Jesus holding them. They’re wearing blue and gold, so close to His chest and looking at Him like they found their love.
“I'm putting all of this in front of me in the morning, looking at this and finding my peace and starting the day.”
Thank you, Shery!