Ms. Azam Abdollahi was born in Tehran, Iran. When she first left Iran in 1976, she moved to London, England and immigrated to Southern California in 1981. She has three children and five grandchildren. Along with ISCC, she is involved with the Iranian American Women Foundation and also is a fundraiser and annual walker for the March of Dimes and Miller Children’s Hospital of Long Beach.

In addition to being a philanthropist, Ms. Abdollahi is a businesswoman. She is the Chief Financial Officer of Cabinets 2000, Inc., a company she founded with her husband in 1989. Cabinets 2000 is one of the leading and fastest-growing manufacturers of frameless European-style cabinets in California.

Azam Abdollahi has been a volunteer with the International Society for Children with Cancer (ISCC) since 2009. From the inception of her involvement, she has been a stalwart supporter of the organization, and has served as co-chair of various event committees. These events have been extremely successful, both in terms of enhancing ISCC’s reputation in the community and in raising funds for ISCC’s mission of helping children with cancer.

What prompted Ms. Abdollahi to join ISSC was personal experience – in 2008, her granddaughter spent 54 days in the hospital, with an unclear prognosis as to her survival. Watching her granddaughter in the hospital, and feeling the anxiety and helplessness of standing by and waiting, invoked in Ms. Abdollahi a passion for helping other children with illnesses. While her story had a happy ending, Ms. Abdollahi was aware that not every child is so fortunate. She became committed to working with ISCC to help ease the strains of suffering on children with cancer and their families.

Since becoming a volunteer with ISCC, Ms. Abdollahi has twice visited MAHAK hospital in Iran, which is funded in part by ISCC. There, she saw firsthand the children and families for which ISCC works. She witnessed caring doctors and nurses with smiles and encouraging words, walls decorated with children’s artwork, and a highly specialized pediatric hospital offering the latest technology for detecting and treating pediatric cancer. In the words of Ms. Abdollahi, “what I saw there was hope.”