You can always pick Stephen Lack out of a crowd. Standing 6-foot-4 with auburn hair and a beard, Lack towers over most people.
“In Turkey, they think I’m Dutch,” said Lack, a New Orleans native who was raised in Kingsport, Tennessee. “In Copenhagen, people start speaking Danish to me.”
Appearance notwithstanding, Lack, a Starkville resident and associate private sector partnerships officer with UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, uses his compassion and curiosity to open doors on which most wouldn’t even consider knocking.
Working with a UNHCR team, Lack facilitates gifts-in-kind – donations of goods and services from individuals and organizations in the U.S. – for deployment in areas of need around the globe.
Since Lack began with the UNHCR in September, he’s supported operations in 16 different countries, including Brazil, Lebanon, Mauritania, Panama and Ukraine.
“There’s a shipping company that’s provided sea shipment for 40 containers for us from Dubai to Port Sudan,” Lack said. “They’re an American company, but we facilitate that. It’s our goods that we bought, (and they) ship them to one of our main warehouses that’ll support six or seven countries out of the main stockpile there.”
Lack’s interest in international affairs stems, in part, from his upbringing. His father worked in the oil and gas industry and was sent to Iraq in 2003 during the U.S. invasion of the country as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Lack traveled extensively in the Middle East while his father lived there full-time, and was eventually drawn to the international studies program at USM via Nagwa Megahed, a Cairo-based professor who spent time teaching at Southern Miss via a Fulbright grant. He eventually reunited with Megahed in Cairo while pursuing a master’s in migration and refugee studies from American University there.
“I was able to get a minor in Arabic (from USM), which I think I’m the only one ever,” Lack said.
The Mississippi advantage
Lack’s career in development began with the Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans where he served as a business resource coordinator for the organization and developed its Refugee Employment Services program. Lack’s family is from Starkville, and in 2018 he accepted a fundraising job with MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering before taking over as lead fundraiser for the College of Business in 2020.
“Fundraising is very simple,” Lack said. “Whether the U.N. or Mississippi State, your job is just to remove the barriers between the donor and the impact they want to make.”
And while he knew his duties at MSU prepared him for a role with international organizations like UNHCR, others didn’t necessarily see it that way.
“It was really hard for me to break in, in the international sector, having a Mississippi address, all the Mississippi background,” Lack told The Dispatch. “There’s already some bias in the nonprofit world against higher ed.”
But, Lack’s “Mississippi background” is part of what makes him so effective as a fundraiser, and now, a facilitator.
“That’s part of the ‘Mississippi’; I felt more comfortable with the Egyptians in the street than I did the kids from New York who’d gone to Ivy League (schools),” Lack said. “The religious difference is there, but the culture, they have a lot in common with us.
“… I watched as a lot of State Department kids or hopefuls were from the Ivy League,” he added. “I sit around a table learning Arabic in Cairo, and they’d be like, ‘I’m from Harvard or Princeton or Yale.’ Well, I’m from Mississippi. They’re all speaking this formal Arabic that didn’t translate on the street, like, they couldn’t communicate with the cab driver.”
The normalization of remote work, brought on by the pandemic, allows Lack to pursue his international interests while keeping his home base in Starkville. He works from home, other than occasional jaunts around the globe.
Lack and his wife, Anna Catherine, have been married almost 10 years. Their son, Hodson, is 6, and daughter, Shellie Lou, is 5. And Lack’s commitment to helping those in need appears to be rubbing off.
“Hodson walked in the other day and saw a kid on my screen – we were doing a report – and he was like, ‘What is this?’ Well, they don’t have clothes so we just sent him these clothes and this is a picture from that delivery. (Hodson) came back in with his wallet, pulled out $5 and said, ‘Dad, can we give this to this kid?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, we can send it later.’ ‘No, let’s do it right now.’ And that was really cool to see. You’re making a real, live impact.”
A role in history
While fundraisers aren’t typically sent to “hot zones,” as Lack calls them, there’s always an element of danger when working abroad, particularly in those war-torn areas most likely to be facing humanitarian crises.
Lebanon, in particular, is an area of concern.
“Our agency is really involved because a lot of Syrian refugees are living there,” Lack said. “They’ve moved into South Lebanon, which has been at the center of recent conflicts, so a lot of bombings happen there. …The borders became overwhelmed because some Syrians were trying to get out because the fighting increased, some were trying to get back in, and they were all trapped at the border.”
While most of us have to rely on news reports from far-flung places like Syria and Ukraine, Lack knows firsthand how geopolitical and military conflicts affect the day-to-day lives of those impacted by them.
“My dad and I were sitting having lunch one day on the Lebanese-Israeli border, and our coffee cups and soup cups started rattling,” Lack said. “He was like, ‘That’s bombs.’ He was in Iraq at the time, so he was like, ‘I know what that is.’ And they were firing over us both ways.”
Above all, Lack knows he’s working for something bigger than himself. And while he recognizes the importance of organizations like the UNHCR in responding to humanitarian crises around the world, he’s also proud of the role he gets to play in that response.
“If an emergency breaks out, you’re not just watching history, you can play a role in (it),” Lack said. “… The world’s a big place, and it’s so cool to be able to do that.”
Philip Poe is sports editor.
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 48 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
