LISC Puget Sound

Slayman Appadolo

Cham Refugee Community

Slayman Appadolo fulfills various roles within the Cham Refugee Community, where he teaches cultural identity classes, leads mentorship and youth development, and most recently, orchestrates the new community center project as the project manager. Affordable housing for his community is at the core of who he is.

Slayman escaped the ashes of a war-torn Vietnam in the early 1980s by boat. Once he arrived, he learned firsthand the importance of affordable housing. The second of four children, he grew up in South Seattle with his fellow Chams, an ethnic Indochinese minority from Southeast Asia, where many were forced to work for minimum wage.

‍
Despite their limited incomes, acquiring stable and affordable housing enabled Slayman’s family and his community to flourish. He was surrounded by cultural richness and peer support that would guide him to become the first in his family to attend college.
In 2013, Slayman earned his Bachelor of Arts in education and, in 2018, a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies and Finance, both from King Saud University. Initially, he was a consultant for several international import-export companies that enabled him to use his fluency in Cham, English, and Arabic.

‍
But community service is his calling. Slayman recognizes the inadequate representation of communities of color in the real estate development. For this reason, Slayman made a personal commitment to identify opportunities and take on roles to address the affordable housing crisis in Seattle. His commitment is to use his own history to envision a community as wonderful as the Chams, where many beautiful families of color can flourish within their culture and live a prosperous life affordably. Slayman is looking forward to exploring these options through the Real Estate Developers Academy program.

‍