After 35 Years, Maha Freij Hands the Keys to America's Largest Arab American Nonprofit to Lina Hourani-Harajli

Today, October 1, marks the start of a new era for the nation's largest Arab American institution. Lina Hourani-Harajli officially becomes President and CEO of ACCESS, the Dearborn-based nonprofit that has anchored Arab American community life in metro Detroit for more than five decades, taking over from Maha Freij, who is retiring after 35 years with the organization. The handoff caps a carefully managed succession. ACCESS's Board of Directors voted unanimously in July to name Hourani-Harajli, who had served as the organization's Chief Operating Officer for more than a decade, as Freij's successor. Freij, who joined ACCESS in 1991 and became President and CEO five years ago, will stay connected to the organization as a strategic advisor during the transition, according to ACCESS's own announcement and reporting from the Arab American News and Crain's Detroit Business. Founded in Dearborn in 1971, ACCESS has grown from a grassroots community outreach effort into a sprawling institution with roughly 300 staff and an annual budget near $20 million. It runs some 120 programs across metro Detroit spanning health care, immigration and social services, workforce training, and youth education, and it oversees a cluster of national institutions: the Arab American National Museum, the Center for Arab American Philanthropy, the Center for Arab Narratives, and the National Network for Arab American Communities, which links Arab American service organizations across the country. Freij's tenure is widely credited with turning ACCESS into that kind of national player. She led the capital campaign that built the Arab American National Museum — still the only museum of its kind in the country — founded the Center for Arab American Philanthropy, and grew the organization's reserves and endowment to put it on firmer long-term financial footing. More recently, as President and CEO, she launched the Center for Arab Narratives and spearheaded the fundraising campaign behind the new ACCESS Recovery Center, a $25 million substance-use and mental health facility that opened in Dearborn late last month. "I have always believed that our responsibility is not simply to build organizations, but to build institutions that can serve communities for generations," Freij said in ACCESS's announcement of the transition. Hourani-Harajli, who joined ACCESS in 2000, spent more than ten years as Chief Operating Officer overseeing business operations, human resources, IT, and marketing, and was a key architect of the organization's "whole-family" service model — an integrated approach meant to help families build long-term stability by tackling education, employment, health, and social services together rather than as separate silos. Board Chair Hussien Shousher credited Freij with cultivating the kind of internal leadership pipeline that made Thursday's transition possible without external disruption. "I am honored by the trust the Board has placed in me and grateful to Maha for her decades of leadership and mentorship," Hourani-Harajli said. The change in leadership comes at a consequential moment for ACCESS, which has spent the past year expanding its physical footprint in Dearborn — the Recovery Center among the most visible examples — while continuing to serve as a political and cultural reference point for Arab American communities nationally. How Hourani-Harajli steers that growth, and whether she expands ACCESS's national programming further, will likely shape how the organization is perceived well beyond Michigan in the years ahead.