CAIRO: A Cairo-based American finance professor was among some 20 people killed in a series of explosions in Baghdad Thursday.
Stephen Everhart, a 52 year-old professor and associate dean in the School of Business at The American University in Cairo, died when a roadside bomb hit a convoy en route to the US Embassy compound in Baghdad.
The explosion that took Everhart’s life, which the US State Department confirmed hours after the blast, was followed later in the day by three additional bombs that killed at least 20 people and injured over 100 others in a crowded Baghdad market.
Everhart, who joined The American University in Cairo in 2008, had previously worked for The World Bank and its subsidiary International Finance Corporation, and he also taught for a period of time at The World Bank Institute. He showed his business savvy much earlier in life, however; in the late 1970s, at the age of 20, he was already working on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange.
Everhart was visiting Baghdad on a consulting assignment for USAID, exploring ways to strengthen entrepreneurship education at Iraqi universities, according to a statement issued by the university.
Everhart grew up in Columbia, S.C. and earned both an MA and PhD in Economics from Georgia State University in Atlanta. He leaves behind a wife and three children, one of whom is a student at the university where he taught.
“Steve worked with skill, humor and unflagging devotion to utilizing the resources of AUC to nurture entrepreneurs and business leaders across the Middle East, and particularly, of course, in Egypt,” a university statement issued Friday said. “His warmth and intelligence, his affection for his students and colleagues, and the contributions
he had already begun to make a better Egypt will all be deeply missed.”
Lisa Anderson, President of The American University in Cairo, was on Friday preparing to meet with some members of Everhart’s family. Although for several years Everhart lived far from the American south where he grew up, “a southern gentleman he was,” Anderson told Daily News Egypt.
The university will hold a memorial service to honor Everhart in the fall, as many students and faculty are currently away from the campus during the summer recess.
*Disclosure: The author of this brief and Dr. Everhart worked at the same university for two years, though they were not acquainted.
