Witness as Ministry
Leadership
A lifetime of experience. A calling to care beyond crisis.
Founder
Patrick Bouchebel
President & CEO
For Patrick Bouchebel, humanitarian leadership is rooted in personal experience. Growing up in Lebanon during years of civil war, he experienced firsthand the fear, disruption, and loss that conflict can bring into everyday life. Those experiences gave him an enduring understanding of what families endure in times of crisis and helped shape a desire to stand alongside others facing hardship, uncertainty, and displacement.
He also saw the power of compassionate service through the example of his father, Dr. Jean Bouchebel, whose humanitarian work helped deepen Patrick’s understanding of both human suffering and the responsibility to respond.
Over more than 30 years, Patrick has built a career in humanitarian relief, international development, reconstruction, and executive leadership across the United States, Africa, and the Middle East. He has led multidisciplinary teams, managed complex operations, built partnerships across cultures and institutions, and overseen humanitarian and development portfolios across relief, protection, advocacy, and community development.
Patrick spent more than 11 years with World Vision in a variety of leadership and operational roles, gaining extensive experience in program management, field operations, humanitarian response, and long-term development. Following the 2003 Iraq War, he helped establish World Vision’s humanitarian response in Iraq, supporting the organization’s efforts to respond to the needs of communities emerging from conflict. His assignments also included challenging and resource-constrained environments across Africa and the Middle East. In Niger, he led programs serving approximately 120,000 people affected by recurring drought, famine, and extreme poverty.
Patrick later returned to Iraq in a senior operational capacity, directing operations for a $240 million U.S. government reconstruction contract in one of the world’s most complex post-conflict environments. He subsequently held senior leadership roles with one of the Middle East’s largest logistics companies and has led large-scale refugee and humanitarian operations involving coordination with governments, donors, international organizations, local partners, and communities.
These decades of experience have shaped Patrick’s approach to leadership. He believes effective humanitarian work requires more than responding to immediate needs. It requires listening carefully, understanding local realities, building trusted relationships, empowering capable local partners, and creating programs that are both practical and sustainable.
In 2012, as the war in Syria forced families across the border into Lebanon, Patrick and his father responded to a need they could not ignore. Together they founded Witness as Ministry.
Today, Patrick provides the strategic and executive leadership of WAM, drawing on decades of experience in humanitarian operations, organizational management, international development, and crisis response. Under his leadership, WAM works through local churches and trusted partners to serve people affected by war, poverty, displacement, and persecution while strengthening the capacity of those serving on the front lines.
Patrick’s leadership is grounded in his Christian faith and in the conviction that vulnerable communities should not be forgotten when attention shifts elsewhere. The experience gained over decades of humanitarian leadership now guides WAM’s mission: responding wisely to urgent needs, investing in strong local partnerships, and helping communities move toward greater stability, dignity, and hope.
Patrick earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Biola University. He is fluent in English, French, and Arabic and conversant in Spanish.
Founder
Dr. Jean Bouchebel
Founder and President Emeritus
For more than five decades, Dr. Jean Bouchebel’s life has been marked by faith, perseverance, and a willingness to serve where the cost was real and the needs were great.
A native of Lebanon, Jean built a distinguished management career across the Middle East and North America. But some of the most defining years of his life began when he returned to Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. He came back to a country fractured by violence, fear, and displacement, where neighborhoods had been scarred by fighting, families had been uprooted, and daily life demanded resilience simply to continue.
Jean chose to stay and serve.
Those years placed him close to the human cost of war. He worked among families who had lost homes, livelihoods, security, and loved ones, often in conditions where needs were overwhelming and resources were limited. The experience sharpened both his resolve and his conviction that compassion must be practical, courageous, and sustained.
In 1984, Jean became Country Director of World Vision Lebanon, where he initiated and supervised 80 emergency relief, reconstruction, reconciliation, and community development projects while leading a staff of 185. His responsibilities later extended beyond Lebanon to World Vision programs and initiatives in Syria, Cyprus, and Iraq, giving him firsthand leadership experience across some of the Middle East’s most complex humanitarian and political environments.
For more than 18 years, much of Jean’s World Vision career was spent in the field, working close to communities affected by war, poverty, displacement, and instability. The work demanded far more than program management. It required judgment under pressure, the ability to operate amid insecurity and division, patience in building trust across communities, and the perseverance to continue when resources were scarce, circumstances unpredictable, and progress hard won.
After nearly two decades of field service, Jean continued his World Vision career in the United States, where his experience took on a different but equally important role. In senior resource development leadership, he built relationships with individuals, churches, foundations, and institutional partners, helping connect resources and generosity in North America with humanitarian needs around the world.
It was a natural continuation of a career spent bridging two worlds: those experiencing profound need and those with the ability and desire to help.
Jean’s ability to move comfortably between these worlds was forged over decades. He could sit with a family displaced by war, work alongside local leaders and humanitarian teams, engage government officials, or speak with major donors and foundations with the same respect and authenticity. His credibility came not simply from professional experience, but from having spent years on the ground, witnessing suffering firsthand and understanding the realities behind the programs and appeals.
His service also carried sacrifice. Years spent working in conflict-affected environments brought long hours, uncertainty, difficult decisions, separation from family, and the emotional weight of repeatedly witnessing human suffering. Yet he remained committed to the work and to the belief that those facing war, poverty, and displacement deserved more than temporary assistance. They deserved dignity, compassion, and people willing to persevere alongside them.
Jean remained with World Vision until his retirement in 2013, concluding a career with the organization that had taken him from frontline humanitarian leadership in the Middle East to senior engagement and resource development in the United States.
That depth of experience became foundational to Witness as Ministry. Together with his son, Patrick, Jean helped establish WAM in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. He brought to the organization far more than technical expertise. He brought decades of trusted relationships, hard-earned regional knowledge, humanitarian leadership, and a deep understanding of the cultures, histories, conflicts, and complexities of the Middle East.
His experience helped shape WAM’s conviction that effective humanitarian work requires both urgency and endurance: responding decisively when crisis strikes, while also strengthening the local churches, organizations, leaders, and communities that continue serving long after outside attention has moved elsewhere.
Fluent in Arabic, English, and French, Jean has spent decades bridging cultures and bringing people together across social, religious, and political divides. In 1988, Warner Pacific College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in recognition of his humanitarian service in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.
Yet Jean’s legacy is not defined simply by titles, projects, or honors. It is found in the people he served, the leaders he strengthened, the relationships he built, and the difficult places he was willing to enter and remain. It is a legacy shaped by experience, perseverance, compassion, sacrifice, and a faith expressed through a lifetime of service.
Today, Jean is enjoying a well-earned retirement, while the experience, relationships, and vision he invested over decades continue to shape the work of WAM and the communities it serves.
Join us in caring
When the crisis fades from view, WAM remains.
Your gift helps us continue serving alongside local churches and trusted partners, bringing practical care, spiritual encouragement, and enduring hope to people facing hardship and persecution.
Together, we can provide Care Beyond Crisis.