Ramsey Rayyis lived in the world, and for the world. During most of his 50 years, he worked in the service of people suffering from the traumas of war, social, economic and political collapse, natural disaster and health emergencies in over a dozen countries in four continents. He took to his task with seriousness, yet was quick with a joke and could bring laughter to any occasion. Ramsey’s humanitarian work started with a college internship at UN refugee camps in Palestine while studying at UC Santa Cruz. After graduation, he joined the local American Red Cross (ARC) as a case worker, providing assistance to victims of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

His international efforts started in Turkmenistan, the first of several former Soviet republics he worked in that suffered from social, economic, and political upheaval, including Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Georgia. In the latter, he met and married his wife, Khatuna.

Ramsey managed refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia, undertook AIDS programs in Uganda, and various relief work in the Dominican Republic, Jordan and Turkey. In Russia, where his daughter Yasmine was born in 2000, Ramsey traveled north of the Arctic Circle and to the most remote parts of Siberia, providing critical relief to isolated settlements and orphanages. As the ARC director for Asia, he concentrated on earthquake relief and avian flu interdiction in China, typhoon and tsunami relief in the Philippines, and response to famine in Mongolia. Since 2014, Ramsey was based in Manila. Despite facing dangers the world over, his passing was mundane, an accident on a Manila street.

Ramsey graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1985, UC Santa Cruz in 1989, and earned an MBA from Rutgers University in 2011. He leaves behind his wife and daughter, his mother Anoush, his brothers Jamal and Fareed, many friends, and hundreds of thousands of people he helped around the world.