Mel Lehman grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He received a BA from Eastern Mennonite University, an MA in theology from Union Theological Seminary (New York) and an MA in literature from Columbia University. He worked for 20 years at the National Council of Churches as an editor in international humanitarian issues and during that time he made several visits to the Middle East. He increasingly came to realize that the ordinary people he met there were very unlike the images of Middle Easterners he was seeing in the U.S. media. In 2009 he founded a non-profit organization called Common Humanity which works to build understanding, respect and friendship between Americans and the Middle East and Arab world.

Last Christmas, he took 793 Christmas and New Yearâ??s Cards to Syria and brought back an equal number of cards from Syrians personally addressed to the Americans who sent the cards. He expects to repeat the card exchange in coming year