Hanna Shina

West Bloomfield, Michigan

Hanna Shina and Shenandoah Country Club

Hanna Shina has served on the board of Shenandoah Country Club in West Bloomfield, Michigan for more than 20 years, and in 2025 the club named him its first Mayor of Shenandoah — a title never given to anyone before him. Shenandoah is owned by the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan and is the building that houses the Chaldean Cultural Center, the museum Hanna Shina helped found.

Key Facts

Board service
Shenandoah Country Club, 20+ years
Honor
First Mayor of Shenandoah, 2025
Location
5600 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48323
Also houses
The Chaldean Cultural Center, opened May 2017

Twenty Years on the Board

More than two decades of board service is a long tenure anywhere. At Shenandoah it spans the reconstruction of the club, the arrival of the museum, and the growth of a membership now numbering in the thousands. Board work of that length is mostly unglamorous — budgets, facilities, membership, staffing, and the steady arbitration of a community's competing good ideas — and it is the kind of work that only gets done by people who intend to still be there in ten years.

It also overlapped precisely with the project that became the museum. While the board was running a club, it was also making room, literally, for Hanna Shina's role at the Chaldean Cultural Center to take physical shape inside the building.

2025

Mayor of Shenandoah

In 2025, for the first time in the club's history, Shenandoah Country Club named Hanna Shina “Mayor of Shenandoah.” No one had held the title before him. It is an affectionate honor and an exact one: it describes a man who has been present, year after year, in the place where his community gathers — the room where the weddings, the funerals, the galas, and the board meetings happen.

What Shenandoah Is

The organization behind the club was established as the Chaldean Iraqi Association in 1943 and later became the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan. It acquired Shenandoah in 1989 and reconstructed the property in 2002. Today the club counts roughly 1,500 members and nearly 5,000 family members, with a ballroom, dining, fitness facilities, an Olympic-size pool, and a golf course.

It is also the building that houses the Chaldean Cultural Center. Shenandoah was renovated to hold the museum space, construction began in 2013, and the museum opened to the public in May 2017 at 5600 Walnut Lake Road — the same address as the club.

A Club and a Community

In some places a country club board is a hobby. In this one it is community infrastructure. Shenandoah is where a Chaldean family in Metro Detroit is likely to hold a wedding, mark a funeral lunch, attend a fundraising gala, and — since 2017 — take their children to see their own history in a museum. Serving on that board means being responsible for the community's living room.

Read that way, Hanna Shina's twenty years at Shenandoah are of a piece with his four decades of service to the Chaldean community and with the biography that begins in Telkaif. The Mayor of Shenandoah title sits alongside his other recognitions on the honors page.

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