Speaker biographies
Jad Al-Akhaoui is a Cedar Revolution activist and the project manager for Quantum Communications in Beirut, Lebanon, where he oversees media and political consulting. Prior to this position, he served as a consultant for Dubai TV from 2003 to 2005. From 2002 to 2003, Mr. Al-Akhaoui also worked as a consultant to al-Hayat newspaper and the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation TV station, where he devised a plan to integrate the content of the two outlets following their merger. During 2001, he was the deputy director of news and managing editor for the Middle East Broadcasting Center in London. Mr. Al-Akhaoui covered the latter stages of the Lebanese Civil War as a correspondent for Abu Dhabi Radio and TV from 1987 to 1991. Born in Lebanon, he is a member of both the Foreign Press Association and the Union of British Journalists.
Ayat Abul-Futtouh has served as the managing director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, Egypt, since 2003. From 2001 to 2003, she was the program manager in the Forum of Dialogue and Partnership for Development. Prior to this position, Ms. Futtouh worked in the National Center for Middle East Studies, a think tank specializing in political analysis. An Egyptian native, she is a founder and a steering committee member of the Network for Democrats in the Arab World.
Emad Omar is a senior advisor for the Search for Common Ground’s Middle East and Partners in Humanity programs. A native of Jordan, he is also the executive editor of the Common Ground News Service. Mr. Omar is a human rights and peace activist, journalist, statistician, and researcher. Prior to his current position, he taught at Kuwait University and worked for the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. Mr. Omar is the author of several books, including The Question of Human Rights and The NGO Capacity Building Handbook.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C. and the Middle East.
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Between 2002 and 2004, Mr. Rubin worked as a staff advisor for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he seconded to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He previously lectured in history at Yale University, Hebrew University, and three different universities in northern Iraq. Mr. Rubin is the co-author (with Patrick Clawson) of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave, 2005), and the author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Palgrave, 2001).
Haider Saeed is the current director of the Iraqi Cultural Forum, an independent think tank in Baghdad founded in 2005. He previously served as a member of the editorial board for al-Mada newspaper in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005. Mr. Saeed currently serves on the board of directors of Iraqiyyat: Iraqi Women’s Studies Center, established in 2005. Born in Najaf, Iraq, he has appeared frequently on Arabic satellite television and radio, and has presented his research at the World Bank, London School of Economics, and Iraqi Ministry of Culture, in addition to other institutes.
Omran Salman currently directs the Arab Reformists Project, ‘Aafaq (Arabic for “horizons”). Originally from Bahrain, he served as a senior editor of the Iraq Democracy Paper in conjunction with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies from 2004 to 2005. During this period, he also worked as journalist for Voice of America, where he broadcasted internationally in Arabic. From 2000 to 2003, Mr. Salman was a managing editor assistant for al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. In the 1990s, he worked as a journalist and columnist for two of Bahrain’s most distinguished papers, al-Ayam and Akhbar al-Khaleej. Mr. Salman has published hundreds of articles on Middle Eastern issues in a number of Arab publications.
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