Executive Board

The 2010-2012 Executive Board was elected in June 2010 and will serve through May 2012. Members of the Executive Board are as follows:  

 

Shahm Al-Wir (President) is currently a Director at Foursan Group, a Middle Eastern private equity fund based in Amman, Jordan. Prior to joining Foursan, Shahm was a Senior Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, where he focused on U.S. and Middle Eastern mergers and acquisitions, privatizations, and capital markets transactional and advisory work. Shahm received a Juris Doctorate in law from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2001 and an A.B. in Government from Harvard College in 1998. Shahm is fluent in Arabic, English and French.

 

 

 

Amer Lahham (Vice-President) joined HBS after a 6 year career in Silicon Valley where he worked as an enterprise systems solutions consultant for high tech companies like Cisco and Sun. He also volunteered on various boards and organizations, including the board of the alumni association of the University of California at Berkeley, which caters to about 20,000 alums. Amer moved to Dubai after HBS to join management consulting firm Booz & Company, where he is currently a Senior Associate specializing in media, serving clients in television, advertising, and entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

Ahmed el-Gaili (Treasurer) is a Partner at the Middle East offices of Vinson & Elkins LLP, an international law firm. His practice areas are project development and financing, M&A, private equity and joint ventures. He was previously a Senior Associate Attorney at the London offices of Sullivan & Cromwell and prior to that an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley's Global Energy Group in New York. He received a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2003 and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Economic Development Studies from Harvard College in 1998. While at Harvard College he served as President of the Society of Arab Students (SAS) and was a founding organizer of the Intercollegiate Arab Students Conference (IASC). He was the founding President of Justice for Palestine (JFP) while at HLS.

 

 

Dr. Kamal Shehadi (Director of Development) is Etisalat Group’s Senior Vice President for Regulatory Affairs. In that capacity, he is responsible for strategic regulatory engagement at Group level. Prior to joining Etisalat Group, Kamal was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, Republic of Lebanon. From 2000 to 2007, Kamal was Managing Director of Connexus Consulting, which he established as the leading consultancy in the Middle East and North Africa in telecom policy and regulation. Kamal consulted to telecom companies -including Etisalat, investors, governments, and various international organizations, including the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations.

Kamal has a B.A. with honors (A.B. cum laude) from Harvard University in economics and a PhD from Columbia University in international political economy.

 

Dr. Sameera Al-Tuwaijri (Director of Media Relations) is a board certified OB/GYN physician. After leaving clinical medicine, she went for a Master's degree in health services management from George Washington University, a Masters degree in Public Health from Harvard, and a post-doctoral degree in health systems from Johns Hopkins University. She is also board certified from the American Board of Quality Management and Utilization Review and the American Board of Physicians Executives.

In the decade she has worked in public health, Dr Al-Tuwaijri held many posts at WHO, UNFPA, the ILO and recently the World Bank.

Dr Al-Tuwaijri is a native of Saudi Arabia, married and has one daughter.

  

 

 

Olfat Hammad (Director of Membership) is currently the associate director at the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Ms. Hammad has a master's degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Mid Career/Mason Fellows Program. She has a master's degree in business administration from An-Najah University and a master's degree in democracy and human rights from Bir Zeit University, both in Palestine.

She served in different senior level administrative and management positions before working for PSR. Ms. Hammad had joined PSR since the year 2000, and has been involved closely with Professor Khalil Shikaki in conducting public opinion polling and surveys in Palestine, and has monitored and supervised the implementation of several research projects in Palestine, among which are the Democracy Index of Palestine, Arab Democracy Index, and Arab Barometer projects.

 

Dr. Nihal Hafez Afifi (Director of Scholarship Fund) is a medical doctor currently working as a health policy and management consultant, based in Chicago. She received her Master’s degree from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1995 and also has an MBA from the American University in Cairo. Nihal worked on health care reform programs in many Arab and developing countries through international organizations as USAID, WHO, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. She specializes in organizational analysis, institutional development, quality improvement, and strategy and policy development for public and private organizations.

 

Yasser Salem ( Director of Career Development) founded and served as Managing Partner of The S&T Group until he sold the business in 2009. The S&T Group is a Middle East private equity executive search firm dedicated to increasing the human capital professional talent in the region. Prior to The S&T Group, Yasser was a consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York and Dubai, where he focused on Corporate Finance and Strategy engagements.  

Yasser’s personal interests include college student professional development. He is a frequent speaker at universities across the United States. He served as a Program Manager with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, a non-profit organization which recruits, trains, and places outstanding minority college students in substantive financial services internships with top-tier Wall Street firms.

Yasser holds a Bachelors of Science in Finance and Accounting from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, where he graduated with honors and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma. He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he pursued his research interests, particularly in the areas of Managing Disruptive Innovation and Moral Philosophy and Business Leadership with Professors Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovator’s Solution, and Nitin Nohria, Dean of Harvard Business School, respectively.

Yasser is married and has two children, Fatima and Abdullah.

Ashraf Hegazy (Co-Director of Harvard Relationship) graduated from the college in ‘96 with a degree in Psychology and from the Harvard Kennedy School in ‘09 with a Master’s in public administration. Ashraf is currently the Executive Director of the Dubai Initiative at the Kennedy School, where he is working to bring Harvard’s best resources to the Middle East and significantly increase the Arab presence at Harvard. 

 

 

 

Deena Shakir (Co-Director of Harvard Relationship) s a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the United States Department of State. She has previously worked with The Aspen Institute, Aga Khan Foundation-USA, Global Philanthropy Forum,USAID's Global Development Alliance, The Dubai School of Government, UAE Prime Minister's Office, BBC News, and Al-Arabiya News. Her personal and professional interests include diaspora engagement, youth empowerment and sustainable development. She holds a BA from Harvard College in Social Studies and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and an MA in Arab Studies from The Georgetown School of Foreign Service. As an undergraduate, Deena led the Harvard's first student-run Admissions recruiting effort in the Arab world--a project she now continues to develop through the HAAA's "Project Harvard Admissions." Deena also sits on the Board of The Abraham Path Initiative, with whom she inaugurated the NGO's first Palestine Youth Walk. Originally from Iraq, Deena grew up in the Bay Area and now lives in Washington, D.C.