Board of Directors
(Bios below)

Co-Founders

Board of Advisors

Ammiel Alclay
Omar Al-Qattan
Kamal Boullata
Ahmed El Attar
Rawi Hage
Anahid Kassabian
Mohamed Khan
Beral Madra
Hamid Naficy
Jack Shaheen

Biographies:

Issa N. Baconi is the Executive Vice President & Regional Manager of Arab Bank plc. Prior to this appointment, he was Executive Vice President and Manager of Gulf International Bank's New York Branch. Mr. Baconi began his banking career at the Beirut office of the First National Bank of Chicago. During his fourteen-year association with the Bank, he worked in Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Sydney and New York, where he headed the Middle East and Africa division. Mr. Baconi is founder and past President of the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA), chair of the International Advisory Council of the Bankers Association of Finance & Trade (2001-2005) and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of International Bankers (IIB). He is also a fellow at the Foreign Policy Association. Mr. Baconi earned his BA/BBA degrees from Haigazian University, Beirut and attended graduate school at the American University of Beirut and an Advanced Management Program at Templeton College, Oxford University.

Tariq Jawad has more than 12 years of investment banking experience specializing in equity/debt placement and cross-border M&A advisory services. He is a Director of Investment Banking and Head of Emerging Markets at Rodman & Renshaw. As one of the first 10 employees at Rodman in 2002, Mr. Jawad set-up the Emerging Markets team and led the effort in building the Institutional Sales Desk and the Placement Teams for the Life Sciences/Biotechnology and Metals & Mining divisions. He has been active in over $5 billion of corporate finance and fundraising transactions and was one of the key team members awarded top Broker Dealer for Private Placements in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Mr. Jawad is the former President of the Harvard Arab Alumni Association and the youngest member in the history of the Board of Governors of the Arab-American Institute Foundation in Washington, D.C. He also sits on the Boards of Arte East, Children of Abraham and ProjectExplorer. Tariq is a Graduate of Harvard University, Class of 1997, in European Intellectual History and Political Economy. He speaks Arabic, Italian and German.

Richard Peña has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, Mr. Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Gabriel Figueroa, Ritwik Ghatak, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Kim Ki-young and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Chinese, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Soviet and Argentine cinema. Since 1996, he has organized together with Unifrance Film the annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today program. He is a Professor of Film Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and since 2006 has been a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13’s weekly Reel 13.

Susan Peters is based in New York, and is the Executive Director to the Board of King's Academy, a nonprofit, coeducational boarding school opening outside of Amman, Jordan in September 2007. From 2000 to 2005 she was Executive Director of the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving relations between the US and Arab financial services sectors. Ms. Peters has over ten years' experience in nonprofit management and development. She has worked as a consultant for nonprofits and universities in New York City, was Development Associate at the Design Trust for Public Space, and Assistant Director of the Arabic Language Institute in Fez, Morocco, where she produced and edited a staple textbook of Moroccan Arabic. A Wisconsin native, Susan holds a BA from the University of Michigan, an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a graduate of the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo.

Mariam C. Said was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She holds an undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut and two graduate degrees from Columbia University. She worked in the financial sector in New York for over 20 years and is currently involved in numerous cultural organization and groups.

She is Vice President of the Barenboim-Said Foundation USA which is a project that her late husband Edward W. Said and, renowned pianist and conductor, Daniel Barenboim established. The foundation has several programs: musical education in Palestine and Israel, a musical kindergarten in Ramallah, and the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, comprised of Arabs and Israelis. The Foundation is sponsored by the Regional Government of Andalusia and holds a workshop every summer in Seville, Spain.

Ms. Said serves as a board member of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine. Using the arts as a model for social change.The Freedom Theatre is developing the only professional venue for theatre and arts in the north of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The aim of this project is to empower and give voice to the children of Jenin Refugee Camp through a unique program of workshops and activities in theatre, arts and multi-media, ranging in their emphasis from the largely therapeutic and healing, to the presentation of high-quality artistic products.

Ms. Said was also a member of the founding board of ADC and served on the Board of Directors of the AUB Alumni Association of NA. In 2009 she published the memoir of her mother A World I Loved: A Story of an Arab Woman by Wadad Makdisi Cortas.

Shouq Tarawneh has more than six years in investment banking experience in New York, London and Dubai. She is currently working at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London where she is responsible for corporate and institutional relations. She has been actively involved in the art community in Dubai; has organized a number of events at Frieze 2008 for collectors of Middle Eastern art, in collaboration with Thirdline Gallery; and has worked closely with a number of the artists at the 2009 UAE Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.