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.

Mahnaz Anwar Fancy is a not-for-profit management professional with over 10 years of experience. She is currently the Executive Director of the American Pakistan Foundation, launched in late 2009 to expand social and economic development of the people of Pakistan. From 2008 through 2009 she was the Director of Development of the Alliance of Civilizations Media Fund, a consortium of media industry leaders and philanthropists dedicated to using mass media to improve cross-cultural understanding and respect between Muslim and western societies. Previously, from 2004 through 2007, she was the Executive Director of Arts of the Islamic World, a public education initiative in the form of a virtual museum dedicated to raising awareness about the Islamic world through its arts. From 2000 through 2003, she was the Director of IndoCenter of Art & Culture, the first NY arts center aimed at the South Asian community. Mahnaz did her graduate work in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, with a dissertation focusing on Islamic and Indian aesthetics and their effects on modern Europe. She has also taught at the graduate, college and secondary levels. She has served on advisory boards for several major South Asian and Islamic arts and culture programs as well as serving on New York State and national advisory committees on arts and culture. Born in Pakistan, Mahnaz grew up in Paris, Abu Dhabi and New York, where she presently lives and consults for a variety of non-profit organizations.

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.

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.