People
Najat Saliba
Najat is a Professor in Analytical Chemistry and the Director of the Nature Conservation Center at the American University of Beirut. Saliba developed innovative methods to characterize smoke in tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine delivery systems. She was voted among the top 100 most influential women by BBC in 2019 and is the recipient of the 2019 L’Oreal-UNESCO International Award for Women in Science.
Fadi El Khatib
Fadi is a professional Lebanese basketball player for the Champville SC in the Lebanese Basketball League. He is known as the Lebanese Tiger for his great achievements and success during his 25 years’ career. He won 7 Lebanese Basketball Cups, 2 Arab Club Basketball Championship, and 3 FIBA Asia Championships Cup titles while being with Sagesse.
Carmen Geha
Carmen is an Associate Professor of Public Administration, Leadership and Organizational Development, at the American University of Beirut. She is also a Research Associate and Founding Member at the Center for Inclusive Business & Leadership (CIBL) for women. She was Founding Director of the “Education for Leadership in Crisis” scholarship program for Afghan women at AUB.She is an advocate for gender equality, refugee protection, and access to information.
National Secretariat Members and Advisors
Lina Daouk-Oyry
Lina is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olayan School of Business (OSB) at the American University of Beirut and Visiting Researcher at Aalto University Finland. Lina specializes in employee assessment, development, and retention. She is specifically interested in personality and individual differences at work in relation to job variables relevant to today’s business context.
Badih Abou Chakra
Badih is a Lebanese actor who studied acting in the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University. Abou Chakra participated in many workshops and courses between Beirut, France, Jordan, and the US. In 2002, he received local recognition winning the Best Male Actor Award at the Murex D’Or.
Mosbah Majzoub
Mosbah is the Managing Partner and Chairperson of Nexia Majzoub and Partners, CPAs. Under his leadership, the firm has been providing assurance and management consulting services for the past 25 years and, since 1998, his firm has joined Nexia International, one of the Top 10 Audit Firms worldwide.
Charlotte Karam
Charlotte is the Founding Director of the Center of Inclusive Business and Leadership for Women and a tenured Associate Professor at the Olayan School of Business (AUB). Her work, as a scholar-activist, contributes to overlapping conversations in HR, Business Ethics, public policy, and feminist praxis. Dr. Karam has been recognized as a Global Gender Champion by the U.S. Department of State.
Nuhad Yazbik-Dumit
Nuhad is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing at the American University of Beirut. She is the convener of the undergraduate division and coordinator of the administration and management MSN track at the School; as well as the co-director of the Continuing Medical Education Office of the Faculty of Medicine.
Iman Nouweihed
Iman is a Professor of Public Health at the Faculty of Health Science (FHS) at the American University of Beirut, where he formerly served as dean for 12 years (2008-2020). He is American Board Certified in Occupational Medicine. Nouweihed applies a social and political lens of analysis in his research, which focuses on health of workers, including health of working children, environment and health, and conflict and health.
Rima Karami Akkary
Rima is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration, Policy and Leadership in the department of Education at the American University of Beirut. Rima is the director and the principal investigator of the TAMAM project launched in 2007 to initiate school-based reform and research on how to build leadership skills for sustainable schools where currently she is operating in 67 schools in 8 Arab countries.
Alain Daou
Alain is an Assistant Professor in entrepreneurship at the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. He worked for 10 years, before joining academia, with several organizations as a project manager, country manager, in house advisor and consultant in many places like Canada, Central America, Middle East and Africa. Daou focuses on social entrepreneurship, SMEs, family business, project management, non-profit management, international development, and intellectual capital.
Celine Al Nemer
Celine holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the American University of Beirut (AUB). During her last two years at university she was a volunteer at the AUB–Lebanese Red Cross–Youth Sector, as well as the event organizing manager for IBDAA2019, the International Biodiversity Day at AUB. She then became the leader for IBDAA2020 in her last undergraduate year. Currently she is the coordinator of Khaddit Beirut who connects all the initiatives together.
Community Health
Nuhad Yazbik-Dumit
Nuhad is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing at the American University of Beirut. She is the convener of the undergraduate division and coordinator of the administration and management MSN track at the School; as well as the co-director of the Continuing Medical Education Office of the Faculty of Medicine.
Team members
Gladys Honein-AbouHaidar
Gladys is an Assistant Professor at the School of Nursing at the American University of Beirut. Her research focuses on primary health care system and refugee health. Honein-AbouHaidar employs mixed method approach to improve community health. She examines gaps in policies and required strategies for a high performing community health system.
Angela Massouh
Angela is an Assistant Professor and Heart Failure Clinical Nurse Specialist at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. Massouh won the Distinguished PhD Dissertation Award in 2017 because of her research which examined the Determinants of Self-Care in a Sample of Lebanese Patients with Heart Failure. Her interest in this area is driven by the need to narrow down the gap between research, theory and clinical practice.
Joseph El Khoury
Joseph is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the American University of Beirut and the current president elect of the Lebanese Psychiatric Society (LPS).Josephmain research interest is in the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders along with the prevention of substance abuse in youth and the implementation of specialist treatment programs for schizophrenia and related conditions.
Georgina Nouaime
Georgina is a Hospital Medicine Specialist in New Bedford. She is the hospitalist director at South coast Hospital Group and the President of the Medical Staff. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and currently is affiliated with Charlton Memorial Hospital. Nouaime is also a member of the Harvard Global Health Delivery Community and a member of the American College of Physicians, along with being a member also of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Global Health Committee.
Rita Tohme
Rita holds a PhD in Molecular Medicine from Cleveland Clinic and specializes in anticancer drug development for hematologic diseases, pancreatic and lung cancers. She is the president of the Northeast Ohio chapter of the worldwide alumni association of AUB. Rita is the recipient of several national US awards including the Bumpus Award for Young Investigators in Basic Science from Cleveland Clinic, the Lenore Kola award for community service, and the Excellence in Leadership award from the Case Western Reserve University.
Sasha Fahme
Sasha Fahme is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut. Fahme has conducted several years of global health service and research, with prior experience in South Africa, Tanzania, and among Syrian refugees displaced in Lebanon. Her research interests are in the syndetic effects of conflict and forced displacement on gender-based violence and women’s health.
Eveline Hitti
Eveline is an Associate Professor of Clinical Specialty and current Chairperson in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the American University of Beirut. Hitti’s administrative and research work has focused on evidence-based health management, lean and six sigma and quality and safety in the ED. Eveline received the ‘Dr. Cristina Costin International Emergency Medicine Award’ for her long-standing and profound impact on International Emergency Medicine.
Maya Romani
Maya is an Assistant Professor of clinical family medicine at the American University of Beirut. Romani is currently the director of the AUB health and wellness center and the Associate Director of Family Medicine Residency Program. She is also a specialist in tobacco treatment and corporate wellness. Her focus in research is on communication skills, burnout, smoking cessation, wellness, along with Balint and Family Medicine.
Rassil Ghazzaoui
Rassil is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Bariatric Unit in the Surgery Department at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. She is Program Coordinator and Psychologist of the Psychosis Recovery Outpatient Program (PROP) and of the Treatment Outreach Program for Eating Disorders (TOP-ED). Rassil has been actively involved in raising awareness abroad about Psychosis in Lebanon and in the Middle East.
Education
Rima Karami Akkary
Rima is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration, Policy and Leadership in the department of Education at the American University of Beirut. Rima is the director and the principal investigator of the TAMAM project launched in 2007 to initiate school-based reform and research on how to build leadership skills for sustainable schools where currently she is operating in 67 schools in 8 Arab countries.
Team members
Tamer Amin
Tamer is an Associate Professor of Science Education and the Chair of the Department of Education at the American University of Beirut (AUB). His primary area of research involves characterizing the cognitive underpinnings of scientific expertise, how scientific expertise is acquired and the implications of this for designing effective science instruction. In this work, he focuses in particular on the role that language plays in conceptual change.
Suzanne Abdul-Reda Abourjeili
Suzanne Abdul-Reda Abourjeili is specialized in Educational Sociology. Currently, she is Professor at the Faculty of Education at the Lebanese University. She’s currently President of the Lebanese Association of Educational Studies LAES that is a scientific NGO gathering 40 reputable Lebanese researchers and Faculty members from different educational fields and universities. Her research interests focus on school climate and change in education.
Basma Faour
Basma holds a doctorate degree in primary education from the University of Leicester, UK. She is an educational consultant with over 25 years of professional experience in university teaching, research, teacher-training and working with children, community outreach and international consulting in Lebanon, UAE, KSA, Oman and Canada. Basma’s research and publications focused on the status of early childhood in the Arab countries.
Julia Mahfouz
Julia is an assistant professor in the Leadership for Educational Organizations program, School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado-Denver. She is dedicated to work on educational reform in Lebanon along with students and scholars from the region. Her research explores the social, emotional, and cultural dynamics of urban and rural educational settings and their effects on school climate and school improvement utilizing qualitative and mixed methodologies.
Salwa Ali
Salwa Ali is a graduate student in Science Education at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in addition to a Teaching Diploma in Secondary Education from AUB. She is a member of the Initiation/Steering committee of GESN. Her current research focuses on the role of language of instruction in relation to conceptual understanding chemistry in multilingual settings.
Siline Itani
Siline Itani earned a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and a Teaching Diploma from Haigazian University. Her thesis focused on Academic Procrastination, Academic Self-efficacy, and Academic Achievement of the Lebanese Baccalaureate Program Candidates. She is currently a university instructor in the School of Education at the Lebanese International University (LIU).
Shaghig Chaparian
Shaghig Chaparian has a Master’s degree in Science Education from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests are science education for informed and active citizenship and sustainable development. Shaghig is an instructor in the Education department at Modern University of Business and Science (MUBS) in Lebanon.
Stephanie Jureidini
Stephanie Jureidini holds a Master of Arts in Educational Administration and Policy Studies from the American University of Beirut. She also earned a teaching diploma with emphasis on Early Childhood from Haigazian University. She is currently a second-year doctoral student in the department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests revolve around sustainable school improvement, building school capacity and building teacher leadership capacity.
Ghada Feghali
Ghada has over 50 years of experience in the sector of education, non-governmental organizations, and community engagement. She joined International College as a member of the administration and Biology teacher. Her experience at IC and as a volunteer among other engagements, inspired her to setup MMKN (which means “it’s possible” in Arabic) in 2010 to help public school students. As the President and founder of MMKN, she continues her work to support the public school and all vulnerable students equally regardless of background, creating socially responsible citizens.
Rim Fathallah
Rim Fathallah is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She explores peacebuilding and intercultural dialogue through design. With an undergraduate degree in Interior Architecture and a master degree in Art, Design and Architecture Education, she is interested in intersections between peace education, culture, identity, pedagogy and design education.
Emma Ghosn
Emma Ghosn is a PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her research focuses on social justice teacher leadership and specifically how teacher leaders in Canadian schools achieve social equity. She has worked with Lebanese and Canadian scholars and international organizations such as UNHCR on research projects about blended and fully online learning programs and teacher leadership and has published in international journals.
Sarah El Halwany
Sarah El Halwany is a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her research interests include studies of affect and emotions in science education. Her dissertation explores affective politics of college STEM education. She is part of the STEPWISE project (directed by Dr. Larry Bencze) and contributed to development of curriculum materials that connect fields of science and technology to issues of social and environmental justice.
Lina Khalil
Lina gained her BS and teaching diploma from AUB. She has 12 years combined experience as a teacher and later deputy principal in an international school. Lina went on to complete her PhD in education in the UK and has since returned to the university she attributes her passion for teaching to: The American University of Beirut. She now teaches leadership, organizational management, strategic planning to graduate students alongside research responsibilities.
Yara Hilal
Dr. Yara Hilal holds PhD in Education from the University of Leicester-UK and a Graduate Diploma in Educational Leadership from McGill University-Canada. She has 14 years of practice in areas of teaching, instructional supervision, and principalship. Dr. Hilal is a faculty member of the Educational Administration and Policy Studies (EAPS) program in the Education Department at AUB. Her research interests lie in the area of school improvement, professional learning, teacher leadership, and reflective practice.
Fahd Jamaleddine
Fahd is a social entrepreneur, dedicating his time to a new initiative called Learning Land. It aims to connect educators along education ecosystem players across all Lebanon to accelerate their professional learning and advocate for enhanced school policies. Fahd is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Education Policy at the AUB. He is a part of the Social Entrepreneurs Collective at Teach for all and recognized as a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum.
Environmental health
Iman Nouweihed
Iman is a Professor of Public Health at the Faculty of Health Science (FHS) at the American University of Beirut, where he formerly served as dean for 12 years (2008-2020). He is American Board Certified in Occupational Medicine. Nouweihed applies a social and political lens of analysis in his research, which focuses on health of workers, including health of working children, environment and health, and conflict and health.
Team members
Najat Saliba
Najat is a Professor in Analytical Chemistry and the Director of the Nature Conservation Center at the American University of Beirut. Saliba developed innovative methods to characterize smoke in tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine delivery systems. She was voted among the top 100 most influential women by BBC in 2019 and is the recipient of the 2019 L’Oreal-UNESCO International Award for Women in Science.
Nathalie Hayek
Nathalie is a research associate in analytical and atmospheric chemistry at the American University of Beirut. She received her master’s degree from the Lebanese University, and her PhD from Aix Marseille University in France. She has worked on developing analytical methods to measure volatile organic compounds indoor. Dr. Hayeck focus in her research on understanding the chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols in polluted countries like Lebanon.
Rima Habib
Rima is a Professor of environmental, occupational, and public health (MPH, MOHS, PhD). She is also the chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Faculty of Health Sciences, at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She has led research on environmental and work-related exposures and the health of displaced refugee and migrant populations. Her research highlights how the interaction between work variables, environment, and gender shapes health outcomes.
Nada Melhem
Nada is an Assistant Professor in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the Faculty of Health Sciences in the American University of Beirut. She is the director of Division of Health Professions and Coordinator of the Medical Laboratory Sciences Program at AUB. Nada is also a member at the WHO Epidemiological Working Group on H1N1.
Lillian Ghandour
Lillian is an Associate Professor at the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health of the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at the American University of Beirut.
Small businesses
Lina Daouk-Oyry
Lina is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olayan School of Business (OSB) at the American University of Beirut and Visiting Researcher at Aalto University Finland. Lina specializes in employee assessment, development, and retention. She is specifically interested in personality and individual differences at work in relation to job variables relevant to today’s business context.
Alain Daou
Alain is an Assistant Professor in entrepreneurship at the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. He worked for 10 years, before joining academia, with several organizations as a project manager, country manager, in house advisor and consultant in many places like Canada, Central America, Middle East and Africa. Daou focuses on social entrepreneurship, SMEs, family business, project management, non-profit management, international development, and intellectual capital.
Team members
Houssam El Eid
Houssam has a bachelor’s degree in Marketing with more than 28 years of experience in brand and experience building and development. El Eid is also the founding member of “Taqaddom” and lately he co-founded “Backbone” with a mission of bringing back to life and sustaining the SMEs devastated by the 4th of August Blast.
Leila Khauli
Leila is a full time Lecturer at the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. She has introduced and coordinated several highly specialized course at the School. Her main focus in her research is about how brands and organizations are adopting digital strategies in the region. She does research in Digital Transformation, Information Science and Information Systems. Khauli is also a Communication Consultant and has worked with several local and regional brands in Brand Strategy and communication.
Aram Yeretzian
Aram is an architect who holds a joint position for climate responsive buildings at the Departments of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the AUB. Following 8 years of work with Cabinets d’Architectes L’Arch in France, on architectural and urban planning projects, he co-founded (in 1999) Prime Design Architects, a professional practice that focuses on research, design and supervision of sustainable architectural design and master planning projects of various scales.
Farah Hani
Farah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Olayan School of Business and a Master’s degree in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has extensive experience in management consulting in the Middle East, having worked as a consultant in PwC Middle East. Farah is currently a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development.
Yasmin Fadel
Yasmine Fadel recently accomplished her MSc. in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Glion, Switzerland. In 2019, she graduated from the LAU holding a Bachelor degree in Business Management with distinction. She was distinguished as one of the top 5% students in Adnan Kassar School of Business at LAU. In June 2020, Yasmine was selected for internship at CIBL at the AUB. She delved more into research about gender studies and women empowerment.
Data Analytics and Mapping Strategy
Wassim El Hajj
Wassim is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. He Chaired the Computer Science department at AUB from 2013 to 2019. His research interests are in machine learning, wireless networks, and network security.
Team members
Wissam Sammouri
Wissam is the head of the Master’s in Business Analytics (MSBA) program at the American University of Beirut with a Phd in predictive data mining and years of experience in the field. A big believer in data-driven public awareness and making information accessible to Lebanese citizens and to the public eye in general., he recently launched opendatalebanon.org, a platform that centralizes datasets, documents and files about Lebanon from already available governmental and non-governmental sources.
Wael Itani
Wael is a licensed Engineer based in Beirut. He received has Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from American University of Beirut (AUB), and is expected to receive his Masters in Power Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in 2021. In addition to his major focus area of fluid turbulence, he has experience across the spectrum in the energy field, from assessing reliability of power electronics, through analyzing turbine performance, to designing systems and preparing inventories. Apart from fluid dynamics, Itani enjoys assisting non-profits digitize their operations, and using computational tools to understand social dynamics.
Ahmad Hamandi
Ahmad is an assistant instructor and a researcher in the fields of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Ahmad has more than 5 years of experience in web and software development and has successfully developed dozens of websites for local and international companies.
Maria Khoury
Maria has a Bachelor degree in Media and Communication from the American University of Beirut (AUB). She is the editor and social media coordinator at Khaddit Beirut where she handles communication strategies and content development. She is also a Research Assistant at the PSPA Department at AUB where she is currently coordinating a research project on Syrian Refugee Futures and the Complexities of Return.
Michele Citton
Michele holds a degree in Geology from Padova University. He joined the Nature Conservation Center at AUB in 2017 as a waste and water expert and conducted different projects assessing water and air pollution, mapping ecosystem services, and raising environmental awareness in schools. He has spaced different fields from Hydro-geology, Ecosystem Management and Services, to Water and Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Citton also managed different projects from Solid Waste Management, Environmental Impact Assessments, and M&E.
Imad Bou-Hamad
Imad is currently an Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Analytics at the Olayan School of Business (OSB), American University of Beirut (AUB). His research interests include both the development of new analytics frameworks and the use of statistical /analytics methods to address original problems in the fields of business and social sciences. Bou-Hamad is specifically interested in interdisciplinary research focusing on consumer/human behavior, youth research, performance measurement, and individual differences.