Board of Trustees

Khaled Abu Bakr is an Egyptian lawyer and prominent media figure with solid expertise in corporate and international law. He has built a distinguished legal career at both the national and international levels. He is a member of the International Association of Lawyers in Paris and serves as an accredited lawyer to the French Consulate in Cairo, the Canadian Embassy, and the Embassy of Côte d’Ivoire in Egypt and Sudan. He also acts as a founders’ agent and legal advisor to a number of European and Arab companies. Alongside his legal work, he has established a strong media presence as a political analyst and host of several talk shows through which he discusses Egyptian, regional, and international issues.

Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdallah is a political science professor from the United Arab Emirates. He holds a PhD from Georgetown University in Washington, and a Master’s degree from the American University in Washington. He is currently a visiting professor and academic at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Gulf Development Forum, a member of the Emirates’ Thinkers group, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Journal of Social Sciences. He has published numerous articles across several prestigious media platforms.   Dr. Abdulkhalek’s interests focus on issues of security and political transformations in the Arabian Gulf, in addition to diverse writings on contemporary Arab and global intellectual and political issues. He has authored several works that have contributed to shaping Arab thought towards the UAE and the Arabian Gulf. His most notable publications include: “The Gulf Moment in Contemporary Arab History” (2019), which was translated into Korean in 2023 and republished by Harvard University in English in 2024; “The Story of Politics,” “The Cultural Movement in the UAE,” “The Gulf Regional System,” “Contemporary Gulf Issues,” and “The Contemporary World and International Conflicts.” His latest works include “Confessions of a Retired Academic,” as well as “My Journey to Harvard: Reflections of an Emirati Academic,” published in 2024.

An academic leader and a scholar of Islamic studies. He is the first Arab-American to serve as President of The American University in Cairo (AUC), a role he took on in 2021. Prior to this, he served as the dean of Georgetown University in Qatar and the provost of the American University of Beirut (AUB). He also held professorial positions at Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown, where he chaired the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Before his career in academia, he worked as a mechanical engineer after earning his bachelor's degree from AUB. He later earned his MA, MPhil, and PhD in Islamic studies from Columbia University.

Dr. Rafia Ghubash is a distinguished Emirati psychiatrist and a celebrated advocate for women's empowerment. With a PhD from the University of London, she became a trailblazer in academia, serving as the first female president of the Arabian Gulf University and as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at UAE University. She also established the Arab Network for Women in Science and Technology to support female scientists. A prolific author and researcher, Dr. Ghubash has published extensively on mental health and is the author of several books, including Encyclopedia of an Emirati Woman. Her work and leadership have been recognized with numerous accolades, including the prestigious Inspirational Arab Woman of the Year award.

The President of Dubai University, an Emirati Scientist and Researcher. He obtained a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree n Electrical Engineering from “California University” in “San Diego” and earned a Ph.D. from “University of California” in “Irvine”. His research interests revolve around “multimedia communications,” “encoding” and “synchronization.” He was awarded the Sheikh Rashid Award for Scientific Excellence in 2009, in addition to receiving the highest honors of the United Arab Emirates in the fields of science, arts, and Literature.

He is a Saudi journalist and the editor-in-chief of the "Arab News" newspaper in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia since 2016. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and a member of the Society of Authors (SoA) in the United Kingdom. He is also an associate member of the Cambridge Union Society (CUS) in the United Kingdom. In 2018, he was selected to be a member of the Global Shapers Community, affiliated with the World Economic Forum. He holds a Master's degree in Marketing Communications from the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Abdel Latif El-Menawy is an Egyptian journalist, author, and media executive with over three decades of experience in political and conflict reporting across the Middle East. Formerly Head of Egypt’s state television news sector and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Masry Al-Youm, he is the author of Tahrir: The Last 18 Days of Mubarak. He currently serves as CEO of News and Journalism at United Media Services and is a board member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.