An accomplished academic or senior practitioner with extensive experience in public policy, international affairs, or related field. Practitioners, such as former civil servants, diplomats, senior administrators from international organizations, journalists and public intellectuals, are ideal candidates for this fellowship. The Senior Policy Fellow can also be a senior scholar who has made significant academic contributions in the areas of public policy and/or international affairs. Senior Policy Fellows are expected to work closely with research programs on relevant research, reviewing publications, facilitating discussions, and publishing relevant policy papers, articles, and other publications. This fellowship is designated through nomination process.
Senior Fellows
Carol Ayat
Carol Ayat is an energy finance professional and an investment banker. She has been deeply involved in policy discussions around the energy sector in Lebanon with various stakeholders including the local administration, the international financing community, international developers and manufacturers. Carol
currently heads the large corporates and specialized lending department at Bank Audi and is on the board of the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative “LOGI”. Prior to joining the bank, she worked with Goldman Sachs with various roles in structured finance and leveraged finance in London, Dubai and New York.
Karma Ekmekji
Karma is a Mediation Advisor with UN Women and the founder of #Diplowomen, an initiative to share knowledge, develop mentorship opportunities, and strengthen networking in the field of diplomacy, peacemaking, conflict resolution, mediation, and negotiation. She is a member of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network and a member of the Global Alliance of Regional Women Mediator Networks, which she participated in launching during the 74th UN General Assembly in New York.
Prior to this, she was the International Affairs and Relations Advisor to former Prime Minister of Lebanon Saad Hariri, where she served as the focal point for all international dossiers for eleven years. Before joining PM Hariri’s office in 2009, Karma was the National Political Officer at the United Nations Special Coordinator’s office in Lebanon. She had also served at the UN Secretariat’s Department of Political Affairs in New York.
She is a Munich Young Leader, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, member of the British Government’s International Leaders Program and a “Personalité d’avenir” – selected by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2012, Karma was named one of the top 99 foreign policy leaders under 33 years of age by the Diplomatic Courier.
Karma holds a Master of Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright student. She is a fourth-generation graduate of the American University of Beirut and a Penrose Award recipient.
Adnan ElAmine
Professor Adnan El Amine holds a doctorate in Sociology of Education (1977), and a "Doctorat d'État es letters” (1991), from the Sorbonne University-Paris. He was full professor of education at the Lebanese university (until 2008), and lecturer at the American University of Beirut (1993-1999, 2008-2011). Worked as UNESCO consultant on higher education (Beirut office, 2008-2011). Co-founder and member of the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies-LAES (1995), and the Arab Educational Information Network-Shamaa (2007). He is the author of 24 books and more than 50 papers published in Lebanese, Arab and International journals. Last publication: Production of the Void: Arab Research Traditions (2021). His website archives more than 450 texts he wrote since 1971.
Ali Ahmad
Ali Ahmad is an energy policy scholar at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research interests lie at the intersection between energy, development, and international security. Ali’s recent work has focused on studying the political economy of nuclear energy in newcomer markets, with a focus on the Middle East. Prior to joining MTA, Ali served as Director of the Energy Policy and Security Program at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB. From 2013 to 2016, Ali was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security where he worked on informing nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Outside academia, Ali is a senior consultant to the World Bank advising the Energy and Extractive Industries Global Practice. Ali holds a first degree in Physics from the Lebanese University and a Ph.D. in Engineering from Cambridge University. He will be advising the Energy Policy and Security Program at IFI. He is also leading efforts in the
Physics and Policy Initiative at the American University of Beirut.
Ishac Diwan
Ishac Diwan is Professor of Economics at Paris Sciences et Lettres where he holds the chair of the Economy of the Arab World. He currently teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and has held in recent years teaching positions at Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Ishac received his PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught international finance at the New York University’s Business School before joining the World Bank, working in the Research Complex (1987-92), the Middle East department (1992-96), and the World Bank Institute (1996-2002). He was the World Bank’s Country Director for East (2002-07), and then West Africa (2007-11).
Ishac directs the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, an association of Middle East social scientists. He is a frequent consultant with international organizations and governments. His current research interests focus on the political economy of the Middle East, in addition to broader development issues, and international financial issues. His recent (co-authored) books include A Political Economy of the Middle East (Westview Press 2015); and Crony Capitalism in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is widely published in a variety of journals.
Albert Kostanian
An economist and an expert in strategy. He is also the content producer and host of “Vision 2030”, a leading TV show on LBCI that provides a platform for an in-depth debate around politics and policy making in Lebanon.
Albert has founded and is heading the Beirut office of Arthur D. Little, the world premier strategy consulting firm, after having spent years with the firm in France. His main areas of expertise are in infrastructure, public transportation and telecom. He worked for major international corporations and governments in a dozen of countries. Albert has also established a boutique consultancy “Levant Consult”, where he advises regional companies on their strategy, governance, M&A and financial and operational restructuring projects.
Albert is committed to promoting reforms in Lebanon and regularly publishes articles and studies in various domains in addition to having been active in politics and policy making, with a focus on electoral laws. He is the co-founder of “Les Plus Beaux Villages du Liban”, an NGO aiming at the preservation of rural heritage in Lebanon. He holds an MSc from the HEC School in Paris and a BA in Economics from the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut.