As it heads into its second decade of operations, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) is thrilled to welcome six new members to its Board of Advisors. They bring a diverse and dynamic array of expertise, experiences, and background to the role, commensurate with TIMEP’s regional direction and approach: Miray Philips, Marwa Fatafta, Nasser Weddady, Alia Ibrahim, Magdi M. Amin, and Mohamed El Dahshan.
TIMEP’s Board of Advisors is a dynamic and interdisciplinary group who share the institute’s mission to platform, invest in, and protect experts and advocates from and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Board of Advisors members bring their professional experiences, expertise, and vantage points to help make TIMEP’s work stronger and more impactful. They provide direction and guidance on TIMEP’s programming, its impact, and its future.
The new members join a group of returning advisors who have contributed immensely to TIMEP over the last decade and have been instrumental to its growth and impact model.
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Meet TIMEP’s new Board of Advisors members:
Miray Philips is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research on the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of sectarian and political violence in Egypt, Syria, and the United States has been published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and the Minnesota Journal of International Law. Committed to bridging the gap between academia and policy, Miray has served as a consultant with the UN Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights, as well as Minority Rights Group International.
Marwa Fatafta is a Palestinian digital rights advocate and tech policy expert based in Berlin. She leads Access Now’s work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region as the MENA Policy and Advocacy Manager. She has written extensively on the intersection of technology and human rights in Palestine and the wider MENA region including on content moderation, platform accountability, surveillance, and data protection. Marwa is also a Policy Analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.
Nasser Weddady is a Mauritanian-American strategy consultant with an extensive background in the Arab world, Muslim affairs, and Africa. His expertise encompasses strategic planning, public diplomacy, advocacy, and networking. He has received numerous accolades, including being recognized as one of the top 5 influencers during the 2011 Arab uprisings by the Atlantic Magazine, voted “Best Person To Follow – Arabic” in Deutsche Welle’s Best of Blogs Awards in 2013, and selected as among “100 Most Powerful Arabs Under 40” by the Arabian Business Magazine in 2015. He has founded and managed various initiatives and contributed to high-profile human rights advocacy campaigns to free democracy activists and political prisoners in several countries.
Alia Ibrahim is the co-founder and CEO of Daraj, a Beirut-based independent media organization focused on the production of impact journalism that holds the powerful to account. Previously, she was a Senior Correspondent at Al-Arabiya News Channel where she produced and directed episodes for Special Mission, a prime-time investigative reporting show.
Magdi M. Amin is a Sudanese-American Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Managing Partner of African Renaissance Partners. In January 2020, he joined the Transitional Government of Sudan as a Senior Advisor to the Minister of Finance; he supported economic reforms to stabilize the economy, regain access to multilateral financial institutions, restructure Sudan’s external debt, and create broad-based growth. Magdi was Managing Director at Omidyar Network within the Responsible Technology practice. He spent two decades with the World Bank and IFC; held senior roles in East Asia, Africa and MENA; and served as the head of country strategy and corporate strategy for IFC.
Mohamed El Dahshan is Managing Director of OXCON, an economic development consulting firm focusing on fragile, conflict, and violence-affected and transition countries; he is also a non-resident Fellow at Chatham House in London. A development economist by training, he has in the past served as Regional Economist for the African Development Bank in Abidjan, as well as senior consultant to UNDP in Palestine, seconded to the Palestinian government’s ministry of Planning. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Expert councils, is an Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow, and a UN Alliance of Civilizations Fellow. He is a member of the advisory boards of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation (Cape Town), and of Economists Without Borders (Canberra).