Past Seminar Participant Pages:
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August 28-Sept. 2, 2005, Seminar Participants

Katherine Metres Abbadi

Katherine heads the New York Office of ADC, and is a former foreign service officer for the State Department and speechwriter for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. She has also worked for a number of nongovernment organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and is managing editor for Bitter Lemons and Bitter Lemons-International, a joint Israeli/Palestinian publication. She has written extensively about the Middle East, particularly for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. She has a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a BA in political science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Majed Abbadi

Majed has extensive experience in nongovernmental work in the occupied Palestinian territories, and also served as Head of Planning and Resource Management for the Palestinian Authority Ministry of NGO affairs. He has published extensively on issues such as children's, women's and citizens' rights in the occupied territories. He has an M.A. in sociology and a BA in sociology, both from their Birzeit University in Ramallah.

Nidal Abed El Gafer

Nidal is an attorney who interned at the legal department at ADC. He recently finished his LL. M. diploma from American University, where he also worked as the assistant director of the Center for the Global, headed by Professor Clovis Maksoud. He is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and has been an active member of the Israel Bar Association since May 2004. His law degree is from the University of Tel Aviv.

Engy Abdelkader

Engy is an attorney based in the New York/New Jersey area who is working on a number of notable human rights cases involving claims to Polticial Asylum by clients fleeing persecution because of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group from all corners of the world. She has served as a Civil Rights Attorney and the national director of Civil Rights at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C. She has also worked as a cooperating attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Arab-American Justice Project run by the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee in New York, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she provided research on the case of Maher Arar. She is the author of "A Muslim Woman's Guide to Her Civil Rights: When Faith Practices Trigger Discrimination in America."

Mai Abdel Rahman

Mai is a third-grade teacher at Lafayette Elementary School in Washington, DC, and was a candidate for the Board of Education for Awards three and four in Washington, DC. She has previously served as a marketing consultant, a journalist and a public-relations specialist for the United Palestinian Appeal. She has an impressive history of activism on the Arab-American and women's issues.

Hassan Elkhalil

Hassan is an attorney in Marietta, Georgia, with a private practice specializing in international, immigration and corporate law. He has an LL M. degree from University of Columbia Law school specializing in dispute resolution and arbitration, and a law degree from John Marshall Law school in Atlanta, as well as a BA in business administration from AUB in Beirut and a second BA in political science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From August 2000 to August 2001, he served as an arbitrator/mediator for the Lebanese Department of Commerce. He has written several articles on Middle East related issues and is working on two books.

Caline Jarudi

Caline is the executive director of ADC's Boston office. She has an MA International Relations and an MBA-Marketing Concentration both from Boston University, and a BA in International Relations and French from Tufts University. Caline has worked for the Collaborative Research Project on Labor and Globalization- Middle East Region at Brown University and the Lebanese Ministry of Finance.

Nadine Wahab

Nadine is a film and video producer, production manager and technician who specializes in projects that explore ethnicity, diversity and culture. She was a founding member and Production Chair of IMAGINE LIFE and was also the Media Chair for the National Association of Arab-American Professionals in New York. She is a graduate of the American University of London and New York University

Brigitte Zabak

Brigitte has just finished working as a Policy Analyst for Texas State Representative Jessica Farrar and is a member of the Board of Directors of the ADC chapter in Austin, Texas. She has a master's degree in political social work from the University of Houston and a BA in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Past Seminar Participant Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |