Program

Dr. Peter F. Dorman

Dr. Peter Dorman, who completed his undergraduate studies at Amherst (BA ’70) and University of Chicago (PhD ’85), is the great-great grandson of Daniel Bliss — the founder of AUB. He brings to the presidency a record of academic accomplishment as a humanist and an international leader in the study of the ancient near east, and in particular the field of Egyptology, in which he is a noted historiographer, epigrapher and philolo­gist. He is the author and editor of several major books and many articles on the study of ancient Egypt and is probably best known for his historical work on the reign of Hatshepsut and the Amarna period. His most recent monograph, Faces in Clay: Technique, Imagery, and Allusion in a Corpus of Ceramic Sculpture from Ancient Egypt (2002), examines artisanal craftsmanship in light of material culture, iconography, and religious texts. In 2007, he and Betsy M. Bryan of The Johns Hopkins University came out with an edited volume titled Sacred Space and Sacred Function in Ancient Thebes.

An accomplished academic leader and administrator, President Dorman chaired from 2002-08 with great success the distinguished Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at one of the world's top research universities, the University of Chicago. Prior to that, he spent nine years (1988-97) heading the epigraphic efforts at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt. From 1977 to 1988, he worked in curatorial positions in the Department of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Mira Kaddoura

Miriam "Mira" Kaddoura is a senior creative/art director at Wieden + Kennedy. For the past nine years, she has worked on accounts such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Target, Belvedere Vodka, and Brand Oregon. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt, but was raised in both Toronto and Beirut, which has always made her feel a part of both worlds. Having worked on three continents (so far), Mira finds it no big deal to hop to the other side of the globe for 48 hours. She also speaks a few languages, which helps when hopping so far and so much.

Mira graduated from AUB in Design and then received a master¹s degree in Mass Communications from VCU Brandcenter. Her work has won many
international honors including D&AD Yellow Pencil, Art Directors Club, I.D. magazine annual design review, One Show, Comm. Arts Competition, Kelly Award, CLIO Award, Gold Effie, AWNY Best of Show, British Television Advertising Award, and Gold Lions at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.


Ricardo Karam

Genane Maalouf

Genane Maalouf lives in Los Angeles, California, is the Vice President of the AUB Worldwide Alumni Association (WAAAUB) and acts as a coordinator for the Chapters Committee in North America. She was previously a member of the AUB Alumni Association of North America (AANA) Board of Directors. Ms. Maalouf is a Vice President for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She has an MBA from the University of Southern California (USC) and a BBA from the American University of Beirut (AUB).

Khalil Makkawi

Dr. Khalil Makkawi (BA '54) lives in Beirut and is the president of AUB's worldwide alumni association (WAAAUB) since 2007.  He was previously president of the AUB Scholarship Fundraising Committee, 2001-07.  Makkawi, who has a MA from Cairo University and a PhD from Columbia University, was Lebanon's Ambassador to the United Nations, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland, and Italy and Lebanon's permanent representative to the UNFAO in Rome.  Dr. Makkawi was the president of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee up to 2009.  

Randa Slim

Randa Slim’s project focuses on creating and managing an Iraqi Forum for National Dialogue (IFND). This forum will serve as a neutral space inside Iraq to sustain and expand the national dialogue initiated by the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue (IISD) and the Helsinki process. Slim is also working on a project related to Lebanon and the role of Hezbollah. Slim has extensive experience in such endeavors. The former vice president of the IISD managed a dialogue and post-conflict peace-building project in Tajikistan and an unofficial trilateral dialogue initiative focusing on relationships among the Arab-Muslim world, the United States and Europe involving Arab, European and American civil society leaders.

Slim, vice president of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue and a senior program adviser to the Peace and Security Program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has worked with a number of international and U.S. governmental and private sector organizations. Some of the projects she has developed and managed include a multi-year training program in collaborative problem solving for the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Jordan and water and wastewater agencies in Egypt; a government-NGO collaborative strategy in Lebanon; training seminars in conflict management for senior officials in Turkey; training workshops in citizen participation methodologies for NGOs in Egypt; and a three-year conflict prevention project in the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia.

She has been a visiting adjunct professor at Royal Roads University in Canada and at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She has held fellowships at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Kettering Foundation and is a former board member of the Institute for Global Ethics and the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution.

Slim holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from the American University of Beirut and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.

Fawaz Ulaby

Professor Ulaby was born in Damascus, Syria and grew up in Lebanon. He attended the American University of Beirut, from which he received the B.S. degree in physics in 1964. He later received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968.
Professor Fawwaz T. Ulaby was the founding Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), a graduate research university under development along the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. Prior to assuming this position, Professor Ulaby was the R. Jamison and Betty Williams Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, where he had also served as Vice President for Research (1999–2005).  In April of 2009, he returned to the University of Michigan as the Arthur Thurnau Professor of EECS.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of IEEE and AAAS, and serves on several scientific boards and commissions.
Since joining the University of Michigan faculty in 1984, Professor Ulaby has directed numerous interdisciplinary, NASA-funded projects aimed at the development of high-resolution satellite radar sensors for mapping Earth's terrestrial environment. He also served as the founding Director of a NASA-funded Center for Space Terahertz Technology, whose research was aimed at the development of microelectronic devices and circuits that operate at vawelengths intermediate between the infrared and the microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Dr. James J. Zogby

Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Since 1985, Dr. Zogby and AAI have led Arab American efforts to secure political empowerment in the U.S. Through voter registration, education and mobilization, AAI has moved Arab Americans into the political mainstream.
For the past three decades, Dr. Zogby has been involved in a full range of Arab American issues. A co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the late 1970s, he later co-founded and served as the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In 1982, he co-founded Save Lebanon, Inc., a private non-profit, humanitarian and non-sectarian relief organization which funds health care for Palestinian and Lebanese victims of war, and other social welfare projects in Lebanon. In 1985, Zogby founded AAI.
A lecturer and scholar on Middle East issues, U.S.-Arab relations, and the history of the Arab American community, Dr. Zogby appears frequently on television and radio. He has appeared as a regular guest on all the major network news programs. After hosting the popular “A Capital View” on the Arab Network of America from 1993-2001. From 2001 until now he hosts the award winning “Viewpoint with James Zogby” on Abu Dhabi Television, LinkTV, Dish Network, and DirectTV.

Dr. Zogby is also active professionally beyond his involvement with the Arab American community. He currently serves on the national advisory board of the American Civil Liberties Union, The Human Rights Watch Board of Directors for the Middle East and North Africa and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Additionally, he is a Senior Advisor for the polling firm Zogby International, where he is responsible for the firm’s groundbreaking polling across the Middle East.