President of Al Sharq Forum
Wadah Khanfar
The president of Al Sharq Forum &former director-general of the Al Jazeera network. Khanfar is a board member of the International Crisis Group and Global Editors Network (GEN). He has been named as one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 global thinkers of 2011 as well as one of Fast Company’s ‘Most Creative People in Business’ of the year.
Katja Iversen
Katja Iversen is the President/CEO of Women Deliver – a leading global advocate for investment in the health, rights and wellbeing of girls and women, with a specific focus on maternal, sexual and reproductive health and rights. Iversen, an internationally recognized expert on development, advocacy and communications, has more than 20 years of experience working in NGOs, corporates and United Nation agencies. Previously, she held the position as Chief of Strategic Communication and Public Advocacy with UNICEF, a position she came to after almost six years of leading the team responsible for advocacy and communication on reproductive health and MDG 5 at UNFPA. She holds a Master’s degree in Communications, a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration and certificates in Management, Conflict Resolution and International Development. Iversen has worked in global health for more than a decade and has an extensive network within the UN, development communities and global media. She has counseled and trained multiple Fortune 500 executives on cross-cultural management and cross-cultural communication. She is a health adviser to the Clinton Global Initiative and is on the CSO consultative group to the World Bank.
Dima Al Khatieb
Al Khatieb joined Al Jazeera in 1997 as a broadcast journalist, then served as a news producer and got known for managing the channel’s coverage during the Iraqi War. She set up bureaus in China and Venezuela for the network and was the first female bureau chief of Al Jazeera.
In 19 years, Al Khatieb has reported from over thirty countries, interviewing presidents and people from all walks of life. In 2012 she was classified as the most connected woman on Twitter in the Middle East.
She has also worked for the World Health Organization, Swiss RadioInternational, Radio Qatar, Agence France-Presse and has lectured in journalism at the American University in Dubai.
Basheer Nafi
Nafi is a professor of contemporary history, a senior researcher at the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and a senior associate fellow at Al Sharq Forum.
He taught Islamic History and Islamic Studies at the Muslim College and Birkbeck College at the University of London. He writes regularly for Middle East Eye and al-Quds al-Arabi. His research focuses on Egypt, Iraq, political Islam, and Middle Eastern politics in general. Nafi has published extensively in Arabic and English on the history of Arab nationalism, the Palestinian question, modern Islam and Islamic intellectual history in various academic journals.
Rafe Haneef
Mohamed Rafe bin Mohamed Haneef has been the chief executive officer and executive director of CIMB Islamic Bank Berhad at CIMB Group Holdings Berhad since January 4, 2016 and also has been the chief executive officer of the Group Islamic Banking Division since January 4, 2016. Haneef has served as an executive director and chief executive officer of HSBC Amanah Malaysia Berhad since November 22, 2010. He first joined HSBC Investment Bank plc, London in 1999.
Ihtisham Hibatullah
Ihtisham Hibatullah is the international relations manager at Al Jazeera Media Network, and board member of Al Sharq Forum. Prior to this role he has held various positions within the Al Jazeera including as head of international relations and project manager for marketing and communications. He continues to attend and contribute to international forums and seminars on issues related Middle East and wider region.
Naeem Jeenah
Na’eem Jeenah is the executive director of the Johannesburg-based think tank, the Afro-Middle East Centre. His research areas include the Middle East, the Muslim world, political Islam, and South African politics. Jeenah’s latest book is ‘Pretending Democracy: Israel, an Ethnocratic State’, published in 2012 by the Afro-Middle East Centre.
Galip Dalay
Galip Dalay is the research director at Al Sharq Forum and senior associate fellow on Turkey and Kurdish affairs at Al Jazeera Center for Studies. He previously worked as a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and as a political researcher at SETA Foundation in Ankara. He is a regular contributor to the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Turkey policy brief series, and a columnist for Middle East Eye. His research interests include Turkish politics, Turkish foreign policy, regional Kurdish politics, political Islam, and radical movements.
Tariq Rimawi
Tariq Rimawi is a Jordanian animated film director and scriptwriter. In 2010, he graduated with a Master’s
Degree in Animation from Newport Film School in the United Kingdom. He wrote and directed the short
animated films ‘Missing’ in 2010, ‘Growing’ in 2013, and ‘Surprise’ in 2016. His shorts have been
screened at more than 180 international film festivals and received 15 awards domestically and
internationally. In 2014, Tariq completed his PhD studies from The Animation Academy at Loughborough
University in the United Kingdom. Tariq is the founder and the head of Animation & Multimedia
Department at the University of Petra in Jordan.
Riyad Al-Issa
Riyad Al-Issa is a researcher in Youth Studies at Institute for Social Science Studies (University Putra Malaysia). He completed his MA in Educational Psychology, also at University Putra Malaysia. His doctoral research explores Muslim youth afterlife beliefs. His main research interests centers on how Muslim youth understand and integrate afterlife beliefs in everyday life. He is currently working on developing scales for measuring Islamic afterlife beliefs, such as: Afterlife reward and punishment beliefs (ARPB), Afterlife Hope Expectations (AHE) and Afterlife Fear Expectations (AFE).
Ott Vatter
Ott Vatter is an entrepreneur, ex-startup founder and media producer from Estonia who deals with multi-disciplinary storytelling, production for multiple media, management of creative businesses and interactive media development. With a history of event production, he aims to offer innovative crossmedia solutions to cater for the growing trend of using storytelling on various marketing platforms. Amongst other ventures, he has founded a multiple companies in Tallinn and is currently involved with government affairs in digital identity field as Managing Director of e-Residency, a governmental programme by the Republic of Estonia.
Rafael Heiber
Rafael Heiber is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Common Action Forum. Geographer and Climatologist with a PhD in Sociology, his expertise includes the political links between technology, territory and citizenship. He advises journalists, provides commentary and publishes in the international media
John Ralston Saul
John Ralston Saul is an award-winning essayist and novelist. A long-time champion of freedom of expression, he served as President of PEN International and has written extensively, with his most renowned work considered to be “The Unconscious Civilization.”
Muhammad Alkhamaiseh
Journalist at Al Jazeera Media Institute and a researcher in Media and Cultural studies
Mohamed Hassan
An award-winning journalist from Egypt and New Zealand currently based in Istanbul with a background in digital, radio and broadcast media. His work focuses on the Middle East, Turkey and Asia/Pacific, with an interest in politics, economy, media and pop culture.
Kerim Ture
Founder, CEO at Modanisa.com, a modest fashion e-tailer from Istanbul, serving 130 countries worldwide.
Riyaad Minty
Riyaad Minty is the Director of Digital at TRT. Riyaad is responsible for overseeing a team of 200+ people, responsible for taking TRTs award winning content to audiences around the world across digital devices. TRT is one of the worlds largest media production houses, producing award winning content across multiple verticals – from drama shows to news, art&culture, sports, children’s and documentary channels.
Previously he founded AJ+, one of the world largest news publishers for a digital generation, in San Francisco as part of the Al Jazeera Media Network.
Riyaad spent a decade at Al Jazeera as part of the networks New Media team, building the networks global strategy across social platforms as the Head of Social Media. He is recognized as leader in the space of digital media and regularly speaks at conferences and universities around the world on the shifts within the media industry.
He joined TRT in Istanbul in 2016 to help build the digital arm of the network.
Azhar Nayan
A Coach at Penang Skills Development Centre.
Ramzan Al Naimi
Ramzan, is a creative Director and Branding consultant specialized in media and commercial advertising, working for Aljazeera Media Network for more than 20 years, worked in many major projects strengthen Al Jazeera Brand and marketing presence. Ramzan Also working as Branding consultant for enterprises, non-profit organization and a mentor for startups and entrepreneurs.
Amel Ouchenane
Amel Ouchenane, an Algerian researcher based in Turkey, graduated from Algiers University Department of African Studies and International Relations, double major Ph.D. researcher at the Faculty of International Relations, Kadir Has University in Istanbul-Turkey and Algiers University. Previously worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Constantine, Algeria. She has participated in international youth workshops, forums and international academic conferences around the world like Egypt, South Africa, Russia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. She has published several scientific works in Arabic and English in the field of Security, Conflicts, civil society and geopolitics.