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MAAS Alumni News: Spring 2008
Published in 2008
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John Mahshie (1983) was made Senior Vice President of his firm, Tutt, Taylor & Rankin Sotheby’s International Realty. He celebrates his sixth year there and his third as the firm’s highest producing individual agent. John gets to use his Arabic from time to time as he works with a number of individuals looking for property in the Washington area from the Middle East.
Phillip Tussing (1983) continues to work in the export business in Dickinson, Texas, where he lives with his wife Alexandra. His youngest daughter, Kira, will graduate from high school this year and attend San Jacinto College in the fall. Chelsea, his middle daughter, has finished her first year at Union College. Jamie, his oldest daughter and whom some alumni may remember, is now 28 and works with a catering company in New Hampshire.
Nabil Al-Tikriti (CCAS Undergrad 1988) has been serving as a 2007-2008 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, where he is following Iraqi forced migration since 2003.
Rania Atalla (1991) writes from Rwanda, where she is currently visiting programs in Kigali and Kayonza for the NGO Women for Women International. After six years as Chief of Staff to Queen Rania of Jordan and one year as Communications Director for King Abdullah, Rania decided to take a career break (which she highly recommends to others!). As of March 2008, she moved back to Washington, D.C., and is serving as Executive Director for the U.S. office of Women for Women, which focuses on the empowerment of women in conflict and post-conflict countries.
Mia Bloom (1991) recently joined the School of International and Public Service at the University of Georgia, where she teaches courses on war, the Middle East, South Asia, and political violence. Mia will be at Penn State in the fall of 2008 for a semester research project with the International Center for the Study of Terrorism. She has published several articles on women and terrorism and is writing a new book on the deliberate use of rape as a strategy of war.
Karen Healey (1992) is living in the Baltimore area, working for a company called PHH, where she is director of product management and is responsible
for corporate extranet and an environmental service offered to clients. She is also leading the company’s internal initiatives to reduce its environmental footprint. She misses the international arena, but loves working on environmental issues. She adds that she’d love to hear from MAAS alums: karen_healey@comcast.net.
Judith Scholar Winfield (1992) and husband Steve announce the birth of their son Charlie (born on August 15, 2007). The family resides in Mansfield, England (near Nottingham). Judith recently returned to work part-time as the manager of a program to support the development of new and existing businesses in her area.
Otavio Peixoto (1997) writes from Rio de Janeiro: “This past March, I witnessed first-hand the street demonstrations sparked by the mounting food crisis currently sweeping the globe. As one of the world’s leading grain exporters together with Brazil, the Argentinean government is trying to cash in on the current crisis by withholding exports of rice and other agricultural products under the guise of fighting inflation by holding down the price of basic foodstuffs in the local market, but the thinly veiled speculation plot underpinning the whole affair is undeniable. Rural producers thus took to the streets and a pot-banging extravaganza ensued in the main square of one of Latin America’s most charming and cosmopolitan cities. Quite exciting, I should say... all too reminiscent of similar riots I witnessed in Cairo in my roaring years as an intern at AUC of Sharia Kasr el-Aini fame...”
Laila Shereen Sakr (1998) moved to California in August 2007 to begin a masters program in digital arts and new media at U.C. Santa Cruz. She and husband, Fadi, recently welcomed their first child on November 5 named Amel Helen Sakr. In February, Laila exhibited graffiti and digital art work at the Sesnon gallery in Santa Cruz with an installation called “United States of Consciousness.” She is currently working on building the “Arab digital media archive” from which she has been performing live video remixes; this archive debuted at Cornell University in April 2008. She misses D.C. very much!
Patricia (Lally) Vanjaria (1998) writes: “It’s hard to believe that it will be 10 years this May since our MAAS graduation. My husband, Hanif, our son, Oliver, and I reside in Atlanta where we have made our home for the past six years. Oliver will be completing kindergarten at the end of May and turning seven in June. We are teaching Oliver some Arabic words just for fun. I am still working with Merrill Lynch in their Buckhead office while keeping up with the Middle East in my free time. Hanif is working with Morgan Stanley in Atlanta and is a frequent reader of BBC in Arabic. We would love to hear from any fellow classmates: vanjaria3@comcast.net.”
Aryah Sommers (1999) writes: “I have moved from the desert to the jungle. I am no longer with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona, as I am now in Ecuador working as a consultant to UNHCR. Come down and visit me in the Galapagos!”
Doug Black (2000) and his wife welcomed their second child, Garrett McClean Black, on April 3, 2007. Doug writes that Garrett and his older sister, Fiona (now almost four) get along most of the time. He continues to work at SRA International, now as the Deputy of the Public Relations and Outreach Services practice area, where he manages a team of 20 consultants. He’s currently working with clients at the EPA, USAID, the Forest Service and the FAA.
Sara Scalenghe (2000) received the 2008 Harold N. Glassman Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in the humanities at Georgetown University.
Haitham Amirah-Fernandez (2001) reports: “I am still working at the Elcano Royal Institute for International and Strategic Studies in Madrid as a senior analyst in the Mediterranean and Arab World Program. This year I have also started teaching courses in sociology and political science in the Department of Arab Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In late January, I participated in a panel on the Maghreb at CCAS, together with Dr. Noureddine Jebnoun and Dr. William Zartman. I was very happy to go back to the Center!” Haitham also co-edited a volume recently published by Routledge entitled North Africa: Politics, Region, and the Limits of Transformation.
Julienne Gherardi (2001) writes: “In January, I took a new job as Director at the Wharton School’s Aresty Institute of Executive Education. I will be marrying my fiancé, Jeff Perry, this August in Calistoga, California. Following Jeff’s graduation from Wharton in May, we are moving to San Francisco, where Jeff will start a new job at Adobe. As I settle into this new setting, I’m eager to reconnect with international affairs and the Arab world, and would love to hear from MAAS alums on the West Coast: jgherardi@hotmail.com.”
Greta Scharnweber (2001) works as the Outreach Director at Yale University’s Council on Middle East Studies. A few of the more exciting projects she’s been working on involve study tours for educators on 1) “The Politics of Water” in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel; 2) “From Sand to Sea: Cultural Exchange Through Trade on the Silk Road” in Yemen, the UAE, and China; and 3) a high school home-stay program in Cairo for students studying Arabic at the Center for Global Studies in Norwalk, Connecticut. Greta also enjoyed organizing the Middle East Outreach Council Teacher’s workshop at MESA this past year in Montreal, which focused on "Urban (r)Evolution: The Dynamic Identities of Middle Eastern Cities." She still lives in New Haven, Connecticut, so if you’re in town, stop in at Yale and say hi!
Rajae Nami (2002) and her husband Badr Chawki are happy to announce the birth of their daughter Yasmeen Ikram on April 8, 2008 in Alexandria, Virginia.
Zeinab Abul-Magd (2004) taught a course this year in the history department at Georgetown entitled “Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature.” She will defend her dissertation in June entitled “Empire and its Discontents: Modernity and Subaltern Revolt in Upper Egypt, 1700-1920.” Zeinab has accepted a position as an assistant professor at Oberlin College this fall, teaching history of the Middle East and North Africa.
Charles E. Kiamie, III (2004) successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, “Fringe Benefits?: Rural-Regime Dynamics, Retraditionalization, and Political (De)Liberalization in Jordan” in Georgetown’s government department in April 2008. He graduates alongside his wife, Rasha, who has earned an M.S. in biochemistry and molecular biology at Georgetown.
Brendan Geary (2005) will be teaching at Catholic University next year in the political science department as a visiting faculty member. He will teach courses on Middle East politics, comparative politics, and American foreign policy. Brendan will also continue as the O’Brien Fellow in the Institute for International Law and Politics at Georgetown.
Ariel Ahram (2006) will finish his Ph.D. in government at Georgetown in August. He has accepted a job at the University of Oklahoma, where he’s been named assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of International Affairs.
Shadi Hamid (2006) is currently a research fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. In March, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post on Obama’s race speech and what it could mean for our relations with the Muslim world.
Kristen Scott (2006) is working at Chemonics International, managing a USAID project that aims to develop the Egyptian mortgage market.
Alienor Van den Bosch (2007) is now based in Brussels, where she works as a consultant for the European Commission monitoring EU-funded development projects in all Arab countries, specifically projects on migration, refugees, and elections.
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