About AAI

Meet the Staff

Office of the President

Dr. James Zogby
Dr. Zogby serves as the President of the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC. He co-founded the organization in 1985 and has been involved in a full range of Arab American issues for over two decades. He also co-founded the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the late 1970s, and later co-founded and served as the Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He serves on the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee as well as on the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Zogby hosts a weekly television show called “Viewpoint with James Zogby” and writes a weekly newspaper column, “Washington Watch.”

AAI Foundation

Helen Hatab Samhan
Helen Hatab Samhan is Executive Director the Arab American Institute Foundation in Washington D.C., an affiliate of the Arab American Institute which has represented Arab American issues in politics, elections, leadership training and public policy since 1985. Ms. Samhan lectures and publishes on Arab American affairs, particularly the immigrant experience of Arabs in the U.S., their identity and demographics, the history of anti-Arab racism, political involvement and Arab American women. She serves on numerous boards and holds a master’s degree in Middle East studies from the American University of Beirut. Ms. Samhan is active in civic affairs in northern Virginia, where she resides with her husband and two children.

Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell
Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell is the Program Manager for AAIF. She was formerly the Cultural Outreach Specialist/AmeriCorps member serving through the Arab American Resource Corps. Ms. Shaheen-McConnell graduated from the George Washington University with a B.A. in International Affairs and Anthropology from the Elliott School of International Affairs, where she specialized in the Middle East, Societies and Cultures, and Religion. Throughout her time at GW she focused on community service and involvement on campus. While a student, Ms. Shaheen-McConnell studied and traveled throughout the Middle East and West Africa.

Government Relations

Leigh O’Neill
Ms. O’Neill is the Director of Government Relations at AAI. Prior to joining the AAI staff in November 2007 as a Government Relations and Policy Analyst, she served as a research assistant at the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy in Amman as a Fulbright fellow. O’Neill began working with the Arab American community in her home state of Massachusetts while serving as Assistant to the State Director in the Boston Senate office of Senator John Kerry. She holds a B.A. in Classical Studies from Boston College as well as an M.A. in American Foreign Policy and International Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. O’Neill was Managing Editor of Conflict in Focus, the bi-monthly journal of the Regional Centre on Conflict Prevention at the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, and has also been published in JO Magazine.

Samia Makhlouf
Ms. Makhlouf is the Government and Policy Analyst for AAI. Prior to joining the AAI staff, she worked as the Continuing Education, Exchange and Relations Program Manager for the Department of Defense’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies from March 2005 to August 2009. With the Department of Defense, she traveled to over fifteen Middle Eastern and South Asian countries to participate in meetings with ministry officials. Before joining the Department of Defense, she worked as the Director of Development for the U.S. Copts Association. She holds a B.A. in English from LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. A Palestinian-American, Ms. Makhlouf focused her studies, and much of her career with the government, on the Middle East and conflict in the region.

Community Relations

Hilary Robertson
Ms. Robertson is the Community Relations Coordinator and can be reached at hrobertson@aaiusa.org. After working at The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut for a summer she moved to Syria to study Arabic at Damascus University for Fall semester. The following spring she continued her study of both Arabic and Spanish at the University of Granada in Spain. Ms. Robertson holds a BA in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies from Mt. Holyoke College.

Development

Jane Kaddouri
Ms. Kaddouri is the Director of Development for AAI and AAIF. She has worked in fundraising for more than a decade with international professional associations and national and international non-profits. Kaddouri has been published in outlets including The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and the Washington Post. She holds a B.A. in French and Comparative Literatures and an M.A. in English and Cultural Studies, both from George Mason University.