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 Cultural Outreach Specialist for AAIF. She is an 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. O’Neill is the current is the author of Countdown.

Communications

Christina Zola
Ms. Zola is the Communications Director at AAI.

Community Relations

Nadine Wahab
Ms. Wahab is the Public Affairs Manager at AAI. She can be reached at (202) 365-6071 or by email at nwahab@aaiusa.org.

Hilary Robertson
Ms. Robertson is the Community Relations Associate 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.