Dr. Ammar Kahf: Co-founder and Executive Director of Omran Center for Strategic Studies- a Syria focused policy research center based in Turkey and USA. Dr. Kahf is also a co-founding Board Member of Syrian Forum, a civil society empowerment and development organization in Syria, Turkey and the US. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science and Islamic Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. His dissertation research was entitled: Syrian Authoritarianism: Persistence or Change. His research work focusses on geopolitical political alignments in Middle East, political process, and local governance in Syria. Omran regularly engages in local and regional dialogues and conversations on public policies that furthers the Syria cause, elevates the voice of Syrians, and develop nuanced technical approaches to the peace process. Omran publishes papers with a whole-of-Syria approach on economic recovery, governance reforms, judicial and security reforms, social contract discourses, return of refugees, and military-civil relations.