Merissa Khurma is Founder and CEO of AMENA Strategies LLC. She is Associate Fellow at the Middle East Institute and a non-resident fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University. She was the program director of the Middle East Program (MEP) at the Wilson Center (2018-2025) where she led programing on four key pillars: the region’s geopolitics and U.S. National Security, economic development in MENA, sociopolitical developments and civil society as well as the Middle East Women’s Initiative.  Merissa has leadership experience working in a range of policy initiatives and projects in the Middle East and Africa that focused on political risk, economic development and digitization, the refugees and migration, education, youth and gender development, governance and leadership. Additionally, Merissa served as a diplomat directing the Office of Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein (2010- 2013) and serving as director of the Jordan Information Bureau in Washington, D.C. (2003-2010). Merissa has a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, a Master of Science in international security and foreign policy from Georgetown University, and a bachelor of art in political science from McGill University. She is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University with a focus on leadership. Merissa speaks Arabic and French.