Meet the Board
Malak Nasr, YC’19 (Davenport)
President
Malak graduated from Yale College in 2019 with a bachelor's degree in Anthropology. Following graduation, she was awarded the Cohen Public Service and Gordon Grand fellowships to support her work as Program Director at Havenly Treats, a New Haven-based non-profit offering job training for refugee women. Malak co-directed the first-ever Arab conference at Yale in 2018 that included speaker events and panels on Middle East current affairs, politics, culture, and history. Malak is vocal as a patient advocate for the Type 1 Diabetes community and received the DeDoc Voices scholarship to attend the 2022 Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes (ATTD) Conference. Malak completed an MPhil in Population Health Sciences at the University of Cambridge and is currently working in the public health department at Newham Council in London.
Omar Christidis, YC’04 (Morse), SOM07
Vice President
Omar Christidis is an entrepreneur, innovation evangelist, and ecosystem builder who is driven by a passion to advance the digital industry in MENA. Omar brings expert knowledge in digital disruption, emerging business models, corporate innovation strategies, and government policies to foster entrepreneurship. Omar's company, Arabnet, has organized over 30 tech conferences featuring more than 2,000 global experts, supported over 650 startups, and issued over a dozen original research reports. Omar is an Advisory Board member of the Strategic Foresights Program at the Middle East Institute (Washington DC), a Faculty Member and Moderator at the Aspen Institute, UK, a Board Member of the Lebanese Exhibitions & Conferences Association (LECA), and a Founding Board Member of the Yale Arab Alumni Association.
Shady M. Qubaty, YC’20 (Morse)
Treasurer and Director of Development
A Member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport and the Institute of Directors, Shady is the Transformation & Strategic Coordination Manager for DP World Europe. Qubaty is also the Founder and CEO of Yemen’s leading international NGO: Adalah (secretariat to the UK Parliament) and serves as the VP of the Economic Forum for Sustainable Development. In those capacities, he has engaged in various UN meetings, spoke before and moderated panels at numerous parliaments and was the youngest speaker at the Beirut Institute Summits. Additionally, Shady chairs the MENSA MENA Chapter, is a trustee of the British Yemeni Society, a board member of the Yale Alumni Fund and Yale for Humanity Campaign, the Chair of his year’s Yale Reunion Gift Committee and the Delegate of the Class of 2020. Shady was Yale's first undergraduate from Yemen, graduating summa cum laude with double distinctions in Economics & Near Eastern Studies, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After receiving Yale’s nomination for the 2020 Henry Fellowship, he earned his master’s in development studies with distinction at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Professor Ha-Joon Chang, focusing on Yemen’s reintegration into the Gulf Cooperation Council. He was elected president of the Cambridge Arab Society, Yemen Society and the Society for Social & Economic Development (CAMSED). Shady also founded the MENA Students Association at Yale and currently serves as their Alumni Chair. Additionally, he is a competitive table tennis player, leading his teams to numerous successes.
Thomas Simsarian Dolan, YC’05 (Morse)
Director of University Relations
Thomas Simsarian Dolan is currently Lead Historian at the Armenian General Benevolent Union and faculty in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory. He previously served as an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow and Fulbright US Teaching Scholar at the American University in Cairo, after receiving degrees from Yale, NYU and George Washington University. An expert in histories of MENA diasporas, he regularly publishes in national and academic publications, and has developed K12 curricula in California, Georgia and New York. In addition to YAAA, he also serves as Co-Coordinator of the “Critical SWANA Studies” section of the Association for Asian American Studies, SAG-AFTRA’s National MENA Committee, and academic advisor to several nonprofit and corporate clients.
Naser Al Sayer, SOM’19
Director of Activities
Naser graduated from the School of Management in 2019, and currently holds the position of Chairperson at AlSayer Franchising, which operates over 70 branches in Kuwait, He is also a Senior Investment Analyst at Al Dhow Holding. He also focuses on screening technology and fund investments in addition, to direct investment Naser is passionate about economic development and has served as Vice Curator for the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers at the Kuwait City Hub for two years. He currently serves on the Board of the Kuwait Business Council in the United Arab Emirates connecting Kuwait businesses to the UAE. Naser has over 7 years of work experience in Finance and Strategy. Previously, Naser was part of the National Bank of Kuwait’s Domestic Corporate Banking Group as a Relationship Officer, primarily working on lending and managing clients' credit needs. Naser is a graduate of the Master’s in Management (MAM) program from Yale School of Management and holds an MBA from IE Business School with a focus on Finance.
Salma Shaheen, YC’22 (Silliman)
Director of Membership and Volunteers
Salma graduated from Yale College in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in Economics. At Yale, she received several fellowships to conduct research at the intersection of labor economics, spatial economics, and migration in Palestine. She worked as an Economics RA for Professor Rohini Pande and the Yale Economics Growth Centre. Born and raised in Hebron, Salma founded Yalies4Palestine to advocate for Palestinians’ rights under the Israeli occupation. She served on Yale’s Advisory Committee on Accessibility Resources, for which she was awarded Silliman’s Diversity and Inclusion Award. Salma also serves on the board committee for the United World Colleges national committee in Palestine. Currently, she is pursuing an MSc in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford after receiving Yale’s 2022 Henry Fellowship. In her research, Salma focuses on gender differentials in the labor market in the MENA region. She is a geomapping nerd & a lover of Arabic poetry and Levant textiles!
