Youmna Adel Youssef
“Policy expert in the making by the day, Listening to music and reading by night.”
Shadwa’s opportunity to enter Egyptian civil society came after graduating from the Lebanese American University, when she was awarded the Lazord Fellowship at the American University in Cairo. The Lazord Fellowship gave her exactly what she needed at that time, as a fresh graduate living abroad who yearned to work on policy reforms in Egypt. She believes that without the Lazord Fellowship, she would not be where she is today.
Prior to graduating from college, she knew that she wanted to work in governance and policy implementation. Accordingly, through the Lazord Fellowship, she worked as a governance coordinator on a joint project between the European Union and the Egyptian Ministry of Trade. This was a rich learning experience for her as it gave her a macro-vision of how policies are formulated; introduced her to high profile governmental officials; and propelled her inside three different ministries for almost a year.
Afterwards, she felt that it was time to take a more micro-visioned path to acquire more hands-on experience. Subsequently, she applied to a monitoring and evaluation position at Yomken.com, a thriving regional platform that works on solving pressing social and industrial challenges by coordinating with multiple actors through a grassroots participatory approach across the Middle East.
Shadwa is currently working as a policy researcher at the Egyptian Financial Regulatory Authority, where she is actively contributing to the shaping of public administration practices in Egypt.
Osama Samir, an Economic and Youth Development practitioner, holds a B.S. in Business Administration and a Diploma in Project Management from the American University in Cairo.
He is currently pursuing an MBA at the German University of Cairo. In 2017, he graduated from the Lazord Fellowship, where he was placed in Corporate Social Responsibility at PwC Egypt. There, he collaborated with multinational corporations to raise awareness about blood donation and environmental sustainability.
In 2018, he worked at the John D. Gerhart Center at the American University in Cairo, empowering youth and designing programs for several projects funded by international organizations. Additionally, he served as a Senior Lazord Fellowship Specialist, focusing on building the capacity of youth seeking employment in the development sector.
Currently, Osama is an Organizational Capacity Building Specialist at the USAID TRADE Project, working to enhance trade support institutions’ capacity and services to support SMEs’ exporting.
After being involved for many years in civil society as a volunteer, Gehad joined the Lazord Fellowship to work in the development field. Through the fellowship he joined Yomken.com, where he was an innovation development specialist who was responsible for identifying social challenges to be solved via Yomken.com’s unique CrowdSolving model. Two years after graduating from the Lazord Fellowship, he decided to pursue his passion in education and technology by starting a new journey to study e-learning technologies at Information Technology Institute. Gehad considers himself as a lifelong learner who enjoys mixing theoretical knowledge with practical solutions.
Duaa grew up in Dahshur, a village on the outskirts of Giza, Egypt. Inhabitants of this historical village live traditionally; they receive their religious teachings from local mosque sermons and clergy. Duaa joined the Azhari education system after the opening of the first school in Dahshur in 1999. Her father supported her joining the Azhari education system as he believed that Al-Azhar was an authentic moderate institution for Islamic studies. Al-Azhar has played a crucial role in civil society by evoking many questions related to women’s issues along with other questions pertinent to modern times.
In September 2016, Duaa joined the Lazord Fellowship, through which she was placed at the Daal Center for Religious Research and Media, and worked with Believers without Borders. Her responsibilities included supervising religious affairs, managing seminars, compiling scientific research, and regularly publishing articles on Thewhat website.
After reading al-Sakhawi’s book ad-Daw’ Allami”, Duaa felt the need to gain more legal knowledge, and got an internship at the Law and Society Research Unit at the American University in Cairo. This experience gave her great exposure to Islamic family law and its intersections with women’s issues. Constantly seeking new knowledge, she then wanted to understand more about how these issues are handled legally from the perspective of Islamic law (fatwa). Islamic jurisprudence is interpreted to achieve justice among the members of society, taking into account gender. She, thus, pursued postgraduate studies on the anthropology of the fatwa. She plans to continue her studies on the history of the development of fiqh and fatwa and how they deal with women’s issues in particular.
In addition to her 5-year work experience in global health and development in low- and middle-income countries, Ebaa Elkalamawi holds a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame as the recipient of the Riberas Orjales Family Fellowship. She also holds an MSc in global health policy from Maastricht University in the Netherlands and an MBBCh in medicine from Mansoura University. She was the recipient of Lazord fellowship at the American University in Cairo and the chair of its alumni committee.
Ebaa served as a senior health program specialist for a private-sector consulting firm that provides development solutions for communities in the MENA region. She also held senior positions in various organizations, including Save the Children – Senior Health Officer and UNFPA – Senior Research Consultant. She has several publications on international platforms. Ebaa also worked with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) as a global health consultant, where she researched Hepatitis C Elimination in Southeast Asia.
Elkalamawi works for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) as an international development professional and acting business development specialist. She is in charge of positioning the Zambia country program for opportunities with various donors. Her driving passion is narrowing the gap between shrinking funding opportunities and the provision of sustainable, equitable health services.
Ahmed is an R&D associate at Educate Me Foundation. He has a BSc in civil engineering, and is a graduate of the Lazord Fellowship and the Educational Entrepreneurs Program. Since being a part of the student club, “Fun Science,” in college, he has been interested in making children’s lives better through enjoying quality learning. Ahmed also enjoys reading, writing, walking and playing with children.