Barefoot in Baghdad (25 page)

Manal M. Omar is the director of Iraq programs at the Center for Post-Conflict Peace and Stability Operations at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). She served as USIP’s chief of party in Baghdad from October 2009 to January 2010. Manal Omar joined USIP as a program officer for the grant program in August 2008. Previously, she was regional program manager for the Middle East for Oxfam–Great Britain, where she responded to humanitarian crises in Palestine and Lebanon. Omar has extensive experience in the Middle East. She worked with Women for Women International as regional coordinator for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan. Omar lived in Baghdad from 2003 to 2005 and set up operations in Iraq. She launched her career as a journalist in the Middle East in 1996. UNESCO recruited her to work on one of her first lead assignments in Iraq in 1997–1998. Omar worked more than three years with the World Bank’s development economics group. She has carried out training programs on in Yemen, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Kenya, and many other countries.

Omar’s activities have been profiled in the mainstream media by the
Washington Times
, the
L.A. Times
, the BBC, NPR,
Glamour
, the
London Times
, and
Newsweek
. Her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in the
Guardian
, the
Washington Post
,
Azizah
magazine (www.azizahmagazine.com), and
Islamica
magazine.

Omar is on the board of directors of Women Without Borders, an international NGO based in Austria, and she is an active member of the American Muslim community. She is also the founder and chairperson of the board for Asuda-USA, the sister organization for Asuda-Iraq, an organization dedicated to combating violence against women. In 2007
Islamica
magazine named her one of the ten young visionaries shaping Islam in America. She holds an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in international relations from George Mason University.

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