Middle East Growth, Development Topics Of Talk
Friday, April 04, 2008
Economic growth and business development in the Middle East will be the topics of the WDI Speaker Series on April 8.
Fadi Ghandour, founder and CEO of Jordan-based Aramex International, and Alonzo L. Fulgham, chief operating officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), will be the guest speakers. The event begins at 5 p.m. in Room W2760 in Wyly Hall. A reception will follow.
Aramex, under Ghandour’s leadership, is the largest logistics and transportation company in the Middle East and South Asia and the first company from the Arab World to go public on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Ghandour is actively involved in community and NGO work, serving as the chairman of the Jordan National Microfinance Bank, the vice-chairman of the Jordan River Foundation, and a member of the advisory board to the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut. He is also a founder of the corporate social responsibility advocacy organization, Ruwwad Development. In 1998, he was a founding partner of Maktoob.com, the world's largest online Arab community.
Fulgham at USAID provides leadership and direction on a wide range of operational and policy issues impacting the achievement of the U.S. Secretary of State's transformational diplomacy goals. He is a member of the Senior Foreign Service. Most recently, he served as Mission Director in Afghanistan from June 2005 to July 2006.
Prior to that, he served as the Director for South Asian Affairs in the Bureau for Asia and the Near East; as acting USAID Deputy Director for Serbia and Montenegro; and as the Regional Mission for the Caucasus’s Director for Economic Restructuring and Energy, responsible for Georgia and Azerbaijan. In June 2000, he was selected to study at the National Defense University (ICAF). From March 1993 to February 1998, he served in Jordan, initially as Private Sector Officer and then as Director responsible for economic policy and poverty reduction.
