Dania Mchaourab
President

Dania is a free lance consultant and project manager. She holds a Master’s degree with a Real Estate Development concentration, from Harvard GSD, and a Bachelor degree from the American University of Beirut. Dania is certified by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional. Married, she lives with her husband and daughter in Dubai.

G. David Woods
Vice President

David has spent over 30 years in the banking industry trying to figure out what he wants to do when he grows up. An Irish national, he graduated from Harvard with a BA in history more years ago than he will admit to, and is very undereducated by HAS UAE standards as he doesn't hold a Master’s degree. He doesn't do Facebook.


Riad Bsaibes
Treasurer

Riad is the Chief Operating Officer of the Amana Group. He joined Amana in 1999. With a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in 1991 and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School in 2001, Riad re-joined the Dubai operations of Amana Contracting and Steel Buildings after serving as the Deputy General Manager of Amana Abu Dhabi. Riad also worked with Corning Inc. (Massachusetts, USA) as Marketing Manager and with Schlumberger Oilfield Services for seven years in various managerial positions throughout the Gulf. Riad is the Treasurer of the Harvard Alumni Society of the UAE and a member of the board for the MIT Club of the UAE.

Steve Brann
Secretary

Steve graduated from Harvard College in 2000 with high honours in Archaeology. He has been a volunteer interviewer for Harvard since 1998, and an active member of the ExComm for the Harvard Club of the United Kingdom and the Harvard Alumni Society of the UAE. Steve is an investment manager for Vitol, the oil trading firm. He is married with one son, and has lived in Dubai since 2006.

Cyrus Hodes

Cyrus is based in Abu Dhabi where he runs a strategic management firm, liaising between the government and the private sector. He was educated at Sciences Po Paris, holds an MA in Defense and Geostrategy from the University of Paris II and a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School. Cyrus is a published author, a contributor to Jane’s publications (Defence Weekly and Intelligence Review) and lectures at Sciences Po in International Security.

Kerri LeFebvre

Kerri Lefebvre is a director of multi-jurisdictional law firm Conyers Dill & Pearman and the head of their Dubai office. She advises on offshore corporate and commercial law including joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, investment funds, private equity, pre-IPO fund raising and private placements, public offerings, corporate restructuring and finance. Kerri holds a BMus from the University of Alberta, an LLB from the University of British Columbia and an LLM from Harvard University.

Sabine Shaeffer

Sabine is Managing Director and Group Operational Director at Pro-invest Group. She started her career at 3i where she focused on investments in FMCG and retail. She then joined McKinsey & Company focusing on Finance and Public Affairs in Europe and the GCC region where she worked on some high profile projects. Most recently, she worked as Director of Investments at Evolvence Capital, a GCC based asset manager, where she was involved in setting up and managing Private Equity Funds, Fund of Funds as well as helping on capital raising. She holds a MPA degree from Harvard University as well as PhD in Economics from University of Austria.

Adela Acevedo