Patricia Karam is the Vice President of Policy and Communications at ATFL. She has over 20 years of innovative and strategic leadership experience in international development and governance in a range of complex, unstable and transitional settings. She has established and led field-based teams across the world and in the MENA region especially, and overseen democracy and governance programs with concrete implications on long-term local institutional capacity and resilience to instability and conflict. Karam has a proven track record in business development and external engagement, running initiatives that build the brand, strengthen communications, foster strategic partnerships, and expand relationships with policy makers, donors, media and other influencers and stakeholders.
Patricia was previously Senior Advisor at ATFL and, before joining ATFL, served as Senior Advisor at the Middle East Institute, where she participated in research and programming to inform US-Iran policy, and Senior Iran Policy Advisor at Freedom House, where she crafted strategies for promoting democracy and human rights in Iran. Her professional background includes senior roles at the International Republican Institute, the Natural Resource Governance Institute, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the United States Institute for Peace, where she oversaw multi-million dollar portfolios focused on citizen-responsive governance, natural resource governance, and transitional justice in the Levant, Afghanistan and the Gulf, and North Africa.
Karam is also non-resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC, and has published widely on the politics of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Iran, and North Africa, as well as on great power competition, and the dynamics of authoritarianism and conflict in the broader Middle East region.
Karam holds a dual Political Science/Religious Studies Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and a Master in Foreign Service Degree with an Arab Studies concentration from Georgetown University. Her PhD work at New York University revolved around identity politics in the Western Sahara.