Jomana Qaddour

Dr. Jomana Qaddour is a civil servant and Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Near East Affairs.  She has thirteen years of professional experience working on governance, security, law, constitutionalism, humanitarian assistance, and social movements in the Middle East. After law school, Jomana practiced as a lawyer in private firms in both Kansas City and Washington, D.C. Following the beginning of the Arab Spring, Jomana switched careers to foreign policy and served as a Senior Researcher at the Brookings Institution covering the Middle East.  At the same time, she established a humanitarian organization in Syria and regional countries that delivered aid during Syria's brutal civil war. She has since worked in the U.S. government's legislative branch at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, after which she was inspired to focus her doctoral studies on ethnic and sectarian communities and bargaining in constitutional processes in Syria, Iraq, and Bosnia. As a result, she was selected to serve on the UN's Syrian Constitutional Committee as a member of civil society. Jomana led the Atlantic Council's Syria and Lebanon research teams and served as a Policy Advisor at the Department of Defense prior to joining the Department of State.