Team & Board

As Founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE has nearly three decades of experience as a peace strategist working globally on conflicts, crises, violent extremism and peacebuilding with civil society, governments and the UN.   

Through ICAN, she spearheads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), comprising independent women-led organizations active in 40 countries globally, preventing violence and promoting peace, rights and pluralism. Under her leadership, ICAN has developed the Innovative Peace Fund (IPF) – the first and only independent multi-donor fund dedicated to women-led peacebuilding organizations. Since its inception, the fund has committed over $11,000,000 across 26 countries. ICAN’s Better Peace Initiative (BPI) is also a flagship program providing strategic guidance, practical tools, and capacity development for UN, governments, and civil society on best practices in inclusive design and gender responsiveness in peace processes. 

Throughout her extensive career, Sanam has led groundbreaking initiatives in research, thought leadership, policy, and practice. Key highlights include being a civil society leader, advocate, and drafter of the seminal UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on WPS in 1999-2000; directing the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission in 2002-2004 with design and delivery of the first multi-country research initiative on the evidence of women’s contributions to peace processes; and publication of her book, Women Building Peace: What they do, why it matters (Rienner, 2007). Sanam designed and led the 10-country UNDP global initiative on “Gender, Community Security and Social Cohesion” as the first in-depth studies on the role and vulnerabilities of men in fragile contexts; she was appointed to the UN’s Standby Team (SBT) of Mediation Experts as the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion working on Somalia, Libya and Syria, Sudan among other cases. 

She has extensive experience in designing and delivering curricula on gender responsiveness, preventing violent extremism, and inclusive mediation issues for senior government officials, UN staff, and mediators. In 2024, Sanam was a Richard von Weizsacker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy. Since 2018, she has been an adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of International Public Affairs (SIPA). From 2020 to September 2022, Sanam served as Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Centre for Women, Peace and Security, working to deepen links between scholarship, policy, and practice in Women, Peace, and Security agenda. In November 2022, she was the first Andrew Mellon Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.  

Sanam serves on the Steering Board of the UK’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and Prevention of Sexual Violence, the Commonwealth’s Panel of Experts on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), and the WMC’s Steering Committee. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Principles for Inclusive Peace Initiative.  

Her media appearances include CNN’s Amanpour, and Al Jazeera.  She has published numerous articles including in Foreign Affair, Le Monde Diplomatique and the UK’s Observer. Her books include Civil War, Civil Peace (Pluto Press, 1998) and Women Building Peace: What they do, why it matters (Rienner, 2007). 

In 2020 in recognition for her work and for services to international peacebuilding and women’s rights, Sanam was awarded an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). She was the 2016 Greeley Peace Scholar at the University of Massachusetts, and recipient of the 2014 UN Association Perdita Huston Award for human rights. 

Sanam speaks four languages and holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Iranian by birth, she is a UK and US citizen, and has identical twin daughters. 

France Bognon, Esq. is a Program Director at ICAN with responsibility for managing the Innovative Peace Fund (IPF) – the only independent, multi-donor, global grantmaking mechanism dedicated to supporting women-led peacebuilding organizations. Under her leadership, the IPF has disbursed over $7 million across 25 countries. France has over a decade of experience in offering technical support to peacebuilding organizations, from trainings on gender responsive programming and monitoring and evaluation to tailored strategic advice on institutional sustainability.  Under France’s leadership, ICAN developed five new funding mechanisms, including flexible funding and two Afghan-specific rapid response streams. France manages a team of five full-time staff members who are responsible for issuing and supporting all grantmaking under the IPF.

France leads ICAN’s advocacy efforts to shift and improve donor practices for more effective funding for women-led peace efforts. This includes fostering collaborations with other peacebuilding and feminist organizations to unite efforts and amplify key shared recommendations related to improving funding mechanisms. France co-authored Funding Women Peacebuilders: Dismantling Barriers to Peace, and accompanying operational guidance, and contributed to Fund Us Like You Want Us To Win: Feminist Solutions for More Impactful Financing for Peacebuilding. In 2022, France was invited to provide recommendations on how to improve international funding policies at the General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Financing for Peacebuilding.

Prior to joining ICAN, France was a Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Experiential Learning Program Fellow with the Outside Placement Program at the George Washington University Law School, where she also received her J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law.  She worked as a student attorney with both the International Human Rights and Immigration Clinics, where she assisted in the civil prosecution of an individual convicted of committing torture and war crimes against an ethnic group in West Africa and co-authored a chapter on the current state of human rights class action lawsuits in U.S. federal courts. France has also worked at the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and briefly with UNDP in Rwanda. She speaks English and French and is married with a daughter and two sons.

Melinda Holmes is Program Director at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) for the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), which brings together existing women’s networks, practitioners, and organizations with long-standing experience in addressing extremism and promoting peace, rights, and pluralism to improve practices in communities affected by violence and informs and offers pragmatic policy solutions for the international community.

A peacebuilding specialist, writer, and strategist focusing on gender and political violence, Melinda is responsible for facilitating collaboration, analysis, advocacy, and outreach on gendered approaches for preventing and responding to violent extremism at ICAN. Previously, Melinda was a 2016-2017 Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Centre for Women, Peace & Security and worked with The Carter Center, where she advised on the engagement of religious and traditional beliefs, actors, and communities in advancing peace and human rights. Melinda graduated with a Master’s in International Affairs from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, focusing on the gendered and religious dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding.

As the Program Director for ICAN’s Better Peace Initiative (BPI), Helena coordinates the development and dissemination of guidance tools for gender responsive and inclusive mediation and the inclusion of women peacebuilders in peace processes. Tools include animations on gendered thematic topics that are commonly addressed in peace processes, tailored seminars, trainings, and capacity building for a range of actors.

In 2009, Helena co-founded the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) where she managed the network’s various advocacy, capacity building, media, and research programs. She was part of the core team who carried out GNWP’s groundbreaking localization of UNSCR 1325 program, and regularly facilitated localization trainings in a variety of countries. Helena was also part of the global coordination team overseeing yearly monitoring of the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in 20+ countries and responsible for outreach and communication.

Helena holds an M.S. in International Affairs focused on conflict and security from the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy (the New School), a postgraduate certificate in conflict resolution from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a B.A. in American Studies from Columbia University.

Helena previously served on the board of the Kota Alliance and on the Junior Board of the New York Center for Children and is still engaged in both causes. She is a founding volunteer for Dare2B, a NY-based organization committed to making transitional living for homeless children less traumatic. A Finnish transplant in Brooklyn, she can often be found exploring the borough on her bike, in search of new murals.

Stacey Schamber works as a Senior Program Officer with the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), providing technical assistance on the Better Peace Initiative, the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL), and issues of protection and psychosocial support. She is trained as a licensed Clinical Social Worker, with a specialty in trauma, and worked in healthcare and mental healthcare settings in the US. She has trained Social Workers internationally in Ethiopia, Lebanon, and India.

In addition, Stacey worked as a consultant on gender-based violence and manager of a protection monitoring project in Lebanon, in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. For one year, she also worked with Meta-Culture, a conflict management organization based in Bangalore, India. She has consulted with Mediators Beyond Borders International on their women in mediation program. She is passionate about preventing violence that can result from social, religious, or political conflict. Stacey’s international conflict resolution experience and training enables her to foster collaborative relationships to identify root causes of conflict and to build local capacity for sustainable community development. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College, and Masters in Social Work and Masters in Theological Studies from Boston University.

Sarah McMains is a Senior Program Officer at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). She works with the Innovative Peace Fund program team, with a focus on the programmatic and grantmaking work and support for Afghan women peacebuilders.  

Sarah has been working in the intersecting fields of human rights/gender and inclusion/women’s and LGBTIQ person’s rights for nearly a decade and has more than a decade of experience working with nonprofits in the field of international relations and policy. She is experienced in grantmaking, capacity development, and program development and implementation, with a focus on support to women-led organizations and women’s rights, specifically women’s labor and economic rights in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka more specifically) and human rights defenders.  

Sarah has been working with the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda for many years in different capacities, including co-chairing Norway’s Forum 1325 and its working group for engaging Norway in the Security Council (2021-2022); leading the civil society input process for Norway’s current and previous WPS National Action Plan; and working as a Policy Research Fellow for the NGO Working Group on WPS in 2019 when the latest WPS resolutions were added to the WPS agenda.  

Sarah earned her MPhil in the Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Oslo, her M.A. in International Relations from the University of Indianapolis, and her B.S. in International Business. She currently lives in West Virginia with her family and loves hiking in the Appalachians with her dog. 

Yodit Willis is the Operations Manager at International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) providing logistical and operational support for the executive team. Prior to ICAN Yodit worked as a Regional Administrator at a real estate firm in the DC area.

Yodit has in-depth knowledge and expertise in event planning and management for the private and public sectors. She attended the University of Maryland University College studying Human Psychology.

Isabela Karibjanian is the Publications Coordinator and Editor at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). At ICAN, she serves as the focal point for the production of all published materials, from flagship reports and guidance tools to advocacy documents and articles. She is based in London, UK.

Isabela started her career in peacebuilding as a Research Fellow on Justice, Peace, and Security at the Public International Law & Policy Group, where she managed the production, publication, and dissemination of two books, alongside a series of articles, opinion pieces, blogs, and speeches by the organization’s founder. She has more than six years of diverse professional experience, spanning qualitative and quantitative academic research, multimedia content production, branding, journalism, strategy, advocacy, external relations, and client service.

Isabela holds an MSc. in Global Governance and Diplomacy from the University of Oxford and an A.B. in International Relations from Brown University.

Rawan Kahwaji is a Program Officer at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). She supports the Innovative Peace Fund and is based in Brussels, Belgium.

Rawan had seven years of experience working with civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey, Syria, and Europe and has experience in project coordination, advocacy, and communications within the humanitarian field. Previously, Rawan co-led DARB, a youth-led organization dedicated to building bridges for peace in local communities, where she increased the CSO’s visibility, established an Advocacy and Communication Unit, and executed gender-related projects.

Rawan is currently pursuing a multidisciplinary degree in Politics, Sociology, and Communication in Brussels. She obtained a degree in Gender and Women’s Studies from the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor’s degree in Instructional Technology from the Middle East Technical University.

Charlotte Morgan is a Senior Communications Officer at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). She leads ICAN’s communications to highlight the innovative approaches and impact of ICAN and the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL).

Charlotte started her professional career with the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, working on advocacy and strategic communications with a focus on Women, Peace, and Security, gender parity, and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. Previously, Charlotte joined the ICAN team as a WASL intern and Program Officer, supporting ICAN’s communications and the WASL network.

She has broader experience working on advocacy, communications, and network building in non-governmental and civil society organizations across a range of social justice issues. For example, Charlotte has previously worked on accessibility and disability justice, language technology and services in humanitarian responses, and community resilience, often incorporating a gender lens in her work. Charlotte holds a Master’s degree in Gender, Peace, and Security from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish and International Politics from the University of Bath.

Kendahl Tyburski is a Program Officer at the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). With five years of experience in managing global grants, locally-driven research, and gender-focused programming, Kendahl Tyburski provides support for the Innovative Peace Fund (IPF) and is based in Washington, D.C.

Kendahl began her professional career operating as a “knowledge switchboard” for the women, peace, and security program at the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. Here, she supported a global network of 1000+ women from 56 countries, drafted numerous policy documents, and launched three initiatives, resulting in $100k of trust-based, localized, and rapid response funding to women peacebuilders. Kendahl has continued to spearhead gender equality in all her roles, from supporting the Syrian Women’s Political Movement in their work to ensure the meaningful participation of women in the peace process to shaping the gender pillar at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs.

Kendahl graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies and International Relations from the University of San Diego.

Documentary director and producer Deeyah Khan has won two Emmys, a BAFTA, an RTS, and two Peabody Awards in over a decade of making empathetic and unflinching films which deal with some of the most important and polarizing issues confronting the world today: extremism, violence against women, inequality, racism, and social exclusion.

Deeyah has filmed with battle-hardened jihadis, members of armed militia groups, American domestic terrorists, and white supremacists, with incisive, illuminating, and often surprising results. After spending a number of months filming with members of the United States’ largest neo-Nazi organization, including filming them on their notoriously violent march through Charlottesville in 2017, three high-ranking figures, including the leader, left the movement and rejected its white supremacist ideology. All of them credit their encounters with Deeyah as the catalyst for them to leave the extremist movement.
The Times of London says of her: “She is one of the bravest, most indomitable women…facing down bullies and extremists with intelligence and unflinching spirit.”

Born in Norway to Muslim immigrant parents, Deeyah’s experience of the beauty and the challenges of living between different cultures shapes her creative vision, informing the emotional honesty and humanity which characterizes her films.

Released in 2012, Banaz: A Love Story, her first multi-award-winning documentary, chronicled the life and death of Banaz Mahmod, a young British Kurdish woman murdered by her family in a so-called honor killing. Deeyah’s second film, the Bafta-nominated Jihad in 2015, involved two years of interviews and filming with Islamic extremists, convicted terrorists, and former jihadis. White Right: Meeting the Enemy, in which she interviewed key figures of the American far right, won her a second Emmy award in 2018. More recently, the BAFTA award-winning film America’s War on Abortion saw Deeyah explore one of the most divisive issues in American politics, while Muslim in Trump’s America charted rising Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims against a background of political and online hatred and division. The latter film won Deeyah a second Peabody Award.
In 2010, Deeyah founded her media, arts, and education company Fuuse, with the aim of creating space for more inclusive and diverse stories. In 2016, she was appointed the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity.

Deeyah is increasingly sought after as an advisor and speaker for her unique insights and her skills in listening- and empathy-based approaches to conflict resolution. Her method of building connections across social, racial, and personal divides, honed over ten years of filmmaking on the frontline, aims to deepen understanding through achieving a recognition of our shared humanity, and building a new way of being in the world based upon our inter-connectivity.

Marie-Joëlle Zahar is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Research Network on Peace Operations, and Fellow at the Centre for International Research and Studies at the Université de Montréal. From March 2013 until August 2015, she served as Senior Expert on Power Sharing on the Standby Team of Mediation Experts at the UN Department of Political Affairs, where she remains on the UN mediation roster. In 2017, she was a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations for Syria. A graduate of McGill University, her research interests span the politics of conflict-resolution and peacebuilding.

A non-resident Senior Fellow with the International Peace Institute (New York) and a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s research working groups (Sweden), Professor Zahar has held a number of visiting appointments, including at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (Finland), the Université Lyon II (France), the Institut d’études politiques de Lyon (France), and the Centre d’études pour le monde arabe moderne, Université Saint-Joseph (Lebanon). She was a research fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and cooperation and a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies (University of Toronto).

Professor Zahar is author, co-author or editor of more than seventy academic books, articles, and chapters including Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World (Lynne Rienner 2012-, co-authored with Rex Brynen, Pete W. Moore and Bassel F. Salloukh) and Intra-State Conflict, Government and Security: Dilemmas of Deterrence and Assurance (Routledge 2008, co-edited with Stephen Saideman). Her work has appeared in Global Governance, the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Critique internationale, and International Peacekeeping as well as in multiple edited volumes on conflict resolution and peace implementation. Her research has been funded by the Carnegie Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the United States Institute for Peace, the International Development Research Centre, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture.

Professor Zahar has been invited to share her insights by numerous academic institutions and research centers, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Christien Michelsen Institute (Norway), the Program on the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales at Sciences-Po Paris, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria), the Center for the Study of Civil War at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo and the Program on Order, Conflict and Violence at Yale University. Professor Zahar has consulted and conducted trainings for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Geneva Center for Security Policy, the United States Institute of Peace, the French Ministry of Defence, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada) and the Department of National Defence, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre among others.
Professor Zahar has previously served on the board of directors of Women in International Security-Canada, the Canadian-Arab Institute, and the Canadian Political Science Association, as well as on the executive committee of the Canadian Consortium on Human Security. She was research director of both the Middle East Network and the Research Network on Peace Operations at the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales of the Université de Montréal. She has consulted, among others, for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Canadian Government, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the European External Action Service, the United States Institute of Peace, the Carter Center, and Search for Common Ground.

Haideh Chubin is a Washington-based Managing Director in Deloitte’s Government and Public Services practice. Haideh was born in Iran, lived in France for ten years, and immigrated with her family to the United States in 1989. Haideh has over 25 years of experience in leading diverse contracts and large projects in support of a wide range of Federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, the General Services Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, among others. Her core focus involves financial management improvement and transformation, internal controls, grants management, improper payments, risk management, and customer experience management.

In addition to her client responsibilities, Haideh leads innovative solution developments, enables and monitors career growth and development of practitioners, and is actively involved in promoting Deloitte’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Women Initiative programs.

Haideh’s other employers included PricewaterhouseCoopers, Arthur Andersen, and Unisys. She holds a Master of Science in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from University of Nice, France and is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in Maryland and Virginia. She also holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

Haideh’s professional affiliations include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Association of Government Accountants (AGA).
Haideh is married with one adult daughter. She currently lives in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

André Mundal is a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. He is a former diplomat with the Norwegian Foreign Service and a former officer with the Norwegian Army.

Most recently André was Norway’s Special Representative for Women, Peace, and Security, leading one of Norway’s main foreign policy priorities, and a priority topic for Norway’s seat in the UN Security Council 2021-2022. In this capacity, André also ensured the follow-up of Norway’s forth National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.
Before taking on this role, he was responsible for women’s rights and gender equality in Norwegian foreign and development policy. He has held posts abroad for eight years at the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the consulate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Norwegian embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Prior to joining the Norwegian Foreign Service, André spent 11 years in the Norwegian Army where he started as a conscript. He graduated from both the Norwegian Officer Candidate School and the Norwegian Military Academy. He was posted as a Platoon Commander in Northern Norway and in Kosovo with NATO KFOR in 2003-2004. His last assignment in the army was at the Norwegian Military Academy, training future officers in the Army.

André holds a Bachelor’s degree in Military Studies and Leadership from the Norwegian Military Academy, a Master of Arts in International Relations from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Transformation from the Peace Centre at the University of Tromsø, Norway. André is also a trained election observer and has been part of monitoring missions in Latvia and in Afghanistan.

Kavita N. Ramdas is a globally recognized advocate for gender equity and justice and an independent philanthropic advisor and consultant. She recently completed a year as the Activist in Residence at the Global Fund for Women. In 2023 she served as a visiting professor at the Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Currently, Kavita is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy.

Kavita is a speaker and thought commentator on the challenges facing philanthropy and civil society as we strive for equitable and sustainable development and gender and racial equity. She provides high-level consulting advice and guidance on initiatives to defend democracy and protect human rights both within the U.S. and across the globe.

She recently completed an independent assessment of the United Nations’ ability to deliver on Gender Equality as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. As Director of the Women’s Rights Program at the Open Society Foundations, the foundation made its largest ever investment in gender justice with a $100 million commitment to the Generation Equality Forum in July 2021.

Kavita is also the founder of KNR Sisters, a consulting venture for social justice movements and philanthropy. Kavita’s previous leadership roles have included serving as Strategy Advisor for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization; Senior Advisor on Global Strategy and Representative for South Asia at the Ford Foundation; and President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women.

She is a long-time women’s peace and justice activist with extensive experience leading and raising funds for international foundations and organizations. Prior to joining Ploughshares in 2016, she co-founded Rawa: Creative Palestinian Communities Fund, served as the executive director of Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, was Global Fund for Women’s first Activist in Residence, and was the executive director of Bat Shalom, Israel’s national women’s peace organization.

Sawsan Chebli is a Senior Advisor to the Chairman and the Board of Directors of Doha Media City in Qatar.

Despite the challenges of statelessness, Chebli pursued an academic career, studying political science at Freie Universität Berlin. She was one of the most prominent Muslim women of Palestinian descent to hold high-ranking political positions in Germany.

Born in Berlin in 1978 as the twelfth child of a Palestinian family who had fled their homeland. She and her family lived stateless in the German capital for 15 years before being granted German citizenship. Despite the challenges of statelessness, Chebli pursued an academic career, studying political science at Freie Universität Berlin. She was one of the most prominent Muslim women of Palestinian descent to hold high-ranking political positions in Germany.

Her political career began in the German Parliament, where she held various roles focusing on international politics, and human rights advocacy. In 2010, she became an Advisor for Intercultural Affairs to the Senator for the Interior at the Berlin Ministry of the Interior and Sport, where she helped give young Muslims a voice in German society.

In January 2014, then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed her as Deputy Spokesperson at the Federal Foreign Office, making her one of the first Muslim women in Germany to hold such a position at the federal level. In this role, Chebli witnessed firsthand several global conflicts, such as the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the refugee crisis in the EU, and the Iran nuclear deal. Her main responsibility was advising the minister on shaping Germany’s position on these conflicts and communicating Germany’s foreign policy to the public and both German and foreign media.

From 2016 to 2021, Chebli served as State Secretary for Civic Engagement and International Affairs in the Berlin government. In this role, she led numerous initiatives to strengthen civil society, promote international collaboration, and combat discrimination.

As an author and public speaker, Chebli has consistently highlighted the intersections of race, gender, and democratic participation. She has been a prominent advocate for marginalized groups, ensuring that their voices are included in democratic processes, and emphasizing the need for systemic changes to dismantle discriminatory structures.

As a social media influencer, Chebli has personally experienced hate speech and digital violence. In 2023, she published her first book, LAUT, which received wide acclaim for addressing the challenges democratic societies face due to social media and cyber violence. Drawing on her own experiences, LAUT became a powerful call for resilience, democratic values, and standing up against hate speech. In LAUT, she also calls on governments to adopt robust policies and legal frameworks to protect individuals from online harassment and ensure accountability for digital platforms.

Since September 2024, Sawsan Chebli has been working at Doha Media City as Senior Advisor to the Chairman and the Board of Directors, contributing her expertise in media, international affairs, and strategic development. In this role, she focuses on positioning Media City as a regional and international media hub, developing new partnerships, and advancing innovative media initiatives.