Four AUC Alumnae Among 100 Most Powerful Arab Women in 2015
Four AUC alumnae have been named among CEO Middle East 's 100 most powerful women in the Arab world for 2015. For the fifth year, the magazine has released the list that ranks the influence of Arab women across the globe in all sectors including business, academia, science and entertainment.
Lina Attalah ’04: Attalah is chief editor of Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian online newspaper. She studied journalism at AUC and worked in a broad array of media outlets, including Al-Masry Al-Youm, Reuters, Cairo Times, Daily Star andChristian Science Monitor. She was also a radio producer and campaign coordinator for the BBC World Service Trust in Darfur, Sudan in 2005. In addition, Attalah served as a project manager for various research initiatives with multimedia outputs focusing on the themes of space, mobility and intellectual history.
Haifaa Al-Mansour ’97: Saudi Arabia’s first female filmmaker, Al-Mansour was selected by Foreign Policy among the top 100 global thinkers in 2013 “for quietly breaking the Kingdom’s gender barriers.” She is the director of the 2005 documentaryWomen Without Shadows and the critically acclaimed Wadjda, the first film submitted by Saudi Arabia for Academy Award consideration. Her follow-up film, A Storm in the Stars, will start filming this year. One of the honorees at AUC’s third annual benefit dinner, Al-Mansour is a graduate of AUC’s English and comparative literature department and completed a master’s degree in directing and film studies from the University of Sydney.
Mona Eltahawy ’90, ’92: An award-winning journalist, commentator and international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues, including women’s rights. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times, among others. She was named by Newsweek as one of its 150 Fearless Women of 2012, and in the same year, she received the Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism and was listed by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of 20 women in the media to watch. Eltahawy earned a bachelor’s and master’s in journalism and mass communication from AUC.
Lamees Al Hadidi ’87, ’90: Host of the daily news show on CBC channel titled Hona Al Asema (Here is the Capital), Al Hadidi has worked for almost two decades as a TV host in Egypt. She is CEO of Al Alam Al Youm, Egypt’s first independent business newspaper. Al Hadidi began her journalism career with international news agencies like NBC, Al Jazeera and The New York Times. At AUC, she discovered her interest in journalism after working as editor-in-chief at the Caravan. She received a bachelor's in journalism and mass communication and a master's in broadcast journalism from AUC. In 2006, she received an Alumni Achievement Award from the University.
