Abdulwahab Alkebsi

Abdulwahab Alkebsi is the Managing Director for Programs at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Alkebsi oversees almost 200 programs in more than 80 countries and supervises staff and representatives in more than two dozen countries as CIPE expands. They include Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Tunisia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Slovakia, Philippines, Cambodia, Colombia, and Guatemala and at CIPE’s head office in Washington, DC.

In his role at CIPE, Alkebsi oversees democracy and market-reform initiatives that combat corruption, build the capacity of business associations to represent private sector voices, strengthen entrepreneurship skills and ecosystems, empower women, organize the informal sector and strengthen property rights, enable access to information, and improve corporate and democratic governance.

Prior to joining CIPE, Alkebsi served as the Director of the Middle East and North Africa division at the NED, and prior to that, Alkebsi served as Executive Director at the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a non-profit think tank, based in Washington, DC, dedicated to studying Islamic and democratic political thought and merging them into a modern Islamic democratic discourse.

A renowned expert on democracy and market reforms as well as on Middle East politics, Alkebsi has been interviewed or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, U.S. News & World Report, United Press International, PBS, CNN, CNBC, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabia, Al-Hurra, MBC, Abu Dhabi TV, ANA, Nile TV, and many others. Follow Abdu on Twitter.