Former Senior Partner, Head of Middle East Practice, King & Spalding

Isam Salah retired as a Senior Partner and the Head of the Middle East Practice at King & Spalding in December 2017, after a 25-year career at that law firm. During his tenure at the firm, he led in the establishment of the firm’s offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. His practice covered a broad range of finance and investment matters, in particular those financings and investments structured on a Shari’ah-compliant basis. He is best known for his expertise in representing Gulf financial institutions, investment companies and family offices in their real estate, private equity and leased equipment investments in the United States. He is a former President of the Arab Bankers Association of North America. A graduate of Case Western Reserve University, Mr. Salah received his law degree from Cleveland State University, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Cleveland State Law Review. He received his LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center, where he held a fellowship at the university’s International Law Institute. He currently serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including the Global Board of Education For Employment and United Palestinian Appeal.

George Salem is an attorney-at-law in Washington, DC. In 2005 he established an independent practice and became a strategic advisor to DLA Piper on its the Middle East and U.S. Department of Labor practices. From 1985 to 1989, Mr. Salem served as the Solicitor of Labor for the U.S. Department of Labor, where he was responsible for enforcing more than 130 laws that regulate the nation’s workplace.

Mr. Salem co-founded the Arab American Institute in 1985 and currently serves as its chairman, and has served as treasurer of United Palestinian Appeal, Inc. since 1982. He is a past president of the National Association of Arab Americans and has served on the board of directors of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. On behalf of the Bush Administration, Mr. Salem served as an official observer to the Palestinian elections held in February 2005, and also as President George W. Bush’s representative to the funeral of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Frederick T. Hadeed is a finance and biotechnology executive. Prior to retiring, he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of United Therapeutics Corporation, a multinational public company. Previously, he served as a Senior Manager with the global accounting firm KPMG LLP, where he practiced as a CPA. Mr. Hadeed was appointed to Virginia’s Equal Employment Opportunity Council and its Commonwealth Health Research Board.

Ann Barhoum is partner, co-founder and managing attorney with Olmos-Barhoum LLP. She is specialized in immigration and family law. Ann has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University and a master’s degree in English Literature from Notre Dame de Namur University. She graduated from San Francisco Law School and is a member of the State Bar of California. She is also admitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth and Sixth Circuit. Ann is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Before becoming an attorney, Ann worked as an executive for non-profits, dealing with issues in the Middle East. She has comprehensive knowledge of the Middle East and has taught courses on the subject at Stanford University.

Salma El-Yassir is a management professional with over 30 years of experience in both the private and development sectors. Her most recent position was Director General of the Institute for Palestine Studies, an institute focused on the Middle East conflict. Prior to that, she was the Country Director of the Welfare Association (Ta’awon) in Lebanon, the largest Palestinian NGO. She is a currently a consultant on the Harvard frameworks in Adaptive Leadership and overcoming Immunity to Change.

Salma earned her undergraduate degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and has a Master’s in Public Health from the American University in Beirut. She recently completed a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, where she focused on Leadership, Negotiation and Decision Sciences.

Salma is equally fluent in both English and Arabic and is culturally adaptive having lived, studied and worked in the Middle East and internationally.

Eyad H. Abed is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has been on the faculty since 1983. He has held administrative positions at the University of Maryland and abroad and has served as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. He received the S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1981 and 1982, respectively, from the University of California at Berkeley, all in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Abed is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a recipient of several awards, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Senior Fulbright Scholar Award, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, and several awards and recognitions from the University of Maryland for his teaching, research, and service.

He has been on the editorial boards of several journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the journal Nonlinear Dynamics, and Applied Sciences. He has served on the board of Governors and the Executive Committee of the IEEE Control Systems Society and as well as on other IEEE committees. He has consulted for several corporations and government agencies on a variety of interdisciplinary engineering problems. Dr. Abed’s research interests include system and control theory and a diverse set of applications including power and energy, communications, aerospace systems and modeling, and analysis of social networks.

Jawad I. Ali is a New York qualified lawyer and spent 28 years in private practice between New York, London, and Dubai. He was the managing partner of King & Spalding’s Middle East offices, and head of its corporate finance and investment practice in Europe, Middle East, and Asia until he retired from the practice of law in 2022. Jawad is a Palestinian-American, born and raised in Ramallah. He has a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from Liverpool University School of Law, and a Master of Laws (LLM) in International Banking & Finance from Boston University School of Law. Jawad is a passionate supporter of Palestinian humanitarian and advocacy work. He is also currently the Chair of the board of European Legal Support Center.