Board of Trustees
Chair, AUIS Board of Trustees
Jill Derby is a Senior Governance Consultant with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges based in Washington, DC.
Vice Chair, AUIS Board of Trustees (leave of absence)
Chair, Land and Buildings Committee, AUIS Board of Trustees
Kamaran Ahmed has served as the minister of construction and housing in the Kurdistan Regional Government. Prior to joining the government, Mr. Ahmed had a successful career as an engineer in the private sector.
Secretary, AUIS Board of Trustees
Azzam Alwash is the founder and CEO of Nature Iraq and is the recipient of the 2013 Goldman Prize for grass roots activism in the protection of the environment.
Chair, Advancement and External Relations, AUIS Board of Trustees
David Skaggs holds positions as chair of the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics and vice-chair of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. He is a senior strategic advisor & independent consultant with Dentons US LLP.
Chair, Finance and Operations Committee, AUIS Board of Trustees
Dov S. Zakheim is Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Senior Fellow at CNA.
Chair, Academic and Student Relations Committee, AUIS Board of Trustees
Henri J. Barkey is the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations.
Chair, Audit Committee, AUIS Board of Trustees
Gaylen R. Hansen is an audit partner and Director of Quality Assurance at EKS&H, a firm of certified public accountants headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Chair, Governance Committee, AUIS Board of Trustees
Newman T. Halvorson, Jr. is a retired partner of Covington & Burling LLP.
Founder, AUIS Board of Trustees (leave of absence)
Barham A. Salih is President of the Republic of Iraq and the founder of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Eric B. Brown is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute where he studies the Middle East and Asian affairs, international security and development, alternative geopolitical futures, and diplomacy and strategy.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Hayder Al-Khoei is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank on international affairs, with a research focus on Iraq.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees (leave of absence)
Lukman Faily served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Iraq to the United States from 2013 to 2016.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Mary Oakes Smith is the founder and president of the Iraqi Women’s Fellowship Foundation.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Mina Al-Oraibi is an Iraqi-British journalist and analyst.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Mohammed Shanshal is Director at Numerus Group, the investment vehicle and holding company of Fakhry Shanshal and sons.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Narmin Othman Hassan is a Kurdish politician with experience in both the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the government of the Republic of Iraq. She is former Minister of Environment, in the federal government.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Rizgar Mageed is Professor of Experimental Immunology, Queen Mary University of London.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Saad T. Hasan is the CEO of Qaiwan Group, a role he has held since its establishment in 1992.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Sadik Yildiz the main shareholder and Vice President of Sena Group Inc.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Shwan Ibrahim Taha is chairman of Rabee Securities and has over twenty years of experience in the financial sector.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Wendy Chamberlin served as President of The Middle East Institute in Washington, DC from 2007 to August 2019.
Member, AUIS Board of Trustees
Yassien Shanshal is Director at Numerus Group, the investment vehicle and holding company of Fakhry Shanshal and sons.