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Mediation Advisor, UN WOMEN

Karma Ekmekji is a mediation advisor with UN Women. She was previously the foreign affairs and international relations advisor to the President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Lebanon where she served as the focal point for all international dossiers and operates as the interface between the office of President Hariri and the diplomatic community. Prior to joining Saad Hariri’s office upon his appointment as Prime Minister in 2009, Karma was the national political officer at the United Nations Special Coordinator’s office in Lebanon where she briefed the Special Coordinator on all domestic political developments, developing the office’s network base with the International Community and Lebanese political parties. She had also served at the UN Secretariat’s Department of Political Affairs. She has been recently selected to take part in the British Government’s International Leaders Programme for 2016 and was previously “Personnalite d’avenir” – selected by the Quai d’Orsay. In 2012, Karma was named one of 2012’s top 99 foreign policy leaders under 33 years of age by the Diplomatic Courier. She earned her Master of public administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She serves as Advisor of 3QA, a Lebanese based start up with a social mission of enhancing the quality of Third Sector entities in the Levant region through an accreditation system. Karma is a Fellow of the fifth class of the Middle East Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.