Meet the Board

Nermien Riad is the founder and Executive Director. She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. She has worked for the Federal Government for 17 years. She and her husband, Yosry, have two children - Yosef and Yustina. Nermien was recently chosen as a delegate for the nonprofit congress. She is also the recipient of the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area Community Human Rights award.

Amira Roess is a public health researcher at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Areas of research experience include: infectious diseases epidemiology; environmental determinants of health; animal agriculture impacts on public health; emerging zoonotic diseases; and technologies to improve neonatal and infant survival in vulnerable populations in South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Amira spent 3 years working on respiratory disease and neonatal mortality intervention projects in rural Bangladesh. She is currently Science Director for a policy commission that is researching ways to reduce the public and environmental health impacts of food animal production. She holds a B.S. in biology and philosophy, a PhD in international health, and a MPH.

Dr. Ashraf Rofail is president of Santeon, Inc. a Business Process Automation and Outsourcing firm. Prior to founding Santéon, Ash served as Chief Technology Officer for User Technology Associates, a $100 M software consultancy with over 1000 employees. Ash was responsible for setting technology strategy and technical leadership. Ash has provided strategic technical vision for several successful and innovative products as Chief Architect for Best Software (acquired by Sage), Product Architect for Solomon/Great Plains (acquired by Microsoft), and State of the Art Software (acquired by Sage). Ash is a thought leader in enterprise software as a member of Microsoft's Visual Basic advisory board since 1997; patent holder for artificial intelligence technology; author of 6 software engineering books on topics such as XML, .NET, COM/DCOM, building n-Tier Applications and Service Oriented Architectures; and Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Business. Ash holds a PhD Artificial Intelligence and MS Computer Science.

Emile Beshai has 19 years of Federal Government service, of which 17 years with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau within the US Department of the Treasury where he currently serves as a senior manager. He supports executive management in strategic planning, policies, and programs pertaining to domestic and international collaboration in fighting financial crimes. He holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Business and Information Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Bachelor’s degree in science from Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Emile lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Nina and their two daughters Angela and Alison.

Advisory Council

Julie Meawad received a B.S. in International Business from the University of Maryland, College Park and completed an honors program in Total Quality Management. She has recently graduated from the University of Maryland at Baltimore Law School with a degree in law with a specialization in Health Law. During her undergraduate career she completed a semester abroad in Egypt at the American University in Cairo. While in Egypt she had the opportunity to work for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which gave her valuable insight into the problems that Egyptian children face. She also spent some time in Africa last summer helping to build churches in the Congo and Zambia. Ms. Meawad regularly attends St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church where she serves as a high school youth leader. She is a proud aunt of two adorable children, Gabrielle and Mark.

Dr. Robie I. Samanta Roy is currently the Assistant Director for Space and Aeronautics at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, an office within the Executive Office of the President. He came to his current position from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) where he was the Principal Strategic Analyst. Prior to CBO, he was a Research Staff Member in the Systems Evaluation Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in Alexandria, VA where he conducted a wide range of technical studies. Robie holds a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, a Master’s degree in Space Policy from the George Washington University, as well as diplomas from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France and the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and two daughters. Robie's extracurricular interests include tutoring mathematics and science, Middle Eastern history, comparative theology and running.