Perspectives from the 2026 CEO Dialogue

Nour Dabboussi is the associate director of the MENA Futures Lab at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs, where she is responsible for managing its business development strategy, focusing particularly on establishing partnerships focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She also leads the concept ideation process of the lab’s programming by tailoring events and research topics to policy recommendations that advance innovation in human capital development, healthcare, and increased economic participation in the MENA region. Dabboussi holds a master of international affairs from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (where she focused on Middle East security); a master’s degree in human rights and humanitarian action from Sciences Po’s Paris School for International Affairs (where she focused on the Middle East); a bachelor’s degree in communications studies and art history from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a certificate in business analytics from Harvard Business School. She is a fluent speaker of English, French, Arabic, and Spanish.

Joze Pelayo is associate director for strategic initiatives and policy at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He manages the Council’s work on US-Gulf Arab states security cooperation, producing forward-looking analysis and engagement with direct implications for regional and national security. He also manages the Council’s China-Middle East line of work and its affiliated podcast. His work supports high-level policy dialogues, analysis, and engagement on strategic issues in the Gulf, with a focus on regional security, diplomacy, and US foreign policy. In 2023, Pelayo was listed by the Middle East Policy Council’s 40 Under 40 awards for rising Middle East experts. Pelayo is proficient in Modern Standard Arabic and the Lebanese dialect, and is a former recipient of the Sultan Qaboos Arabic Language Scholarship (2018–2021) and an alumnus of the National Council of US-Arab Relations. He completed his MA in international development from the University of Oregon with a certificate in nonprofit management and a BA in political science from Southern Arkansas University.

Manal Fatima is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. She coordinates and facilitates the program’s activities, supporting the Iran Strategy Project, the Counterterrorism Project, and the initiative’s work on Pakistan. Fatima focuses on the Gulf’s strategic security trajectory, with particular attention to nuclear energy and space developments.

Previously, she interned at the National Council on US-Arab Relations and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and worked at Limbik, a cognitive artificial intelligence company, where she applied AI and machine learning tools to counter online misinformation and disinformation.

Fatima holds a bachelor of arts in quantitative economics and Middle East studies from Smith College and spent a year at the London School of Economics as a general course student. At Smith, she founded Fusayfsa’ (Mosaic), a student-led journal dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the Middle East and North Africa through its people and successfully published three issues as its editor-inchief from 2020 to 2023. While in London, she also served as a MENA correspondent for LSE’s international affairs journal, the London Globalist.

Originally from Pakistan, Fatima approaches her work with a commitment to connecting regional realities with policy debates in Washington.

David Maloney is the assistant director to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. Maloney is responsible for program support to the director and deputy director. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Maloney was an intern in the Office of US Representative Andy Kim, an intern at the US Department of Homeland Security assisting in resettling Afghan refugees into the United States, and a government affairs fellow at several advocacy organizations focused on increasing the US foreign aid budget and efforts to combat climate change.

Maloney holds a bachelor’s degree from George Mason University in government and international politics, with a concentration on the European Union.

Khalid Azim is the director of the MENA Futures Lab at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The lab serves as a collaborative hub and intellectual engine, driving innovation, entrepreneurship, private-sector engagement, and the creation of transformative knowledge capital and connectivity across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. He has led nonprofit efforts advancing financial and professional engagement across the MENA region, worked as a global capital markets banker at Morgan Stanley in New York and Hong Kong, and began his career as a US Navy officer during the First Gulf War, serving on a fast-attack, nuclear-powered submarine. A former White House Fellow and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Azim is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University, where he teaches courses on leadership, ethics, and communications.

His prior board service includes the executive committee of ABANA and the board of trustees of the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine. He holds a BA in English from Pitzer College (Claremont Colleges) and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.