Appointment of Dr. Leila Dagher as Assistant to the President for Public Policy
Dear LAU Community,
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Leila Dagher has been appointed as Assistant to the President for Public Policy.
Dr. Dagher has been tasked with setting up the new LAU Center for Public Good, where she will develop its operational framework, including organizing full-and-part-time memberships at the center for LAU faculty and external experts and in collaboration with other senior university officers. She will also build and expand the university’s network of contributors to the center within and outside of LAU.
As part of her work at the center, she will undertake the development and enhancement of policy courses at as many LAU schools as possible, and she will contribute to securing intramural and external funding for key research areas, in close coordination with the relevant LAU entities.
The idea for the Center for Public Good takes root in the fact that LAU, as a comprehensive university with highly skilled experts in diverse fields, has a shared a responsibility to treat and find solutions to the ills that plague our country. With the launch of this center, we hope to rally the efforts of our own experts toward building an advanced think tank with community engagement capacity.
Dr. Dagher will also join our Adnan Kassar School of Business as an Associate Professor of Economics. Since 2008, she has worked at the American University of Beirut (AUB) as an assistant professor, chairperson of the Department of Economics, director of the Institute of Financial Economics and most recently, as associate professor of Economics. She had also taught at George Washington University, the University of California-Los Angeles, and Virginia Tech as a visiting professor. She holds a PhD in Mineral Economics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from AUB.
Dr. Dagher is an ardent supporter of public sector reforms in Lebanon, where she has served as an economic advisor to the former prime minister, as well as current and past ministers of Economy and Trade, Industry and Foreign Affairs. She was also a member of the Lebanese delegation negotiating with the IMF and co-lead on the Government of Lebanon’s Economic Plan during 2020-21.
She has won a number of grants and awards, including a recent Transparency International Grant for the project “Ensuring Accountability in Reconstruction and Reform Efforts in Lebanon,” and an Oxfam Grant for the project “For Inclusive and Fair COVID-19 Socio-Economic Recovery Measures in Lebanon.”
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Dagher and wishing her well for an exciting new chapter at LAU.
Michel E. Mawad, M.D.
President