Dr. Bassma Kodmani is the Executive Director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a consortium of Arab policy research institutes with partners in Europe and the US, working collaboratively on reforms and democratic transitions in the Arab world. She is also Associate research fellow at the Centre d’études et de recherché internationals (CERI) at Sciences-Po, Paris and a senior adviser on international cooperation to the French national research council (CNRS). From 1999 to 2005 she headed the Governance and International Cooperation program at the Ford Foundation office for the Middle East and North Africa, based in Cairo where she had overall responsibility for support to research institutions, NGOs and public agencies in the region, and special responsibility for initiating and supporting joint Israeli-Palestinian projects and track II meetings. Prior to moving to Cairo, she established and directed the Middle East Program at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris from 1981 to 1998 and was Associate Professor of International Relations at Paris University. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences-Po in Paris. She has authored books and articles on conflicts in the Middle East, regional security, the Palestinian question, political developments in Arab societies and states and the relationship between religious authority and political authority in the Muslim world.