Kate Seelye is vice president for arts and culture and communications at the Middle East Institute, where she oversees many aspects of the institution’s development and growth. Since joining MEI in 2009, Seelye has been involved in multiple aspects of the institute’s growth in senior leadership positions. As vice president, she built up its programming and communications departments and later launched its policy center in 2012, which is today ranked as the top Middle East-focused policy center in the United States. In 2015, she launched MEI’s Arts and Culture Program with a focus on exploring the role of the arts in Middle Eastern society and promoting the importance of cultural diplomacy. In 2019, Seelye launched the MEI Art Gallery, the only gallery in the U.S. capital dedicated to promoting modern and contemporary art from the Middle East. The gallery serves as a hub for exhibits, film screenings, literary panels, and more, introducing the Middle East’s rich cultural scene to U.S. audiences with the goal of promoting deeper connections between the two cultures.  

Over the past decade, Seelye has also organized major cultural conferences in the Middle East and run cultural delegations to the region. She has secured and organized multiple exchange and educational programs. Highlights include a 2016 program to bring Syrian civil society activists to Washington, DC for media training, congressional and National Security Council meetings, policy briefings, and more. In 2017, she ran a unique program sponsored by the King Abdul Aziz Center for World Culture bringing nearly 30 Saudi cultural leaders to 53 U.S. cities for bespoke speaking tours. Prior to joining MEI, Seelye worked as a radio and television journalist covering the Arab world from her base in Beirut, Lebanon from 2000-09. She reported on the region for National Public Radio, the PRI/BBC show “The World,” the PBS documentary show “Frontline/World,” and the Channel Four British investigative television news series “Unreported World.” Prior to that, she was a producer for “PBS Newshour” based in Los Angeles and started her journalism career at the award-winning business program “Marketplace Radio.” In 2004, Seelye was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to research the history of the early Arab-U.S. relationship. That same year, she received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Amherst College, for her efforts to increase U.S. understanding of the Middle East. She is the recipient of several journalism awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for NPR’s team coverage of the Iraq War. Seelye spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Syria, where her father served in the U.S. Foreign Service.