Raghida Dergham is the founder and executive chairman of Beirut Institute and a columnist for The National. She served as columnist, senior diplomatic correspondent, and NY bureau chief for the London-based Al-Hayat for 28 years. She has contributed to Al Joumhouria, Huffington Post, Arab News, Al Arabiya English, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek. She was a political analyst for NBC, MSNBC, and LBC for eight years as well as a contributing editor for Global Viewpoint, produced for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Since founding Beirut Institute, she has partnered with remarkable board members, global think tanks, exceptional staff, and host governments of the Beirut Institute Summit such as the United Arab Emirates. Such partnering has allowed her to lead an organization since its inception until it became a highly respected global brand recognized by other think tanks all over the world.

While president of the United Nations Correspondents Association in 1997, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Dergham as a member of the Task Force on the Reorientation of Public Information. A recipient of numerous lifetime achievement awards, she is in the State University of New York’s Hall of Fame as a distinguished alumna and received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2003 from SUNY. She was named one of the 100 Most Powerful Arab Women in 2011 and 2016, and in 2017 she was named “Arab Woman of the Year” for her achievements in journalism.