"Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world”
- Nelson Mandela -
TFL-US is a 501(c)(3) Public Charity (click here to see IRS exemption letter) established in 2010 and incorporated in New York state. The TFL-US EIN is 27- 2370827. Contributions are fully tax-deductible if the donor is taxable in the USA.
TFL-US carries out fundraising activities in the United States to support the work of Teach for Lebanon (TFL), which is a non-governmental organization registered through the Lebanese Ministry of Interior, Attestation number 1518, as of November 5, 2008.
TFL-US has a Board of Directors presently consisting of eight people: Remi Geahel, Guitta Barghash, Charbel Tagher, Amal Moussa, Ziad Azar, Diane Kaldany, Ghassan Saab and Eva Farha. The organization’s plan is to expand its membership in the near future to include members from many cities across the USA.
Dr. Ziad Raymond Azar is partner at White & Case LLP in New York. Dr. Azar's practice focuses on corporate and financial transactions in the United States and internationally. His expertise involves the tender, development, financing, acquisition, and divestiture of energy, infrastructure, and natural resource projects. Prior to joining White & Case, Dr. Azar was a consultant with the World Bank Group in Washington DC, and taught law and economics at Harvard University. Dr. Azar’s holds a doctorate degree in law from Harvard Law School, master’s degrees in law and economics from the University of Paris, Georgetown University and New York University, and bachelor degrees in law and economics from Université Saint-Joseph and the American University of Beirut.
Guitta was born in Tripoli, Lebanon and graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1979 with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Administration. She began working with the International Red Cross during the Lebanese Civil War as well as with the Lebanese Red Cross based in southern Lebanon,
She is an active volunteer at Somerset Medical Center in Bridgewater, New Jersey, where she advocates and represents patients and families. In addition, she has been instrumental in organizing fundraising efforts for the Concussion Center at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey.
She began to volunteer for Teach
For Lebanon as of 2015, introducing TFL to various new donors,prospects and
other stakeholders, including the Salaam Club in Brooklyn.She currently works
as an accountant at Millenium Marine Corporation in New Jersey and has lived in
the United States since 1981 with her husband, Hani Barghash, and their three
children.
Remi Geahel, Partner at
Cooper-CitiWest, has over 30 years of executive experience in real estate asset
management, development and redevelopment. Since 2005, Geahel has provided a
wide-range of consulting services to REO asset management and marketing
companies including designing, implementing and maintaining web based and EDI
capable REO Asset Management and Marketing Solutions (including workflow
processing and electronic bidding systems). From 1991 to 2005, Geahel’s firm --
CitiWest -- successfully provided REO marketing and management services to the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under 16 separate
contracts in more than 20 states around the country with sales totaling over
$2.4 billion.
Amal Moussa is a derivatives trader at UBS where she is
responsible for trading and risk managing equity exotic options and structured
products.
Prior to that, Amal was a derivatives trader at Deutsche Bank
and JP Morgan also covering equity exotic options and structured products, and
before that she was a quant in the emerging markets fixed income quantitative
research team at JP Morgan where she developed pricing models for foreign
exchange and interest rates derivatives.
In addition to her work in Markets, Amal teaches a yearly
graduate course at Columbia University covering stochastic volatility models,
and has served as a lecturer in Mathematics at the American University of
Beirut.
Amal has a Ph.D. in Statistics, obtained with distinction, from
Columbia University. Her thesis “Contagion and Systemic Risk in Financial
Networks” shed light on the importance of the network structure in identifying
systemic financial institutions and formulating regulatory policies, and has
been cited as a reference by Federal Reserve president Janet Yellen.
Prior to her Ph.D., Amal graduated with a Masters in
Mathematical Finance from Paris VI University and a Grande Ecole engineering
degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications.
Her studies in France were supported by the government-awarded
Scholarship for Excellence. She was born and raised in Lebanon and completed
both the Lebanese and French Baccalaureate degrees in Mathematics.
Amal is an active member of the Lebanese community in NY and
board member of ABANA. She also enjoys travelling, history and learning
languages.
In 2003, Mr. Saab formed the Uptown Development Group with some of his friends and business associates to rejuvenate and rebuild the neglected and deteriorated downtown area of Flint, Michigan. Ghassan contributes time and resources to numerous charities and civic organizations in his local community, on the national level in the US, and internationally. He is the recipient of many awards and honors including the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Ghassan was born in Choueifat, Lebanon on November 22, 1944, the eldest of four children to Mahmoud and Najla Saab. In 1966, he graduated from the American University of Beirut with a degree in Civil Engineering. He is also a graduate of the National College of Choueifat in Lebanon where he obtained the Lebanese Baccalaureates I and II.
A naturalized American citizen, he
and his wife Manal and family reside in Fenton, Michigan, USA.
Number of fellows: 1
students: 600
refugees: 600
"Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world”
- Nelson Mandela -