Dr. Rola Dashti
Chairperson of Kuwait Economic Society

    Dr. Rola Dashti, a winner of King Hussein Humanitarian award for year 2005 and listed among the world’s 100 most powerful Arabs in 2007. She is presently the elected Chairperson of Kuwait Economic Society (first woman to chair the society since its establishment in 1970), also a member of the executive committee of Young Arab Leaders (Kuwait Chapter), and Founder of Women Participation Organization.

    Rola Dashti earned her PhD in Population Economics from Johns Hopkins University, where she also lectured, conducted and managed research in development and applied economics particularly in regard to the country’s recent quest for modernizing its economic, financial, and social processes. Dr Dashti is currently heading an international consultancy firm in Kuwait focusing on privatization, and activation of SMEs. She has held key positions in R&D institutions such as the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (Manager, Economics Department), and worked for major local and international financial and development institutions (Senior Economist at the National Bank of Kuwait and provided consultancy to the World Bank). She also managed all the contracts signed on behalf of the government of Kuwait for the Emergency and Reconstruction Program during the invasion-to-post liberation period (1990/1991).

    Dr. Dashti has been involved in several volunteering activities since her undergraduate years, where she worked with the International Red Cross in Lebanon to assist refugee families from the south in 1982. She was involved in various activities for the economic empowerment of women in the Republic of Yemen. Dr Dashti is a leading activist in the MENA region advocating democratic reform and fighting for gender equity and increasing role for women in public life. Most recently, she lobbied for the May 2005 decree allowing Kuwaiti women to vote and run for parliamentary elections for the first time, and was a candidate in the historical parliamentarian election in 2006.

    Dr. Dashti also contributed to the efforts towards energizing civil society institutions to turn them into a major driving force behind economic, social, and political reform. Developing work in these institutions also became one of her focus of interest after her election as chairperson of Kuwait Economic Society.