Partnership Specialist and Capacity Building:

Over the past 10 years, I’ve dedicated my career to the capacity building of local organizations and managing projects with them, through conflict and hardships. As a partnership manager with Mercy Corps and Norwegian People’s aid, my main role was to develop the expertise of civil society in project management, through extensive training but also through on-the-job mentoring and following up on project design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Key focus was on proposal writing, completing assessments, developing budgets, establishing MEAL frameworks, and overall policies and systems for project control and management.

Additionally In my position as Partnership Manager with Mercy Corps and Norwegian People’s Aid, I’ve developed policies and strategies for these two INGOs on responsible partnership and localization. Additionally, I’ve developed frameworks for evaluating partnership modalities and projects and drafted lessons learned and recommendations that helped to improve Mercy Corps and NPA’s approach to localization.

Over 30 organizations received capacity building under my direct leadership and demonstrated successful improvement in project management in high-risk environments.

Beyond project management, the scope of my career also focused on building organizational structures, policies and teams for program management, MEAL, financial management, quality control, human resources, fundraising, and other critical organizational sectors.

And finally, in my current capacity as Food Security and Livelihoods Sector Coordinator for Northeast Syria, I ensured the mapping and participation of local NGO in the coordination body and supported their visibility and inclusion in the humanitarian funding.

Humanitarian Experience:

Through my ten years of experience in the humanitarian field, I’ve built rigorous technical and operational experience in the humanitarian sectors of food security, livelihoods, WaSH, NFIs, Health, and Protection, with a strong emphasis on integrated programming in hard-to-reach areas. This experience allowed me to take on the position of a sub-national cluster coordinator for food security and livelihoods in Northeast Syria and act as a technical reference for these sectors at field level and through engagement with donors to draft strategies for interventions.

Additionally, this experience expands across program design, implementation, monitoring, data analysis, and access, in hard-to-reach, high risk, and conflict-affected communities. This gave me the innovative and adaptive skills required to manage, support, and build the capacity of field teams and local partners.

Thematic areas of focus during my work on Syria included developing area and project specific contingency and preparedness plans, rapid response mechanisms, triggers, and resource mobilizations to respond to spikes in need in a timely and quality manner.

This experience allowed me to successfully manage two high-profile emergency responses in Syria during escalations of hostilities and considerable waves of displacements. With my team and implementing partners, we were able to reach more than one million individuals with protection assistance, pre-positioned food rations, NFIs, cash, and WaSH services, and to successfully navigate the complexity of reduced access, heightened security risks, and extreme operational environments.

At any given moment, I was managing at least fifteen projects across three donor grants, ranging from complicated emergency responses to cash-based interventions, and complex livelihoods and market development projects. Furthermore, at any given moment, the portfolio budget I managed was no less than eight million dollars.

In addition, I am a strong advocate of cash-based programming, attended many training on CASH including the Cash Learning Programme Training Level II and CaLP for Senior Managers, and conducted myself multiple technical training internally and with Partners.

In the projects and grants I have managed so far, I made sure to include Cash Based Interventions across all sectors from emergency and recovery responses to Protection, Livelihoods, and WASH. I have also managed programs with unconditional and conditional cash, vouchers, and everything in between.

Project Management:

My experience in project and program management for the past 8 years allows me to offer theoretical but also practical experience as an added value for this role, especially my experience in managing complex projects in conflict settings. By combining hands-on expertise in direct, implementing partner-led, remote, adaptive, and iterative projects I can offer a new and unique perspective on proposal writing and MEAL across different settings, projects, locations, challenges, and best practices.

Additionally, holding two globally accredited certificates in Project Management (PMP and PMDRo) gives me the needed technical skills to incorporate international standards and practices into this role.

I also hold an Access and Humanitarian Negotiation Degree from NRC and INSO. This certificate allowed me to gain the needed skillset to be able to assess and negotiate humanitarian access in conflict zones. I was able to use this skillset in my work especially in hard-to-reach and besieged communities in Syria.

Fundraising and Program Development:

Another key component of my career entailed developing large-scale proposals for Mercy Corps, IRC, and Norwegian People’s Aid. Over the past years, I’ve successfully completed proposals totaling more than 100 million USD across humanitarian, recovery, development, and civil society sectors.

Through this experience, I can effectively manage proposal writing processes that ensure all relevant departments and stakeholders complete their roles in the development of complex and long proposals.

Donor and Funding Landscape Expertise:

I’ve spent the past 10 years actively fundraising and developing funding strategies for donors including USAID, EU, FCDO, EC, UN, French MOFA, Norwegian MOFA, DANIDA, SIDA, DFATD, GFFO, Private donors, and others. This endeavor also allowed me to develop comprehensive understanding of the different donor compliance, complicated processes like cost-sharing and restricted goods procurement, as well as due diligence, data protection, and complex requirements in monitoring, reporting, modifications, and evaluations.

And finally, I hold a certificate in Building a Better Response, a training that focuses on humanitarian coordination structures and the integration of different humanitarian organizations (local and international) within this structure.