Our Team

Mr. Nassar earned his undergraduate degree from Bethlehem University (Palestine) in Information Systems and Business Administration in 2010.  He earned his Master’s Degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA) in 2014.  As the fourth generation of the Nassar family, Mr. Nassar was deeply involved in his family’s educational farm, Tent of Nations, in Palestine, including education, communication and social media.  In 2014, he founded the Nakba Museum Project, where he developed the concept, worked with artists, prepared artwork and exhibits, negotiated exhibit space, coordinated the setup of the exhibits in locations across the country, and raised funds.

Farshid Hakimyar was born and raised in Afghanistan. He lives and works in Northern Virginia, United States. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations and a master’s degree in strategic conflict resolution and peacebuilding. He is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Snow Leopard Traders, where he invests and trades on global macro economy. He is co-founder of the Farsi Institute. Mr. Hakimyar is chairman of the board of Museum of the Palestinian People. Mr. Hakimyar is an independent analyst on global politics and global macroeconomy. He writes and frequently appears on television news.

Mr. Nizar Farsakh is a trainer focusing on leadership, advocacy and negotiations. He worked for two years at the Project On Middle East Democracy in DC building the advocacy capacity of Arab CSOs and before that he was the General Director of the PLO Delegation in Washington DC for two years. Between 2003-2008 he was advising senior Palestinian leaders including the President, the Prime Minister and various ministries. Nizar holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Masters in International Boundary Studies from King’s College London. He is currently involved in several non-violence initiatives in Palestine/Israel and the US.

Dr.. Fakhira Halloun is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who recently received her Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Her doctorate specialty is in Ethnic Identity, Power, and Narrative. Her Ph.D. research focuses on the collective identity of Palestinian citizens of Israel and their discourse of struggle to achieve their collective rights. Fakhira has acquired considerable professional experience in conflict transformation, and specializes in facilitating dialogue between mixed groups in conflict involved in cultural, political and social issues in a variety of settings. She served as a board member for Mossawa Center, The Advocacy Center for the Palestinian Citizens in Israel and worked for several years in the Center for the Advancement of Shared Citizenship in Israel.

From 2012-2015 Fakhira worked on the design and coordination of “Leaders for Democracy Fellowship” (LDF) – USA program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and implemented by Syracuse University (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs). Once a year, this program brought civil and political leaders from the Middle East to the United States for three months to provide them with academic and practical experience in civic society, leadership, and conflict resolution. Fakhira holds a B.A. in social work and an M.Sc. in criminology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Mr. Amir Mesarwi is a reformed consultant with more than a decade of non-profit finance experience, most recently as the Sr. Director of Finance at the Association of American Medical Colleges. Prior to that, he spent six years consulting across the manufacturing, non-profit and financial services sectors helping leadership solve their most pressing business challenges. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from New York University. His passions extend to the community through his role on MIT’s Educational Council, as a mentor within his organization, coach of his daughter’s soccer team and board member of his HOA. He appreciates the arts and can often be found taking his three daughters to various museums in the Washington DC area.

Ruba Marshood is a Palestinian-American community leader with over 15 years of international development and non-profit experience. She has worked with global and local agencies, ranging from the United Nations to small organizations in different parts of the world, cultivating community collaboration and advancing social justice and equity.  Currently, as Director of Partnerships and Community Engagement with the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia, Ruba fosters strategic relationships with other nonprofit, civic, government and corporate entities. She has served on various committees focused on the needs of the underserved in the region, including her appointment to the Alexandria City Public School 2025 Strategic Planning Committee, Alexandria City’s COVID-19 Community Response Advisory Committee, and the Fairfax County Community Partnership Strategy Team, of which she is a co-lead. She is Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the non-profit Montessori School of Northern Virginia and an alumna of the Princeton AlumniCorps’ Emerging Leaders program. She was recently named a Northern Virginia 2021 “40 Under 40 Winner” by Leadership Center for Excellence and Leadership Fairfax. Ruba received her BSc from University of Maryland and her MA from Duke University. A published photographer, lover of dance and food, Ruba’s greatest joy is hearing her children laugh and watching them proudly embrace their Palestinian heritage.

Melissa is a member of MPP’s board and highly skilled tax controversy and litigation attorney with 20 years of experience in a wide range of civil tax matters at the federal and state level. An actuary by training, Melissa is relentlessly detail-oriented and thorough, without losing the ability to see the bigger picture. She is also deeply committed to pro bono service, representing children and caretakers in the District of Columbia in custody and abuse/neglect matters.

Steve Benzek is passionate about helping address injustice (and living just a block from the Museum), Steve was delighted to be taken up on his offer to provide an improved map of the Palestinian diaspora. He’s also happy to have created MPP’s Virtual Museum by applying map-making and software skills developed during a career of humanitarian assistance planning for the Department of Defense and in academia.

Steve is an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Geospatial Information Systems teaching cartography at the University of Redlands and a retired GIS Developer and cartographer who worked the Army Geospatial Center of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Alexandria, VA.  His projects included overseeing imagery collection missions in Africa, the Overseas Humanitarian Assistance Shared Information System (OHASIS) for managing and analyzing worldwide humanitarian programs.

He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from Marymount University in Arlington, VA.

Julia Pitner studied art before switching to history and political science, focusing on the mashreq area, specifically Palestine. Before joining MPP, she lived in Palestine working with human rights, media and civil society organizations and spent time in several refugee camps in Lebanon doing the same. In 2018, as Executive Director of the Institute of Palestine Studies, she worked with the curator of the inaugural exhibit of MPP.  She has also published and presented lectures on Palestine history, politics, and culture. 

Wafa Ghnaim is a Palestinian researcher, author and educator who began learning embroidery from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, when she was two years old. Her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2018), documents the traditional patterns and stories passed on to her by her mother. Wafa has since become a leading educator in the field of Levantine embroidery and textile art history, as the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum, Curator for the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C., and most recently, Senior Research Fellow for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wafa continues her mother’s educational legacy through The Tatreez Institute (Tatreez & Tea), a global arts education initiative she began in 2016 teaching courses in Palestinian embroidery and lecturing at leading institutions, museums and universities around the world. Wafa has since been featured in major media outlets, recently in Vogue Magazine, naming her and her mother “the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”.

Ms. Rula Dughman, founder and director of Bab idDeir Art Gallery in Bethlehem,  for the last four years she was responsible for organizing more than 15 exhibitions and art projects promoting Palestinian art and artists, partnering with local and regional cultural organizations.  In addition to that, she worked as an Independent curator at Birzeit University Museum. Between the years 2000-2015, she had worked in many local and international organizations in many managerial and capacity development positions.

 She earned her Master degree in communication from Sterling University, Scotland. Between 2016-2019  she attended  many art courses at Sotheby’s and the School of Art Institute – Chicago.

Mohammed El-Khatib is a web developer with the Smithonian’s National Zoo and brings over ten years of experience building websites and applications for a number of high profile clients in the DC metro area. A Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, Mohammed moved to the US from Beirut in 1999 before becoming a US citizen in 2004. As the museum’s volunteer coordinator, Mohammed is passionate about advancing the Museum’s role as a community platform and participation hub.

Mohammed holds an MA in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University and a BA in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Mr. Christopher Clarke, Ph.D., is recently retired from a thirty-five-year career in the museum field. For the final 20 years of this career, he worked as a freelance consultant to museums across the Northeastern US; he also spent the 2013-14 academic year at Syracuse University, teaching full-time as a Visiting Professor of Practice in the Museum Studies graduate program. Since 2010, Christopher has served as the consulting administrative director of a philanthropic initiative that supports community-scale water and environment projects in the West Bank via local and regional NGOs.

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-25. Her poems appear in a number of literary journals, webzines, and anthologies, and her full-length poetry collection, Some Things Never Leave You, was published in July 2023 by Tiger Bark Press. Zeina’s chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, was released in 2021 by The Poetry Box. She has collaborated with visual artists in art-poetry exhibitions and her poem, “You Birth the Seeds,” was set as a choral piece by the renowned composer Melissa Dunphy. Zeina is also a mentor for We Are Not Numbers, a writing program for youth in Gaza. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University, an M.A. in sociology from George Mason University, and a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

Mrs. Roberta Schwartz, Founder of The Persuasive Pen, is a professional grant writer and editor with considerable experience in the arts, social services and healthcare. Since 1995, she has provided grant-writing services, project oversight and implementation, and advocacy
for nonprofit organizations. She has also served as Assistant Director of Foundation Relations for the University of Rochester Medical Center and as an Institutional Grants Manager at the Strong Museum. Roberta holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History from Vassar College and a Master’s of Philosophy in Art History (American Art and Architecture) from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Roberta was a visitor to one of MPP’s traveling exhibits years ago and, as an American Jew, was greatly moved to discover Palestinian stories for the first time. This compelled her to join our team and contribute her to work towards bringing authentic Palestinian stories for the world to hear.