Hatem Salama
Program Officer, Middle East and North Africa
Hatem Salama is a program officer in the foundation’s Cairo office. His grantmaking focuses on supporting arts, culture and media in the Middle East and North Africa. Hatem comes to Ford with 20 years of experience working for international organizations to support arts and culture across the region. Since 2014, Hatem has been supporting the sector through MitOst e.V., based in Berlin, where he acted as project manager and program advisor, and, before that, as project manager at Centre Rézodanse Egypte in Alexandria.
He has firsthand experience in creative production, technical direction and fundraising. He was the technical director for Nassim al-Raqs Festival in Alexandria from 2011 to 2013.
Throughout his career, he has a history of building bridges of trust and respect, nurturing relationships within the cultural sector and the wider civic space, and supporting inventive approaches and ecosystems to create change through culture in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and beyond.
Hatem has a bachelor degree in theater history, acting and directing from Alexandria University’s Faculty of Arts, and received training in cultural management at the Goethe Institute. He speaks Arabic and English fluently and has a strong knowledge of French and basic knowledge of German.