Sally Abi Khalil
Middle East and North Africa Regional Director
Oxfam
About
Sally Abi Khalil is a humanitarian and development leader with over two decades of experience across the Middle East and North Africa. She serves as Regional Director for MENA at Oxfam.
Her work focuses on advancing feminist leadership, localization, and more equitable and accountable models of aid. She has led responses to major crises, including the Syria crisis, the Beirut port explosion, the COVID-19 pandemic, regional conflicts, and earthquakes, while overseeing multi-country portfolios across humanitarian, development, and influencing mandates. She has also contributed to rethinking organizational models, exploring more adaptive, networked, and decolonial approaches. Across her work, she seeks to shift power and decision-making closer to affected communities.
Sally’s career has evolved alongside major waves of political transformation in the Arab region. Across roles in international organizations and civil society, she has worked to expand civic space, support democratic participation, and advance locally rooted approaches to leadership and social change.
Her recent work engages the intersection of artificial intelligence, governance, and inequality, bringing a feminist and decolonial lens to how technologies shape power and accountability, particularly in the Global South.
She is a Senior Fellow at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut, a 2020 Yale World Fellow, a 2023 Fisher Family Fellow at Stanford University, and a 2006 Chevening Scholar. She holds an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and a BA and MA in Political Studies from the American University of Beirut.