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Meet Dana Erekat MCP '09
Dana is a Palestinian American architect and planner. She holds a Bachelor`s of Art in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley (2001) and a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2009). She has a passion for photography, arts, and baking sweets!
Dana was born in Kuwait, and grew up between Kuwait, the US, and Palestine. In keeping with her transatlantic spirit, Dana has so far spent her professional life also in the US, Kuwait, Palestine, and Jordan, where she has focused her career on human rights, economic development, poverty alleviation, and strategic planning in the Middle East.
She previously served as the Special Advisor to the Minister of Planning in Palestine on aid management and donors’ relations where she managed a ten-person team coordinating the portfolio of one billion US dollars in humanitarian and development funding between public institutions and international organizations, including varying branches of the UN. Dana’s previous positions also include consultancies with the Palestinian Museum, the Welfare Association, and PADICO Holding in Palestine. She also worked with the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa region Sustainable Development Department in Washington DC where sheco-authored the report The Grain Chain: Food Security and Managing Wheat Imports in Arab Countries, as part of a regional food security study. Prior to her career in international development, Dana worked for seven years as an architect in San Francisco and Kuwait.
Dana is a Munich Young Leader Alumna, an MIT Humphrey SPURS fellow and was a Research Fellow at the Kenyon Institute in 2016 in Jerusalem where her research focused on planning and development in conflict areas.She is the author of several publications on international development and urban planning. Dana’s photography series Borders Crossing Bodies has been exhibited in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and North America. She currently resides between Jordan and Palestine where she consults with non-profits and international organizations on sustainable development, fundraising, and economic development.