With a mix of gratitude and sadness, The Maghreb Economic Forum family announces that our Secretary General Her Excellency Dr. Amel Karboul will be leaving our organization as she has outlined in her farewell letter yesterday.

We can never thank her enough for the six years of dedicated service. Since joining in 2015, Amel has injected new life in MEF and played an extraordinary role in its revival. She boosted MEF development by connecting and building strong relationships with leading global foundations and partners. As Secretary-General, she was a great source of inspiration and of quality leadership to the team. Her departure is a great loss to MEF.

To assure continuity, the MEF is so delighted to confirm Ms. Lilia Hachem Naas as the new Secretary-General. Her altruistic career spans almost three decades throughout which she had held many key positions at very reputable organizations.

      She is currently Chief Office for the Arab States at the International Trade Centre in Geneva. From 2017 to 2019, she served as Director North Africa Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa based in Rabat, Morocco. Lilia has extensive experience in economic transformation, strengthening partnerships, implementing sustainable development goals, designing development strategies, working with the public and the private sector as well as civil society to ensure inclusiveness and sustainability.

She has been extremely active in the MENA region and particularly in Maghreb countries where she coordinated and managed several technical assistance programs to enhance regional integration, promote private sector development, and ensure employment creation in particular for women and youth.

She has previously held many other leadership roles within and outside the United Nations organization, where she was involved in supporting developing and least developed countries to use trade, investment, finance, and technology as vehicles for inclusive and sustainable development, and providing innovative learning solutions to enhance country-level decision-making and support actions by local authorities for shaping a better future.

She has an MBA in International Management and an MS in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has a bachelor’s degree from “Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (IHEC)”, Carthage, Tunisia. She is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, and Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship

In her free time, she loves walking, reading, discovering places, and meeting people.