Tarek Zeidan

Tarek is a sexual and bodily rights activist from Beirut, Lebanon advocating for the rights and protection of LGBTI individuals and groups in the MENA region. He is the executive director of Helem, the first LGBTI rights organization in the Arab World, founded in Beirut in 2004. He was an ELI fellow at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership and an emerging human rights fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. Tarek has previously worked as director of communications and strategic planning for the MENA region at both the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He obtained his MPA in human rights law and advocacy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.