Stefanie Hausheer Ali is nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, focusing on Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Entrepreneurship, Women, Economy and Business, Politics & Diplomacy. Stefanie is also a Director at Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC based in Washington, D.C. where she manages the firm’s clients who are interested in expanding their businesses in key international markets such as the Middle East, China, Europe, and Latin America.

Stefanie is a Middle East specialist and worked at the Atlantic Council from 2013 to 2023 before joining RHGM. She was most recently the deputy director of empowerME at the Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East; this initiative focuses on shaping innovative investments to empower entrepreneurs, women, and the private sector in the Middle East. At the Council, Stefanie co-founded and managed the WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship for women entrepreneurs, a new collaboration between the Atlantic Council and Georgetown University funded by the U.S. Department of State, PepsiCo, and UPS launched in Saudi Arabia in 2022. Stefanie also co-founded and produced the empowerME Conversations podcast featuring top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and government officials in the Middle East.

Stefanie’s past work at the Council includes serving as project manager for: the Iraq Initiative; the Middle East Strategy Task Force co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley; and the Task Force on the Future of Iraq chaired by Ambassador Ryan Crocker. At the Council, Stefanie planned and managed hundreds of virtual and in-person events in Washington, D.C., Europe, and the Middle East with business executives as well as senior foreign and US government officials. She also staffed VIP delegation trips to Egypt, Germany, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Stefanie was formerly a research fellow with the King Salman Center for Local Governance in Riyadh where she studied the impact of Saudi Arabia’s recent higher education initiatives. She was also a graduate research assistant at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies.

Stefanie holds a master’s degree in Middle East Studies from George Washington University where she won the Dean’s Academic Excellence Award for one of the top GPAs in the Elliott School of International Affairs. She graduated summa cum laude with a dual bachelor’s degree in political science and Italian studies from Saint Louis University, where she was a Presidential Scholar. She is proficient in Arabic and Italian.