Aboubakr Jamai

Aboubakr Jamaï is the founder and editor of the Moroccan weekly magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire. Jamaï began his career in finance, co-founding Morocco's first independent investment bank in 1993. After two years advising international emerging market funds with holdings in North Africa, the company, Upline Securities, became the first Moroccan-based bank ever selected to manage a privatization project in Morocco. In 1996, M. Jamaï joined the Executive Secretariat of the Middle East and North Africa Economic Summit as a financial and economic adviser. This organization was set up by the sponsors of the Middle East peace process to foster economic cooperation in the region.

He co-founded Le Journal and Assahifa in 1997 and 1998. Since 2008, he is visiting Scholar at the University of San Diego where he teaches courses on Political Islam and Politics in The Middle East. His articles were published in The New York Times, Time Magazine, El Pais, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique.

Aboubakr Jamaï won the Committee To Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2003. In January 2008, he won the first Newhouse School of communication at Syracuse University’s “Tully Center Free Speech Award”. In December 2010, he won the Gebran Tueni Award, the annual prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

Jamaï has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader for 2005. He was a Yale World Fellow in 2004 at Yale University. He was a Nieman Fellow in 2007 at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and a Mason Fellow in 2008 at Harvard University. M. Jamaï holds a Master of Business Administration from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School.