Leadership
Hassan Damluji
Head of Middle East Relations
Hassan is an expert in international development, education reform, and organizational strategy. As Head of Middle East Relations at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation he is responsible for the foundation’s Middle East strategy across program areas, as well as serves as the lead Middle East adviser to Bill and Melinda Gates.
Examples of work within the Middle East portfolio include creating a large development financing facility in collaboration with the Islamic Development Bank, agriculture research to improve food security across the Arab World, and polio eradication in several countries, in partnership with Gulf donors.
Prior to joining the foundation, Hassan designed and implemented large-scale transformations for governments and philanthropy in the Middle East and the UK, both as a manager in McKinsey & Company and through establishing and leading non-profit organizations. Examples of his work include radically upgrading the school system in Pakistan, building a new vocational education system for Saudi Arabia, and designing a national job creation strategy for Yemen.
In the UK, as COO and Head of Strategy at New Schools Network, Hassan played a key role in the introduction of Free Schools (equivalent to Charter Schools in the US), as well as in improving the provision of disability education as COO of the national school support network, Achievement for All.
Hassan is an adviser to a number of non-profit institutions, including Achievement for All, Injaz, the Education for Employment Foundation, and Al Fanar, and is currently in the process of establishing a Free School to serve deprived children in North West London. The One Degree Academy has been approved by the UK government for opening in 2016.
Hassan earned his BA in Classics and Arabic from the University of Oxford and his MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.
