ArteEast is led by a dedicated nine-person board that brings a range of professional expertise to the organization, including nonprofit, arts, business management, marketing and law.
Ellen Brooks Shehata, President
Ellen Brooks Shehata is an Associate Banker in the private banking division of JPMorgan Chase, where she is responsible for managing Middle Eastern relationships and investment. She holds a degree in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master’s of International Affairs in International Finance and Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University. Prior to joining JPMorgan, Ellen worked for the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, in Cairo, Egypt, where she ran the U.S. Relations portfolio and founded the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Committee. She is a founding member of Policy Circle NYC and currently lives on the Upper West Side of New York City with her husband.
Hazam Gamal, Treasurer
Born in Cairo to an Egyptian father and American mother, Hazem spent the majority of his youth between Cairo and Beirut. Frequent travel early on inspired undergraduate studies in hotel management which took him across the US, China and Europe for the first decade of his career. An MBA from Thunderbird, The International School of Graduate Studies, in Phoenix helped him leverage his international living and work experience towards a new career in the financial services industry initially with American Express then for more than 15 years with OppenheimerFunds in various roles in New York.Hazem brings a broad interest in the arts and his deep organizational skills to the board of ArtEast where he hopes to share his experiences and interests to help continue the program’s reach and growth.
Katherine Precht, Secretary
Katherine Precht is a development professional currently at Friends Seminary and previously at the American University in Cairo who brings professional experience to support ArteEast development efforts.
Lena Diab
Lena Diab is an art collector and currently runs My Pick LLC, a New York-based company that identifies and promotes emerging labels in the ready-to-wear and fashion accessories space. Born and raised in Nazareth, Lena is a graduate of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Lena moved to the United States in 1994 and has lived in Washington, London and York City where she currently lives with her husband, Salah Saabneh, and her two children, Amir and Yara. Lena is an art enthusiast and collects art from around the world.
Angela Edens
Angela Edens is currently Executive Director, Strategy and Development for the JP Morgan Chase Compliance team. She has worked in process transformation and strategy roles since 2001, predominantly in financial services. Prior to JP Morgan Chase, she worked in Operations at CIT, Controllership at American Express and in the Engineering Process Improvement team at Motorola. During the same time, she also dabbled in real estate, was a professional musician, and provided cross-cultural business consulting within her family’s extended network. Angela moved to Cairo as a child and considered it her home base for the 17 years that her parents lived there. She appreciates the ability of the arts to build connections and bridge cultural barriers. She has enjoyed supporting the ArteEast residency program by hosting many of ArteEast artists-in-residents at her Brooklyn home.
Osman Khan
Osman Khan is one of the co-founders of and the Chief Operating Officer for Paddle8, the leading online auction house. Since Paddle8’s inception in 2011, Osman has overseen day-to-day management of the company, including all of its internal operations and business development, as well as helped develop and manage the company’s proprietary infrastructure and processes around bidding, fulfillment, logistics and client service. Osman also co-manages all of the Company’s benefit collaborations. Osman’s primary expertise is in organizational development and change, operations/logistics, and strategic and financial advisory. Prior to Paddle8, Osman held 10+ of professional services experience across management consulting and investment banking. From 2009-2011, he helped launch and co-manage the Private Capital group for the New York boutique investment bank, Perella Weinberg Partner as well as held a role in the M&A Advisory group, working on transactions in the media, telecom and financial institutions sectors. From 2006-2007, Osman served as a financial technologies banker at Goldman Sachs and prior to that was a management consultant with various firms. Osman started his professional career as an operations associate for the United States Postal Service evaluating procedures and technologies for optimizing mail routes through the United States. Osman holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Masters of Industrial Engineering, Bachelors of Economics and a Bachelors of Science and Education from Northwestern University. As an avid cook, Osman holds the Diplôme de Cuisine from the Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris and spent six months as a sous chef in-training at various restaurants throughout UK and France. Osman is fluent in Urdu and Arabic and has basic proficiency in French.
Tarek Khanachet
Tarek Khanachet practices as an attorney at Covington & Burling LLP, where he advises clients across a broad range of complex international regulatory, government affairs and corporate matters focused on Turkey, the Middle East and Gulf States. Tarek was previously an archaeologist and a Supervisor at the Brown University Petra Great Temple Excavations in Petra, Jordan. Tarek received his A.B. in Old World Archaeology and Art from Brown University, his M.A. in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and his J.D. from New York University School of Law. He is currently a member of the New York City Bar Middle Eastern and North African Affairs Committee, and a member of the NYU Law Alumni Association Board.
Carole Marshi
Carole Marshi is an art collector and prominent member of the Lebanese American community.
Karim Mostafa
An Egyptian-American philanthropist who is a doctoral candidate in Reading, Writing, and Literacy at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. While working to complete his dissertation on the interplay of text and image in Arabic and Arab-American children’s picture books, he has been assisting in teaching a course at Penn on Multicultural Issues in Education for three years. Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Karim worked in New York City for nine years as a journalist and an elementary public school teacher. From 1997 – 2002, Karim reported on the online newspaper industry as Associate Editor of Editor & Publisher Online, the online edition of Editor & Publisher magazine. From 2002-2006, he was a New York City Teaching Fellow, requiring him to teach grades 4-6 in Spanish Harlem and to complete a Masters in Elementary Education at Hunter College in 2004. For his undergraduate degree, Karim studied Near Eastern Languages & Civilization, focusing on medieval Islamic thought, at the University of Chicago (1995). Since 2006, Karim has been an active board member participating in the management of Nimos Engineering & Agricultural Development Co., (Cairo, Egypt), while studying at University of Pennsylvania. As an Egyptian-American who has lived in both Egypt and North America, each for 20 years, Karim now divides his time between residences in Cairo and New York City.
Susan Peters
Susan Peters is a former ArteEast board president and the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA). Susan has a long history in nonprofit management and development, as well as in the MENA region. Prior to rejoining ABANA in 2010, where she had also been executive director from 2000-05, she was Executive Director to the Board of King’s Academy, where she led strategic planning, development and policy for a new coeducational boarding school outside of Amman, Jordan. She has lived in Egypt and Jordan, as well as in Morocco, where she was assistant director of the Arabic Language Institute in Fez from 1994 to 1997. Susan has been a development consultant to several nonprofit organizations and universities in New York City. She was a founding board member and is a former president of ArteEast, a New York-based nonprofit organization that promotes the contemporary arts of the Middle East, and serves on the boards of a private company and foundation. A Wisconsin native, Susan holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was a fellow at the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo and completed language studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Middlebury College and the Arabic Language Institute in Fez.
