Katie Croake
Katie Croake is a program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at NDI. Based in Washington, DC, Katie manages the Institute’s Levant programs in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria and directs the Young Women Leaders Academy, which she started in 2007. Before joining NDI in 2006, Katie was a democracy and governance analyst at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) where she provided research and analysis to USAID policymakers and evaluated USAID programs around the world. Katie has also worked in the publishing industry, consulted for the World Bank, and taught social studies in Beirut, Lebanon. Katie earned a Master of International Public Affairs, with a concentration on post-conflict corruption in the Middle East, from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

Fatima Hadji

Fatima Hadji is a program officer with NDI’s Middle East and North Africa team. Before joining the Institute in 2006, Fatima worked with the Jennings Randolph Fellowship for International Peace program at the United States Institute of Peace and was also a tutor coach and participant there in an economic model for post-conflict strategic planning, known as S.E.N.S.E. Earlier, she was an assistant to the director at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, where she also taught. Fatima worked for a number of years at SunTrust Bank as a regional operations manager in Virginia and Maryland before making the jump to democracy and peace work. She has also taught and conducted workshops on leadership and empowerment for women in Washington, D.C. Fatima earned her B.A in Intercultural Communication and is completing an interdisciplinary Master’s degree with a focus on Middle East and North Africa, Conflict Analysis and Resolution. The final project for her thesis was on Islamic Sharia and the Family Law.

Lizzy Tomber
Lizzy Tomber is a senior program assistant with for the Middle East and North Africa at NDI. She focuses on the Levant region and the Young Women Leaders Academy. She joined NDI in 2007 after having spent a year in Egypt on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship where she completed graduate work in economics in international development at the American University in Cairo. While in Egypt, Lizzy conducted research on religious networks and alternative social service structures. Prior to this, she interned at Ashoka Arab World, the Middle East Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lizzy has also taught Arabic yoga at the Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota. During college, she traveled and volunteered in El Salvador, Morocco, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Appalachian-Kentucky. She earned a BA in Human Rights and International Studies from the University of Dayton. Lizzy speaks intermediate Arabic.