Board of Directors

Dany Assaf’s practice focuses on competition and antitrust, in both domestic and international matters, as well as on foreign investment review. He acts for Canadian and international clients, advising on all aspects of competition law and foreign investment matters and has been involved in many of Canada’s highest profile transactions and investigations. Dany has been recognized as a leading expert in the areas of competition law and foreign investment law. He is also a co-founder and instructor of the inaugural Islamic Finance course as part of the Executive Programs at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Dany has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Western Ontario and has served as an associate editor of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Magazine. Dany is a member of the Board of the Canadian Club of Toronto and formerly represented a prior firm at the Canada-Arab Business Council.

Dr. Mohammad H. Fadel is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.

Dr. Adel Guitouni is an associate professor of management sciences, operations research and decision support systems at the Gustavson School of Business. Between 1998 and 2012, Dr. Guitouni worked as defence scientist for the Canadian Department of National Defence where he directed large scientific teams involved in significant events and strategic initiatives such as the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and G8/G20 summits, and a variety of R&D projects for the Canadian Forces.  His research interests include the automation of planning and scheduling, net-enabled dynamic resource management and supply chain management, classification and machine learning, multiple criteria decision analysis, multi-objective optimization, collaborative decision making, and decision support systems.  Through his research, Adel's goal is to help improve the decision-making process at the individual and corporate level. Through his entrepreneurship and leadership project work, he hopes to empower youth and leaders by giving them the tools to change their world.  Adel serves as adjunct professors with different universities. 

Dr. Walid Hejazi is an Associate Professor of Business Economics, and Academic Director, at the Rotman School of Management where he teaches Canada’s current and future business leaders in the MBA, EMBA, and custom Executive programs. Walid has developed a course in Islamic Finance in the MBA program at the University of Toronto, the first such course in Canada. He has published extensively in many academic and business journals. Walid balances his research activities by helping many of Canada’s leading organizations leverage research to develop and deploy new strategies and initiatives. He has consulted for the Canadian and foreign governments on themes related to international competitiveness and has appeared several times before parliamentary committees. He is currently working to enhance the Rotman presence in the Middle East, and has been working closely with Mubadala, an arm of the Abu Dhabi government on Training.

In addition to her work in client relations and business development at Blake, Cassels and Graydon LLP, Ban Kattan runs a consultancy focused on art and culture research and translation focused on bridging the knowledge transfer process between the English language and then West and the Arab World. Ban Kattan’s areas of interest cover issues of human and institutional capacity building, sustainable development, women empowerment, and art in the Middle East. Her translations have been published by various academic, cultural and art foundations in the region. 

Hala Khayyat is the Business Development Director of International Initiatives at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP (Blakes). Blakes is one of Canada’s top business law firms and has offices across Canada as well as London, New York, Bahrain, Al-Khobar, Riyadh and Beijing. Hala works closely with members of the Blakes partnership to develop and implement marketing and business development strategies and activities to support the firm's international client base and its various initiatives in other parts of the world including Africa, Australia, Europe, India and Latin America.

Dr. Bessma Momani is an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and Senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI). She has been a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Mortara Center, and at the Amman Institute in Jordan. She has authored and co-edited over six books and over 55 scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters that have examined the IMF, the World Bank, petrodollars, regional trade agreements in the Middle East and economic liberalization throughout the Arab Gulf & the Middle East. Dr. Momani has received a number of Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council awards and prizes for her research on global economic governance & political economy of the Middle East. Dr. Momani has been a public commentator and analyst on the Global Economy, Middle East and the Arab Spring. She is a regular contributor to CBC radio and is a Middle East analyst on CTV News, CBC’s The National, Al-Jazeera English, Bloomberg TV, BNN and TVOs the Agenda. She has also published numerous op-eds on the Arab Spring in Canadian & international news outlets as well maintaining her own blogs on the Huffington Post, Open Canada, and CIGI.

Abdullah Snobar is the Executive Director of the DMZ at Ryerson University, a world-leading tech accelerator that helps Canada’s top tech startups grow to world-class businesses. He leads a team that is passionate about helping Canada’s most promising startups scale their business and create innovative technology that changes lives.  His expertise has landed him coverage in both print and broadcast publications, which include BNN, The Globe and Mail, Financial Post and CBC Radio. Abdullah has played a pivotal role in nurturing up-and-coming Canadian talent and boosting entrepreneurship from coast to coast. He holds a B.Comm. and MBA degree from Ryerson University.

Ziad Said is a partner in KPMG’s Financial Institutions and Real Estate Practice. He has over 12 years experience auditing and advising financial institutions in Canada. He attended the University of Western Ontario where he obtained his Bachelor of Science degree (math) then went to the University of Toronto to pursue his CA requirements.