Director of AJC Sidney Lerner Center Arab-Jewish Understanding, Center

About AJC

American Jewish Committee (AJC) is the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people. We create trusted partnerships with leaders around the world to ensure Jews and Israel are safe and thriving. With an unparalleled reach spanning six continents, AJC engages leaders in more than 110 countries through 40 offices and dozens of partnerships with Jewish communities worldwide. Wherever the Jewish people and Israel need us, AJC is there—empowering leaders in government, education, partner communities, and the private sector to counter antisemitism and act as allies.

The challenges we face are global. AJC is leading the global response. Join us.

AJC’s Center for a New Middle East (CNME) utilizes AJC’s unparalleled global advocacy network to foster deeper diplomatic, economic, and civic ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors. It builds upon AJC’s historic success in cultivating trust and opening doors to all levels of government across the Arab world. Drawing upon the relationships AJC has nurtured since its initial visits to Morocco in the 1950s, and expanded since the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, AJC pursues programs across three principal sectors: diplomacy, business, and civil society.

AJC actively promotes U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and its full integration in the Middle East and North Africa, regional business collaboration, and interfaith dialogue to advance Israeli‑Arab understanding. This holistic approach, combined with AJC’s global architecture—with 15 international posts, including offices in Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi, and a range of government contacts and communal partners around the world—uniquely positions the Center to advance AJC’s policy and institutional agendas.

By bringing together decades of trust, international architecture, and multifaceted programs, the Center for a New Middle East can do things that no other organization can accomplish. The Center will have the power to convene the best and brightest from across the world to build bridges, shape policies, and instill the hope needed to truly create a new Middle East.

Incumbents in this position provide leadership, management and vision to AJC Abu Dhabi:
The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab‑Jewish Understanding in carrying out the initiatives and work of the organization. The Director ensures that AJC’s interests are appropriately represented in the Gulf regions, and that AJC is the "go‑to" Jewish communal organization for the governments, foreign ministries and thought leaders therein. This position makes an impact at AJC by planning, overseeing, and developing work with significant impact on the organization’s mission and goals;

including managing a country regional office and staff team. It offers significant latitude to solve complex problems and make strategically important decisions impacting the department. The Director also helps support AJC CNME’s mission and operations by fundraising and friend‑raising directly for the department/institute and for AJC at large.

Promote AJC’s mission and programs as they relate to strengthening diplomatic, economic and civil society relations between Israel and the Arab world; in particular, promoting Emirati and Bahraini bilateral relations with Israel and attitudes toward Israel; and leading AJC’s efforts throughout the region to counter antisemitism, radicalism, and extremism. The Director serves as a front‑line observer, analyst, and voice on Gulf regional strategic affairs of concern to AJC.

The Director is responsible for, and is the public face of, AJC’s— and, specifically, CNME’s— advocacy and programming efforts in the region. The Director is responsible for all matters relating to execution of AJC’s mission in alignment with the priorities and strategic plan of CNME in the region, and the operations of the assigned office(s).

• Cultivate meaningful and long‑term relationships with senior government officials, rising political figures, business and civil society leaders, and other thought and policy leaders and influencers, including diplomats from the U.S. and relevant…