Mariam A. Nawabi

Mariam A. Nawabi is an attorney, social entrepreneur, and activist. She is General Counsel and Strategic & Business Development Director for AMDi Inc., and a Founding Member of the Afghanistan Advocacy Group, which is a national network of Americans who wish to engage in dialogue with policymakers regarding development and security in Afghanistan. She has experience in the legal, diplomatic, business, and civil society sectors.

She served as Senior Advisor to the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce and Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce from February 2006 until April of 2007. From January 2004 to January 2006, she worked at the Embassy of Afghanistan, serving as Commercial & Trade Counsel.

She was actively involved in promoting investment to Afghanistan and market development in Afghanistan. She launched the Afghanistan Business Gateway, an online source of information on business and investment in Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Business Dialogue, a series of ongoing seminars with the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, and facilitated numerous investments by U.S. companies in Afghanistan, joint ventures, and export of Afghan products to the U.S. and other markets. Her work on private sector and economic development has been covered by the World Bank, PBS, and newspaper publications.

Mariam is an attorney who worked in private practice at Dechert LLP in Washington, D.C. from 1999 until 2003. Her focus was commercial litigation, intellectual property, and international business law. In February 2002, she was selected to serve as a member of the U.N's Legal Affairs Working Group for Afghanistan. Mariam's focus was women's rights in the new constitution. In May 2003, Mariam traveled to Afghanistan to meet with women leaders, organizations and members of the Constitutional Commission regarding approaches to women's rights in the new constitution.

Mariam was a leading force behind commercial and legal reform in Afghanistan post-Taliban. She served as the Coordinating Attorney for the Afghanistan Commercial Law Project, sponsored by the Center for International Management Education and the Asia Law Initiative of the American Bar Association. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of several nonprofit organizations engaged in capacity building efforts in Afghanistan, including the American University Foundation of Afghanistan, Aschiana Foundation, and Nooristan Foundation.

Mariam is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., cum laude 1999), where she served on the editorial board of Law and Policy in International Business and of George Mason University (B.A., International Studies, summa cum laude, 1995), where she was a recipient of the Peat-Marwick, Datatel and John C. Wood scholarships and a White House intern.