Yossef Ben-Meir

Yossef Ben-Meir "has nearly twenty years experience in international development, specializing in participatory development and community planning. He served in Morocco as an Associate Peace Corps Director (1998-1999), managing the environment program, and as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1993-1995), helping to establish socio-economic and environmental projects in communities that border Toubkal National Park. In 2000, he co-founded the High Atlas Foundation and has since served as President, overseeing an eighteen member international Board of Directors, and providing strategic vision for program development. Yossef has published articles in approximately thirty countries on the subject of international development, with a particular focus on the Middle East. He joined the faculty of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco in August 2009, where he teaches sociology and comparative political systems. Yossef holds a PhD in sociology from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2009), where his research concentrated on comparative development, education, gender, and race; a MA in International Development from Clark University (1997); and a BA in economics from New York University (1991). In 2004 he was the recipient of an International Excellence Award from the University of New Mexico; he is a former research fellow of the American Institute of Maghrib Studies (2001-2002), and a 1999 recipient of the Meritorious Honor Award from the Department of State."