Sara Habachi

Head of MENA Programmes

Sara Habachi is Head of MENA Programmes at GPG. She has 14 years of experience in the political, development, gender, and governance fields as both an implementer and funder. She has worked with parliaments, political parties, electoral campaigns, private companies, NGOs, and private and public funders.

Sara was previously at Porticus, a family philanthropy, where she managed the peacebuilding, civic engagement, democratic governance, and gender programmes in MENA. In this role, she oversaw grants on topics ranging from freedom of expression and information integrity, widening civic spaces for inclusive participatory democracy, funding global south knowledge generation, and transitional justice.

Prior to this, Sara worked at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy as Senior Programme Manager in MENA starting in London before moving to head up the office in Amman. Before this, Sara worked on local governance programmes in Syria for Integrity Research, for the British Council in London and Tunisia, and for the Women’s Centre for Legal aid in Palestine. She started her career in Westminster where she worked for two UK Members of Parliament. Sara holds an MA in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict from Birkbeck, University of London.