Said Tayeb jawad
H.E. Said Tayeb Jawad served as ambassador of Afghanistan to the United States from 2003 to 2010. He also served as Afghanistan’s non-resident ambassador to Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.
Ambassador Jawad returned to Afghanistan after Sept. 11 to assist in the state-building process, where he played a versatile and crucial role as President Hamid Karzai’s press secretary and chief of staff and director of the Office of International Relations. In these positions, Ambassador Jawad formulated and managed strategies, implemented policies, assisted in the building and re-building of national institutions including the Afghan National Army and brought about major reforms in Afghanistan, notably to the Ministry of Defense.
Ambassador Jawad currently serves as chairman of the Foundation for Afghanistan, a nonprofit organization that focuses on increasing human capacity and intercultural dialogue in Afghanistan, and chief executive officer of Capitalize LLC, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in investments in Afghanistan and the greater Gulf region.
Additionally, Ambassador Jawad is an active leader in the academic community. He recently joined the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government as the inaugural Fisher Family Fellow and was named diplomat in residence at the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University. In both of these capacities, he engages students and colleagues in a number of forums and public speaking events on the future of Afghanistan.
Ambassador Jawad was educated at the Afghan French Lycée Esteqial and School of Law and Political Sciences at Kabul University and later at Westfaelische Wilhelms University in Muenster, Germany. He earned his Master of Business Administration from the Golden Gate University in San Francisco and subsequently worked for a number of prominent law firms in the United States.