Merissa Khurma is nonresident fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University. She served as program director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center (2018-2025). She has leadership experience in strategy building and strategic communications, working in a range of projects in the Middle East, North Africa, West Africa that focused on economic development, the refugee crisis, education, youth, women’s rights and labor force participation and governance. Khurma was a Jordanian diplomat, serving as director of the Office of Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein (2010- 2013) and as press attaché and director of the Information Bureau at the Embassy of Jordan in Washington, D.C. (2003-2010). Khurma has a master of public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, a master of science in international security and foreign policy from Georgetown University, and a bachelor of art in political science from McGill University. She was adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service focusing on leadership.
Jordan’s Economy Weathers Iran War’s Shocks and Finds New Opportunities
In the summer of 2003, King Abdullah II told Bloomberg Jordan sits “between Iraq and a hard place,” a play on words designed to describe the kingdom’s challenging environment to an American audience amid the US-led Iraq war to the east and the lingering Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the west. Jordan is grappling with a much “harder place” today.
