Azza Karam

Azza Karam (born 1968) is an Egyptian professor and author who pioneered the United Nations' work linking religion with sustainable development. A senior advisor at UNDP and UNFPA for over a decade, she founded the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Development in 2010, and in 2019 she was elected the first woman, first Muslim and first North African secretary general of Religions for Peace, serving until her resignation in July 2023. She is professor of religion and development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an affiliate professor at Notre Dame's Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. ^{1 2}

Karam grew up in Egypt and India, in a conservative Egyptian Muslim family; her father was a diplomat, and the family travelled frequently. She has said that watching her parents pray and her Hindu nanny's puja as a child sparked her interest in religion and religious collaboration. She earned a BA in economics and business administration from the American University in Cairo in 1988, an MA from the International Institute of Social Studies in 1990, and a PhD cum laude in environmental sciences from the University of Amsterdam in 1996. ^{1 3}

From 2000 to 2004 Karam headed the Global Women of Faith Network at Religions for Peace. She then moved to the United Nations in New York, serving as a senior advisor at UNDP's Arab Bureau from 2004 to 2007, where she coordinated the Arab Human Development Reports, and at UNFPA as senior advisor on culture from 2007 to 2019. In 2010 she founded and chaired the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Development, and in 2018 she coordinated the establishment of the UN Multi-Faith Advisory Council. In 2019 she was elected secretary general of Religions for Peace — the first woman, first Muslim and first North African to hold the post in the organisation's 50-year history — and she resigned in July 2023. She is the founding president and CEO of the consulting firm Lead Integrity. ¹

Karam lectured at Queen's University Belfast from 1998 to 2000 and at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 2002 to 2018. In 2019 she became professor of religion and development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, holding its Religion and Sustainable Development chair for five years, and in 2024 she became an affiliate professor at the Ansari Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include Women, Islamisms and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt (1997). No source read for this record names a religious school for Azza Karam, and this record records none. ^{1 2}

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