Shaha Riza

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Shaha Ali Riza works for the World Bank.

She was born in Tripoli, Libya, to a Libyan father and Syrian-Saudi mother. She grew up in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom. She moved to the United States after her marriage to Mr. Bulent Ali Riza in the late-1980s. Riza studied at the London School of Economics before taking a master's degree in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she studied at St Antony's College.

She specializes in the Middle East and has carried out field research in a number of Arab countries. Immediately before joining the World Bank, she worked at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she set up and led the endowment’s Middle East programs. Since joining the World Bank in 1997, she has worked with the Middle East and North Africa Social and Economic Development Group as the senior gender and civil society coordinator in the Office of the MENA Chief Economist. In July 2002, she became the manager for external affairs and outreach for the World Bank’s MENA region.

She is presently working for Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney, in the State Department.

She has been romantically linked to the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, since the time when he was an undersecretary for defense in the Bush Administration. Vanity Fair magazine reports (March 2007 issue) that Shaha Riza worked for Science Applications International Corporation, a US defense establishment contractor.[1]