Pathbreakers of Arab America—May Rihani
This is the seventy-second of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, arts, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our seventy-second pathbreaker, May Rihani, was born in Beirut to parents from Freike, Matn District, Lebanon. As contributing writer John Mason reports, she is an expert on girls’ and women’s education, working in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to implement educational reform, particularly to improve girls’ education and family health. In 2016, May was awarded the prestigious position of director of the Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland and recently ran as a candidate for the 2022–2025 Lebanese presidential election.