Members are invited to vote in the 2026 ABANA Board of Directors election. Electronic ballots and voting instructions have been sent in separate emails to all members.
The current Board of Directors has nominated a slate of six candidates for (re-)election by the membership, to fill six open positions on the board; each (re-)elected director will serve a three-year term.
The voting deadline is January 27, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and the results will be announced at the Annual Meeting, which begins at 6:00 p.m. on the same day. To register for the annual meeting, please click here.
* Per ABANA’s By-Laws, only members in good standing as of January 8th, 2026, are eligible to vote. If you are a member and have not received the ballot email, please note that it is sent from invitations@mail.electionbuddy.com. Therefore, please make sure to check your inbox/junk mail folders for that email address or send us an email at events@abana.co for assistance.
Candidates and their bios are listed below:
- Omar Jabri, Managing Director, Lexington Partners
- Amal Moussa, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
- May Nasrallah, Executive Chairwoman, PJT deNovo
- Mahmoud Salem, Managing Director, BNY Mellon
- Fayez Muhtadie, Co-Head of Private Equity, Stone Point Capital
- Kenan Basha, Head of TMT, GIC Private Equity
Biographies:
Omar Jabri
Managing Director
Lexington Partners
Omar Jabri is a New York-based Managing Director at Lexington Partners, a global leader in private equity secondaries and co-investment funds. Mr. Jabri is primarily engaged in the sourcing and execution of direct co-investment opportunities in growth and buyout transactions, alongside industry-leading private equity groups. As part of his role, Mr. Jabri engages extensively with institutional and family office limited partners throughout North America and the Middle East. He is a Board Member and the current Vice Chair of ABANA.
Prior to joining Lexington Partners, Mr. Jabri was an investment banking analyst at Evercore Partners where he focused on M&A, restructuring and financial services transactions. He received an Honors Business Administration degree with distinction from Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, and is fluent in Arabic and French.
Amal Moussa
Managing Director
Goldman Sachs
Amal Moussa is a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where she leads the Single Stocks Exotic Derivatives Trading team in New York.
In addition to her work in Markets, Amal is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where she teaches a graduate course on volatility modeling in the Mathematics of Finance Master’s program and in the Financial Engineering Master’s program.
Amal has a Ph.D. in Statistics, obtained with distinction, from Columbia University.
Prior to her Ph.D., Amal graduated with a Master’s in Mathematical Finance from Sorbonne Université (former Paris VI) and a Grande Ecole engineering degree from Télécom Paris.
Amal is an advisory board member of the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business Analytics and Financial Technology at Columbia University. She is actively involved in the mentorship of young students and professionals across the financial industry.
May Nasrallah
Executive Chairwoman
PJT deNovo
May Nasrallah is the Executive Chairwoman of PJT deNovo and Partner at PJT Partners. Prior to merging and fully integrating deNovo Partners into PJT Partners on October 1st, 2024, Ms. Nasrallah was the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of deNovo Partners, an independent financial advisory firm she established in 2010, with offices in Dubai and Riyadh. Under her leadership, deNovo Partners became a premier boutique advisory firm in the Middle East, serving a broad range of clients, including SWFs, GREs, PEs, multinationals, corporates, and family groups, advising on over 100 transactions, including the region’s two largest private sector M&A transactions in 2024
Before founding deNovo, Ms. Nasrallah spent over 15 years at Morgan Stanley in New York, Hong Kong, London, and finally Dubai, where she set up and led the firm’s investment banking efforts in the MENA region. Ms Nasrallah previously served as Non-Executive Chairman of BlackRock in the Middle East from 2020 to 2022. Ms. Nasrallah also serves as an Independent Board Member of The Dubai International Chamber, DMCC, and other non-profit organizations such as ABANA, LIFE, and PAX.
Ms. Nasrallah is a recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including being ranked one of the Middle East’s 100 Most Powerful Businesswomen in 2023 and 2024 by Forbes Magazine.
Ms. Nasrallah holds a Master’s of Science in Finance from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mahmoud Salem
Managing Director
BNY Mellon
Mahmoud Salem is a Managing Director in BNY’s Issuer Services sector and the Regional Manager for the Middle East and Africa region. Mahmoud has helped governments, issuers, and family companies execute IPOs, secondary offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and other corporate transactions in Europe and Middle East, and Africa via depositary receipts. Mahmoud structured the first depositary receipts program for the following countries: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Tunisia, and the UAE. He has helped execute some of the largest cross-border mergers & acquisitions in the Middle East region and has worked on key NYSE and NASDAQ listings and offerings from Europe and South Africa region.
Mahmoud is a board member of the Middle East Investor Relations Associations (MEIRA) and a former board member of ABANA. He received a BA and an MBA from Rutgers University and joined BNY Mellon in 1993.
Fayez Muhtadie
Co-Head of Private Equity
Stone Point Capital
Fayez Muhtadie is Co-Head of Private Equity at Stone Point Capital and a member of the Investment Committees of the Trident Funds. At Stone Point, he helps lead the firm’s global investments across asset and wealth management, business services, and employee benefits. Fayez joined Stone Point in 2003 and has more than 25 years of experience in the private equity and investment banking industries. He currently serves on the board of directors of Kroll, LLC, Focus Financial LLC, Ascensus, LLC, LegalShield, among other privately held companies.
Prior to joining Stone Point, Fayez was an analyst in the Financial Institutions Investment Banking Group at Credit Suisse First Boston and a financial analyst at Aon Capital Markets.
Fayez received an M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a B.S.B.A. from The Ohio State University.
Kenan Basha
Head of TMT, North America
GIC Private Equity
Kenan Basha leads technology, media, and telecom (TMT) private equity in North America for GIC, which is the sovereign wealth fund for Singapore. Mr. Basha is primarily engaged in the sourcing, execution, and management of private equity investments. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Athenahealth, ECi, and Zuora.
Prior to joining GIC in 2023, Mr. Basha was a partner at Ares Management, which is a global alternative asset manager. At Ares, Basha directed TMT PE investments and served on the boards of multiple companies. Before Ares, Mr. Basha served as an investment principal at Rockbridge Growth Equity and KKR. He started his career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.
Basha received a B.B.A. from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.