Randa Slim is a senior fellow and director of the Conflict Resolution and Track 2 Dialogues program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., and a non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. A former vice president of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, Slim has been a senior program advisor at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a guest scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, a program director at Resolve, and a program officer at the Kettering Foundation. She has consulted for a number of international, U.S. governmental, and private sector organizations, including USAID, UNDP, the German Agency for International Cooperation, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
A former member of the Dartmouth Conference U.S.-Russia regional conflicts taskforce, Slim was a member of the U.S.-Russia mediator team in the Inter-Tajik Dialogue (1992–2000) and participated in the design and implementation of several conflict prevention and peacebuilding initiatives in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Ferghana Valley (2000–2006). Since 2004, she has convened Track 1.5-2 dialogue initiatives focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, U.S.-Russia and U.S.-Turkey bilateral relations, and future regional cooperation frameworks in the Middle East. Slim also worked on the U.N.-mediated negotiations in Yemen as a consultant with the office of the U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen (2015–2016).
Slim is the author of several studies, book chapters, and articles on mediation, conflict prevention, dialogue processes, and post-conflict peacebuilding. She holds a B.S. and an M.A. from the American University of Beirut and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. Her countries of expertise are Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Her issues of expertise are peacebuilding, Track 2 dialogue, and post-conflict reconciliation.