P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

MARYANA F. ISKANDER is the Chief Executive Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, a social enterprise building African solutions to the global challenge of youth unemployment.

Maryana was born in Cairo, Egypt and moved to the US when she was four years old, settling in Round Rock, Texas.

Maryana is a magna cum laude graduate in sociology at Rice University. A Rhodes Scholar, she earned an MSc at Oxford University and founded the Rhodes Association of Women. She graduated from Yale Law School in 2003 and clerked for the Honorable Diane P. Wood on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois.

At Rice University, Maryana broke multiple precedents to win the student body presidency as a sophomore, a woman, and a naturalized citizen. As a Truman Fellow, she served on the staff of Senator Max Baucus. In 2019, Maryana won the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and the Yale Law School Distinguished Alumnae Award.

Maryana has served as Chief Operating Officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York.