Shai Tamari
In Congress, he served as Associate Staffer to the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs for Congressman James P. Moran. He is currently Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Adjunct Instructor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in conflict management.
Additionally, Shai is the director of the Conflict Management Initiative at UNC and President of Tamari Conflict Management, through which he provides high level, one-on-one corporate coaching, facilitation, and training.
For over a decade prior, Shai was the Associate Director of the Center for Middle East & Islamic Studies at UNC, where he administered a multi-million-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Shai has lived and worked in Jordan, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. He earned a B.A in Journalism from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and a Master’s degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in the UK.
In 2006, Shai was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship and studied for a second Master’s in Global History. While a Rotary Peace Fellow, he worked with the Cooperative Housing Foundation International in Amman, Jordan.
He is a native speaker of Hebrew, has co-facilitated communication-intensive circles in prisons in North Carolina (including on Death Row), and is an avid Elvis Presley fan.