Founder & Trustee
Hamida A. Alireza, was born in USA, raised and educated in Switzerland. In 1987, she founded The Barakat Trust, together with Shahnaz Bagherzade and Tarik Alireza. She has overseen the Trust’s evolution, funding more than 500 students in a range of specialisations across the globe over 35 years. She is also a board member of The Barakat Trust’s Academic Advisory Committee and is instrumental in communicating with and developing the grantees database. Hamida is also a founding member of the Mansoojat Foundation: The Museum of Saudi Arabian Costume and was an Advisory Board member to the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.
She has organised a wide range of international events related to art, heritage and culture. She was one of the co-organisers of a conference on ‘The History of Islamic Art, Collectors, Collections & Scholars’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum and curated a range of exhibitions including “Word Cultures Through Traditional Costumes” for the Singapore National Heritage Board during the Youth Olympic Games; “51 & 21 Costumes”, hosted at the Jeddah Economic Forum and “Souk, Scripts & Sand Bites” at the V&A, London. She has organised a wide range of cultural educational trips to Jordan (Amman, Petra, Dead Sea), Syria (Damascus, Hama, Palmyra, Aleppo), Saudi Arabia (Abha, Makkah, Madinah, Taif), Turkey (Istanbul, Konya), Bahrain.
Hamida is fluent in English, Arabic, and French and has a strong interest in contemporary ceramics, Islamic art and calligraphy.
