Board of Directors

Frank Blake is currently the General Manager for Outside Sales and Service for The Home Depot. He is responsible for leading the nationwide professional sales force as well as leading the company's B2B services efforts. Since joining The Home Depot in 2004 as part of the Store Leadership Program, Frank has held positions of increasing responsibility, including Store Manager, District Manager and General Manager.



Prior to joining The Home Depot, Frank served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. He is also an accomplished angel investor and serves as General Partner of his own early stage investment fund, and as Limited Partner within several investing groups.

Frank is a passionate philanthropist and serves on the board of many local and global non-profits. He and his wife Jennifer live in Atlanta, Georgia with their three children.

Gaylen R. Hansen recently retired as an audit partner of Plante Moran, PLLC following over forty years of engagement in the accounting profession. His career spanned lengthy periods in public practice including initial periods as a manager with Arthur Andersen and later Price Waterhouse. He currently is the chair of the Consultative Advisory Group (CAG) of the International Ethics Standard Board for Accountants and serves as a CAG representative to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. The IESBA and IAASB establish standards of practice for professional accountants throughout the world. The CAG’s are responsible for ensuring that the public interest is a priority in financial reporting standards. Hansen also currently serves on the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Auditing Standards Board. The ASB establishes auditing for all U.S. non-public entities, including not-for profit organizations. He is a graduate of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and holds an MBA in international business from California State University, Fullerton. He has been a CPA since 1977 and resides with his wife in Evergreen, Colorado.

Andrea Saliba brings significant corporate management and entrepreneurial experience and expertise to the Foundation Board. She was the Co-founder & VP of Marketing for an ecommerce startup, where she presented business plans to venture capitalists for first-round funding. Prior to that she helped Cisco Systems enter the remote access market where she pioneered the concept of telecommuting through product development, educational seminars and strategic partnerships.

More recently Ms. Saliba founded MindfullyFit to help revolutionize the fitness industry with a posture-based approach to finding more mobility and flexibility and eliminating back pain. With the launch of her book, MindfullyFit, Four Steps to Moving Correctly, Avoiding Back Pain and Dancing to Get Fit, Andrea seeks to educate the industry about the importance of posture.

Raised in Boston and very proud of her Syrian heritage, Ms. Saliba is a dedicated supporter of the AUIS Arbat Brighter Future campaign, which raises scholarship funds for Syrian refugees to attend AUIS. Ms. Saliba has an MBA in Marketing and Strategic Planning from The Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles as well as a B.A. with honors from Wellesley College where she studied Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Math.

Dr. Rachel Laribee Gresk currently serves as the Executive Director of the American University of Iraq Foundation (AUIF). She is the former Vice President of Advancement at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS), and now serves as Senior Director of Advancement for the College of Business at Northern Illinois University (NIU). Dr. Gresk brings extensive experience in university advancement, external relations, strategic fundraising, and donor engagement, with a career dedicated to strengthening institutions through philanthropy and partnership.

Dr. Gresk has deep expertise in higher education administration, having previously served as AUIS’s Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs. Her areas of leadership include student satisfaction, strategic planning, student persistence, external relations, program and grant management, and accreditation. She also served as Director of AUIS’s English Language Program (ELP) during its successful pursuit of Iraq’s first U.S. accreditation.

Her scholarly work focuses on student satisfaction, persistence, international development, and institutional effectiveness. Rachel earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where her research examined social-cognitive factors and environmental influences on student satisfaction. She holds a master’s degree in International Development from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Dr. Gresk served as the self-study coordinator for her ELP’s Commission on English Language Accreditation (CEA) review and has overseen U.S. regional accreditation efforts at AUIS. She has presented at numerous Iraqi and international conferences, including ASHE and TESOL, and is a trained accreditation site reviewer with CEA.

Email: rachel.gresk@auis.edu.krd

Eric has directed a wide-range of research and analysis projects on Asian and Middle Eastern affairs, international security and development, and alternative geopolitical futures.

Brown’s current work is on re-tooling international assistance to vulnerable countries and on strategies for enhancing public security in weak and contested states.

Jake Cusack is co-managing partner of CrossBoundary, a frontier market investment advisory firm, as well as its adjunct investment platform, CrossBoundary Energy. Mr. Cusack holds joint MPP/MBA degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s Honors Program. Prior to CrossBoundary, Mr. Cusack served as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq and worked at Abraaj Capital, an emerging market private equity firm. He also worked in Kurdistan in 2011 advising OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corporation) on their portfolio of investments in the region. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The New York Times, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Inc. Magazine.

He is Chairman of the Emerging Market Private Equity Association’s Frontier Market Council, Board Member of Invest Africa US, Presidential Leadership Scholar, Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Aspen Ideas Fellow.

Email: jake@crossboundary.com

Jason J. Galui creatively collaborates at the nexus of business, government, and academia leading The Commercial Diplomacy Initiative @ SMU Cox.

Throughout a unique military career, Jason led soldiers in combat, taught economics to two generations of West Point cadets, and advised the most senior U.S. leaders in the Pentagon and in two very different White Houses.

Jason is a Fellow at the John G. Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at SMU and a Visiting Scholar and Director of the Eisenhower Working Group on Economic Statecraft at Texas A&M; University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. Jason also serves on the Board of Trustees at the Pingree School in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, on the Board of Directors for the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations, and on the Board of Advisors with Deep Knowledge Investing.

Jason earned an M.S. in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. in Economics from the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Since 2011, Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse has taught in the English Department at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. While there, she was instrumental in the formation of the department, serving as the founding Chair. She translates classical and contemporary Kurdish poetry, hosts readings with regional poets, and introduced the annual translation workshop. She received her M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College and her M.Ed. in English Education and B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia. She was awarded the Richard A. Meade Award for Excellence in English Education, honored as a member of the Raven Society, and was an Echols Scholar.

She has been published in The Iowa Review, Words Without Borders, The Fair Observer, and 91st Meridian. She compiled and edited SoJust: An International Art Festival, an anthology of translations and interviews from American and Iraqi artists.

Email: levinson.labrosse@gmail.com

General Counsel at AUIS, Assistant Professor of Business Law and Business Management Courses at AUIS Most recently Clovis Maalouf served as the General Counsel at AUIS, reporting directly to the AUIS President on all internal and external legal matters pertaining to the University. In addition to his law responsibilities, Clovis was an assistant professor of business law and business management courses at AUIS.

Prior to joining AUIS, Clovis was a Director at a boutique CEO business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C. Before that, he practiced law at Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick - a litigation law firm based in Washington, D.C. - where he focused his efforts on corporate transactions.

Clovis is US bar certified in the states of New York and Wisconsin.

Schnapper-Casteras founded the first student exchange program between Stanford University and postwar Iraq in 2004. He is the founder of Schnapper-Casteras PLLC, a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C., as well as a National Security Crisis Law Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center. Previously, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Roger L. Gregory of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and to the Honorable Scott W. Stucky of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

He received his J.D. with Pro Bono Distinction from Stanford Law School, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an M.A. in Sociology and B.A. with honors in Political Science from Stanford University.

Email: jpscasteras@gmail.com

Kate Allen is a public health researcher and professional who has worked extensively throughout the Middle East. Most recently, Kate was a Research Scientist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where her efforts focused primarily on improving road safety and injury prevention. Kate holds a PhD in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, a Masters in Epidemiology and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelors from UC Berkeley. She was a Fulbright Scholar in the Sultanate of Oman and CASA Arabic Fellow from the American University in Cairo. She enjoys learning regional Arabic dialects.

Aaron Bartnick has spent 15 years at the intersection of technology, national security, and global markets. He currently serves as Chief of Staff for neural engineering company Science Corporation and is a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, where he writes and researches at the intersection of technology, economics, and energy. He most recently served in government as Assistant Director for Technology Security and Governance at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he led the economic and technology security portfolios including cross-border investment screening, research security, and strategic industries including unmanned systems and open source semiconductors. He previously served as a senior advisor at the Treasury Department and for Congressman Seth Moulton, among other roles, and in 2017 was a fellow at AUIS' Institute of Regional and International Studies. He received his MBA from the University of Oxford, his MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and his AB in history and political science from Brown University.

A seasoned attorney with an LL.M. from Yale and an M.P.A. from Harvard, Safwan has extensive expertise in corporate law, cross-border litigation, and public policy, particularly in the Middle East. He has held leadership positions at top law firms and served as a legal and political advisor to prominent figures in Iraq. Fluent in both Arabic and English, Safwan is also a published authority on Iraqi constitutional law.