Maggie Mitchell Salem is the Executive Director of Qatar Foundation International and has over 15 years of experience in the field of Middle East affairs. She is the former Regional Director for the MENA region at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems; first Director of Communications and External Relations for the Middle East Institute; and former Foreign Service Officer at the United States Department of State.

For six years, Salem was a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. State Department where she served as a Special Assistant to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and as a Staff Assistant to Ambassador Martin S. Indyk at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel. Salem completed coursework for a Master's Degree in Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and studied as a Fulbright scholar at the Arabic Language Institute in Damascus, Syria. She holds Bachelor's Degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Political Science and Psychology.