Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Houda Nonoo
Summary
Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo (هدى عزرا نونو; born 7 September 1964) served as the Bahraini Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2013. She was appointed to the position by decree of Foreign Affairs Minister Khaled Ben Ahmad Al-Khalifa. Nonoo is the first Jew, and third woman, to be appointed ambassador of Bahrain. She is also the first Jewish ambassador of any Middle Eastern Arab country, and the first female Bahraini ambassador to the United States.
Nonoo was born in Manama, to a family of Jewish business entrepreneurs with origins in present-day Iraq. Nonoo's grandfather Ibrahim left Baghdad in 1888 and started a financial business in Bahrain.
Nonoo lived for an extended period of time in the United Kingdom, where she attended Carmel College, a Jewish boarding school, and earned an MBA. She also met and married Salman Idafar, a British Jew, with whom she had two sons; Menasheh and Ezra. After her father died in a car accident, she returned to Bahrain to take over the Basma Company, a company offering different office services, from IT to janitoring, hence becoming a successful businesswoman after inheriting the family's business.
Prior to her appointment to the Majlis al-shura in 2005, she founded in 2004 and presided over the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society, a society for the advancement of women's rights as well as of foreign workers in Bahrain. For a total of three years served as a member of parliament (40-member Shura Council), after being appointed by King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifah. Her appointment made headlines because Houda is part of the small Jewish community of Bahrain. Bahrain's Jewish community reportedly consists of just 37 people, most of whom are the descendants of immigrants from Iraq and Iran. Nonoo is not the first person in her family to enter Bahraini politics, or member of the Jewish community. In 1934, her grandfather Abraham Nonoo served as a member of the Manama Municipality, the first ever elected municipal body in Bahrain. In 2000, a cousin, Ebrahim Daoud Nonoo was appointed to parliament.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.