Director
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Ahmed M. Badr, Ed.M.
Director, Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship & Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life
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Ahmed M. Badr is an Iraqi-American author, poet, and social entrepreneur working at the intersection of creativity, climate action, displacement, and youth engagement. He is author of While the Earth Sleeps We Travel: Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young Refugees Around the World (Andrews McMeel), featuring a foreword by actor and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller. WTESWT was selected as the 2022-23 First-Year Common Reader for the University of Delaware.
On July 25, 2006, Ahmed's home in Baghdad was bombed by militia troops. He and his family relocated to Syria, where they lived as refugees for over two years before receiving approval to move to the United States. As a teen, Ahmed founded Narratio, an organization and online platform that activates, supports, and highlights the creative expression of displaced young people through fellowships, workshops, publishing, and partnerships. In the summer of 2019, Narratio launched an annual storytelling and leadership Fellowship for resettled refugee youth in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the past four years, work by 57 Narratio Fellows has reached 2.5 million individuals worldwide.
In 2020, Ahmed began a storytelling and strategy consultancy with the World Bank’s Connect4Climate initiative. For this role, Ahmed co-hosted #Youth4Climate Live, a nine-episode series highlighting youth climate leaders in conversation with government ministers, institutional executives, and civil society. The series and the #Youth4Climate campaign reached over a billion people across 130 countries.
Ahmed’s work has been exhibited at Juilliard, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, UNICEF House, Christie's, World Bank Headquarters, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.
Ahmed received a BA in Anthropology from Wesleyan University and a Master’s in Education from Harvard University. At Wesleyan, Ahmed was an Allbritton Fellow, a Patricelli Center Fellow, and a recipient of a Patricelli Center Seed Grant.
He is a winner of the 2022 Echoing Green Social Innovation Showcase, and the recipient of a Regional Murrow Award, the Adrian Cheng Fellowship from Harvard Kennedy School, and the Social Innovation Fellowship Fund award from Harvard Business School. He is a National Geographic Young Explorer, and serves as one of 17 UN Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals in the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth.