Farzaneh Roudi who has been with the Population Reference Bureau since 1987 is a senior policy analyst, serving as Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She initiated the Program in 2001, with the goal of responding to the region's need for timely and objective information and analysis on population, socioeconomic, and reproductive health issues. The program explores the linkages among these issues and provides evidence-based policy and program recommendations for decisionmakers in the region. Ms. Roudi has collaborated with different organizations from the Middle East region and is recognized as an authority on Middle East population matters. She has lectured on these topics at the World Bank, academic institutions, and international conferences. She is author of a number of reports and articles on Middle East population issues. Her latest publications are Ending Child Marriage in the Arab Region and Women’s Need for Family Planning in Arab Countries (coauthor). Also in collaboration with colleagues, she has conducted training workshops on policy communications for researchers in the MENA region working in the area of population and development, to enhance their skills in communicating their findings to policy and program planners.

Ms. Roudi has an MA in demography from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, with additional graduate study in demography at the University of California in Berkeley. She received her BA in sociology from the National University in Iran.