A Successful Lebanese Woman… Manal Abdel Samad, Madam Minister

Manal Abdel Samad is a Lebanese politician who served as the Minister of Information in Hassan Diab's government from January 21, 2020, to August 9, 2020.

She was born on March 28, 1975, in Ammatour – Chouf, belongs to the Druze community, is married to Youssef Najd, and is a mother of three children.

She studied financial laws at the American University of Beirut from 2004 to 2009, earning a Master of Business Administration. She continued her studies in Paris between 2010 and 2014, where she obtained her Doctorate in Law.

In 1997, she joined the Lebanese Ministry of Finance and held the position of Head of the Audit and Tax Policy Department. In 2000, she was appointed as a member of the first task force for the establishment and implementation of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Lebanon. She has been a member of the VAT Appeals Committee since 2004 and was an active member in Lebanon's accession to the Multilateral Convention to implement tax treaty related measures to prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) in accordance with the standards of the OECD and G20 countries. In 2016, she was accredited as a specialized expert by the International Monetary Fund to evaluate tax administrations worldwide, and her first field mission was in Tunisia in March 2018. She has also been a lecturer at the American University of Beirut and Saint Joseph University since 2009.

She became Minister of Information in Hassan Diab's government in January 2020, but she submitted her resignation from the government on August 9, 2020, in response to popular demands following the Beirut Port explosion. Her resignation statement read:

“I would like to apologize to the Lebanese people whose aspirations we were unable to meet, and to the demands of the October 17 revolution. Change remained elusive, and since reality did not match the ambition we were striving for, and after the horror of the Beirut disaster, and bowing to the pain of the wounded and in response to the popular will for change, I submit my resignation from the Lebanese government.”