Omar Samad is the former Senior Advisor to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the former Chief Executive of Afghanistan from 2014 to 2020. He served as the Afghan Ambassador to Canada from 2004 to 2009, and to France from 2009 to 2011. He was a Senior Central Asia Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. 2013-14, after working as Senior Afghan Expert at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. 2012-13.