New CLC Steering Committee Chair: Rasha Maal-Bared

The WEF Community Leadership Council (CLC) Steering Committee would like to welcome Rasha Maal-Bared to her new leadership role as CLC Steering Committee Chair. Rasha will continue to work hard to support WEF communities and serve their membership. She is part of a tremendous team that includes her vice chair, Ian Fife, and the CLC Community of Practice Directors, Scott Schaefer, James Barsanti, Donnell Duncan, Val Frenkel, Kari Fitzmorris Brisolara, and Mark Knight.

Rasha works as a environmental microbiologist at the CDM Smith Bellevue Research and Treatability Laboratory in Bellevue, WA. Before that, she worked as a microbiologist for EPCOR Water, a policy analyst for Health Canada and a research associate at the University of Ottawa. She completed her PhD in Environmental Microbiology at the University of British Columbia and her MSc degrees at the Harvard School of Public Health and Dalhousie University. She is the chair of the WEF Community Leadership Council and the chair of the WEF Waterborne Infectious Disease Outbreak Control focus group, which received the WEF 2020 Water Heroes award for their work on COVID-19. She also received the Empowering Women in Industry “Leadership in STEM/STEAM” award in 2020, the WEF Volunteer Service Recognition in 2021, and the Western Canada Water Environment Association Analyst Excellence Award in 2022. She serves on the editorial boards of Science of the Total Environment, Frontiers in Environmental Engineering, Water Practice and Technology, Frontiers in Public Health and Data in Brief. When she’s not working, she enjoys travelling with her family, and playing Minecraft with her twelve-year-old daughter.