Charles Kestenbaum

Kestenbaum served 24 years in the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service at U.S. Embassies in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia, and supervised the 1991 Rebuild Kuwait program for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kestenbaum also has served as commercial liaison office director in the U.S. executive director’s office at the World Bank. He has negotiated trade agreements; counseled U.S. and international companies on all aspects of establishing and running businesses in the region; run trade shows and exhibitions in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, and Baghdad; and conducted extensive market research throughout the region. Since leaving government work in 2002, Kestenbaum has been a Middle East business consultant to Fortune 500 companies, has established several security companies in Iraq, and has worked as a director of business development for a leading international risk management and investigation firm. Kestenbaum has done postgraduate research at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced In