Washington – Saudi Ambassador to Washington Prince Khalid bin Salman issued an order to assign Fatima Baeshen the embassy’s spokeswoman, making her the first female spokesperson for a government institution.

Baeshen is a businesswoman, who has earned her master’s degree with a focus on Islamic finance from the University of Chicago, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Baeshen was a director at the Washington based think tank Arabia Foundation. She spent several years working in Riyadh’s Saudi Ministry of Labor and the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning before returning to the United States in 2017.

She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and the Emirates Foundation for Youth Development.

Baeshen was raised in the US and spent most of her childhood in Mississippi.