Background
Maria Al-Masani was born in Russia and moved to Yemen at age three.
Maria Al-Masani was born in Russia and moved to Yemen at age three.
In 2012, she was named as one of eight 'agents of change' by CNN's Inside the Middle East. At 16, she moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, attending a local college before relocating to Ottawa to study economic development at Carleton University. Maria Al-Masani founded during the Arab Spring in 2011, providing a means of updating news via social media when traditional news media had been blocked – she was later cited by Andy Carvin as one of his most reliable sources about opposition activities in Yemen.
She has appeared as an activist against forced marriage on Al Jazeera's The Stream, recounting her own escape from a potential forced marriage in Yemen. In 2012, Al-Masani was among the speakers at a summit hosted by Yahoo! in Cairo on women's use of technology to create positive change. In 2011, she spoke at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, discussing how social media has been used to circumvent censorship in Yemen.
Maria Al-Masani serves on the board of Madbakh Women's International, a group whose projects have included raising funds for the National Boroma Fistula Hospital in Somalia. She also discussed fistula on Al Jazeera's The Stream and in a feature in the Canadian political and government newspaper The Hill Times.