Roula Seghaier brings a depth of experience in migrant rights and feminist organizing and advocacy, as well as organizational management. Most recently, Roula served as Strategic Program Coordinator with the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), a WIMN member organization and a global union federation. Her organizing work encompasses both the Southwest Asian and the North African (SWANA) region, where she worked with migrant domestic workers, as well as global engagement.
Roula has a track record in growing organizations. In Lebanon she worked to formalize the Migrant Workers Task Force, one of the first domestic workers’ collectives in the SWANA region. She co-founded the nonprofit press, Intersectional Knowledge Publishers, raising funds for its launch. She supported the Alliance of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon in seeking their first grant, and served as Managing Editor of Kohl, a Journal for Body and Gender Research. As a member of the IDWF leadership team, Roula addressed strategic and operational elements of the federation’s work—including planning, advocacy, funding and internal policy development as well as membership engagement. She oversaw the Communications team.
Roula is the author of WIMN’s 2025 Beijing+30 Report, 30 years since Beijing: Women in migration still seek inclusion in the Gender Equity and Equality Agenda and has been part of various WIMN activities–from the 2023 CSW International Women’s Day rally to representing WIMN at the 2025 CSW Side Event, Advancing the rights protections of migrant women and girls over the next 30 years. She represented IDWF at the 2022 UN International Migration Review Forum and co-authored an article on migrant women domestic workers in the SWANA region for the 2026 Global Coalition on Migration and FES Spotlight Report.
She holds an MA in Political Studies from the American University of Beirut and a BA in Political Studies, Transitional Justice, and Human Rights from the American University of Beirut and the American University of Washington D.C., as well as a diploma in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. She is also an award-winning novelist.
Roula participated in a fellowship in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights organized by Women Deliver, and co-founded the Gender and Sexuality Club at the American University of Beirut. The club sought to provide a safe space for queer people’s expression, lobbying for anti-discriminatory policies on campus, and making knowledge about Gender and Sexuality accessible. In 2018 she was a founding member of Masaha: Accessible Feminist Knowledge, an anticolonial queer feminist collective that conducts work in the Arabic-speaking regions.
Roula holds dual citizenship in Tunisia and Russia and is currently based in New York. She is pursuing a PhD at Rutgers University in the U.S. Her focus has been on exploring intersections of gender, labor, and migration in various settings—whether in grassroots organizing, research, or within the labor movement. She speaks Arabic, Russian, French, English and some Spanish.
