Medea Group Founder and Managing Director Rachel Zedeck guides the organization with more than a decade of personal hands-on experience facilitating international business and social development in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and the former Yugoslavia.
Before founding Medea Group, Ms. Zedeck spent three years managing a commercial consultancy in Amman and Baghdad facilitating multimillion dollar international business development for Middle East and multinational firms establishing business channels and independent geo-political development in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan.
Ms. Zedeck previously spent two and a half years in Kosovo as a site coordinator for one of the largest capacity building and education programs before being recruited for field staff positions by both the OSCE and United Nations Mission in Kosovo. Her development efforts included the design and implementation of IT infrastructure and support of technical requirements for the 2002 elections for the Kosovar Provisional Institution of Self Government (PISG) including the drafting of communications and IT policy for use in legislation, coordination of field operations and all UN-channeled equipment procurement and building of a 67-person team of local, multi-ethnic Kosovar and international staff. During this time Zedeck was exposed to and responsible for navigating through the complex multifaceted issues facing humanitarian and commercial organizations in such post-conflict regions.
Zedeck also brings a decade of extensive analyst experience in Washington DC, and New York, as well as project management and technical development expertise throughout the United States, Middle East, Africa and Europe, with a special focus on the deployment of e-commerce and basic IT infrastructure development within conflict and post-conflict regions.
Ms Zedeck is on the panel and fundraising committee of the Aid Workers Network (AWN), and Medea Group contributes the CSR methodology and design helping the organization more effectively interact with the development community within conflict and post-conflict regions.
Zedeck holds a Master of Arts (International Security & Counter Terrorism Studies) from Bradford University and has guest lectured at Harvard University. She has provided technical and security briefings for organizations developing infrastructure in Kosovo, British International Studies Conference 2006 on “COMSEC and Private Security in Iraq – Implications on Terror networks,” among smaller industry, governmental and commercial forums. In 2007 Zedeck will be lecturing at Harvard and Cambridge universities on Islamic perspectives of terrorist networks, as well as the past, present and future implications of the internet on terror networks.
Zedeck founded Medea Group to provide strategic, analytical and practical intelligence services for commercial, governmental and non-profit organizations with current or future business or political interests in conflict or post-conflict regions.
