Biography

Issam Michael Fares — born on May 10, 1937 — served through early 2005 as the Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon. A member of the Lebanese parliament since 1996, Fares has worked to ensure Lebanon’s status as a pluralistic, democratic society where people of all religious backgrounds can live in peace, under the rule of law.

Fares returned to Lebanon after the country’s civil war — leaving behind his financial career because of a deep belief in the need to rebuild the country that made his success possible. His dual experience in international finance and his nation’s politics has fostered a conviction in viewing our problems from a global perspective — and that belief motivates his philanthropic efforts even today.

Roots

A native of the farming region of North Lebanon, Fares dreamed of becoming a merchant — and eventually embarked on a trailblazing, successful financial career. Working his way up from a job as a clerk with a catering and food services firm at age 17, Fares found himself heading that company’s finances in Qatar just two years later — and he met with only more success from there, continuing to work with the company, Abela Group, by managing its operations in Pakistan, Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Fares decided to go off on his own, and in 1975 left the Abela Group to launch his own contracting operations. He became the owner of the Netherlands-based Ballast-Nedam — and grew that company into one of the largest civil engineering and construction firms in the world. Under his leadership, the firm completed many large projects, including the worlds longest international bridge, which connects the island nation of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.

Eventually, Fares sold the company to British Aerospace. He used the proceeds to invest in a variety of businesses in the United States and Europe, and bought a large stake in an established U.S.-based investment and industrial firm called the Wedge Group Inc. Civil war had begun to set in back home, however — and the violence forced Fares to move his financial headquarters to Greece.

Returning Home

Experience in international finances taught Fares that world-class enterprises transcended geographic boundaries. The epiphany made him a globalist, in a sense, before globalization even had a name. What struck him most was the transparency and ease of innovation seen in the financial world in the United States and Western Europe — a dynamism, he felt, that owed directly to those countries’ traditions of democracy and commitment to pluralism and tolerance.

Those lessons played a direct role in his thinking when, in 1989, the Taif Agreement brought the civil war in Lebanon to an end. Warring armies from outside Lebanon had laid waste to the Beirut and Lebanon, once known around the world as the cosmopolitan, tolerant financial center of the Eastern Mediterranean — and Issam Michael Fares faced the choice of continuing to enjoy a prosperous life abroad, or returning home to rebuild a shattered society.

Fares chose the harder path. He returned to Lebanon, and devoted his time and energy to the revival of the social and economic life of Lebanon. Putting his global investments in trust under professional managers, he embarked on a long process of visiting with Lebanese ex-patriots to remind them of their homeland and of the need to rebuild. And, within Lebanon, he moved steadily to help heal the wounds of civil conflict, hoping to revive the country as a nation that was once again a democratic, peaceful, secular state governed by the rule of law.

Into Government

After the journey back to Lebanon, Fares won election to the Lebanese parliament in 1996 — entering government as a representative of his native northern region. Since then, he has led a diverse coalition of lawmakers from the region, working with elected leaders from a broad array of religious and social backgrounds.

In parliament, Fares has paid steady attention to the need to defend human rights, eliminate corruption in government, and enforce the nation’s laws against trading drugs. Known within the Lebanese government as a tough-eyed deficit hawk and a believer in the power of international finance, Fares has used his position as deputy prime minister to drive a cabinet committee to draw more foreign investment into Lebanon.

His travels continue to focus on Lebanese ex-patriots as key to the rebuilding of the nation’s society. In his travels, he particularly encourages foreign nationals of Lebanese descent to — as Fares has — remember their native land and its plight.

An avowed supporter of maintaining ties with the West, Fares believes that Lebanon must embrace close relations in order to maintain a connection to the nations he sees as the engine of world economic growth. To that end, he hopes for Lebanon to become a strong, diverse and non-sectarian society — one that lives at peace with its neighbors, including Israel. Fares maintains a steadfast insistence that Lebanese must refrain from taking up arms to settle disputes.

Philanthropy

Through the Fares Foundation — headquartered in Beirut — Mr. Fares supports an abundance of humanitarian activities. He cares deeply about education, endowing institutions of higher education in Lebanon and providing study-abroad scholarships to thousands of Lebanese students, through which they gain the skills needed to rebuild the country and its society.

The Foundation has also funded access to healthcare in rural Lebanon, and supported civic organizations promoting the creation of a democratic, non-sectarian civil society. Mr. Fares has also laid the beginnings of an institutional foundation for a stable Middle East at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies — an academic center he established at Tufts University. The Center acts as a major focus for cross-regional and cross-cultural analysis, providing a forum for the articulation of a broad diversity of viewpoints in the belief that this will serve as an effective means of conflict resolution.

Fares serves on the board of trustees at Tufts, and holds an honorary doctorate from Tufts in international public affairs. He has received numerous awards from institutions of higher education and his church for his civic and charitable work.