Laila Iskandar has served as the Minister of State for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements as well as the Minister of State for Environmental Affairs in two cabinets from 2013 to 2015. Prior to holding public office, Iskandar was a leading member of civil society for her work on informal urban settlements. Since 1983, she has worked with the garbage collectors of Cairo with a focus on the informal waste sector, recycling SMEs and value chain analysis. As a chairperson of CID Consulting, she has received global recognition for her work, including the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the 2006 World Economic Forum for her sustainable recycling school in partnership with UNESCO and Procter & Gamble. Her international assignments have included serving as UNESCO Resource Person for the Arab region as part of the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) and serving as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Education Advisor in Egypt.  She holds a doctorate from Columbia University, New York, and a master’s from U.C. Berkeley, California.