Maha Issa, PhD

Maha serves as a Specialist, Programs for Delta after joining in 2023. She is a sustainability professional, urban planner and academic researcher. In Chicago she served as Chair of Professional Development and board member on the Women in Planning and Development (WP+D). She served as a member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee advocating on the American Planning Association (APA). When Maha previously lived in the Middle East, she was academic researcher, and the chair of Spatial Planning Department in the University of Kurdistan- Iraq. Her duties included coordinating a joint research and exchange program with TU- Dortmund- Germany, applying sustainable green approaches in planning, design and construction for projects impacted by climate change. She also was an assistant professor at the University of Duhok-Kurdistan. Maha is a Fulbright Scholar in Urban Studies from MIT and has her PhD in Urban Planning from Baghdad University. Maha likes the natural systems combining both great lakes and great plains in the Midwest as it resembles the old water marshes and plains of Mesopotamia!