Maria Al-Masani Modeling, Fashion Sales and Art

Maria Al-Masani is a graphic designer and PR director, with a university degree with honours in economics and public policy. She was the branding lead of the Canadian Public Relations Society two years in a row. She is also an artist, women's rights campaigner and a model. She has worked for the Parliament of Canada, Cambridge University Advanced Research Unit, Open Net Initiative and started her own firm, Visionary PR.

She is also a model with many years of experience working in the fashion industry, including sales, consumer research, fashion sales, retail and merchandising. She founded boutique PR agency Visionary PR. PRVisionary.com. Like many of her colleagues at Miss Universe Canada, she proves that beauty and brains do come in the same package.

Below - more on Maria Al-Masani from Wikipedia

Maria Al-Masani

Maria Al-Masani was born in Russia and moved to Yemen at age three. At 16, she moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, attending a local college before relocating to Ottawa to study economic development at Carleton University.^[2]

Maria Al-Masani

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Maria Al-Masani came to national and international attention as the first contestant of Yemeni origin to enter the Miss Universe pageant at the national level for Miss Universe Canada, and the first Yemeni contestant to win a title, of Miss Congeniality at the competition in 2010.^[3]^[4]^[5]

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Maria Al-Masani

Activism

Maria Al-Masani founded Yemen Rights Monitor during the Arab Spring in 2011, providing a means of updating news via social media when traditional news media had been blocked – she was later cited by Andy Carvin as one of his most reliable sources about opposition activities in Yemen.^[1]^[6]

Maria Al-Masani

She has appeared as an activist against forced marriage on Al Jazeera's The Stream, recounting her own escape from a potential forced marriage in Yemen.^[7] In 2012, Al-Masani was among the speakers at a summit hosted by Yahoo! in Cairo on women's use of technology to create positive change.^[8]^[9] In 2011, she spoke at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, discussing how social media has been used to circumvent censorship in Yemen.^[10]

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Women's rights

Maria Al-Masani

Maria Al-Masani serves on the board of Madbakh Women's International, a group whose projects have included raising funds for the National Boroma Fistula Hospital in Somalia.^[11] She also discussed fistula on Al Jazeera's The Stream and in a feature in the Canadian political and government newspaper The Hill Times.[

Maria Al-Masani

Maria is also an artist who studied art and at art history at Mercyhurst University and Mercyhurst Prepartory School, and had to grades in class and was a member of the art honours society.