Omar Samad, is a Senior Advisor to Dr. A. Abdullah, the Chief Executive of Afghanistan since 2014. He served as the Afghan Ambassador to Canada from 2004 to 2009, and to France from 2009 to 2011. Omar Samad worked as a journalist. In 1996, based out of the United States, he launched Azadi Afghan Radio. He reported on political events in Afghanistan, and conducted interviews with various Afghan leaders, international policy-makers and analysts. He was also a guest commentator for various news organizations from around the world. After September 11 2001, he appeared regularly on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, FOX News, Al Jazeera, MBC and other television and radio networks. He was hired by CNN as an analyst to cover the 2001 UN-sponsored Bonn peace conference on Afghanistan.
He was a Senior Central Asia Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. 2013-14, after working as Senior Afghan Expert at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. 2012-13.