Breaking barriers and powering a greener kingdom

As a woman from Saudi Arabia making a career in climate sustainability, Noura Mansouri MC/MPA Mason 2025 has been defying expectations for a long time. 

“I remember even back when I first pursued my master’s in London, and I chose to do my thesis on hydrogen fuel cells—that was back in 2003—and then to do my PhD on the clean energy transition,” she says. “And people were like: ‘Are you even Saudi, to consider a future that doesn’t rely on oil?’”

Mansouri, a child of the 1980s, grew up in an era of conservatism and limits on women’s participation in education and the workplace (which have since undergone significant reform). Yet she still became a highly educated expert in a male-dominated field, a working mother of four children, and a clean energy advocate in what has been one of the world’s foremost petro-states—which she says is now being transformed under Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" energy diversification plan

She credits her mother, who she says was part of the first wave of Saudi women to be educated during the 1960s, and her father for the inspiration to pursue her education and passion for climate justice. She started studying for her bachelor’s degree at the age of 15 at Dar Al-Hekma University in Jeddah. She earned her MBA from Queen Mary University of London before she turned 20. Her PhD work at Queen Mary University became a book, “Greening the Black Gold: Saudi Arabia’s Quest for Clean Energy,” that she dedicated to her husband, her mother, and her late father, Youssef Mansouri, a doctor and brigadier general in the Saudi armed forces who encouraged her to pursue her education and study abroad. 

She also credits the Kennedy School and her professors, including Marshall Ganz and Ronald Heifetz, for helping her understand how her powerful personal narrative could help her become a leader and achieve her goals. She took both of Ganz’s classes, on leadership and organizing and on public narrative and storytelling. 

“I was able to come up with my own narrative based on the values that mean a lot to me,” says Mansouri. “And so I used that story to do the organizing campaign around climate justice.” 

With student co-leaders from Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria, Mansouri started the Climate Justice for All campaign. The group took personal narratives from students from the Global South, turned them into climate case studies, and then lobbied HKS instructors to broaden their perspectives on teaching climate justice. 

“Noura was part of a terrific group of students devoted to increasing visibility of the subject of climate justice at Harvard Kennedy School, and I see myself very much as an ally in that endeavor,” said Professor Mathias Risse, faculty director of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, who was one of the faculty members the group held discussions with. “I think the students succeeded in drawing a good deal of attention to these matters.” 

Getting the chance to collaborate with fellow students from around the world on projects like the climate justice group, Mansouri says, was her most treasured experience at HKS. 

“We are 258 people from over 63 countries,” she says. “And it's just been fascinating to get to know each one of them through classes, through coffees, and through being part of the Mason cohort and the larger MC/MPA Program—people with amazing stories and very inspiring causes and a desire to change the world and make it a better place.”

She calls her overall HKS experience both transformational and challenging. “If I look at Noura in the summer of 2024, and then I see myself right now, I am much more empathetic, much more willing to sit across the table from whoever it is on the other side and listen with no agenda,” she says. “And then I can use that framing to just see the world differently, not necessarily embracing that other worldview, but understanding it. And that is phenomenal. I've never seen myself change that way.”

Mansouri also found it difficult to be away from her family, especially her four children, who range from 7 years old to 17. She and her husband discussed moving the family to Cambridge for the year, but in the end decided it would be too disruptive. She says she was able to get back to Saudi Arabia for a long visit during the winter break and went back again for almost a week when one of her daughters had to have an unexpected medical procedure.

“It was a learning for them to be away from me, and a learning for me to also let go and trust,” she says. “They're missing their mom every single day. But on the other hand, I'm also determined to give an example that they can remember, and one that can inspire them.”

For the immediate future, Mansouri will return to her job as a senior fellow at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), a think tank that focuses on climate and energy. At KAPSARC, Mansouri has led projects on circular carbon economy technology—which addresses climate change by focusing on reducing, reusing, recycling, and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—and helping Saudi Arabia create its Nationally Determined Contributions plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement.

Mansouri says she hopes to ultimately fulfill her ambition of serving her country and the planet. “My goal is to leverage Vision 2030's drive for woemn's leadership by applying my clean energy expertise to shape Saudi Arabia's top energy policies,” she said. 

She says she has been encouraged by significant women's empowerment and liberalization measures since 2018—from lifting the driving ban and granting full travel and passport autonomy without guardian approval, to enshrining equal pay guarantees and quota for women on corporate boards and in the Shura Council, the advisory body that counsels the Saudi king. She says the new measures have helped Saudi women enter traditionally male sectors, from sports to space exploration, and are driving a social and economic renaissance, even as some legal and cultural barriers persist.

“Before my mother’s generation there was no formal education, so to go from there to here, I can't imagine what the future of my daughters could be,” she says. “It's just fascinating realizing the potential that there is for the story of the Saudi woman.”

Portraits by Lydia Rosenberg; inline images courtesy of Noura Mansouri