Mai Yamani (Arabic: مي يماني; born 6 September 1956) is an independent Saudi scholar, author and anthropologist.
Her early education included schooling in Baghdad, Iraq and Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude (with highest honors) from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; and subsequently attended Somerville College, University of Oxford, where she was the first Yemeni woman to obtain a M.St.
[4] She has been a research fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London (1997–2007); a policy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC (2007–2008); and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut (2008–2009).
She speaks fluent Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Italian, and has a working knowledge of Persian, Hebrew and Maltese.