Zack Manning is the founder and Executive Director of the Diwan Institute for Humanity. He brings to this work a decade spent at the intersection of humanitarian practice, law, and the arts — a combination he considers inseparable in service of the Diwan Institute's mission.

Zack is a practicing attorney in New Mexico, where he focuses on immigration, personal injury, and medical malpractice, drawing on prior field experience spanning federal contract compliance, humanitarian program oversight, and direct legal representation for individuals navigating complex, high-stakes systems. Before law, he served as a Law Clerk in USAID's Office of General Counsel and as Ethics and Compliance Program Coordinator for Relief International, work that took him across humanitarian operations in the Middle East and beyond. He is fluent in Arabic and has spent much of his career building cross-cultural bridges through language, law, and advocacy.

Zack's musical training is equally central to his identity. He holds a B.M. in Music and Middle East Studies from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and an M.A. in Music from New Mexico State University, and studied percussion with James Culley, the Percussion Group Cincinnati, and Dr. Fred Bugbee. He performs and commissions new works as part of Diwan's music programming, treating performance as a form of public scholarship alongside his writing and legal advocacy.

From 2009 to 2013, Zack served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer on the island of Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia and later in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan — an experience that set the trajectory for his subsequent humanitarian and Middle East-focused career. He also serves as President of the Southwest Asylum and Migration Institute (SAMI) and as a Board Member of the ACLU of New Mexico.

Zack holds a J.D. from the University of New Mexico School of Law and an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Chicago.