Bustle | 27 April 2014
If you were hoping that one day as you sailed your boat around Lake Como, old Georgie would come out on his balcony and beckon you in for drinks, it might be time to give up on that fantasy. (Keep the boat fantasy of course; drop the Georgie part.) According to multiple reports, George Clooney is engaged to Amal Alamuddin, a 36-year-old British lawyer who he’s been dating since October. So, who is Amal Alamuddin? Clearly she’s way more than just Clooney’s fiancé. Here’s what we know.
ABC News reports that Alamuddin is a graduate New York University Law School. According to her alleged LinkedIn profile, she also attended Oxford University and is fluent in French and Arabic. After earning all those degrees, she represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in his extradition proceedings with Sweden and according to News.au, she’s currently an advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who, since 2012, has been a representative for Syria.
Alamuddin is also an author and editor. She’s written The Law and Practice of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and her bio on the Oxford University Press reads:
Amal Alamuddin is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, London, specialising in international law, human rights, criminal law and extradition. She appears in both English and international courts and provides written advice to individuals and governments. Amal has recently acted as adviser to Kofi Annan, the Joint Special Envoy of the UN and Arab League on Syria; as counsel to the government of Cambodia in a territorial dispute at the International Court of Justice; and as legal advisor to the Royal Court of the Kingdom of Bahrain in connection with the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) investigating alleged human rights abuses in Bahrain. Amal also represented the head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, in extradition proceedings in the UK and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuila Tymonshenko before the European Court of Human Rights. Amal previously served as legal adviser to the Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and as legal adviser to the head of UNIIIC in Beirut.

Well, damn.
An article on CNN.com from January argued that Syria and the U.S. need Clooney to ”take an urgent, complicated issue and make it matter to Americans.” While that remains to be seen, clearly he and Alamuddin are passionate about similar issues and the two, with their powers combined, might be able to make the change they wish to see.