Speakers
Hear from inspiring panelists and speakers influencing the technology industry
Interested in speaking at the
“Annual Women of MENA In Tech” 2020 conference?
That’s great! We would love to see women and men from different background sharing their knowledge and experience with our audience.
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Keynote Speakers
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Previous Speakers
Dr. Anousheh Ansari is a Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Prodea Systems a leading Internet of Things (IoT) technology firm. As she launched her new company, in 2006, she also blasted off for an 11-day space expedition and captured headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer, first astronaut of Iranian descent, the first Muslim woman, and the fourth private explorer to visit space. This was the accomplishment of a childhood dream for her.
As a successful serial entrepreneur and active proponent of world-changing technologies she along with her family sponsored the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million cash award ignited a new era in private space industries. Anousheh has published her memoire titled “My Dream of Stars” to use her life story to inspire young woman around the world.
Anousheh is a Vision Circle and Board member of the X Prize Foundation’s. She serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council and has received numerous honors, including the WEF Young Global Leader, Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and STEM Leadership Hall of Fame, to name a few.
Anousheh is a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador and serves on the board of Jabil (NYSE: JBL) and Peace First as well as several other not-for-profit organizations focused on STEM education and youth empowerment. She currently works to enable social entrepreneurs to bring about radical change globally, with organizations such as ASHOKA, which supports social entrepreneurship around the world.
Anousheh holds BS in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University, MS in electrical engineering from George Washington University; honorary doctorate from George Mason University, Utah Valley University, and International Space University.
Deena Shakir is a partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), where sheis responsible for managing partnerships for GV’s portfolio companies. She helps startups scale and grow by connecting them to the world’s largest companies.
Prior to joining GV, Deena spent five years at Google doing business development for early-stage products in health care, research and machine intelligence, and search. She also spearheaded social impact investments for Google.org.
Deena previously led public-private partnerships with Global 2000 companies as a presidential management fellow in the office of Secretary Clinton at the U.S. State Department. At the U.S. Agency for International Development, Deena was a partnerships advisor where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010.
Deena co-founded her first company at 19, and is an angel investor and startup adviser. She serves as an advisor to the board of TechWadi (after serving as a Board Director for several years), and sits on the boards of the Harvard Alumni Association, the Project on Middle East Democracy, the Arab Film Festival, and the Asian University for Women. She is also a Board Advisor to Girls Who Code.
Deena holds a joint Bachelor of Arts in social studies and Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard College and a master’s degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She delivered the 2008 Harvard Class Day speech, “From Baghdad to Boston: Dropping the Global H-Bomb.”
Sepideh (“Sepi”) Nasiri is an award winning serial Entrepreneur with 16 years of experience working in the Tech Industry, the Founder of Persian Women In Tech, the former Vice President at Women 2.0 and a life-time advocate for women, diversity and inclusion. Mrs. Nasiri started her career as a Co-founder and Managing Editor of a digital and print Los Angeles Magazine and later joined a number of successful startups in Silicon Valley.
In 2014, she was recognized by San Francisco Business Times/Journal “40under40” and Diversity Journal’s 2014 “Women Worth Watching”. Currently, Mrs. Nasiri advises early stage startups including at global initiatives such as WeMENA (a program by the World Bank) and mentors globally many female entrepreneurs and founders in technology serving as an advisor to initiatives such as TechWomen, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA).
Allison Allen is VP of Diversity & Inclusion; Talent Management at Oath. In this role, she leads global efforts across Oath’s 50+ media and technology brands to build strong talent and organizational philosophies and culture. Allison also partners and works collaboratively across all levels of Oath’s brands to guide the company’s diversity and inclusion strategy, focusing on creating innovative approaches that result in an all-inclusive and diverse work environment. Her goal at Oath is to enhance the internal and external brand of the company from both the people and process perspective, as well as maintaining an exceptionally high bar for diverse talent.
Prior to Oath, Allison was Vice President, Talent & Organizational Development for AOL Inc., where she created a series of new learning programs, technical end products and organizational/project models.
Before AOL, she headed up the Global Organizational Development Practice at Bloomberg LP and was Vice President in Global Talent and Leadership at Deutsche Bank, where she worked with clients around a broad range of issues (e.g., strategy execution, leadership pipeline building, talent identification, change management and human capital systems).
Allison began her career at Johnson & Higgins (now part of Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc.) where she focused on designing and implementing courses on insurance brokerage systems. Earlier in her career, Allison was a Manager of Learning & Organizational Development with Cushman & Wakefield,Inc.
Allison completed her degree from New York University and is currently researching Masters programs focusing on Industrial Organizational Psychology & Human Resources Management.
Duygu Oktem Clark is a VC at the European Investment Fund where she leads early stage tech startup investments, and the Founder of DO Consultancy LLC - a boutique consultancy company focused on corporate innovation. Prior to that; as an Intrapreneur, she founded and ran Turkey's first corporate-run startup accelerator from scratch where she led 22 early stage investments. Before that, she was a Founding R&D Manager at Turk Telekom where she oversaw more than 40 R&D projects with an overall budget of +$100M. She has mentored hundreds of startups in the last 5 years and continues to help startups by serving as a jury member and mentor at many startup programs including the Chobani Startup Program,Founder Institute,United Nations Clean Tech,Telefonica Wayra UK and Startup Bootcamp. She is a Computer Engineer with Master Degree in Technology Management.
Sharif El-Badawi currently serves as Partner at 500 Startups, the most active venture capital firm in the world. In his role, he manages 500 Startups' MENA fund, focusing on seed stage investments in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, Sharif is the Chairman of the Board and Head Mentor at TechWadi, where he leads the TW100 mentors and helps bridge MENA startups with Silicon Valley. He also serves on several advisory boards for startups in the MENA region and Silicon Valley.
Previously, Sharif was the Partner Lead to VCs and Startups at Google where he worked with top tier VCs and their most promising startups on strategies that bring all of Google to their businesses. Joining from AdMob almost 7 prior, he led performance advertising strategy for Google's largest customers in North America covering Mobile, Search and Display ads. Before AdMob, Sharif was a technologist and serial entrepreneur having founded or co-founded several companies in the Consumer Internet and B2B space over twelve years. Sharif earned his MBA from UC Irvine Merage School of Business and his BS in Neuroscience from UCLA. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.
Dr Ali Parsa is a British-Iranian healthcare entrepreneur and engineer. He’s the founder and CEO of Babylon, the revolutionary artificial intelligence and digital health company. Babylon’s mission is to put an accessible and affordable health service in the hands of every person on earth.
Dr Parsa was listed in The Times 100 people to watch. The Health Service Journal recognised him as one of the ‘50 most influential people in UK healthcare’. He was featured in the Maserati 100, a list that recognises game-changing entrepreneurs who are disrupting the world of business. The Independent Healthcare Awards presented Dr Parsa with an Entrepreneurial Achievement award. He is also a UK Cabinet Office Ambassador for Mutuals and has a PhD in Engineering Physics.
Faranak Farahmand Pour
Currently Faranak lives in Dubai and works at SAP’s Global Strategic Initiatives, a high performing sales organization responsible for the strategy, structure and negotiation of highly complex partnership and opportunities.
Faranak joined GSI in 2015 initially located in The Netherlands focusing on SAP EMEA North region (Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Baltic countries) and moved to Dubai in August 2016 focusing on SAP EMEA South region (Africa, Middle East, South Europe: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey). Faranak is a key member of the GSI team successfully leading the strategy, structuring and negotiation of large complex opportunities with our customers in EMEA. Faranak has demonstrated the ability to engage with customers in various countries and cultures. Faranak is also the Chapter Lead for the SAP Business Women’s Network in the United Arab Emirates.
The business women’s network (BWN) is an employee-driven network at SAP to help women advance their careers and the company’s business. By sharing professional insights, best practices, education and experience, we help one another develop skills and career advancing opportunities to drive SAP’s
success. More information can be found on https://news.sap.com/2017/07/ten-years-business-womens-network-sap/ Between August 2013 and July 2015, Faranak headed the Legal Department for SAP in The Netherlands, managing all legal matters for SAP Nederland B.V. including drafting and negotiating agreements (software licensing, Cloud Services, Consulting Services, (IT) outsourcing, purchasing and sales). Prior to joining SAP, Faranak was part of the Legal Depart of Philips International B.V. providing legal support for the divisions of Philips IP&S, “Philips Corporate IT”, “Philips Forwarding and Distribution”, “Philips Group Purchasing” and “FINOPS”(Finance Operations) worldwide. Faranak has a Master of Law in International Business Law and a Bachelor of International & European Law from Tilburg University in The Netherlands, both graduated Cum Laude.
Yasmine El Baggari, a native of Morocco and San Francisco based, is the founder and CEO of Voyaj, an online platform that connects people from around the globe for one-on-one meaningful exchanges to foster global understanding. Yasmine is committed to creating a safe environment where the exchange of ideas will result in mutual respect and our ability to embrace our differences, to empower each other to become citizens of the world committed to a healthy, peaceful planet.
For the past four years, Yasmine’s reach includes research at Harvard University, and the U.S. State Department as an Youth Moroccan Ambassador to the United States. She has spoken at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum, the Middle East Studies Association, and Obama's Global Entrepreneurship Summit. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, NPR, Forbes, and the Huffington Post. Yasmine has also received the Royal Air Maroc Award from the African Studies Association, Glamour Women of the Year Microsoft's Made Achieving Award, Hampshire College’s $60K Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, The Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, the Sander Thoenes Research Award, and two Ingenuity Awards. Recently, she was invited to the White House as one of the 100 Most Influential Travel Bloggers, and on Forbes 30 Under 30's list as one of of the most inspiring and promising entrepreneurs in Africa.
Ash Ali
An award-winning serial tech entrepreneur and angel investor, Ash sold his first internet business at the age of just 19 (and most recently his Dubai-based on-demand mobile app startup in 2018).As the first marketing director of Just Eat UK which IPO’d for £1.5 billion, he was included in the Top 250 Growth Hackers, as well as Top 100 Asian Tech Stars in the UK.
With over 20 years of hands-on experience creating and growing startups, he has consulted, advised, and invested in hundreds of startups at various funding stages.
Ash is a highly sought-after international speaker and expert on digital disruption and tech transformation, and has spoken at numerous global organisations and conferences including Salesforce, Ernst & Young and TEDx. His new book The Unfair Advantage – Boost Your Chances of Tech Startup Success (co-authored with Hasan Kubba) is coming soon.
Sepideh Dundon, Channel Lead EMEA, LinkedIn
Sepideh Dundon is a digital marketing strategist and tech enthusiast who has worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies. She currently leads LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions Channel business across growth markets in EMEA, where she works with local partners to cultivate LinkedIn across the region. She has a wealth of experience in working with numerous industries including Technology, Telco, Education and Finance.
At LinkedIn she is also responsible for the Environmental Sustainability Group, Go Green and is a People and Culture Ambassador. Sepideh holds a Masters in International Business from The European Business School, Regent’s College and a BA in Business Management and Mandarin from Kingston University.
Xanyar Kamangar is a Founding Partner at Griffon Capital, a frontier market focused Asset Management, Venture Capital and Investment Banking group. Xanyar graduated with an MBA from London Business School. Prior to Griffon Capital, Xanyar spent 8 years as a Director in the Telecom and Technology investment banking team of Deutsche Bank in London advising some of the largest tech players in EMEA. Before that, Xanyar founded Tehran Computer, a leading provider of computer telephony solutions in the Middle East. Xanyar is also an active angel investor in tech companies in the MENA region.