[LCM Events] Fwd: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Middle East - HKS at 4:45pm on 5th April, Tuesday

[John Boghossian]

John Boghossian
Massachusetts Institute of Technology '11
Mechanical Engineering and Economics
428 Memorial Drive
Cambridge MA 02139
(617)710-2411 | jbogoss at mit.edu


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Daria Michelle Kaboli <dkaboli at MIT.EDU>
> Date: April 1, 2011 7:06:10 PM EDT
> To: "d.alkekhia at gmail.com" <d.alkekhia at gmail.com>, John G Boghossian <jbogoss at mit.edu>
> Cc: "majalal99 at gmail.com" <majalal99 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Middle East - HKS at 4:45pm on 5th April, Tuesday
> 
>  
> Entrepreneurial Ecosystem – Challenges, Opportunities in shaping the business and political landscape of the Middle East
>   
> 4:45 pm – 6:00pm on April 5th, Tuesday
> The Weiner Auditorium, Harvard Kennedy School
>  
>  
> 
> Launch of WAMDA.com, the most comprehensive MENA-wide entrepreneurship
> portal at Abraaj Capital's Celebration of Entrepreneurship
>  
>  
> A Panel Discussion with
>  
> Sami Shalabi - Google Inc., Founder of Zingku, Inc & YallaStartup
> Habbib Haddad - Founder of Yamli.com & WEF's Young Global Leader
>  
> Moderator
> Ahmad Jalal - Summer Associate at Jordan & Palestine Growth Fund
>  
> - What is the regulatory and financing environment for new enterprises in Middle East?
> - How are entrepreneurs innovating to overcome the challenges?
> - What is the state of entrepreneurial activism in the region?
> An example was when Internet activity was shut down in Egypt, volunteers from Google and Twitter launched international lines to leave voicemails. Habib Haddad was a volunteer involved with the AliveInEgypt initiative which set up a translation service to take those Arabic voicemails and convert them to text in many languages and Tweet them onwards.
>  
>  
>  Also available for distribution at the event will be copies of
> Abraaj Capital's  Celebration of Entrepreneurship Consensus Brochure
>   
>  
> Sponsored by:
> HKS Venture Capital and Private Equity PIC, HKS Arab and Palestine Caucus, HBS MENA Business Club and MIT MENA Business Club.
> The Dubai Initiative, and Center for International Development
>  
>  
>  
> Sami Shalabi is a software inventor and entrepreneur. He is currently at Google leading the engineering teams responsible for Google Friend Connect (which he co-founded), Googleʼs Social API Platform, and few other secret projects. Sami joined Google after they acquired Zingku, Inc, a venture backed software company he cofounded in 2006. 
>  
> Sami has 32 patent/patent pending ideas and the MIT ASO recently recognized Sami with the 2009 MIT Young Professional Award.Sami also co-founded a non-profit called YallaStartup, an organization with the mission of fostering innovation and early stage entrepreneurship in the MENA region.
>  
> Prior to Zingku, Sami had architecture and leadership responsibilities for a number of products at Lotus, Iris Associates, and IBM. Sami serves on the MIT Arab Alumni/ae Association’s Executive Team as well as serving on the Board of several startups. Sami received his SB and MEng from MIT.
>  
>  
> Habib Haddad is a tech entrepreneur, recently founder and CEO of Yamli.com a startup focused on empowering the Arabic language on the web. His also the founder and CEO of YallaStartup an organization focused on early stage entrepreneurship in the MENA region. In 2009, the World Economic Forum recognized Habib as a Young Global Leader and the ArabianBusiness named him one of the top 30 influential Arabs under 30. He currently serves on the Global Agenda Council on innovation.
>  
> Habib is an advisor to several US and Middle Eastern startups and non-profits. During the July of 2006 war he started Relief Lebanon to support relief operations. He holds a Bachelor of Computer and Communication Engineering from the American University in Beirut and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
>  
>  

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