Omar Christidis is the founder of CEO of ArabNet, a digital media venture with the goal of spearheading the Arab Web and Mobile movement, and encouraging its expansion worldwide, was founded by Omar Christidis in 2010. Born in Lebanon, Omar holds a BA in Ethic, Politics, and Economics from Yale, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. After his studies, Omar worked as a consultant where he was exposed to exciting and innovative digital developments. After spending a year working for Sheff...
Jun 09, 2020•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Joy Ajlouny co-founded Fetchr in 2015 , a Silicon Valley-backed tech company that was created to tackle the Middle East’s “no address” issue, which has been long been a hindrance to growth in emerging markets. She facilitated $52 million in initial investments in Fetchr, as well as $41 million in a series B round in 2017. The company now successfully operates in five countries with a 3500-person staff, and was dubbed the number one startup in the Middle East by Forbes. Ahead of founding Fetchr, ...
Jun 02, 2020•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. He co-founded HealthCentral.com, one of the nation's largest social and content platforms in health and wellness, backed by Sequoia Capital, Polaris Ventures, The Carlyle Group, Allen & Company and IAC Corporation. The company was sold to the health media publisher, Remedy Health, in January 2012 where Schroeder remained a board advisor. Schroeder was invited to speak and mentor at the Celebr...
May 26, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mr. Ahmed El Alfi is the Founder and Chairman of Sawari Ventures a Cairo-based venture capital firm. Established in 2010, the goal of Sawari is to help transform Egyptian and MENA region economies through the creation of high impact businesses. In 2011, Sawari created Flat6Labs, its own startup accelerator. Flat6Labs immerses startup entrepreneurs into real-world challenges of creating and managing sustainable enterprises. Before Sawari Ahmed was a veteran investor and venture capitalist from Ca...
May 19, 2020•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Erick Pinos is Americas Ecosystem Lead at Ontology, a high-performance public blockchain and distributed collaboration platform. In addition to his role at Ontology, Erick is President of the Blockchain Education Network (BEN) and a graduate of MIT, where he was President of the MIT Bitcoin Club and a researcher at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. Ranked 30th on CoinMarketCap and listed amongst the top blockchain projects in China, Ontology’s unique infrastructure supports robust cross-chain...
May 12, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amir Hegazi is a lifelong entrepreneur, with over 20 years of startup, tech, e-commerce, and digital media experience. He is the Managing Partner of intoMENA Group, a consulting firm that helps international companies do business into the MENA region. Amir was previously the Director of Marketplace at Souq.com, the region's largest e-commerce platform (recently acquired by Amazon.com). He helped build Souq. com's marketplace from the ground up to account for a sizable portion of overall sales vo...
May 05, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Host Andrew Berkowitz shares his thoughts that changes need to be made in how we approach building startup and innovation industries in frontier markets. Some ideas to move us forward include Focus capacity building efforts on selling in-demand skills on global freelancing sites Invest in programs to empower Diasporans in US, UK, and Europe to build companies Provide a sandbox framework for digital currency startups to set up shop in your country For full blog post visit - https://thegsm.co/?p=1...
Apr 28, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Koichi Saito is the Founder and General Partner of KK Fund, leveraging his experience in the internet sector, finance expertise and investment experience at PE and VC fund. He previously worked at IMJ Investment Partners as Director and responsible for IMJ's startup investments across Southeast Asia such as iMoney, Bukalapak and Zipmatch. Prior to IMJ, Koichi worked at Private Equity Fund founded by George Soros, and was engaged in several corporate and hotel acquisitions. Koichi holds a MBA deg...
Apr 21, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Marek Zmysłowski is a Polish-born entrepreneur and executive, focused on online businesses in Frontier and Emerging Markets. He co-founded Jumia Travel - Africa's Biggest Hotel Booking Portal listed on NYSE as part of Jumia Group and HotelOnline.co - a Travel Technology Company. In 2014, he was chosen as one of the Ten Most Important People in Tech by IT News Africa Magazine. He is a Lead Mentor at Google's Launchpad and World Bank's XL Africa Program. Check out his new book, Chasing Black Unico...
Apr 14, 2020•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast CK Japheth is building The Innovation Village; Uganda’s launchpad for leading Innovators and entrepreneurs co-creating the future through the smart application of technology to unravel challenges and create unique solutions. He works with mission-oriented entrepreneurs to capture new value from digital—creating products, experiences, and businesses. Formerly he was Head of Talent at Uganda's largest utility, his mandate was to put the best Talent behind the company's Corporate strategy. Kai Isan...
Apr 07, 2020•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Alexandre (Alex) Lazarow has spent his career working at the intersection of investing, innovation, and economic development in the private, public, and social sectors. He is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation, a global firm that invests across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Previously, Alex worked with Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm that has invested over a billion dollars in hundreds of startups around the world. He has served as a strategy consultant with ...
Mar 31, 2020•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Maurice is the CEO and co-founder of Yellow Card Financial. Chris started his freelance writing and SEO consulting career in high school, writing for more than 200 publications (including the former EOG.com and MovieTVTechGeeks.com) and optimizing over 140 websites on Google (including Prezi.com). In college, Chris began sourcing shoes and clothing from Pakistan, giving him his first experience with international markets, partnerships, and currency exchange. He then started consulting for ...
Mar 24, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andile Masuku is a Zimbabwean broadcaster and entrepreneur based in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the executive producer of African Tech Roundup, much of his time is spent covering Africa’s emerging tech and innovation ecosystem. Andile speaks widely and advises high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. He has a finger on the pulse of the ecosystem’s most ...
Mar 17, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andile Masuku is a Zimbabwean broadcaster and entrepreneur based in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the executive producer of African Tech Roundup, much of his time is spent covering Africa’s emerging tech and innovation ecosystem. Andile speaks widely and advises high net worth individuals and leading brands and businesses around the world on media strategy, market-entry plays and investment pipeline development focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. He has a finger on the pulse of the ecosystem’s most ...
Mar 10, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode we dive into our top 5 episode that we've ever done with leaders in the Asia-Pacific startup ecosystems. Featured guests include William Bao Bean, Sajith Pai, Justin Hall, Rivers Corbett, Alicia Garabedian and Simon Cant.
Mar 03, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Samia Melhem is a Lead Policy Officer in the World Bank's Transport and ICT Global Practice. She chairs the Digital Development Community of Practice and leads Global ICT's Transformation practice, as well as its Knowledge, Learning and Solutions functions. Her current operational responsibilities include lending and technical assistance for the ICT sector. In her 20 years of experience in development at the World Bank Group, Samia has worked on ICT4D in several sectors: telecommunications and b...
Feb 25, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eric Olander is the co-founder of the China Africa Project (CAP), an independent, non-partisan media initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Africa. Eric is also the co-host of the weekly China in Africa podcast that is now among the top-10% most downloaded shows worldwide. Eric is a fluent Mandarin-speaker and a longtime China-watcher with more than 25 years of journalism experience at many of the world’s leading media companies including CNN, the BBC, and FRANCE2...
Feb 18, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Odunayo Eweniyi is Cofounder and COO of PiggyVest. She previously cofounded pushcv.com, one of the largest job sites in Africa with the largest database of prescreened candidates. In 2019 she was named one of Forbes Africa 30 under 30 Technology as well as 30 Quartz Africa Innovators 2019. She sits on the advisory board of TrainFuture, an Education Technology company based in Switzerland, as well as the Gender Lens Acceleration Best Practices Initiative, a collaborative effort of Village Capital...
Feb 11, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aubrey Hruby is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center. She is also co-founder of Insider and the Africa Expert Network (AXN), Co-host of the NewThink Podcast and an active investor in African start-ups. In her role at Insider, Hruby works with global entrepreneurs to generate positive public relations and to connect them with investors, while at AXN, she has helped build Africa’s leading information brokerage and expert connection service. Hruby has consulted extensively in ove...
Feb 04, 2020•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode we dive into our top 5 episode that we've ever done with leaders in the MENA startup ecosystems. Featured guests include Ali Abukumail, Idriss Al Rifai, Jacob Korenblum, Simon Galpin, and Yariv Lotan.
Jan 28, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast W. Gyude Moore is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development. He previously served as Liberia’s Minister of Public Works with oversight over the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure from December 2014 to January 2018. Prior to that role, Moore served as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Head of the President’s Delivery Unit (PDU). As Head of the PDU, his team monitored progress and drove delivery of the Public Sector Investment Program of L...
Jan 21, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode we dive into our top 5 episode that we've ever done with leaders in the Canadian startup ecosystems. Featured guests include Mark Organ, Mark Maclean, Charles Boulanger, Rivers Corbett, and Marie Chevrier.
Jan 14, 2020•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Julio Lavalle is the Cofounder of Poupa Certo and MiBolsillo, mobile apps that digitize financial behaviors and tasks to build a financially healthy generation with less human intervention and reduced transaction costs for both end users and financial institutions to bring 5 million people to the formal financial system in the next three years. Poupa Certo and MiBolsillo currently operate in Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico with plans to expand into more Spanish-speaking countries. After work...
Jan 07, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast false
Dec 24, 2019•46 sec•Transcript available on Metacast Samier Mansur is a social entrepreneur, innovator, and writer who is driven by ideas that can build a more just, peaceful, and better organized world. Samier is the founder of No Limit Generation, an organization that supports thousands of displaced and vulnerable children rise and thrive into their full potential. This initiative builds on his previous work in founding the "Safe Haven" for Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh in partnership with the award-winning JAAGO Foundation. The facili...
Dec 17, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eli David is the co-founder of StartupBlink.com, global map and research center of the global startup ecosystem. They work with dozens of governments and municipalities on the promotion and mapping of their ecosystems. StartupBlink was featured in hundreds of magazines around the world and has thousands of registered startups and release the World's most comprehensive startup ecosystem index ranking more than 1,000 cities and 100 countries. In 2010, Eli also co-founded Lingolearn with its curren...
Dec 10, 2019•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast This special installment of The Global Startup Movement podcast was recorded at the Africa Fintech Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with 4 tech ecosystem player including Adam Abate Cofounder & CEO of Apposit, Yemiru Chanyalew CEO of Moneta Technologies, Saad Sheikh Principal of Investments at TLG Capital, and Habtamu Tadesse Founder & CEO of both Zayride and Arifpay.
Dec 03, 2019•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kristin Rechberger is CEO of Dynamic Planet, a company that invests in conservation enterprises so that people and nature can thrive: wilderness protection (land and sea), sustainable tourism, food-energy-water security, and market transformation towards sustainable sourcing and consumption. As SVP Global Programs & Partnerships at the National Geographic Society, over 14 years Kristin helped lead worldwide growth of cable channels, corporate partnerships, and research, conservation, and explora...
Nov 26, 2019•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shailee Aldinofi is Director of Public Sector Solutions at ConsenSys, a global blockchain technology company building the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world. She served as Vice President of BanQu, a blockchain-based platform for supply chain transparency. Prior to joining the blockchain industry, Shailee spent 11 years leading USAID funded projects in financial inclusion, mobile money in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and 3 years in logistics and sof...
Nov 19, 2019•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nizar Zakka is a Lebanese national and US permanent resident who was arrested by Iran in 2015, and was imprisoned until 2019 on charges of espionage for the United States. Zakka worked as an Internet freedom advocate and served as secretary general of the Arab ICT Organization in Washington, D.C.. On September 8, 2018, the person who had invited Nizar to visit Iran, Shahindokht Molaverdi, the top aide for citizenship rights to Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, told the Associated Press that the I...
Nov 12, 2019•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
