Oudai Tozan is one of the founding members of the International Syrian Association for Education Development, a network of over 120 researchers, academics, professionals, scholarship holders, and education activists working together to support Syrians’ education all over the world with focus on marginalised groups. He is also a member of the Steering Group for the UK Universities of Sanctuary, founding members of the Syrian Network in Glasgow, UNESCO RILA Ambassador, and Chevening alumni.

Founder and CEO of BALADNA, a global business specialized in Arabic, Halal and premium food products, and sooner to be the first and biggest B2B & B2C marketplace for Halal online food business.

Ahmad is an award-winning social entrepreneur, and the author focused on supporting vulnerable communities, including those in conflict and fragile societies, and refugees to access entrepreneurship.

He works as the Middle East and Africa Regional Manager at Techstars, The global platform for investment and innovation. Since 2012, he has been helping hundreds of Syrians to gain access to entrepreneurship opportunities and build a supportive environment as the Startup Roadshow entrepreneurship program Director and founder of Startup Syria.

He has written, “Entrepreneurship In Conflict Zones” and “Entrepreneurship in Exile,” to shed some light on the status quo of Syrian founders, in conflict zones, and as refugees in host countries.

Mayaz Alhashmi is a young Libyan female entrepreneur who launched the first ever
female tech club in Libya. Born and raised in Libya, Mayaz always dreamt of owning her own business. With the help of the LEAD programme, she joined LEAP, a co-working space created by Jusoor in partnership with SPARK in 2019. During her time there, she was trained and mentored by expert trainers, offered legal and marketing advice and was provided a secure and affordable office space to launch her business.

Marcel is the Director of the Europe Office, Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) in The Hague. Prior to this he was the Policy Specialist on Private Sector and Conflict at Oxfam in The Netherlands.  Over the last twenty years he has worked for international nongovernmental organizations operating in fragile states and conflict affected areas in South Asia, Africa, Balkans and the Caucasus. Marcel served as the Director of the Forum on Early Warning and Early Response, the Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting-NL as well as the Country Director for the Nonviolent Violent Peaceforce in Sri Lanka during the civil war.

A Syrian businessman in Gaziantep, Turkey, running Saadplast, which specialises in pharmaceutical and cosmetic containers production. Saadplast has been active in Turkey since 2013. Saad has a background in Mechanical Engineering; however, due to workload his goal became to improve his management skills, and to achieve this goal he attended many courses and workshops that helped him to become the CEO of Saadplast. Currently, he is trying to come up with new ideas to reduce the disputes between migrants and host communities.

Researcher and business law expert, in 2015 Hala co-founded Jusoor Centre for Studies and Development, the first Libyan think tank that focuses on economic development with special focus on women issues. Hala also
worked as a mentor and champion for UN Women’s Empower Women Global Program. Hala is a frequent speaker in local and international conferences on issues related to economic development, gender and youth empowerment. She also serves as an advisor for many local and international organisations and operates all these activities from Tripoli, Libya.

Tijmen Rooseboom is the Dutch Ambassador for Youth, Education and Work. In the policy of Minister Kaag for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation giving perspective to young people -through learning, youth employment and bridging the gap between skills and jobs- is an important priority. Earlier Tijmen was Deputy Ambassador to Somalia and worked for an EU mission, UN Peacekeeping Missions and an NGO.

As country director at The Hunger Project Netherlands, Evelijne is a driver of change, facilitating debates and discussions about change and development. She is a member of the boards of World in Progress, Partos, and Both Ends. Evelijne also works as a columnist at de Dikke Blauwe and Internationale Samenwerking. Before, she was a member of the boards of Agriprofocus, IDP/The Broker, and ICDI, as well as editor in chief at Vice Versa and Capacity.org. Evelijne holds experience as communications advisor at SNV, as well as junior advisor social mobilisation SNV Vietnam.

Co-founder & Director at CARL Group and Head of Agroprocessing cluster at Rwanda youth in Agribusiness Forum (RYAF). He first brought about what was at first regarded as a ‘crazy idea’, the idea of making pastries out of sweet potatoes – something later proven to be possible, and where CARL Group stemmed from www.carlgroup.org. Regis identifies himself as having an entrepreneurial eye; and an ambitious, patient and optimistic person. Regis hold a Bachelor’s degree in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics at the University of Rwanda. Regis was selected among the 1000 top young entrepreneurs in Africa 2016 by the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Program. He is active at the Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs at Private Sector Federation (PSF) and serves as the vice chairman of the chamber.

Fred is a London-based social entrepreneur and international development consultant with 7 years’ experience in leading and managing inclusive incubators, social enterprises and blended learning programmes in urban rural contexts. He currently focuses on two approaches to tackling forced migration issues:

1)     enabling refugees through the power of their own ideas: First as a livelihoods innovation consultant for UNHCR and later as a co-founder of TERN (wearetern.org), Fred has gained 6 years’ experience in designing and building entrepreneurship ecosystems and startup programmes.

2)     making the next generation of citizens more informed about forced migration: Fred’s technical career is in Blended Learning and Open Educational Resource (OER) design. Over the past two years, Fred’s other social enterprise Beyond Refuge has designed and produced the majority of educational materials resources on UNHCR’s ‘Teaching About Refugees’ web portal: unhcr.org/uk/teaching-about-refugees.html.

Abir Sarras is the North Africa Regional Manager at RNW Media specialised in media platforms for social change. 

She currently leads several thematic media projects in both Libya and Egypt, including include “Huna Libya هنا ليبيا”,  a youth platform where young journalists and vloggers engage on sensitive topics and amplify youth voices to influential decision-makers.  A more recently established platform is Masaraat مسارات, focusing on education, work, and economic inclusion of youth.

Abir is also the co-founder of Love Matters Arabic, “الحب ثقافة”, a leading Arabic digital platform on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the Middle East.  

Abir grew up in Palestine. She holds an MA in Social Studies from the University of Amsterdam and is a graduate of mass communication and journalism from Goshen College, Indiana.

Head of Social Mission Strategy, Europe, Ben&Jerry’s. Chris worked for 7 years on issues surrounding education and skills development in Ghana, India and South Africa.  He then transitioned into working more closely on how business can drive social impact, spending time at both Ben & Jerry’s and Marks & Spencer.  Chris now heads up Ben & Jerry’s social mission strategy across Europe which focuses on driving action in support of refugee and asylum rights.

Richard is passionate about entrepreneurship practice. He has 18 years of experience, dedicated to supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship, in 28 countries. He facilitates innovation, enterprise and investment in “hard places”; emerging markets and developing economies.

Richard started his entrepreneurial journey as CEO of his city’s fifth fastest growing SME. Then, he was invited to lead change as entrepreneur in residence for an ambitious local government body. He appreciates a multi-disciplinary approach to entrepreneurship. He is a qualified coach and mentor and an independent international development professional. He has worked with SPARK in Palestine and North Africa.

Middle East Regional Manager at RNW Media. Ruba is a media professional with broad experience in building and implementing media projects for social change in fragile and conflict settings. For more than 5 years, Ruba has been leading digital media projects in Syria and Yemen, focused on multiple thematic programmes such as economic inclusion, social cohesion, inclusive governance and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Prior to moving to the Netherlands, Ruba spent a decade working as a TV journalist in Palestine, producing and presenting award-winning TV programs tailored for young people tackling social and political issues. Ruba holds a master’s degree in Political Communication from the University of Amsterdam and a bachelor’s degree in Media and Political science.

Roy is Head of ING Impact Finance, a department which he has built from scratch, and which currently consists of lending, financial education and research. He invested in micro-finance institutions directly and through local ING subsidiaries, reaching 1 million entrepreneurs. On top of that, he supported a training for 430 women entrepreneurs and the financial education of 25,000 women. An important driver for end-user insights and in-depth knowledge of impact finance is gained through the ‘A Billion to Gain’ research in cooperation with universities and knowledge centres. He holds several board seats in the Inclusion and Diversity environment, like Chairman of the Inclusion & Diversity Monitor. By providing high quality researches he is pushing the industry to optimize the inclusion of the unbanked. Roy is co-author of several strategic documents like the ING Global Sustainability Direction, Global Top Employer programme, Analysis of Chinese micro-finance market and Evaluation of 65 years of Dutch development aid.

Expert Researcher in Economic Studies at Bremen University. An economic researcher and lecturer at various European universities and institutions. She earned her BS in Economics from the Damascus University in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Economics and Social Sciences from The University of Bremen in 2010. Since 2009, she has been researching and teaching Arab Economies, Arab Trade Policies and the Political Economy of Syria. Said also worked on several development projects as a scientific coordinator, and published numerous academic articles and research papers.

Director of Programmes at Access to Finance Rwanda (AFR), which is a Not for Profit Company and part of the Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Network across sub-Saharan Africa, promoting Financial Sector Development and facilitating financial inclusion of people with low income. Jean Bosco has been instrumental in the design and implementation of a diverse range of financial inclusion projects including the digitisation of agricultural value chains to enable smallholder farmers access to financial services, the Rwanda Long Term Saving Scheme providing micro pension products to people working in the informal sector, the Rwanda National Agriculture Insurance Scheme and the Rwanda National Digital Payment System (an open loop inter-operable payment platform for Banks, MNOs, MFIs, SACCOs and FinTechs). He was CEO of the Rwanda Business Development Center, an entrepreneurship and business incubation facility under the auspices of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Regent University and the International Christian Chamber of Commerce (ICCC). He also served in various leadership capacities in some of the Africa’s leading Financial Institutions such as Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), where he was the Regional Business Manager and Head of Retail and SME Banking. He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and he is currently a CFA Candidate. He is a Certified Expert in MSME financing and Inclusive Insurance from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Germany. He is also a Certified Expert in Digital Financial Solutions from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, USA, and a fellow of Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education on Rethinking Financial Inclusion.

Co-Founder and CEO of NaTakallam, an award-winning social enterprise that connects refugees and displaced persons with work opportunities in the language sector through the freelance economy. Winner of the World Bank Youth Summit, Rent the Runway/UBS Project Entrepreneur accelerator and pitch competition, and OpenIDEO Bridgebuilder Challenge among other competitions/awards, Sarah has overseen the growth of NaTakallam from a small startup to a globally recognised organisation that has distributed over $650,000 in self-earned income to refugees and displaced people.

Chief Executive Officer of Rural Finance Initiative (RUFI), a cross-border MFI operating in South Sudan and Uganda. Yengi Lokule holds a BSc. Degree in Agriculture and a Master Degree in Development Studies specializing in Micro-finance. He has over 20 Years’ working experience in micro-finance and banking in the post-conflict environment of South Sudan and refugee context in Uganda. Yengi’s journey in micro-finance started at the level of an Agriculture Loan Officer at Centenary
Bank (Uganda) to the present position of Chief Executive Officer of RUFI. In Uganda, he has pioneered access to finance for refugees in the West Nile Region of the Country. In South Sudan, he is heading an Access to Finance project for post-conflict returnees targeting Youth and Women in the Agriculture Sector. Yengi has also consulted a lot in micro-finance, agriculture and the development sector.

Sabina Kekic is an advisor on European and International Affairs for the mayor and vice mayors of the City of Amsterdam. She focuses on the topics of Inclusion, Diversity and Citizenship. Sabina also coordinates the Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees of the Urban Agenda for the EU. Within the Partnership different projects have been set up for better inclusion of migrants and refugees in EU-cities like to European Migrant Advisory Board. Before Sabina worked as a policy advisor on Integration and Education for the City of Amsterdam and as a policy advisor for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She studied Dutch Language and Culture (BA) and Second Language Acquisition (MA) at the University of Amsterdam. Sabina has a refugee background herself: at the age of seven she fled the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina in 1995.

An Agriculture Engineer by education, a marketer by experience and an entrepreneur by choice,
Samar is the Executive Director of INJAZ Lebanon. She has extensive experience in marketing and management in the private sector in both Lebanon and the UAE where she worked for eight years before she decided to come back to Lebanon. Samar’s belief in the importance of entrepreneurship education led her to INJAZ Lebanon where she hopes to use her knowledge and passion for youth development to further help spread INJAZ vision in Lebanon.

Minister of Local Administration and Services in the Syrian Interim Government, Bachelor of Civil Engineering, Roads and Airports Department, President of the Local Council of Afrin City, Member of the Tribes and Clans Council of Syria, CEO of Judy Education NGO and Secretary of the Civil Peace Council.

Faten Alhoni holds a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic design but switched her career path when she established the first educational institute (Kids Garden Preschool & Daycare) in Libya back in September 2012, a year after the Libyan war. With her passion to help develop the society and rebuild the country, she turned the institute into a growing success, especially after the deconstructions happening in 2011. The institute has expanded to a new venture, Kids garden Club, providing a unique service to working mothers by entertaining and educating their children 12 hourse per day, throughout the whole year. Another target set by the institute was to employ new graduates as interns in order to develop and empower the educational workforce – aiming to raise the Libyan learning and educational standards.

Richard guides 21st century leaders to continually evolve and realise talent and potential. He supports and challenges to expand self-awareness – to be their own inspiration for sustainable performance, real impact and positive social influence. Since 2009, Richard has collaborated with Mowgli Mentoring in developing mentors and entrepreneurs as role models and leaders in the Middle East & Africa; and, since 2013, with Help For Heroes in UK to guide and enable injured veterans through transition into an independent and meaningful civilian life. Richard’s career background includes workflow and business process re-engineering (SAP & Siebel) delivering full cycle projects across functions and processes, and across diverse industries from aerospace to pharmaceuticals, beverages to public sector (Diageo, Hewlett-Packard, Lufthansa…). He has been a visiting lecturer at University College London, Henley Business School and London Metropolitan University, and combines his passions, skills and experience to co-lead small groups on “open adventures of self-exploration” in remote parts of the world.

Marcello is a development innovation expert with over 10 years experience launching and scaling programs at the intersection of education, conflict resolution and technology. Marcello’s deep curiosity about leadership and innovation in the social sector have led him to work
with a variety of organizations from government to social enterprises. Prior to Re:Coded, Marcello led human rights and peace-building programs in Myanmar, Bosnia, Colombia, and West Africa, as well as managed diplomatic bilateral projects between Brazil and Canada for four years. In addition to his role as Co-Founder at Re:Coded, Marcello is also currently investigating ways to use mobile technology to report attacks against education globally. Marcello holds a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University where he was a Lehmann fellow and a Bachelors of Communication and Journalism from Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Rio de Janeiro.

Director of Operations in the Orange organisation in both Syria and Turkey as well as leader of the field management of Orange Syria offices. Ahmad has a great passion for Training, Capacity Building, Career Development, Community Development, and Change Management. Ahmad worked with many international and national NGOs in both HR and Projects Management positions. He is greatly experienced in livelihood programming and employability projects within the Syrian context and conflict zones, coordinating with stakeholders on the ground to implement such projects that empower the youth and link them to the market.

Zahraa holds a Master’s degree in Linguistics from the Utrecht University and is now a trainee at the Young Professionals Program for status holders at the municipality of Amsterdam and a guest researcher at the Utrecht University’s department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Being a refugee herself, Zahraa defines herself as a global citizen, full of ambition to contribute to equal chances for all people. “My trajectory as a refugee was and is still a revelation as it shows me how life can be from a very different position and perspective. This motivates me to set new aims and objectives in life.”

Muhammad Elsharebeni, has 6 years of experience working for development and humanitarian organizations as, ILO, Save the children and Red Cross/Crescent where he was coordinating a wide range of programs, mainly at the youth Employment theme (refugees, Migrants and the Host Community)

Furthermore, he is now working as a livelihood officer at the Egyptian Red Cross/Crescent and a program development Coordinator at RNW media, Masaraat project. There, Muhammad is working closely with the private sector to lead the partnership development through strategic management and good team building to create a conductive and trustworthy environment among stakeholders, for building a safe workplace for the beneficiaries.

Jumana Salous holds a Bachelor Degree of English Literature minor Translation from Birzeit University. Recently, Jumana joined the Executive MBA at Birzeit University where she is currently the Programme Manager of the Business Women Forum Palestine, responsible for managing and supervising the implementation of five projects which provide business development service that aim to empower Palestinian women entrepreneurs and SMEs in the Palestinian economy. Since 2010, Jumana has been working directly with female entrepreneurs, business women and graduates where she provides coaching and guidance for women SMEs and female graduates. 

As the Program Manager, Ms. Salous joined local, regional and international trainings, and represented BWF and Palestine in different platforms such as the International Visitor Leadership program titled “Women and Entrepreneurship”. In addition, she accompanied women SMEs in different trade missions to Holland, Jordan, UAE, Italy and Germany.    

Since Ms. Salous joined BWF, she gained experience in fundraising, proposal writing, M&E and became an advocate for women economic empowerment especially marginalized SMEs. 

Shadi Gammoh, CITP|FIBP, is a founder and managing director of Manafeth Consulting and Training. With many years of practical experience offering consulting and business development strategy in several sectors, Shadi has a proven track record of success that he can apply to any international and local startups and SMEs. In 2009, Shadi joined a leading consulting company as a senior marketing consulting, where he specialised in offering export marketing consultancy to Start-ups, SMEs, and Corporates. He also offered training and mentoring in many fields such as marketing, export management strategies in addition to business coaching.

Yannick Du Pont is the Founder and Director of SPARK and has been working in the field of higher education & economic development in post-conflict countries since 1994. With an MA in International Relations and Sociology from the University of Amsterdam, Mr. Du Pont worked for the Netherlands Minister of Development Cooperation from 1996 to 1997. After working with the Dutch IKV and the Development think-tank of the Dutch Labor Party, the Evert Vermeer Foundation, Mr. Du Pont was engaged as researcher for the Netherlands Institute of International Relations “Clingendael” to evaluate the performance of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000/2001). SPARK has programs to support  growth oriented SMEs and facilitate youth job creation in 17 fragile States in primarily East and West Africa, North Africa & Somalia and the Middle East. In addition to his work at Spark, Yannick Du Pont also serves on the Board of the Max van der Stoel Foundation (Amsterdam), Advisory Board of the Centre of Theory of Change (New York), the Steering Board of the Knowledge Platform on Security and Rule of Law (The Hague) and the AIDCOIN Foundation (The Hague).

Ahmed has been Managing Hivos’ Youth Entrepreneurship Support programmes in MENA since 2016 including the Coworking  for Sustainable Employment (CwSE) and Boosting Bottom Up Societal Transformation (BOOST) programmes both funded under the LEAD scheme by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both programme contributed to the creation of more than 4500 Jobs for youth and the creation and/or scaling of more than 300 businesses in North Africa. Prior to working at Hivos, he cofounded and managed the first incubator for social enterprises in MENA and for more than 10 years, Ahmed has been working closely with Social Entrepreneurs consulting them on starting or scaling their social ventures between Cairo, London and San Francisco.

Laila Al Amine holds a Master degree from the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva and has been working in the humanitarian and development field for over ten years. She has experience with UN agencies and INGOs in conflict and post-conflict areas such as Darfour (Sudan), Pakistan, and Syria. Laila is currently working with Mercy Corps Lebanon and managing the FORSA program, a three years intervention aiming at reducing social tensions through improved access to livelihoods for refugees and host communities. She is also collaborating on a research aiming to test the link between employment programs and social stability.

Perrine Pouget is a senior investment manager in the Inclusive Finance Division of the European Investment Fund. She has over fifteen years’ experience in inclusive finance, in particular on aspects related to the financial and social performance of social finance providers, as well as investment structuring and governance on social investment funds.

She previously worked as senior investment officer for seven years in the Microfinance Unit of the European Investment Bank, covering sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa. Before joining the EIB Group in 2009, Perrine was a senior rating analyst and the Africa office manager at MicroRate, a microfinance specialised  rating agency. In 2004, she started her career in microfinance as program officer at ADA, the Luxembourg-based microfinance NGO.

She holds a Master degree with a major in Finance from the Audencia Nantes Ecole de Management (France). She is a French national, fluent in English, German and Spanish with basic knowledge of Russian and Arabic.

Daniel McCormick has extensive experience managing humanitarian and development programs in emergency, post-conflict and fragile contexts, mainly in Africa. Most of these have focused on livelihoods, TVET, employment and entrepreneurship. Currently, he is the Deputy Regional Director for Spark for the Local Employment in Africa for Development (LEAD) program, which promotes entrepreneurship, business creation and expansion, and job growth in Somalia, Libya and Tunisia. (In the past year, LEAD supported 1000 entrepreneurs and 500 businesses to create over 2000 new jobs, in agriculture, manufacturing, technology and services). Daniel holds an MBA from the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco.

Astara Maiure leads the business incubation and training for Five One Labs, a start-up incubator that helps diverse entrepreneurs from Iraq and Syria launch and grow their businesses in the Middle East. Before moving to Iraq, she worked as a business consultant for start-ups and entrepreneurial ventures around the world. She has experience advising business owners on ways to cut costs, gain consumer insights, and drive growth in their organizations. Prior to this, she worked as an Agricultural Advisor in the Peace Corps in Madagascar focusing on economic development and food security.

Deema Bibi is the CEO of INJAZ, a Jordanian non-profit organization established in 2001 with a mission to inspire and prepare youth to become productive members of the society and accelerate the development of the national economy. Under Bibi’s leadership, INJAZ expanded its operations to reach 2 million students all over Jordan, up to date, through a network of over 34,000 qualified volunteers from the business sector, and has recently mainstreamed Financial and entrepreneurship education within the national education system to reach out to every school student across Jordan from grade 7 to 12 through a strategic partnership with the Minister of Education and CBJ. Bibi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Digital Electronics and MBA.

Fulco van Deventer is co-founder and Deputy Director of Human Security Collective. He has extensive experience in the fields of Governance, Security, Counter Terrorism, Preventing Violent Extremism, as well as institutional and organizational development of Civil Society. He has trained Civil Society Organizations in West-Africa and the Middle-East, Central Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia in building their institutional and strategic capacities, with a focus on governance and development. For the last years he is working with Governments and Civil Society to strengthen the nexus security & development and facilitate dialogue on Prevention of Violent Extremism.

Ceren Genc has built up a strong international network and has over 15 years of experience  in different aspects of internationalization of higher education, working in Turkey and in Europe. She has delivered several sessions and workshops on admissions and on recognition for refugees. Ceren is the chair of the Admission & Recognition Expert Community at EAIE. In recent years she has been collaborating closely with admissions offices at different universities working with refugees and international students in general.

Head of Business Development at Mowgli Mentoring, a Social Enterprise supporting entrepreneurs across the Middle East and Africa. She is passionate about the role that mentors play in supporting entrepreneurs’ development and growth, as well as building networks within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.  Between 2013 and 2016 she was the country manager for SPARK in Rwanda and Burundi, a time that instilled in her in the important role of entrepreneurs in job creation. With the aim of practicing what she preached, she left SPARK to set up a socially minded café and restaurant in Rwanda which currently has 19 employees. As a consultant and author, she likes to understand the world by writing about it and has published Working in International Development and Humanitarian Assistance, (2015, Routledge) and Working in International Health (2011, OUP). Her other personal passion is tiny houses and of which she has built a few in Rwanda and Morocco.

Nieves Thomet is an employment for peace specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO). She has held a variety of position with ILO since 2001, including managing employment and decent work programmes in post-conflict and post-disaster settings based in Mozambique, Senegal and Cuba. In September 2018, Nieves has joined the ILO’s Coordination Support Unit for Peace and Resilience in the framework of a joint ILO and Peace Building Support Office (PBSO) program, aimed at enhancing the employment contribution to peacebuilding. Nieves holds a BA from McGill University (Canada) in social psychology and a Master degree from IHEID Geneva.

Wolfgang Stojetz is a Senior Researcher at the International Security and Development Center and a Research Fellow at Humboldt-University of Berlin. Previously, he was a Predoctoral Fellow at Yale University and has also served as a consultant to ILO and Mercy Corps, among others. Wolfgang analyzes human behavior and policy interventions in highly adverse settings, with a particular focus on violent conflict. Current projects include studies into the impacts of employment programs on stability and the relationships between inequality and pro-social behavior. He holds a PhD in Economics from Humboldt-University of Berlin, and a Diplom in Physics
from the University of Regensburg.

Mohammed has been working in the field of youth employment and economic empowerment for the last 14 years in fragile and conflict affected countries in the MENA region. With an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Business Growth, Mohammed was the founder and the director of the Business and Technology Incubator (BTI) in Palestine. Given his former role at the BTI, Mohammed has run several entrepreneurship support programmes for growth oriented SMEs and Tech Startups with strong bonds to regional and international entrepreneurship ecosystems. Since 2015, Mohammed has joined SPARK has a regional economic empowerment lead to design and manage entrepreneurship and youth employment programmes as per the global entrepreneurship best practices and technical experience. This included building full entrepreneurship and business skills training material, managing field activites to support entrepreneurs and growth oriented SMEs in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Syrian, Jordan and Palestine.
Since 2018, Mohammed has been managing regional business development activities of SPARK in the MENA region including projects design, creating networks, scouting for the best local partners, and contacting main donors in the region to mobilise resources to support entrepreneurship and create business networks in the MENA region. Mohammed has More than 12 years of experience in establishing and directing business centres, incubators, and accelerators given a former role as the founder and leader of the biggest Tech Business Incubator in Palestine. This has been demonstrated by many publications related to entrepreneurship and business growth. His MBA thesis tackled the role of the business incubators in the socio-economic development in Palestine. Mohammed Holds a second master degree in civil engineering. He is also a member of the international network for innovation and entrepreneurship experts and has done and published several researches in youth empowerment.

Budyang Emmanuel Bugga is the founder and director of the first vegetable oil mill factory in South Sudan and a business developer. Until the war broke out in 2016, he was also active in Agri-Busienss value chains development in fragile markets. With his motto “Enable the Environment”, he aims to ensure that every South Sudanese has food on the table, a job, and money in the pocket by 2025. In this framework, he recently established two projects within his factory to feed 2,000 refugees returning from exile.

Mark van Dorp is a freelance consultant, specialising in responsible business and sustainable economic development in emerging markets and fragile and conflict-affected settings. He holds 24 years of professional experience in the field of private sector development, responsible business conduct, living wage, employment creation and conflict-sensitivity. Mark has worked as a consultant in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America for various multinational companies, INGOs, UNHCR, IOM, and different research centres, including ICRAF, ICCO and SOMO. Mark van Dorp combines a strong drive for a more peaceful and equitable world with the art of bringing people and stakeholders together, inspiring them to find creative and innovative solutions to let the private sector operate in a responsible way in the most complex situations.

Murad Hamzeh is a Management Consultant with more than 10 years of business experience. He has an extensive background and proven track record in business and strategic planning, marketing planning, export management, and in conducting thorough local and global market research. His experience was built in both management consulting and coaching with a specific focus on the development of SME performance and competitiveness across a wide array of manufacturing and service sectors, including healthcare and microfinance.
Murad Hamzeh earned both a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and an MBA in Marketing from the New York Institute of Technology.

Lamia Tarabiah is the founder of Nawaret Haretna (The light of our neighborhood), a women-centric community center in Jordan, where women are empowered economically, culturally, and emotionally through a diverse array of training and capacity building activities. She is aiming to be a trainer to enforce a positive change in people’s life through applying parapsychology, reiki and pranic healing. Lamia holds a bachelor degree in English literature.

Marije Bedaux is Career Adviser at the Leiden Law School, Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is the owner of Marije Bedaux Coaching & Advies. She is currently a board member of the Employability expert community of EAIE. Marije is a NLP coach focused on providing individual and organisational counselling services. She specialises in work-related stress and career switch for experienced professionals. As a owner of Marije Bedaux Coaching & Advies, her specialties are headhunting, recruitment, coaching, consultancy, employability, student counselling and mediation.

Sharif Ahmad is a Programme Coordinator at SPARK in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Through the programme Networks of Change, he is working closely with Kurdish youth in order to combat youth radicalisation through positive community-based and digital approaches. The programme empowers them with intensive training, awareness campaigns, leadership and entrepreneurship development.

Before joining SPARK, Sharif gained experience in working for education, development, and humanitarian organisations, such as the British Council or Humanity&Inclusion where he was coordinating a wide range of programmes serving refugees, IDPs and the host communities.

Botan Majeed AL-Hadad is an academic staff at Erbil Polytechnic University (EPU), Erbil, Kurdistan region, Iraq. He has been acting as academic since 1995 and as Dean for Erbil Technology Intitute (ETI) since August 2014. Botan AL-Hadad achieved BSc in Civil Engineering in Mosul University (Mosul, Iraq) in 1992 then MSc at Salahaddin University (Erbil, Iraq) in 1995. His PhD thesis from The University of Nottingham, UK (2011) introduces a novel technique for highway alignment development. He has taught and supervised MSc students and has been a member in several MSc thesis viva committees. Botan AL-Hadad has participated in a number of scientific international conferences inside and outside IRAQ and published several articles. Moreover, he has worked as co-chair, reviewers, and scientific committee member in several engineering conferences. He is currently interested and working on research projects that deal with using GIS as an assistant tool in genetic algorithm based highway alignment optimization problems. Besides, sustainability has become of his great interest especially in highway alignment planning. For him, sustainability concern constitutes a major part of real life projects.

Sami Al-Ahmad is a Syrian entrepreneur living in Cairo. Sami is the CEO & Founder of Khatwa, supporting Syrians through higher education opportunities. Besides that, he is the CEO & Co-Founder of MARJ3, MENA #1 Platform which Connects youth to Scholarships , Opportunities and Universities around the world. Sami is a fellow in the AMENDS program at Stanford University, and he is also a member of ChangemakerXChange Community and Global Shaper at World Economy Forum. Sami also is a talented Growth Hacker and was able to increase his platform traffic 100x within 2 years (from 25K per month to 2.5 million per month).

Firas Deeb, Senior Programme Manager, has extensive experience and long focused on youth programmes, entrepreneurship, microfinance as well as vocational and educational development programmes. He has more than 14 years of working experience in Middle East, subsaharan Africa and European Union working with European institutions and international nongovernmental organizations to support business development in Post Conflict Countries. He served with junior chamber International (JCI) as a National President of JCI Syria in 2008 and was elected as JCI International Vice President for 2019 during the JCI World Congress in Goa, India.