Hala is managing partner and founder of Leap Ventures, a late-stage venture capital firm based in Beirut and Dubai, and the founder and chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the pan-Arab region, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship and organizes among other things the MIT Arab startup competition.

She is also an Angel investor in start-up companies in the Middle East and Europe, and has launched a co-working space in Beirut called Coworking+961. She recently founded MIT Technology review Arabic, the Arabic edition of the MIT Technology review Magazine, that covers science and innovation in the Arab region.

Hala was previously for 12 years a portfolio manager for European Equities at Comgest, a euro Equity 20bn fund.

She graduated from HEC in France in 1997 with a Masters in Financial Economics and attended the Berkeley Haas School of Business, she holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

While at MIT she participated and won part of the MIT 50K business plan competition with Booleo, a telecom software business, later acquired as an internal solution by a client.