Tag Archives: Lebanon

Mira Kaddoura – Red & Co. – USA

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Speaker26

Mira Kaddoura is an Interactive Artist, Storyteller and Executive Creative Director. In 2013 she founded, Red & Co., a creative and technology agency that helps brands solve problems that matter.

Red & Co.’s first initiative, Made with Code with Google, is seen as one of Google’s most important and ambitious marketing efforts to date.

She has worked in advertising for 14 years 10 of which were at Wieden+Kennedy, both in the US and UK, where she created work like Nike I feel pretty, The Girl Effect, Travel Oregon, Coke Olympics among many others. She tries as much as she can to create work that starts meaningful conversations around topics and causes she believes in. Her work has received numerous national and international press and her honors include TED’s Ads Worth Spreading, several Gold and Silver Lions at Cannes, D&AD Yellow and White Pencils, Gold Effies, Clios, Communications Arts and Webbys.

After working on four continents (so far), she finds it no big deal to hop to the other side of the globe. She speaks a few languages, which helps when hopping so far and so much. Mira thinks her husband, family, yoga and conceptual art projects keep her sane in the crazy world called advertising.

If you meet her you’ll find she has crazy hair that dances almost as crazily as she does.

Loulou Khazen Baz – Nabbesh – UAE

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Loulou

Throughout her 13-year career in Dubai, Loulou – a Lebanese national – never missed an opportunity to get out of her comfort zone, her journey landed her roles in Hospitality Management, Financial Services, Marketing Management and most recently she was part of the founding team at Venture Capital firm ActiveM where she oversaw the planning and execution of new start-ups across the healthcare, education and technology sectors. In 2012, Loulou founded Nabbesh.com to fulfill her dream of building a world-class business while making a positive impact on the local communities.

In November 2012, Loulou competed with over 2000 regional entrepreneurs and won the reality TV show “The Entrepreneur” for the Nabbesh.com concept bringing the business US$272k in prize money.

Today, Nabbesh.com is a venture backed, fast growing freelance marketplace focusing on top talent from the world’s emerging markets and connecting nearly 80,000 freelancers with 5,000 businesses in over 100 cities across the world.

Through Nabbesh.com companies can find, hire, manage and securely pay screened and handpicked freelancers to get any work done.

Loulou will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 next week! Register to get the chance to see her!

Web & Mobile Hackathon Organizers

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Hackathon Organizers

 

BDL Accelerate 2015 is hosting a Web & Mobile hackathon organized by MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab & WDS.

The participants will be provided with a brief that will consist of a specific theme and the contestants will have to collaboratively brainstorm and work extensively to find a web or mobile solution to a specific issue that is shared with them at the start of the hackathon.

The BDL Accelerate 2015 Web & Mobile Hackathon will gather developers/programmers, designers, and businesspersons, who will be grouped in teams and each team will have 36 hours to develop a working website or app.

The teams will pitch their solutions to a panel of international judges on stage at BDL Accelerate 2015. The winning team will win a $3,000 cash prize, the 1st runner-up team will win a $2,000 cash prize, and the 2nd runner-up team will win a $1,000 cash prize.

Meet the WDS team who will be running the hackathon:

Christophe Tallec
Founder
Christophe is WDS founder and specializes in service design & innovation management. He teaches at ENST Paristech the French Telecommunication National Engineering School and is the author of Customer Experience, a transformation framework for organizations.

Arnaud De La Tour
Partner & Board Member
Arnaud is WDS partner and board member and VP at Hello Tomorrow VP, major competition and community for disruptive technologies. He holds a Phd in Economics and previously spent 2 years transforming organizations in BCG.

Sarah Pedroza
Partner
Sarah is a WDS Partner.  She specializes in Entrepreneurship, fin tech and social innovation with change management skills as a former BCG and Bearing Point consultant.

Romain Schalck
Lead Service Design & Service Innovation
Romains is WDS lead service design and service innovation. He currently leads fin tech strategy for WDS banking clients after spending time within the Insurance sector at AXA.

Jovana Kovacevic
Chief Scientific Officer
Jovana is WDS Chief Scientific Officer and holds a PhD in management science with a focus on open innovation. As a system engineer, teacher and researcher, Jovana explores and practice a wide range of innovation methodologies.

Rani Aliahmed – VenVest Capital – Los Angeles

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Rani

Rani is currently the managing Partner of VenVest Capital, a secondary market opportunity fund. Through its unique sourcing process, VenVest provides liquidity to founders/insiders while promoting employee retention for private and venture-backed companies.

Rani recently served as CEO of Trend Media, an innovator in the new media and television space, incubating TV shows through an innovative and disruptive development process. Prior to Trend Media, he was director of Craftsman Capital Advisors, providing venture structure, financing and merchant banking services for both entrepreneurs and venture investors in the technology, biotechnology, hospitality, entertainment and fashion industries.

While President of USA Link, a provider of end-to-end mobile solutions and services for the marketing arena, his team launched the first text messaging marketing campaign in the US for P&G. Rani was co-founder and Chief Strategic Officer of Enverta, a B2B platform for the US confectionery industry, where he led the corporate strategy and business development of its e-business software activities.

He received his BA in Economics from Yale University and his MBA in Information Technology and Entrepreneurship from MIT.While at MIT, he worked on some of the first Internet commercial applications and on IT healthcare startups. He is still closely affiliated with the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and part of the the E-Lab founding team.

He has also helped raise over $250 million for different ventures and investment funds and is a seed and angel investor in several tech companies in the US and serves on the boards of Total Beauty Media, Telnic and Blue Marble Materials among others.

He will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 next week!

Michael Lints – Golden Gate Ventures – Singapore

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michael lints

Michael Lints is Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures. Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage VC firm in Southeast Asia with over 17 investments to date. With offices in Singapore and San Francisco, the firm helps bridge Silicon Valley and Asia through investment, experience, and network. The firm invests in internet & mobile startups regardless of sector: ecommerce to payments, mobile applications to SaaS platforms. Companies include online grocer RedMart.com, mobile payments platform Coda Payments, and webbased developer software Nitrous.io. Golden Gate Ventures has been ranked as a global Top 50 startup investor by Mattermark comparing over 300 incubators, accelerators, and VC firms based on web traffic, mobile downloads, employee count, and social media reach.Michael has over 11 years entrepreneurial and managerial experience.

Michael studied Management and Control of information science. After his graduation, he worked briefly as a consultant and project manager at one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands, after which he started his own IT business, an IT System Maintenance Company. In 2007, Michael founded his own venture fund focused on Dutch SME’s. Michael has had various positions on a societal and administrative level as a result of which he has been able to build an extensive international network. Michael is a former vice chairman of the Economic Development Board Rotterdam and studied Financial Analysis for Business Valuation, and Private Equity and Venture Capital at Harvard Business School. Michael is a specialist in IT startups and venture management.

He will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 next week!