Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival 2023

Mo Gawdat is the Founder of One Billion Happy, former Chief Business Officer of Google X, and author of the international bestselling books Solve for Happy and Scary Smart.

Following the tragic loss of his son Ali, Mo began pouring his findings into his international bestselling book, Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy. Following his success, Mo launched his chart-topping podcast, Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat, a weekly series of exploring the profound questions and obstacles we face in the pursuit of purpose in our lives.

In 2020, He published Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World. He latest book, That Little Voice in Your Head: Adjust the Code That Runs Your Brain is a comprehensive user manual for optimally using the human brain optimally to thrive and avoid suffering.

Nelly Attar is a Fitness Ambassador, Sports Leader, and an Health Advocate who is contributing significantly to the transformation of the sports landscape in the Middle East. Nelly earned the title of “One of Top Influential Muslim Women in Sports” in 2020 by The Muslim Women Network, and the “Female Fitness Influencer of the Year across the GCC” in 2019 by Sports 360. She is currently nominated for the “”Sporting Event of the Year”” Award by Laureus World Sports Awards.

Nelly scaled the World’s second highest mountain peak, making headlines globally, and becoming the First Arab women to climb to such a height. Within four weeks after her climb, Nelly scaled the most treacherous peak in the world “”The King of Mountains.””

Nelly completed her academic studies in Psychology and was awarded a BSc from the American University of Beirut and an MRes from Kingston University.

April Rinne is an acclaimed speaker, thinker, and advisor that is radically shaping our relationship to uncertainty and sustaining a healthy productive outlook for organizations across the globe.

From keynote speeches to advisor sessions, April focuses on inclusive business innovation, policy reform, sustainable development, and emerging markets. In 2021, she successfully wrote and published Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.

April holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in International Business and Finance from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a B.A. in International Studies and Italian summa cum laude from Emory University. In 2011 the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. She is one of the 50 leading female futurists in the world, a Fulbright Scholar, and a trusted advisor to well-known startups, companies, financial institutions, and governments worldwide.

Azeem Khan is a New York based entrepreneur and a Web3 native who’s worked in tech, blockchain, biotech, esports/gaming, and entertainment. Azeem is currently the Fundraising & Partnerships Lead at Bitcoin, a decentralized autonomous organization that has given out approximately $70million in grants to open-source software developers since inception in 2017, and helped spawn many multi-billion dollar companies in the web3 space that were originally grantees of the enterprise.

Simultaneously, Azeem was writing with the Huffington Post interviewing hip hop artists including Big Sean, T.I, Casanova, Kid Ink, Bun B, Jadakiss, Memphis Bleek, Rapsody, DJ Drama, and even Mark Cuban.

Prior to joining Gitcoin, Azeem built an esports company alongside major music executives from Roc Nation. Some of his clients include Kanye West, Bryson Tiller, Teyana Taylor, Rae Sremmurd, and Dreamville Records.

Robert C. Wolcott is Co-founder and chair of The World Innovation Network (TWIN Global), a global community that is built up of over 4,000 innovators and leaders from 30 countries. TWIN gathers 400 delegates for TWIN Global, a yearly event exploring the future of industries and the objective to build a network across multiple sectors.

Robert is Adjunct Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Booth School of business, as well as Adjunct professor at Kellogg School of Management, where he won Teacher of the year four times.

He also Co-founded Clareo in 2003, a growth strategy firm that helps complex organizations tackle big challenges. Robert helps organizations clarify vision, articulate strategy and sustain an innovative action plan that enables companies to approach challenges confidently.

Omar Chihane is the Founder and CEO of englease, an EdTech company delivering scalable accredited English classes synchronously (live) online, taught by an in-house team of expert teachers. englease* partners with governments, schools and organizations to help them roll-out English proficiency programs at scale by offering a turnkey solution from program design, to tech integration and delivery.

Prior to founding englease, Omar has had a very successful corporate-level career in learning and development and sales management with multinational companies, such as Siemens, Nokia, and Microsoft, where he led both regional and global business units, achieving sales targets that exceeded US$100 million dollars and leading functions responsible for upskilling over 15,000 people.Omar holds an MBA from London Business School.