Baker Bozeyeh, CEO and Founder of Flowless

Baker Bozeyeh, a sustainability engineer born and raised in Palestine, launched Flowless to address this very major pain point in his home country and region. Born out of Baker’s own work with a Palestinian utility company, he recognized the need for a better water management solution to optimize usage of this precious resource. Born out of Palestine’s Founder Institute Program, Baker and Flowless have been deploying their solution in Palestine and elsewhere in the region since about 2019. I had the chance to chat with him earlier in the summer. I hope you enjoy!

Majd Zkiyah, Founder of Syrpronet

Majd Zkiyah is a man on a mission. Having studied and worked in three different countries, and left his homeland of Syria at 17, he knows firsthand the challenges of building a career in societies where most people equate “Syrian” with a word like “victim.” Majd’s mission is to change that perception, and lift up the image of skilled, qualified, professional Syrians across the globe. He launched Syrpronet, a global network for Syrian professionals, in September 2019 to promote this vision.

ميس و هاني، مؤسسين، يلا نحكي

وقد قامت "يلا نحكي" التي أطلقت في عام 2017، بالعمل على التطرق للمواضيع والسرديات التي غالبا ما تترك دون أن يمسها مجتمع الجاليات العربية في الشتات، وزيادة تأثيرأصوات الشباب العرب الذين يعيشون خارج منطقة الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا، فعند القيام بتصفح سريع لموقعهم الإلكتروني، ستجدون محتوى رقمي يتراوح بين وصمة الصحة النفسية في المجتمع العربي، والهوية الجنسية في الشتات، وصولا للموارد اللازمة لدعم الأصوات الفلسطينية، فقد وجدت YLT مجتمعا مستعدا للاستماع والمساهمة في هذه المحادثات، من خلال ما يقرب من 70،000 متابع على Instagram.

Mays Alwash and Hani al-Dajane, Founders of Yalla! Let’s Talk

Launched in 2017, Yalla Let’s Talk has made a mission of tackling topics and narratives often left untouched by the Arab diaspora community, and lifting up the voices of young Arabs living outside of the MENA region. A quick scan of their website, and you’ll find content ranging from the stigma of mental health in the Arab community, to queer identity in the diaspora, to resources to support Palestinian voices. With nearly 70,000 followers on Instagram, YLT has tapped into a community ready to listen and contribute to these conversations.

Last summer, Mays and Hani took the bold step to build a business around this initiative. As a PhD student and corporate lawyer, respectively, in addition to managing Yalla Let’s Talk, neither of them has an abundance of free time. That said, they recognized the importance, need, and potential for the space that they’d built, and realized that to make that space sustainable, they needed to build a media company around it.

Lama Amr, Executive Director, BuildPalestine

Crowdfunding and social innovation have grown immensely in recent years across the world, and the MENA region is no exception. Especially in a place like Palestine, with a large, global diaspora and network of supporters, and no lack of social challenges on the ground, crowdfunding for social enterprises has the potential to catalyze positive economic change. To learn more, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lama Amr, the recently promoted Executive Director of BuildPalestine.

Salam Al-Nukta, Cofounder and CEO of ChangeMakers Syria

As many of my readers may know, Salam is the Arabic word for peace. Salam Al-Nukta, the Damascene Cofounder and CEO of ChangeMakers Syria, highlighted this point right at the beginning of our discussion. In preparing this post, I found a John F. Kennedy quote about peace that I felt poignantly described the journey that Salam had shared with me: “Peace is a daily, weekly, monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.”

Adnen Ben Hadj Yahia aka “Nino,” Cofounder of El Space

Adnen, known as Nino to his friends, graduated from Tunis Business School in the years following the Arab Spring’s most successful revolution and has worked at the forefront of the small mediterranean country’s social innovation sector since. In between founding two startups and furthering his studies in the U.S., Nino co founded El Space with his friends, Tunisia’s premier social innovation hub. Over the past five years, El Space has grown to occupy two physical locations, as well as the metaphorical heart of a growing community of Tunisian entrepreneurs using business to create positive change in their country.