Community

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a community of innovators from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Search current members and alumni by year awarded, sector or region.

Sanjay Gupta

Managing Partner and Founder, LinkedCap, USA

Informed by his twenty-five years of experience in turnarounds, restructuring and capital formation in Fortune 50 and Forbes 50 contexts, Sanjay provides thought-provoking insight on matters of finance, strategy and governance across a range of disciplines, including family office, private equity, venture capital, corporate development, governance, and business ethics,

Sanjay earned his AB in Philosophy from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and his MBA from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He also studied Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Leadership at the Darden School of Business, Venture Capital, Private Equity and Strategic Financial Analysis at Harvard Business School, and Sustainability Studies at Stanford University.

Eyal Gura

Managing Director, WebTalk Ltd, Israel

Mr Gura is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Zebra Medical Vision, a deep learning medical imaging company that will enable scalable healthcare for the 2 billion people to join the middle class by 2025. Eyal is an Angel investor and previously venture capitalist with Pitango Venture Capital, the largest venture capital fund in the Middle East. Formerly, Co-Founder: PicScout (acquired by Getty Images); PicApp (acquired by Ybrant Digital); The Gifts Project (acquired by eBay). Adviser, WebTeb.com, the leading Arabic medical portal. Member, Advisory Board, Tmura.org. Member of the Board, Latet. Founding Member, Tovanotb.org. Eyal is a faculty member at IDC's Zell entrepreneurship program and a graduate of the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014 Eyal was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum

May Habib

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Writer AI, United Arab Emirates

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Writer AI, a fully integrated generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform built for enterprises. Began entrepreneurial journey as a teenager and founded first language start-up, Qordoba, a localization software company,
10 years ago. Expert in AI-driven language generation, AI-related organizational change, and the evolving ways language is used online. Recognized for many different awards, including the recent 2023 Forbes AI 50 and Inc.'s 2023 Female Founder Award. MELI Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Graduated from Harvard University.

Habib Haddad

Managing Partner, E14 Fund, USA

Habib is a tech entrepreneur, currently CEO of Wamda who aims to inspire, connect and empower entrepreneurs in the MENASA region. He is also the founder of Yamli.com a startup empowering the Arabic language on the web and YallaStartup an NGO that fosters early stage entrepreneurship in the MENA region. In 2009, the World Economic Forum recognized Habib as a Young Global Leader and the ArabianBusiness named him one of the most influential Arabs under 30. He currently serves on the Global Agenda Council on fostering entrepreneurship. During the July of 2006 war he started Relief Lebanon to support relief operations in Lebanon an effort that raised more than US$ 2 million in individual donations. Habib also co-founded INLET to leverage the North American expat community to give back to entrepreneurship in the Arab world. Habib is an adviser to several startups and non-profits and often speaks about early stage development and entrepreneurship. He holds a Bachelor of Computer and Communication Engineering from the American University in Beirut and a Master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Camilla Hagen Sørli

Member of the Board, Canica Holding, Norway

Camilla is an owner of Canica Group, a privately owned investment company based in Norway. (Orkla ASA, Arcus ASA, Komplett). She serves as the Chair of the Board of Canica Investor, in addition holding board positions at other corporate companies and startups, including Canica AS and Jotun AS (global coatings company). Camilla holds several years of experience within retail, sustainability, consumer behavior, marketing, management, business development and strategy. She holds an Executive MBA from London School of Economics (TRIUM - LSE, HEC, NYU Stern) in addition to having obtained education from Harvard Kennedy School, Kings College London (BA), University of Oslo (MA) and BI, Norwegian School of Management. Camilla is passionate about working to always improve the environmental and social footprints of Canica, and have been leading several strategic initiatives, as implementing sustainability as a part of Canica´s overall strategy. Orkla ASA was recently ranked among the top 100 most sustainable companies in the world by WEF, and Camilla has become a renowned speaker on the topic. She is engaged in the subject of responsible ownership and is an advisory member of the Oxford Ownership Research Project. Being an advocate for women and health she is a Founding Member of Maverick Collective and using her voice promoting female leadership and diversity as the Chair of SHE Community, arranging the yearly global conference on diversity, She Conference. In 2021 Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau were key note speakers. Camilla was elected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum 2018 and is an active member of the Community. She lives in London with her husband and children.

Helen Hai

Executive Vice-President, Binance Holdings Limited, United Kingdom

Helen is Executive VP of Binance. Helen is a respected global leader and United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Goodwill Ambassador.
She received the 2015 African Business Icon Award, and awarded as Officer of the National Order of Lion of Senegal in 2016. Hai was named 2017 Wu Fellow by UC Berkeley, Global Visionary by UBS and 2018 Aspen Fellow by Aspen Institute. She was also on “Ones to Watch” list for Bloomberg’s 50 people who shaped 2018 in unexpected ways. She received the 'INSEAD Alumni Force for Good Award' in 2019. She was also selected as one of the Cointelegraph Top 100 most important and influential people in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

Kim Hallwood

Head, Corporate Sustainability, HSBC Bank Canada, HSBC, Canada

Kim Hallwood is a sustainability professional who is passionate about using business as a catalyst for positive, long-lasting change. As a member of HSBC Bank Canada’s Executive Committee and HSBC’s global Corporate Sustainability Executive Committee, Kim shapes the development and leads the local execution of a sustainability strategy for one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations. Under her leadership, the bank has been consistently recognized as one of Canada’s best corporate citizens and is actively managing the risks and opportunities presented by the transition to a low carbon economy. Kim has served as Director on the HSBC Global Asset Management (Canada) Board since 2020.
Kim is a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader. Kim has been recognized among BIV’s 500 most influential business leaders in British Columbia, WXN’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada and Canada's Clean50 Emerging Leaders. She is Executive Sponsor of the bank’s national Balance Network which supports the recruitment, development, advancement and engagement of a gender-balanced workforce. Kim holds an MBA (Distinction) and various professional sustainability certifications.

Sophia Hamblin Wang

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, MCi Carbon, Australia

Sophia Hamblin Wang is Co-Founder and COO of MCi Carbon, a technology platform that transforms CO2 into building materials and products for advanced manufacturing. MCi Carbon recently announced more than US$10M investment from RHI Magnesita, Mizuho Bank and Itochu Corporation, alongside a $14.6M Australian Government Grant to build a Demonstration Plant. Currently in construction, the 'Myrtle' MCi Carbon Plant will lock away more than 1,000t of CO2 p/a into low carbon embodied materials.

Sophia is one of few female executives in the emerging carbon capture and utilization (CCU) industry and was recently awarded Best Clean Energy Startup at the NZTC COP26 Pitch Battle in Glasgow 2021. She was awarded The Australian National University Young Alumna of the Year 2023.

Ms Hamblin Wang is also a Co-Founding Director of the advocacy group CO2 Value Australia. A strong circular economy and diversity advocate, Hamblin Wang has been featured at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020, World Economic Forum Pioneers of Change Summit 2020 and UN Youth Climate Summit, TEDx, The New York Times and TIME Magazine.

Shahril Hamdan

Managing Director, Watchtower Advisory, Malaysia

With a background in Economics, Shahril has developed a multi sector profile in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

He climbed the political ladder in Malaysia, and was until late 2022 the Head of Communications for Malaysia’s oldest political party. In a career in public life spanning 10 years, he had also served in government as the Economic Director in the Prime Ministers Office (2021-2022).

But Shahril was not a career politician, and has had stints as
• A management consultant with McKinsey serving clients across Southeast Asia (2011-2014)
• A CEO managing the mid-sized Malaysian energy services company Destini Oil with footprint in Southeast Asia and the Middle East (2014-2018)
• A private markets advisor currently, as founder of Watchtower Advisory, alongside a role as Senior Advisor at GP Bullhound, a global tech advisory and investment fund. (2023 - present)
• A communicator as co-host of Malaysia’s current top current issues podcast Keluar Sekejap (2023-present)
• A geopolitical analyst on Southeast Asian affairs as a Visiting Fellow at Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies (2023)

Since January 2023, Shahril has stepped out of politics, but continues to leverage the varied insights and roles he developed in the past decade to deliver impact via Watchtower and beyond. He actively seeks opportunities to engender cross-cultural and cross-border understanding crucial to meet the global challenges of the moment and capitalise on collaboration opportunities, especially given Southeast Asia’s strategic position in the context of de-risking, multipolarity and Great Power Competition.

Shahril holds a BA in Economics from the University of Manchester (2008) and an MSc in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies, LSE (2011) where he also won the Hobhouse Memorial Prize for graduating top of his class that year.

Hussam Hammo

Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Tamatem Inc., Jordan

Hussam Hammo is the CEO and Founder of Tamatem Games, a leading mobile games publisher in the MENA region. The company boast 150 million game downloads, with 3 million monthly active users and over 50 published games. Tamatem collaborates with international game developers worldwide to provide the best mobile games and entertainment to Arabic-speaking individuals.

Hussam, a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 17 years of experience, embarked on his venture with Tamatem in 2013. His vision was to develop games that authentically reflected the native language and rich culture of the Arab region. Being an avid gamer himself, Hussam keenly observed the glaring absence of Arabic content in the mobile gaming industry. To bridge this gap, Hussam created Tamatem Games to develop easy-to-understand games that resonated with audiences. Hussam is part of the Entrepreneurs Organization EO and Endeavor Global network.

Before Tamatem, Hussam had extensive work experience. He kicked off his career in 2006 as a product manager at d1g.com, an interactive user-based portal for Arab online users. Following his time at d1g, Hussam moved on to become a product manager at Maktoob.com an Arabic internet portal and online platform. Hussam co-founded one of Maktoob’s most popular products Faye3.com. Faye3.com was the first ever all-Arabic social network with over 1 million users. Maktoob was acquired by Yahoo for $175 million in 2009.

After the acquisition, Hussam chose to quit working as a full-time employee and pursue his dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. In 2009, he co-founded Wizards Productions, a game studio that developed online browser-based games. Although the company had a successful track record, the prematurity of the industry in the region led Hussam to eventually close down the studio and focus on a different strategy for mobile games.

Despite the closing of Wizards Productions, Hussam continued to believe in the Arabic mobile games market and was persistent in creating content that was relevant to a region of 400 million native Arabic speakers. In 2013, Hussam’s idea of publishing and localizing international mobile games in the Arabic-speaking market was seen as a potential success by California-based accelerator ‘500 Startups’ and Tamatem received its first acceleration opportunity to be sent to Silicon Valley and began its journey of publishing the best Arabic mobile games.

Bicheng Han

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BrainCo, USA

Bicheng Han is the founder and CEO of BrainCo. He is dedicated in the research and application using the technology of non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI). Bicheng found BrainCo in 2015, while he was pursuing his PhD degree at Harvard Center for Brain Science. The company has now grown into a world-leading brain-computer interface (BCI) company and the first unicorn among all BCI companies in the world. Their technology has been applied in multiple fields to help people with different needs, from neurological diseases like ADHD, Alzheimers, and Autism, to prostheses that help people with disabilities regain control over their body. For his work in BCI, he was awarded the “MIT Tech Review China 35 Innovators under 35”. Their product was selected as “Best inventions of the year” by TIME magazine.

Hussain Hanbazazah

Director, Community Services, Aramco, Saudi Arabia

With a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Master's Degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Hussain has held several significant leadership roles within Aramco and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the past 14 years. An engineer by training, he has an innate ability to adapt, build inclusive networks, and lead people from a variety of professions and backgrounds; from engineers to power operators to communications professionals to arts, cultural and museum curators, demonstrating that he is talented, diverse and highly well-respected no matter the situation he is faced with. Hussain currently serves as the Director of the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Between 2021 and 2022, he was selected by the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture to lead the Saudi Pavilion project as Commissioner-General during the World Expo 2020 held in Dubai. He was the Kingdom's Expo 2020 chief diplomat, promoting the country's rich history, heritage, and culture. Very importantly, he played a crucial role in fostering a better understanding of the Kingdom and the qualities of our people. In addition to his roles at Ithra and the World Expo in Dubai, Hussain has provided trusted thought leadership throughout his career at Aramco. He has served as Aramco's Head of Media Relations and has held many leadership and technical roles within the operations and electrical power system business.