Line-up
CEO
Snipe
Nader Barakat is a technology entrepreneur and investor with nearly four decades of experience in the U.S. technology sector. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, with an emphasis on wireless communication. He co-founded Xirgo Technologies, a GPS tracking and fleet management solutions company, which he successfully exited in 2021. Since 2022, he has served as CEO and major investor at Snipe, a Palestine-based AgTech company developing affordable and innovative precision irrigation and fertilization (fertigation) solutions to address conventional fertigation practices and water scarcity in the MENA region. He leads the company’s growth and regional expansion, advancing technology solutions for sustainable agriculture across Palestine and the MENA region.
Founder • Chief Business Officer
PartneringX • SignWell
Bader Hamdan is Founder & CEO of PartneringX, an ecosystem-building growth advisory that helps startups, VCs and innovation labs turn partnerships into their most powerful growth lever. A 24+ year tech executive and B2B ecosystem builder, Bader has led partnerships spanning business development, go-to-market, and corporate development at Google, Twilio, Cisco, Vectara, and SignWell, where he currently serves as Chief Business Officer. Recognized by industry peers as the "Most Inspiring Partner Leader," he is an advisor and mentor to startups across the US and MENA, including Palestinian and Moroccan accelerators, committed to value co-creation and a thriving co-innovation economy. Bader holds a Computer Engineering degree from NC State and completed advanced leadership studies at Harvard Business School.
Founder & CEO • Founder
GoLEAD • GoPrep and EchoTrax
Hania Baramki is a Palestinian entrepreneur and senior business leader with more than 25 years of experience in leadership, business development and market expansion across the Middle East and Africa.
She is the founder and CEO of GoLEAD and the founder of two technology startups: GoPrep, an AI-powered academic intelligence platform for higher education, and EchoTrax, a workforce intelligence platform supporting skills-based recruitment, talent development and workforce planning.
Hania previously held senior regional leadership roles at Cisco, McGraw Hill and Area9 Lyceum, where she built and scaled businesses, led multicultural teams, developed strategic partnerships and managed large P&Ls.
She is passionate about using technology and entrepreneurship to address regional challenges, strengthen education and workforce development, and create scalable solutions with meaningful impact.
Founder and CEO
CrossRealms International
Usama Houlila is the founder and CEO of CrossRealms International, a Chicago-headquartered, employee-owned global cybersecurity company with teams in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and India. Over more than two decades of building technology businesses, he has made hiring in the region central to how CrossRealms works, not an outsourcing strategy: engineers in Palestine and across the region build the company’s security, automation, and AI products and services alongside their U.S. colleagues.
Usama’s conviction is simple: the Middle East and Africa have world-class technical talent, and people should not have to leave home to build world-class technology. To widen that pipeline, CrossRealms created Furssah, a program that prepares third- and fourth-year university students for careers in cybersecurity and technology. His focus is turning graduates into globally competitive professionals, and their careers into stronger local economies.
Project Director
DAI / TechStart
Founder & Chief AI Strategic Officer
MetaServ ME
Ramy AlDamati (Founder & Chief AI Strategic Officer, MetaServ ME) is a technology strategist, entrepreneur and advisor specializing in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital transformation and responsible AI governance. Through his leadership of MetaServ and AI-focused initiatives, he works to bridge the gap between emerging technologies, institutional capabilities and real-world business opportunities across the Middle East and international markets.
His work spans strategic advisory, AI capacity building, innovation ecosystem development, and partnerships connecting academia, industry and technology entrepreneurs. He actively contributes to initiatives focused on strengthening digital capabilities, enabling technology-driven entrepreneurship and fostering cross-border collaboration.
With a strong commitment to advancing the region’s technology ecosystem, Ramy advocates for building globally competitive innovation capabilities and creating sustainable pathways for startups and technology companies to access international markets.
Founder and CEO
Pulse Technologies
Usama Jacir is the Founder and CEO of Pulse Technologies, a Dubai-based deep-tech company with team members in Palestine. Pulse develops IoT sensors to monitor the health of bridges, tunnels and buildings in real time and forecast the service life of critical infrastructure. Its systems are deployed on Dubai’s airport, metro and port infrastructure and on energy assets in Saudi Arabia, and the company is now building partnerships in Europe and North America.
A chemical engineer by training, Usama brings more than 30 years of experience in corrosion management across the Middle East, including 17 years leading Cortec Middle East, where he remains Chairman. He is a member of ACI Committee 444 on Structural Health Monitoring of Concrete Structures and serves on the Executive Board of the Palestinian Business Council in Dubai.
Representative Office of Switzerland, Ramallah
Ghassan has 27+ years of professional experience in the MENA region in different sectors (project management, agriculture development, investment management, TVET and education development, humanitarian assistance and relief, commercial and technical management, product & business development, telecommunications, and software development).
Ghassan led the work on supporting entrepreneurs starting their business ventures. He also worked on exporting Palestinian agriculture products through opening two distribution hubs in the U.S. and Europe. Ghassan also managed several donor programs, worth more than $100M, many in agriculture, tourism, and technology, resulting in more than US$ 100 million of new exports, and the creation of 2,500 full time jobs.
Executive Director
Palestine TechnoPark
CEO
Business Alliance
Omar Al-Sahili is CEO of Business Alliance (BA, BusinessAlliance.me), a regional management consulting firm established in 2010, with offices in Palestine, Jordan, and Oman. He brings over 30 years of executive leadership and advisory experience in economic development, telecommunications, and IT.
BA has delivered more than 320 strategic projects for over 200 international and regional clients, including corporations and NGOs, across job creation, digitalization, and organizational support. With a strong team and deep regional expertise, BA provides HR advisory, headhunting, staffing, Employer of Record (EOR), IT consulting, and custom boot camps.
Omar recently launched INVEETO.com, a platform that helps small and medium-sized organizations streamline and institutionalize contact management, event coordination, and newsletter communications.
His life and professional mission is to help ideas, people, and organizations move forward.
Vice President for Business Development and Finance
Arab American University
Dr. Eng. Islam Amro holds the rank of Associate Professor of Cybersecurity at the Arab American University, where he also serves as Vice President for Business Development and Finance.
He has occupied a succession of senior executive posts in leading Palestinian universities, carrying institutional responsibility for academic administration and for the governance of technological provision. In parallel he has contributed to the formulation of legislation and to the drafting of regulatory instruments governing the education, banking and industrial sectors, where the questions at issue are at once juridical and technical.
He directs research and development within one of Palestine's foremost economic groups, where his present undertaking is the construction of a comprehensive Palestinian cybersecurity capability, together with the provision of senior advisory services on the industrial application of artificial intelligence.
His engineering practice has been directed at national-scale systems — communications networks, security operations, cryptographic and digital-identity infrastructure, and institutional platforms of record — and latterly at artificial intelligence: the design of research and decision-support architectures, their incorporation into graduate curricula, and the conditions under which an institution may adopt them without surrendering custody of its data.