Scholars

Abdul Sammad was born in Multan, Pakistan. He has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgy & Materials Engineering from Institute of Advanced Materials, BZU, Multan, Pakistan. He has 5 years of experience in oil and gas sector, and community service projects with nonprofit organizations. Passionate about social change, he volunteered as a “Rahbar Mentor” for 4 months in underprivileged areas of Karachi for 4 months. He took on the responsibility to sow the seeds of positivity and inspire youth about the importance of education and creating one’s own destiny without fear. Abdul is also involved with Citizen Foundation as “Baghban Ambassador” to raise funds to support and provide quality education in underprivileged areas of Karachi. He was also part of “Amal Academy”, an education startup funded by Stanford University, which provided him with vocational skills. It was a 3-month fellowship in which he invested 150 hours to develop business skills such as communication, leadership, problem solving and teamwork, etc. Professionally, Abdul works for TUV Rheinland Arabia LLC as a test engineer. Previously, he had also spent two years working for Bureau Veritas Pakistan, a global company that provides a range of sustainability services and solutions. He is interested in bringing about social change in the areas of health, education and sustainable development for the people of Pakistan in line with the UN 2030 agenda.

Ahsan Hayat is a graduate of the College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, NUST, majoring in computer systems. He’s currently enrolled in an EMBA program at NBS. He has more than 6 years of professional experience, mainly in the telecommunications sector, where he gained hands-on experience in various industries in areas such as telecom operations, service delivery and customer care, governance and standards. Recently, he has been working as an IT Audit Manager, ensuring compliance with global best practices and standards. During his work experience, he learned the methods to comply with global standards and practices, document and design processes, and ensure customer satisfaction through timely service delivery. The operational aspect of the telecommunications sector continues to be his forte, as that is where he gained much of his experience. He also enjoys spending his time reading and participating in writing competitions. He has qualified for the selection exams twice (CSS and PMS). He recently completed the McKinsey Forward Learning Program and is also a member of the Youth Parliament of Pakistan. He follows the issue of climate change and its impact on Pakistan with great interest, as recent events have shown that it’s a matter of life and death for his country in particular and the world in general. It’s time to act now, otherwise the socio-cultural and economic impacts of climate change will threaten our collective existence.

Ako Eyo Oku is a young leader with extensive experience in broadcast media and public service. Ako has worked for the Nigerian Television Authority for nine years, where she has served three different regions and over 200 Nigerian communities with enlightening, educational, and entertaining TV programs. Ako is committed to community development and advocacy for social change. She has been an active leader in several organizations, including the Child Rights Club, Rotaract Club, MDGs/SDGs Mass Awareness Group, Strategy and Innovation for Development Initiative, and the Young African Leadership Initiative. She founded the Global Learning Community Program, a community of practice that encourages worldwide learning at the local level via MOOCs and GLAMs. In 2019, Ako participated in the US government-sponsored Mandela Washington Fellowship, where she received training on Leadership in Public Management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ako is a Commonwealth+ Open Source Leader, a World Pulse Ambassador, and an African Changemaker. Ako belongs to Chatham House, TED, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia communities.

Amos KLA is from Cote d’Ivoire and is a training Computer Application Developer. He is in the process of obtaining his Executive Master’s degree in Engineering Option Data. He has four years of experience in Information Technology, including at an international recruitment firm Empower Talents & Careers in Ivory Coast, where he helped street musicians to live off their talents with his Ivoireflow music promotion platform. As an IT developer, he was involved in the entire IT project cycle: design, production, and maintenance. He is currently IT Manager in this recruitment firm. Through these experiences, he developed many qualities such as rigor, professionalism, sense of organization, and adaptability, as well as strong project coordination and implementation skills. He enjoys focusing on the topics of culture and technology, and has a strong passion for youth empowerment. He was laureate of AYADA Lab, which is a Franco-German incubation program carried by the French Institute and the Goethe Institute which allowed him to attend training and participate in networking across Ghana, Nigeria, France and Germany..

Emmanuel Bama is an IT Network System Engineer and Network Cybersecurity Analyst with seven years of experience in the fields of telecom networks, open technologies, and geographic information systems. Emmanuel holds a degree in Systems and Telecoms Network Design Engineering. As a student engineer in computer science, Emmanuel, along with three of his classmates, started Openstreetmap Cote D’Ivoire: a digital and collaborative mapping initiative to map all of Cote D’Ivoire’s regions in an effort to save lives and promote open technologies. Three years later, as a Volontariat International de la Francophonie (VIF), he contributed to supporting Openstreetmap’s collaborative free mapping project in French-speaking West African countries. Emmanuel is at the very core of numerous innovative initiatives, and has been part of the driving force behind projects focusing on innovative information and communication technologies, such as Openstreetmap Cote D’Ivoire, Billet Express, Data Transport, Watrifeed, and Opendigitech. Emmanuel is very interested in information and communication technologies (ICT) to transform problems into innovative solutions or services.

Erina Nafula has eight years of experience in the IT systems Integrator sector and two in the business sector. Erina is pursuing a Master in Business Administration from Cavendish University Uganda and earned a Bachelor’s in Engineering (Hon) Electronics majoring in Telecommunications from Multimedia University, Malaysia. She is a member of ISACA and a Certified Information Systems Auditor. Erina is the Chief Operations Officer and co-founder at JjengoTech Limited, a tech startup incorporated in Uganda. JjengoTech Limited’s primary business is a fintech and an e-commerce platform that provides merchants with a virtual address and access to a vast customer base and allows for the convenience of contactless transactions. In this role, her responsibilities have included the design and implementation of business strategies, team leadership, performance measurement and management, daily operations, and financial management. She is also currently serving as a Solution Architect-IT at The Copy Cat Limited, where, for the last eight years, she has developed mission-critical infrastructure solutions for businesses effectively addressing the IT networking, server-builds, network, and cybersecurity pain points with significant financial yields for the company. She volunteers in Rotary serving in several leadership capacities from the local Club to the District as the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Vice-chair 2019-2021. Through these experiences, she has developed critical thinking and problem-solving skills and honed her creativity and innovativeness. She is passionate about technology, adult literacy, and youth leadership.

Faisal Ghani earned a Bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering from NED University in 2021 with distinction. Faisal is a two-time national-level participant in wilderness Leadership BootCamp training by “Youth Impact” and “MillionSmiles” foundations. He is a member of “Aspire Leader” an initiative by Harvard University and serves as a delegate for the year 2022 at Asia Youth International MUN. He worked as an executive engineer in the steel industrial sector for the last year, with the responsibility of ensuring the production quality of finished goods. Using the Kaizen approach, he designed a project which improved the yield of the production plant. During his fellowship with “Amal Academy,” he organized a fundraising campaign for “Edhi Foundation.” His recent experience was working as a member of the organizing committees for executing national level youth leadership boot camp “Compass’23,” the theme of the conference is to develop social leadership skills among the youth of Pakistan. To flourish purposeful and character-based young change-makers across Pakistan, who work for the issues in their communities. He also serves as a “Volunteer for Humanity” with the MillionSmiles foundation to work for people affected by natural disasters. Successfully executed the project “Aman ke Rahi” (Peace followers) to recognize violence, intolerance, and extremism among students, and how to tackle the conflict situation. He’s interested in providing quality education to underprivileged students, spreading awareness for UN SDGs in Pakistan, and research and innovation in higher education, learning, and development in the corporate sector.

Haitham Badarin is a computer engineer and YouTuber, based in Hebron. He grew up in a family of 12, completed secondary school with distinction and went on to study engineering at Palestine Polytechnic University. Upon graduation, Badarin was nominated for the MEPI Student Leader Program and spent 6 weeks developing leadership and communication skills in the United States. Upon returning to Palestinian Territories, he competed in the annual teachers’ employment contest, won first place and was hired as an IT teacher. In his first year of teaching, Badarin volunteered to train fellow teachers at the district on how to use computer software and his contributions were recognized both by the school district and the Ministry of Education. In 2018, Badarin was promoted to a new position as a software engineer, which was created in response to the increasing digitization of education. As it required a well-established expert in this field and someone who has a vision of what e-learning should look like, Badarin was a great fit. There, Badarin supervised the transition of the eSchool website to a national eLearning portal. He modernized and automated huge parts of the district’s tasks and provided in-person training to secretaries and employees in the district, public, and private schools. As remote work and collaboration intensified during the pandemic, Badarin was tasked with proposing and managing a remote learning system, he administered the introduction and deployment of the Office 365 Education package in Hebron schools. Within months, every teacher and student became familiar with MS Teams and through his YouTube channel Badarin provided tutorials on how to use Office 365 apps. His tutorials have registered more than 1.2 million views. Badarin is mostly interested in education and introduction of new technologies in the classroom.