Ali is a very common name in Arabic. The below paragraphs serve as a better identification.
I was born on a Black Friday (November 13th, 1987) which makes me a Scorpio. Since Black Friday is the extreme bad luck sign for others, I consider myself very lucky and 13 is actually my favorite number. My journey in life is divided into two countries: Iraq and Jordan in the Middle East. Married with One Kid. My favorite sport is football and I cheer for Manchester United!
The date I always like to start writing from is actually 1999. My mother passed away that year. In order to keep me busy, my father registered me for a two month course in the “National Center for Computing” in Baghdad. I was only 11 years old competing with bachelor’s degree candidates to solve problems and achieve the rank of 1st in my class with an average of 97 points. This ignited my passion in computers and the digital world!
I attended highschool like any other ordinary teenager between 2000 and 2005. My school was Al-Mansour High School. My favorite subjects were Arabic (Poetry), English, Math and Chemistry. I didn’t score very high in my last year of highschool so I couldn’t join medicine school as my family wanted. Following some back and forths to get an acceptance to join dentistry school and some family members trying to convince me to study civil engineering I decided to spare the year and try to find out what I want to continue studying.
Throughout this spare year, I enrolled in Godia Training Center in Baghdad to study design using Adobe Photoshop with my direct instructor Mrs. Siran Kandirian. The Training Center was directed by the one and Only Dr. Saad Almoomen. I also worked with an online portal that was very famous at that time called 7shasha.com. It was the leading online forum and portal in the country and it was so famous to a point that even NYTimes wrote about it in 2006. Later that year I volunteered with IOM on a program called Operation: Smile. The program took care of kids with cleft lips and palettes taking them to Jordan to get treatment and live a normal life. And then my fairytale with Amman, the capital of Jordan kicked-off.
On September 9th 2006, I made a decision to travel to Jordan and study computer science “Software Engineering” there. On September 24th of 2006 I left Iraq not because of civil war or life unrest but to pursue my bachelor’s degree in Amman Al-Ahliyya University. I was so eager to make full use of the American system to catch up with the year I [wasted]. So, I graduated in 3 years scoring “very good” in software engineering, having my graduation project score 92 points and written in 6 different programming languages. It was tackling social media for businesses at that time. Alongside with my colleagues Karam Azzawi & Hanan Yaldo we did a marvelous job in putting things together. Yet we were only three kids from Iraq living in the Middle East, so we didn’t see the fruits of our achievement go outside the university walls. Later that year Facebook introduced its Facebook Pages platform that was somehow like what we did. Throughout the years in college I also pursued my first MCSD (Microsoft Certified System Developer) & PHP Zend Certificates.
After settling in Amman, I started an online forum called Mr.Iraq in 2007, while pursuing my bachelor’s degree, it grew rapidly to a point when WashingtonPost recognized it in an article, in Mr.Iraq we took things even further than 7shasha. We established our own on the ground CSR team to renovate some aspects of orphanages in Iraq. in 2013, we executed the Mini Cinema project in coordination with Zain Telecom in Iraq installing these Mini Cinemas in 22 orphanages across the whole country.
In 2010, I enrolled in NYIT to pursue my master’s degree in business administration. At first, I was only there to renew my Jordanian residency and I didn’t like the curriculum. Day by day I discovered the beauty of what I’m studying and started registering in classes and taking them seriously. At some point in 2011, the university asked me to form a team and participate in the national level of the CFA research challenge. The main topic we were analyzing that year was the [Telecom Industry] in jordan. We were lucky enough to have two mentors, one from the university Prof. Nitin Arora & Aram Rabadi from AB Invest of the Arab Bank. Guess What !! We won the national level and participated in the continent level competing against EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) business schools. Our group competed against groups from 6 other Jordanian universities. At the end of the day, our team was awarded 1st place on the local level. We had the opportunity to travel to London and take part in the regional level of the competition. Unfortunately, our journey ended in London. But we returned to Jordan and our university as champions.
Later that year, I submitted a previously worked project on renewable energy to Masdar institute in Abu Dhabi and received a pre-acceptance after passing all the required exams. The program was run by an MIT coordinated institute. I didn’t go into the program due to some visa issues. but this pre-acceptance enriched my confidence in myself.
2013 marked another milestone in my life. I wanted to start helping others in the same age range to develop themselves and have the same privilege that I had so I started helping some Google Student Ambassadors in Jordan by lecturing about Google AdSense. I lectured three times, one time in the American University of Madaba, one in my old home Al-Ahliyya Amman University and the last one in Princess Sumaya University of Technology. I also participated in three Startup Weekend events in my home country Iraq, Two in Baghdad and One in Erbil. Currently I’m a member of the Jordanian Economic Policies Development Forum too.
In August 2013, and with the help of my previous employer AMBRO AB, I founded Hilark Co. a company specialized with three different categories, Cables trading, Training & development and Software Development.
Throughout 2013 and 2014 I was introduced to a new world, the world of entrepreneurship through Startup Weekend activities. This was again because of Dr. Saad Almoomen who introduced me to the organizing team in Baghdad. I mentored, Judged, Organized and facilitated many activities and I’m currently serving as the team leader of Jordan’s team as well as the point of contact between the Iraqi teams. Throughout 2015, I’ve succeeded in connecting more Startup Weekend local teams with sponsors like Zain Jordan and Zain Iraq. At this very moment, 4 different teams are deployed and well connected with local sponsors in Iraq (Sulymani, Erbil, Baghdad and Basrah). Through the activities in Jordan we’ve successfully deployed the main SWAmman team, SWAmman Women team, SWGJU, a local team for German Jordan University, as well as working with the Jordanian government to deploy a SWAmman mGov edition to help minding the gap between Jordanians and Mobile applications that are serving the public sector.
May 9th 2015 was the day I met the Queen of Jordan, Queen Rania to report on StartupWeekend and Entrepreneurship activities on behalf of the organizing team. During November, we executed another GSB edition and were ranked 5th Globally in the Hashtag Battle. Top 5 in two consecutive years, WOW!
In May the same year, I was a member of ICON-INSTITUTE helping the GIZ to perform a big development project in Jordan to develop vocational workers, the project ended with the end of the Year. Throughout the program I was a member not only in the training that took place, but also in writing the first handout book that can make the whole process of training a closed circle and complete. Later, that book was recognized and used by the VTC (Vocational Training Center) in Jordan that is part of the ministry of Labor. The book is about starting your own business from scratch for vocational workers.
in June 2015, With a friend, we established a Gaming Development Studio (appslab), I ran the production arm for appslab for two years before becoming entrepreneurship consultant for Zain Iraq Telecom where I’m managing the establishment of the first Co-Working/Innovation Center in Iraq as well as coordinating with the already established communities to facilitate their sponsorship requirements and activities execution.
In November 2016, I joined a taskforce assembled by Zain Iraq to establish a youth empowerment function. CER (Corporate entrepreneurship responsibility) team aimed to ignite different digital youth communities nationwide. I spent 5 years at Zain Iraq building the team and operating different actions and activities. Before leaving Zain in 2020, I helped create ZINC (Zain Innovation Campus) the first multipurpose venue to service youth gatherings, digital hackathons, conferences, and other activities that is built by a private sector entity in Iraq.
While being in Zain Iraq, I joined a friend of mine Yasir Ridha, who created a marketing studio in Jordan called ChickMania. I built and ran operations in the Studio. I spent almost three years with ChickMania between 2018 to 2020 helping the company take off after covid.
During Covid’s first year, I assembled a group of people to create the first of its kind business manual that is directed to Iraqi graduates to help them get introduced to the Iraqi private sector and make them navigate an easier task kicking off their mSMEs and/or becoming more ready to join the job market. In 2022, the Manual was officially handed to the ministry of higher education in Iraq having spent a year and a half in development with the supervision of the GIZ.
In June 2020, I joined Blue Pay, a newly established FinTech company. I spent one year with them learning so much about the financial sector and helping launch the first prepaid platinum card with a multipurpose application that enables not only individuals but SMEs too to unlock more opportunities for them in the Iraqi Market.
In May 2021, I joined Miswag, the first homegrown and the leading E-Commerce startup in the Iraqi market.
