Born on Black Friday, November 13, 1987, I’ve always considered myself fortunate — 13 is my favorite number. My life spans two countries, Iraq and Jordan, and is grounded by my spouse and child. I’m a devoted Manchester United supporter, for better and (often) for worse.
My fascination with computers began in 1999, when at eleven years old I enrolled in a computing course at the National Center for Computing in Baghdad. Competing alongside bachelor’s degree candidates, I finished first with a 97% score. That early spark shaped everything that followed. After an unremarkable run at Al-Mansour High School, I found my real footing in software engineering at Al-Ahliyya Amman University, graduating with distinction in three years. My final project was a platform for businesses to engage customers through social profiles, an idea that arrived a little before Facebook Pages made the concept mainstream.
Somewhere in that period, I also built Mr.Iraq, what became the largest vBulletin forum in the country. Between 2005 and 2007, as Iraq lived through one of the most turbulent windows in its modern history, the forum grew to roughly five million Iraqi users and became one of the central places people gathered online — to argue, organize, share news, and simply find each other. It drew international attention, including coverage in the U.S. press. Looking back, it was my first real lesson in how digital spaces can hold a country together when physical ones can’t.
In 2010, I pursued an MBA at NYIT, where my team won the national level of the CFA Research Challenge analyzing Jordan’s telecom industry and went on to represent Jordan at the regional level in London.
Over the past fifteen years, I’ve worked across telecom, e-commerce, FinTech, ecosystem building, and digital transformation, between Jordan and Iraq. Early on, I served as Head of Product & Marketing at Hilark Co. in Amman, forging strategic alliances, building a regional opportunities observatory, and leading the marketing of software products and mobile applications. Alongside that, I worked as a freelance trainer with ICON-INSTITUTE on the TWEED program in partnership with GIZ and VTC, helping Jordanian tradespeople develop the business skills to start their own ventures.
The most formative chapter of that period, though, was co-founding Appslab Jordan, a mobile gaming studio. It was my first real experience of startup life — working closely with designers, artists, and developers, learning the rhythms of a creative industry, and discovering how differently the brain works when the product is play. Appslab gave me a dimension I hadn’t found elsewhere: the discipline of building something that has to feel right, not just function. That experience is what eventually pulled me into Zain’s orbit and toward the ecosystem-building work that followed.
I then spent five formative years at Zain Iraq as a Youth & Entrepreneurship Consultant, helping build the entrepreneurial ecosystem from the ground up — co-creating startup communities, organizing programs, and contributing to the launch of ZINC, a hub connecting Iraqi founders with investors and resources across MENA. I later joined Miswag, Iraq’s leading e-commerce company, eventually serving as VP of Demand and Marketing Director, where I focused on growth, brand, and the operating systems that scale a young company. Along the way, I consulted for Blue Pay on commercial strategy and worked with several organizations on entrepreneurship and digital programs.
Today, I serve as Chief Commercial & Strategy Officer at FiberX Iraq, a fiber-to-the-home operator working to expand reliable internet access across the country. The work sits at the intersection of commercial strategy, infrastructure, and the long, patient process of digital transformation in a market that deserves better connectivity.
Alongside FiberX, I founded and chair the Irada Foundation, a Baghdad-based organization working to strengthen Iraq’s startup and SME ecosystem through policy advocacy, ecosystem coordination, and access to finance. Under Irada, we’re currently building Raqami, a national digital literacy initiative delivered in partnership with the Communications and Media Commission, Zain Iraq, GIZ, Cisco Academy, and Hub200.
I’m also a partner at Marker Media, a performance marketing agency, and co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Travel Tale, an Iraqi self-guided tourism app that uses immersive audio storytelling to help travelers experience the country through its own voice.
Beyond operating roles, I serve as Iraq’s National Expert and Grand Juror for the World Summit Awards, the global digital innovation network founded under the UN World Summit on the Information Society. In 2022, I was selected for the Techstars All-Stars Class, joining a global community of founders and ecosystem builders.
The thread running through all of it — Mr.Iraq, Appslab, Zain, Miswag, FiberX, Irada, Travel Tale — has been the same: build things that make Iraq’s digital and entrepreneurial future a little more possible. Mentoring younger founders, volunteering with organizations like Operation Smile, and contributing where I can to the ecosystem remain central to how I think about the work. There’s a lot still to do, and I’m fortunate to get to do some of it.
