The second edition of ‘edge Technology Leadership Awards’ is here. The event aims to recognise and honour the true trailblazers in the technology industry who have embraced advancements and triumphed over market challenges. Scheduled to take place on the 17th of October 2023, the Technology Leadership Awards is set against the backdrop of GITEX Global, one of the industry’s largest and highly anticipated events.
This year’s judging panel consists of Nezha Alaoui, serial entrepreneur, and enabler for women-led tech start-ups, Mareva Koulamallah is Founder & CEO of a UAE based Consultancy, Dr Ioannis Karamitsos, Professor at RIT & Certified ethical hacker scheme committee member, EC-Council and Dr May El Barachi, Associate Dean of Research & Head of Industry Outreach and Executive Learning University of Wollongong.
The judges are entirely impartial and have no favour with any brand or person nominated for the awards.
More on the judges below:
Nezha Alaoui
Nezha Alaoui, serial entrepreneur, enabler for women-led tech start-ups, advocate for diversity, Founder and CEO of Women Choice & the Social Innovation Incubator (SII), whose mission is to employ 1 million women across Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) by 2028, counts more than 12 years of experience in supporting the development and implementation of women’s empowerment initiatives in USA, FRANCE and the MENA region.
She launched her career with the United Nations in 2011, and since then, she has been continuously working with global leading corporations, brands and institutions to advance their gender equality agenda with a strong hold on supporting women’s financial independence and increase in technical skills through leadership programmes and business development training.
She works hand-in-hand with Founders, Investors, CEOs, Heads of Diversity and Inclusion, HR and Marketing departments to reinforce their women’s inclusion strategy. She also helps multinationals address their market penetration challenges by leading impact-driven initiatives on their behalf.
Mareva Koulamallah
Mareva Koulamallah is the Founder & CEO of a UAE-based Consultancy which helps both businesses and individuals, in the region and worldwide, with their needs related to Marketing and Communication. Additionally, she is the former Head of Marketing and Communication for an international cybersecurity group and currently acts as an Advisor for a fintech start-up based in Africa.
Mareva brings over a decade of international experience working across Europe, Northern America, Africa and Middle East. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) double major Marketing and Management/Leadership – Honours Magna Cum Laude from AACSB accredited Rider University (New Jersey, USA), and a Master’s degree from CEFAM French-American Business School in France (Lyon) — received with distinction. She is an advocate of diversity and inclusion, and built from scratch the first internal programme to support women in cybersecurity for her former employer.
Dr Ioannis Karamitsos
Dr Ioannis Karamitsos, Professor at RIT & Certified ethical hacker scheme committee member, EC-Council
Dr. Ioannis Karamitsos has over 30 years of industry and research experience, working with European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese companies in both private and public sectors.
He is currently a full-time Assistant Professor in Data Analytics at RIT University and a member of DSOA-Dubai Innovation Advisory Board and DTEC accelerator as a mentor.
Karamitsos has research interest and expertise in telecommunication security systems, cryptography, cybersecurity, AI, machine learning, blockchain, and Smart Cities. He holds several executive certificates from top institutions, including Oxford Said Business School, MIT, and Columbia Business School. Ioannis is an author of numerous journal papers and book chapters, and a member of IEEE since 1997.
He also holds various professional certifications, including CBH, CISCO/CCNA Data Center, CEH v.9, ISO27002, PRINCE2, COBIT 5.0, IBM Certified Infrastructure Cloud Solution and IBM Cloud Computing Architecture, ITIL, TOGAF 9, and Scrum Master.
Dr May El Barachi
Dr May El Barachi is a next-generation networking expert currently teaching the subjects of Information & Communication Security, Distributed Systems & Cloud Computing, as well as Programming in the Bachelor of Computer Science and the Bachelor of Information Technology programmes.
Using her knowledge and experience, Dr El Barachi conducts large-scale multi-disciplinary projects in the areas of BioTech, Smart Transportation, Smart cities, Inclusion & Innovation. With collaborators spanning the globe, and a large group of researchers under her supervision, she tackles challenging real-life problems using a combination of legacy and emerging technologies. In addition to academic collaboration, she is involved in industry collaborations with the telecom and health industries and was able to raise more than 3 Million Dirhams in the last 5 years to support her research work.
During her teaching career, Dr El Barachi developed and taught a variety of IT and computer science/engineering courses which included: IT essentials, programming, security, networking, mobile computing, green computing, penetration testing & ethical hacking, emerging technologies and sensor networking.
Check out the shortlist here.
