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Speakers confirmed for Stargazing in Education webinar

Line up of Speakers Announced for Stargazing in Education Webinar

We're pleased to announce our latest virtual webinar event designed for leaders in schools and run in association with HP/Intel. 

Our expert panellists and speakers will deliver sessions designed to inspire leaders in education during the webinar event, Stargazing on Education: Reflecting on the Building Blocks for Digital Transformation of Schools in collaboration with HP / Intel and GESS. Taking place on the 28 April, 16:00 GST / UAE, 14:00 EET/Egypt, 15:00 AST / Qatar.

Speakers confirmed: 

Vishnu Taimni, Managing Director Middle East & Turkey, UAE, HP Inc.
Vishnu Taimni is the Managing Director and Vice President at HP Middle East and Turkey. Prior to this Vishnu was the Print Category lead for HP’s ISE region where he was responsible for driving profitable growth in the Print Business.

Vishnu has over 20 years’ experience in the tech industry, having been with HP since Compaq’s merger with Hewlett Packard in 2002. He joined the Computing Category division at Compaq in 2000 then after the merger, Vishnu held several category and channel management positions in both the consumer and commercial segments in the Middle East. From 2008 to 2010 Vishnu worked in South Africa as the Country Category Manager for South Africa’s computing business and then as District manager for Southern and Eastern Africa leading the entire sales and product functions for the region.

From here Vishnu moved to India where he worked as the Consumer Channel Director in India responsible for leading a sales and marketing team which took HP to a strong market leadership position. In 2016, Vishnu went on to become EMEA Head of the Home Printing Solutions business based out of Barcelona, Spain, before moving to Dubai, UAE where he served as Print Category lead for ISE ahead of his most recent ascension to Managing Director, HP Middle East & Turkey.

Keynote: Sally Jeffery, Partner and Global Education & Skills Practice Leader, PwC Middle East
Sally is based in Dubai and leads PwC’s global education and skills practice.  She has a broad range of strategic and operations consulting experience across all the sectors of education.  Sally joined PwC's ME advisory practice in early 2007. Prior to PwC, Sally worked for over 15 years as a strategy consultant and has worked extensively across the US,  Europe and the Middle East. Sally is now driving the development of PwC’s education service offering including: transformational services for higher education, capacity expansion and quality improvement services for primary and secondary education and the development of new types of applied degree programmes that meet employer needs in developing markets. Sally has a keen interest in helping to bridge the gap between the competencies CEO’s are looking for in the future, and the approach being adopted by today’s educators and has contributed to a number of reports and articles linked to PwC's work on workforce of the future (see https://www.pwc.com/futureworkforce).

She has led projects across the Middle East looking at bridging skills gaps in several high demand areas including: culture and the arts, tourism and hospitality, sports, security and defense, retail management. She has an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Loughborough University, an MBA from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, and an MSc in Applied Psychology from the University of Liverpool. She will shortly be publishing a paper at the 2021 World Government Summit, onthe recommendations for regulating education in the post-covid world.

Moderator: Mayank Dhingra, Senior Education Business Lead, Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, HP Inc.
Mayank Dhingra leads the Education Business Vertical for Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe at HP Inc. His role is to provide commercial headship, strategic direction, solution frameworks, social-capital curation and thought leadership to the Education business line. Mayank works with National and Regional Education Ministries to positively impact country level education policy and to evangelize HP’s education proposition. He is currently spearheading the development of HP’s Remote Learning Program, Smart Classroom Ecosystem, Innovation Labs, Digital Capability Development for Educators, and Pedagogy Consultancy Frameworks for governments and regulators.

He was previously with GEMS Education where he headed the Commercial line for a network of 50 Schools in MENASA region. In addition, he sat on the board of two schools. Prior to GEMS he was with the Emirates Group for nearly 15 years in two stints and his last role was Head of Global Technology Partnerships where he led a portfolio of over 450 vendor relations and program managed large scale collaboration projects with tech partners. His preceding role was Head of Customer Experience for dnata (Emirates Group) where he set up the line and managed the business technology, product, pricing and customer service functions across the network.

Mayank is a sought-after keynote speaker, author and moderator on EdTech subjects. He has spoken at prominent international conferences and his articles have appeared in leading publications. He has also been an active mentor for several talent management pools. Mayank is a certified Yoga teacher as well and the founder of a non-profit entity – Yogasmriti; which combines individual and community wellbeing. All proceeds from the initiative are directed to charitable causes supporting children in need. Mayank’s philanthropic work has been recognised at regional and international forums.

Eman Hamshari, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Taaleem 
Head of Innovation and entrepreneurship at Taaleem. She has participated in events speaking and giving breakout sessions / workshops, master classes about smart designs and Art , boot camps about future careers, future of education, innovation impact on education and similar topics applying methods of Design Thinking at the core. Eman was a member of the organizing team of Global Innovation Challenge 2019. Also part of the Expo2020 school programme for students to promote innovative learning. She has a Master’s in Education with a major in International Management and Policy of Education. With over 15 years of experience, she has covered the full education spectrum from teaching, curriculum advising and building, and adopting innovation in schools creatively dealing with challenging cases using design thinking approaches.

Rabih Saab, CEO MENA, Inspired Education Group 
Inspired is a leading global premium schools group educating over 45,000 students across an international network of over 60 schools on 5 continents. All Inspired schools are individually developed and designed in response to their environment and location, delivering an excellent education to their respective communities.

Prior to joining Inspired as CEO Africa & The Middle East, Rabih Saab was President & Managing Director for Europe, Middle East, Africa and South Asia for Travelport where he held overall responsibility for the strategy and performance of Travelport’s leading Travel Commerce Platform in these regions.   Rabih and his team were also responsible for introducing new and highly innovative products to travel agencies operating across the region, all designed to help them sell more, earn more and meet their customers’ needs. Prior to this, Rabih was President and Managing Director for the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.  In 2008 he led the transformation of Travelport’s new direct operations for travel agents and airlines across the region the Middle East.

Before joining Travelport, he held senior executive roles at a number of international organisations with operations in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, including French company Chantelle, Japan Tobacco International and Procter & Gamble. Rabih was born in Lebanon and is a graduate of Business Administration from the American University in Beirut.  Since 1991, he has lived in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Cyprus and currently resides in the United Arab Emirates.

Raya Bidshahri, Founder, Awecademy 
Raya Bidshahri is a serial entrepreneur, author, futurist and keynote speaker. As the Founder of Awecademy, Raya is one of the world’s leading experts alternative models in education, the future of work and exponential innovation. She has been featured by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential and inspirational women globally and is a member of the Bett Global Education Council. Raya has been described as a techno-optimist, a communicator of popular science, and an advocate of curiosity, critical thinking, wonder, and awe.

Manar Ahmed Sharouda, Education Specialist, UNICEF, Egypt
Manar Ahmed Sharouda is the Education Specialist at UNICEF, Egypt. Her role focuses on education system strengthening through policy advice and strategy development, and quality education. Her portfolio includes technical support to the Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MoETE)’s Education Reform Program, Education 2.0. including the integration of UNICEF- led the Life Skills and Citizenship Education Framework across different programmatic areas and interventions both within the MoETE and beyond. Areas of focus also include quality education through skills development within and beyond schools, open and flexible learning systems, youth development and participation, community engagement in education and school governance. Currently, Manar is coordinating the efforts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive Education Sector Analysis and Plan, under the leadership of the MoETE, and in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the in-country Development Partners.

Manar has been working as a social development practitioner for more than 15 years, with a special focus on education, youth development and participation, and child rights. Before joining UNICEF, She has worked in a number of international organizations in Egypt, including Save the Children and Ashoka Arab World. Manar has a Master of Public Policy from the American University in Cairo and a Master of Art in International Education Management and Leadership from Ludwigsburg University of Education, Germany. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. As a research, Manar has presented a number of her papers in different research conferences, focusing on quality education and flexible education and learning systems, especially for the most marginalized.

Nyla Khan, Co-Founder, Mirai
Nyla Khan is a Forbes 30 Under 30 millennial educator and the co-founder for Mirai Partners, Wilow Tree Kids, and Kids World Nurseries. Over the past 10 years & more Nyla lived, worked and pursued the same dream of wanting to create sustainable & scalable change for those most vulnerable.

Over the past two years, as the co-founder at Mirai, Nyla brought Artificial intelligence and literacy assessment to governments across MENA, with a potential impact of millions of students. On the other hand, with Willow Tree Kids & Kids World Nurseries, we have been  pioneering a new nursery for a new normal, along with launching the first machine-learning enabled personalized early learning platform.

Mahmoud El Gabry, Global Partnerships Director, Classera
Mahmoud Elgabry is the strategic partnerships Director in Classera Inc.  He has more than 25 years’ experience in technology in general and EdTech industry in particular.  In his current role, Mahmoud leads the activities of cultivating and maintaining different types of partnerships to support Classera vision to be the best globally in innovating smart, impactful, inspiring solutions to develop, simplify and enrich learning.        As part of his job, Mahmoud works with industry leaders like Microsoft, HP, Udemy, Pearson and others to create the right level of collaboration and alignment on strategic planning and policy influencing, EdTech partners to extend the services being offered under Classera eLearning solutions umbrella to support the expanding needs of its customers in their digital transformation, and finally supports Classera Channel network for availing the benefits of Classera solutions worldwide.  Prior to joining Classera in 2019, Mahmoud spent more than 10 years in Intel Corporation as Education ecosystem enabling manager in different regions, including Middle East, Africa, CEE and RCIS. Mahmoud holds B.Sc. in computer science and automatic control from Engineering faculty, Alexandria university.

Senthil Kumar, PreSales Technology Consultant at HP Inc. ME&EA
Senthil is an IT Sales professional having 15+ years of experience in HP Middle East and India mainly in Consultative Sales – HP Personal Systems, HP Printing and HP Security.

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