Make What's Next: A Breakfast Event with Microsoft

Hala Alhasan is an Executive Recruiter in the Global Executive Talent Acquisition team at Microsoft Dubai. She’s been with Microsoft for two and a half years. Hala is responsible for identifying and engaging with exceptional leaders across Middle East, Africa, and India with a strong focus on diversity. Hala holds a Business Administration degree in Management & Marketing from the University of Houston in Texas.

Hiba Amer is a Technical Delivery Manager at Microsoft Services, based in Abu Dhabi. She has been working with Microsoft for the past nine years and currently manages a team of technical consultants and premier field engineers located across Middle East and Africa.

Sara Eid is Premier Field Engineer at Microsoft based in Dubai. She joined the role as part of the Microsoft Academy for College Hires (MACH). Over the past year she has specialized in managing the infrastructure of Microsoft Cloud, Azure. She earned her Electrical Engineering Bachelor’s degree in 2016 at the American University in Dubai.

Zeta Yarwood is the Middle East’s leading Career Coach and NLP Life Coach. Regularly interviewed and featured in over 20 publications worldwide, she is recognised as a thought leader in her field. With over 10 years’ experience in coaching, management and recruitment – in multinational companies and award-winning recruitment firms – Zeta knows the secrets of career success and job satisfaction. Coupled with her degree in Psychology and NLP qualification, she is also an expert in unlocking human potential. Passionate about helping people discover their strengths, talents and motivations, Zeta now lives to inspire others to dream big and create the life and career they really want.

Lubna Taji is the Founder and Managing Director of Fun Robotics, the first KHDA-approved dedicated robotics center in the UAE. Her aspiration is to create the tools and the conducive environment for future innovators and makers to flourish.
Throughout the past five years, Lubna and her team at Fun Robotics have worked closely with students, schools,universities, institutions and individual educators to promote robotics as a means to support STEM and STEAM education, and to provide children and young adults with opportunities to unleash their creativity and achieve their goals with confidence.
Lubna has received her B.Sc. degree in computer science from the University of Jordan. She has also done advanced studies in education, with an emphasis on gifted and talented students. Lubna has received advanced training in robotics from the Robotics Academy of Carnegie Mellon University. She has also received advanced training in “Mastering innovation and Design Thinking” from the MIT in Massachusetts-Boston. Lubna is also certified as STEM and Project-Based Learning Author from PTC Boston. And finally she has done professional development at Stanford University in “Strategic Planning, Design and implementation of educational MakerSpaces program”.

Yamna is a techpreneur with 4+ years of experience in the digital and startup world. She is currently the founder of an employee benefits platform, PerksPlus (www.getperksplus.com) as well as consults with many women-led startups and SMEs on their digital strategy. With a background in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Yamna has managed teams that have built digital products for government organizations, MNCs, SMEs and startups. Additionally, she has been featured in ArabianBusiness, The Entrepreneur and Forbes ME as a young female founder.
Yamna has been teaching Math since high school and uses it as a way to de-stress. You can also find her at her favorite Mexican restaurant chatting away with friends and family while sipping a glass of Coke Zero (with extra ice obviously!). She is an avid reader who is a little obsessed with Jane Austen's Emma, the Harry Potter series and Agatha Christie novels. Her favorite way to end the day is by watching cliche Hallmark movies or crime thriller shows on Netflix.

Lucy is focused on the innovation space, both in terms of supporting founders and as an investor. She is a Director of WAIN (Women’s Angel Investor Network) and Little Thinking Minds (creators of Arabic education content). Lucy sits on the Advisory Board of Mindshift Capital, as well as the Middle East Venture Capital Association. She is also an investor with NextWave Ventures and the Founder Institute, both based out of the US. Recently she was honored to be a Judge for the GEMS Global Innovation Challenge (student entrepreneurs) and the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab & Challenge 22 Prize (an innovation award that promotes creativity in the Arab world).
She is Chairman of the Events Committee with The Capital Club, founded the Dubai Chapter of Room to Read, was Non Executive Director for Educate Girls Globally and a Co-Chapter Chair for Techfugees (UAE).
Lucy has degrees from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management Northwestern University and HK University of Science &Technology and the University of British Columbia.