- June 29, 2021
EPISODE #
Facebook’s Ramez Shehadi on the digital economy, entrepreneurship and impact
About this episode
Ramez Shehadi is the Managing Director of Facebook for the MENA region. In 2020, Ramez was ranked among the top 20 of the ‘Top 50 Regional Executives Heading International Companies’ by Forbes. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Aramex, the Board of Trustees of BeMA (Beirut Museum of Art), the Board of Directors of MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Middle East Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network to name a few.
What is striking about Ramez though is not his accolades, it is his humility. In this episode Ramez speaks openly about the differences between his lifelong consulting career and his leadership role at Facebook. He shares some of the hard lessons he had to learn along the way. Ramez talks about a stronger and more prosperous MENA region and why he has faith in the region and its capabilities.
We talk about Ramez’s own experience as an entrepreneur and the outcome of the startup he co-founded. He continues to love and give back to the startup space by mentoring and personally investing in startups via R&R Ventures, a boutique VC he co-founded.
We chat about the skills of the future and what advice he is currently giving his daughters who are transitioning from high school to university. We conclude with a recommendation for governments that are currently launching funds to invest in local startups and SMEs.
This conversation is a peak into Ramez’s mind and would certainly leave you more optimistic about the future. For more on Ramez and his work, please check out his biography.
Table of Contents:
00:00 | Loulou’s introduction
03:32 | Facebook’s new products and why they are game changers for MENA
14:17 | Facebook’s work culture
18:51 | What do you look for when hiring
22:18 | Ramez’s entrepreneurial journey and the fate of his startup
31:36 | Life is a journey
34:52 | Investing in Startups and opportunities for VCs
42:50 | How should governments invest in enabling SMEs and Startups
50:58 | Career advice to his daughters
55:14 | What is success
59:06 | Loulou’s closing remarks
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guest profile
Ramez Shehadi
Ramez Shehadi is an internationally seasoned transformational leader, an industry and technology strategist, thought-leader, venture capitalist and community builder. Ramez is at the regional helm of a global digital innovation and social media giant, and over the years, has started, scaled and led regional and global lines of business and cross-industry portfolios for a number of top-tier global consulting firms. He has written extensively and advised leading public and private sector institutions on topics ranging from digital strategy to technology- driven socio-economic development, sectoral digitization and next generation smart services and infrastructure. Ramez has also built and led social responsibility programs and actively participates in community leadership initiatives with the aim to deliver positive change on essential themes such as empowerment of women, environmental preservation, and social entrepreneurship among various other socio-economic issues.
In 2020, Forbes ranked Ramez among the top 20 of the ‘Top 50 Regional Executives Heading International Companies’, while Gulf News ranked Ramez among the ‘Top 10 Tech Executives in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) Region’, building on Forbes 2019 ranking of Ramez among the ‘Top 30 Business Executives’.
Ramez is the Managing Director of Facebook for the MENA region. He leads the operational and commercial growth of Facebook and its expanding portfolio of apps with the aim to drive and magnify both the mobile-first performance success of the business as well as the positive impact of further enabling the +250 million people using the platforms and the many millions not yet using them, to build social and commercial communities and bring the region closer together.
Ramez was formerly Senior Partner, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading business and technology strategy consultancy, where he was tasked with driving the international expansion of the firm’s general management and strategy consulting services portfolio for public and private sector clients across all major industry verticals; Lead Partner, MENA Digital Practice Leader and Global Booz Digital Co-Leader at Booz & Company (now branded Strategy&), a leading business and technology strategy consultancy; Co-Founder and Senior Director of Product Development at eBreviate, a billion-dollar online e-sourcing solutions platform in San Francisco; Senior Associate in the Strategic IT Practice at A.T.Kearney (now branded Kearney), a leading business and technology strategy consultancy; Research Associate at the Centre for Management of Technology & Entrepreneurship, a leading operations think tank housed within the University of Toronto; Mechanical Engineer at Stone & Webster, a leading engineering consultancy; Co- Founder of R&R Ventures, a boutique VC focused on US and MENA digital innovation investment.
Ramez is serving a second term as a Board of Directors Member of Aramex, a publicly- traded global logistics provider; a Board of Trustees Member of BeMA (Beirut Museum of Art); a Board of Directors Member of MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) in MENA; a Member of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) in MENA; an Advisory Board Member of the Stony Brook School, a college preparatory boarding school in New York where he had graduated Cum Laude; a Founding Member of The Middle East Diversity & Inclusion Council; a former Board of Directors Member of Young Arab Leaders as well as Endeavor Mentor and remains an active Young Presidents Organization Member of both the Emirates and Lebanon chapters. Ramez is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Middle East Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network and serves as a Moderator to both.
Ramez is an avid sailor and an 8m class amateur medalist in the 1997 and 1998 North American Championships and the 1999 World Championships. In 2018, he completed a 30-day 500km hiking expedition from southern tip to the northern tip of Lebanon, while charitably raising funds for nature preservation.
Ramez holds a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University and an M.A.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto and has invested in continuing education programs at Oxford, INSEAD and University of St. Gallen. Ramez and his wife, Dr. Nada Afeiche, are blessed with four children (between the ages of 8 and 17).