I believe that humans were created in the space between vivid light and clouded
darkness. In each of us, then, lies the promise of both brightness and obscurity. The
story of human history illustrates this potential for great generosity and extreme
violence. What motivates me is not pushing back the darkness with my own limited
means — this would be pretentious and impossible. Instead, I am passionate about
providing as many people as possible with a tool that can collectively move us out of
ignorance towards empathy and mutual support: education.
My childhood was charged with violence and confusion. Splitting my time between a
small village in North Africa and a low-income area in France, I struggled at school. My
inability to express myself in either French or Arabic along with a violent neighborhood
and home life, led me to become an aggressive child. Stuck between African, Middle
Eastern and French culture, I have long witnessed a deep identity crisis. Predictably, in
those years violence was my primary method of communication.
Yet, the more I studied, the more I discovered other ways to express my frustrations
and my point of view. I began to see that violence is the hopeless cry of the unheard –
of prisoners trapped in a wordless, clouded fury. With difficulty, I caught up in school
and earned engineering and business degrees in France, and an MBA in International
Development in Canada.
Armed with my education, I was in a better position to discover and contribute to the
world at large. In 2005, working for the French government, I was sent to Morocco to
investigate why street kids had committed suicide attacks in a Casablanca market. I felt
that these children were not destined to be terrorists but had simply never been
exposed to any sort of critical thinking. They lived in the particular hell of unexpressed,
obscure rage. Violence had been their only voice. My experience had taught me that
without education, all of us are susceptible to violence. Is it possible to change that
reality? Yes, I believed, through education.
Back in Canada, I started a social enterprise that would provide free education to kids
in developing countries. Creating Tech-AdaptiKa together with leaders who shared my
passion for education, our organization has grown by leaps and bounds over the last
fifteen years. While the for-profit side of our social enterprise built one of the first
Metaverse for universal education, the not-for-profit branch launched a digital solution
in Somalia. The idea was to mobilize former teachers in France, Canada, and the USA
to tutor Somali kids in the city of Hargeisa. In addition, other international projects
became possible in Haiti, Ghana and Tunisia.
I was fortunate to meet an incredible woman, a Somali refugee, who later became the
first female surgeon of Canada’s largest African diaspora and my wife, Fahima Osman.
Together, we have two children, Adam, 8, and Ayäan, 3.
Over the past 15 years, we have launched dozens of products internationally, from
virtual campuses for universities and large corporations, to virtual incubators in the
metaverse. Today, many companies in the USA, Canada, the EU and Africa have
benefited from our digital products, and we are proud to pave the way to the
Metaverse for universal education and professional development.
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I am deeply motivated by the potential I see in 21st Century technologies to impact
education. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, and its impact on the job market (job
displacement), we know that hundreds of millions of people will have to be retrained to
fill the needs of tomorrow’s job market. With 41% of its population under the age of
15 years old, Africa is/will be at the center of these societal changes. It is my belief that
online education can move education in developing countries forward at a rapid rate,
skipping over traditional steps. Just as many African countries have bypassed
telephone landlines to jump straight to smartphone technology, online education
through the metaverse will soon provide access to better quality education. I am
proud to be able to participate in this transformation by implementing new and
innovative digital products all over the world.
In 2017, I had the privilege to become a course facilitator at the Stanford LEAD
program. Armed with my understanding of the emotional journey of the online learner,
I contributed to the development of this program over the past five years. Today, the
LEAD program gathers thousands of executive participants from 68 countries.
During my first year at the LEAD program, I explained in an interview by the Wall
Street Journal, that although online education is very powerful, “nothing will beat the
hand-shake”. That realization pushed me to create Me2We hosted at the Stanford
GSB. A 3-day conference where hundreds of these online executive learners would
meet on campus to solidify their belonging to this world-wide community of learners.
Since then, the concept of Me2We has been embarrassed by the GSB staff for whom I
am forever grateful for the opportunity they offered me.
Motivated by my own personal history of violence transformed through education, I
hope to continue to clear a path to quality education so that collectively we learn to
see more clearly.