ARAB-AMERICAN: Meet the Arab-American Women Tech Leaders shaping the future

Three entrepreneurs share their stories as well as tips to succeed, regardless of background

Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell of iPod and Nest thermostat fame, and Taher Elgamal, the father of SSL technology, may be some of the most successful Arab Americans the global tech world has seen – but bit by bit, that picture is starting to change.

An emerging group of Arab-American women is increasingly taking up the tech mantle in a host of diverse fields.

A year spent in Kansas as a cultural exchange student at the age of 17 led to Morocco native Yasmine El Baggari feeling a profound need to help people connect.

“Most people [in Kansas] had never met someone from Morocco before. It felt like I was a cultural ambassador for Morocco at every opportunity,” she says.

The experience morphed into something more: a road trip to all 50 US states, during which she stayed with families and taught French and Arabic to get by, and later, a career that has seen her visit more than 45 countries – while securing a degree from Harvard University along the way.

All this led Ms El Baggari to found Voyaj, an online platform that fosters connections between people from diverse backgrounds in all corners of the globe.

“Once you build a human connection with someone, they’re more open to considering different perspectives … which is the basis of the work I continue to do: building and facilitating connections with people around the world,” she says.

Voyaj has collaborated with organisations to bring dozens of students from Africa to California for cultural exchange trips.

In March, Ms El Baggari raised more than $50,000 through a crowdfunding campaign involving more than 260 people from 40 countries to help fund the app.

Recently, Voyaj started working with non-profit Alight to help connect Afghan refugees recently arrived in Minnesota with local residents.

With the number of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa in the US doubling over the past 20 years to 1.2 million, Arab-American women are set to play an increasing role in the tech and entrepreneurial landscape.

But getting to the top is not easy – just ask serial achiever Sherien Youssef.

Born and raised in Cairo, she emigrated to the US aged 11.

“My parents gave up a lot in Egypt to come here. They were comfortable there, but wanted a better life for their children,” she says.

Now living in a suburb of Washington, Ms Youssef is a senior executive and vice president at CGI, a major IT and consulting multinational that employs more than 90,000 people in about 40 countries.

It has taken serious determination to get to where she is.

“Growing up, being Arab American and being a Muslim, it wasn’t easy to find a person that looked like me [in this industry],” she says.

“It wasn’t very prevalent in my field. When you come as an immigrant, you have a desire to be constantly working harder and proving yourself over and over again.”

Today, her professional life consists of speaking at conferences, working closely with chief executives at partner companies and mentoring staff.

Having raised a family, grown her career and secured an MBA, she says there is still room for change.

“This is still a male-dominated field. We don’t see as many women in the C suites in the IT field,” she says.

Health and wellness is another area Arab-American women are making inroads.

For 12 years, Megan Moslimani was a dedicated public servant, working as a lawyer for the city of Detroit and serving as a board member of the Detroit Bar Association.

But a trip to Los Angeles in 2016 made her realise health care and wellness were industries on the up, and that IV drip therapy could be a game-changer.

“We visited different medical spas for fun and to enjoy the luxury experience. I was impressed with the way you could feel instantly better and hydrated [from using the drips],” she says.

Last spring, Ms Moslimani, whose family arrived in the US from Lebanon in the early 19th century, and her colleague, Biane Bazzy, dove headfirst into their passion, opening the House of Drip & Wellness in Dearborn, Michigan.

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Made popular by celebrities such as the Kardashians and Hailey Bieber, and appearing in popular TV shows such as Billions, restorative IV drip therapy is a way to get vitamins, electrolytes and other nutrients into the bloodstream quickly.

It is believed to help people recover more quickly from illnesses, jet lag, fatigue and other ailments.

“Clients feel results instantaneously as the drip directly enters the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive tract,” she says.

“People love instant gratification, and I knew all could benefit – athletes, tired mums, overworked professionals.”

Restorative IV drip therapy spas or “drip bars” are springing up in strip malls and neighbourhoods across the US. With the global wellness industry estimated to be worth about $1.5 trillion and expected to grow by 5 per cent to 10 per cent per year, IV drip therapy is set to become an important health recovery tool.

For Arab-American women thinking about starting out in the tech and entrepreneurial worlds, the trio have tips to share.

Ms Moslimani says it is important to be prepared to spend money on the right things to grow your business.

“Look for attorneys offering pro bono hours and get real business law advice,” she says.

Ms El Baggari says getting past the stigma of asking for help is essential to succeeding as an entrepreneur.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need – if people say no, that’s OK,” she says. “You want a clear sense of mission. Understand your ‘why?’”

For Ms Youssef, investing in yourself is key, “whether it’s in degrees and certificates, or in networks”.

“Oftentimes it’s the relationships and connections that you make will be the reason that you get to the next step in your career,” she says.

source/content: thenationalnews.com (headline edited)

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Last spring, Megan Moslimani and a colleague launched the House of Drip & Wellness in Dearborn, Michigan. Photo: Megan Moslimani

Yasmine El Baggari is the founder of Voyaj, an online platform that fosters connections between people from diverse backgrounds. Photo: Yasmine El Baggari

For Sherien Youssef, investing in yourself is key, ‘whether it’s in degrees and certificates, or in networks’. Photo: Sherien Youssef

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AMERICAN / ARAB / EGYPT / LEBANON / MOROCCO

ARAB AMERICANS: 06 Groundbreaking Innovations by Arab Americans

Americans born in or with ancestral ties to Arab-speaking countries have made countless significant scientific, medical and engineering contributions.

While Americans born in or with ancestral ties to Arab countries have made countless significant scientific, medical and engineering contributions, most have never made it into record books. From cryptography, to the artificial heart, to the iPod, here are a few examples of some of the major advancements by Arab Americans.

1. Television Transmission and LCD Screens

Born in Nabatieh, Lebanon in 1895, Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah studied and then taught mathematics at the American University of Beirut before immigrating to the United States in 1921. After a brief stint studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Al-Sabbah earned a master’s degree in engineering sciences from the University of Illinois, says Lujine Nasralla, communications specialist at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

“In 1923, General Electric (GE) hired him to work in its Engineering Laboratory under a contract that awarded him a dollar for each of his patents,” Nasralla explains, noting that between 1927 and 1935, he applied for patents for 52 of his inventions while working at GE. Some of the patents Al-Sabbah was awarded during his time at GE include three for innovations in television transmission technology (granted between 1928 and 1930), and two for cathode ray tubes (1935).

Though Al-Sabbah died in a car accident 1935, GE engineers continued to rely on the technology he invented, including developing the liquid crystal display (LCD) based on one of his patents. Al-Sabbah made numerous other significant contributions to science, technology and engineering, especially in the field of solar energy.

2. Emotion Recognition Technology

RANA EL KALIOUBY, CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF AFFECTIVA, SPEAKING DURING THE NEW WORK SUMMIT, CALIFORNIA, 2019. / DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

While Rana El Kaliouby was completing her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge in England in the early 2000s, she never felt as though she could ever truly connect with her loved ones back home. “Away from her family and friends in Egypt, El Kaliouby wished her computer could better convey her emotional state,” Nasralla says. That’s when she decided to find a way to make more emotionally intelligent technology.

After earning her doctorate, El Kaliouby took a position as a research scientist in the Affective Computing group in the MIT Media Lab. There, she was part of a team that developed an “emotional hearing aid,” as well as a pair of eyeglasses that could read emotions, along with social cues. Officially known as “the Emotional-Social Intelligence Prosthesis,” El Kaliouby and a colleague created the wearable technology in 2006 for people living with autism who have difficulty identifying and processing other people’s emotions as they communicate.

In 2009, El Kaliouby and the same MIT colleague co-founded a company called Affectiva, which used deep learning, computer vision, speech science and vast amounts of real-world data to develop emotion recognition technology. “Her pioneering technology accurately reads minute changes in facial expressions that convey emotions,” Nasralla says, adding that El Kaliouby is a member of the Women in Engineering Hall of Fame.

3. The iPod and iPhone

TONY FADELL, WHO OVERSAW THE DESIGN OF THE IPOD AND IPHONE, PHOTOGRAPHED IN SINGAPORE, 2019 / WEI LENG TAY/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when listening to music outside of your home meant bringing the physical album with you on a record, audio cassette or compact disc. And while portable MP3 players existed before 2001, none were popular enough to make the device the standard way of listening to music on the go. That is, until Apple CEO Steve Jobs hired Arab American inventor Anthony “Tony” Fadell and put him in charge of a new special projects group within the company tasked with doing exactly that.

The result was the iPod, which launched in 2001. Fadell, who is now known as the father of iPod,” went on to oversee the first 18 iterations of the device before Jobs gave him his next assignment: to create a mobile phone with many of the same features as the iPod. 

This time, the end product was the iPhone, which essentially allowed people to carry a highly compact computer with internet capability around at all times, and, in the process, changing the way people access information. Fadell was involved with developing the first three generations of the iPhone.

4. Developments in Surgery

HEART SPECIALIST DR. MICHAEL DEBAKEY, C. 1994. / F. CARTER SMITH/SYGMA/GETTY IMAGES

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1908 to Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey (the Anglicized form of Debaghi) grew up spending time in his father’s pharmacy and enjoyed sewing, gardening and learning how motors and other machinery work. He earned his medical degree in 1932 and served in the Surgical Consultants Division of the Army Surgeon General’s Office from 1942 to 1946.

It was during this time that DeBakey and his colleagues developed special units dedicated to providing surgical care to soldiers wounded near the front lines. They were first deployed in 1943, though are best known for their work during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, when they were known as the Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospital (MASH) units.

DeBakey’s surgical contributions continued for the next several decades and included performing the first successful removal of a blockage of the carotid artery (1953), developing the concept behind coronary bypass surgery (1963), pioneering the field of telemedicine with the first demonstration of open-heart surgery transmitted overseas via satellite (1965), and being the first to use a partial artificial heart (1966).

5. Internet Security

While internet security is top-of-mind now, that wasn’t the case when Egyptian-born cryptographer Taher Elgamal began his pioneering work in the field in the 1980s. “Elgamal published a paper in 1984, ‘A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme based on Discrete Logarithms,’ which became the basis of the Elgamal Digital Signature algorithm,” says Richard Gardner, a software developer and CEO of Modulus. This work was then utilized in the development of the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA).”

Elgamal’s work became even more influential after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) adopted it as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). “Like the name implies, it became the standard for electronic signatures,” Gardner explains.

And according to Abdulrahman Henedy, an Arab American entrepreneur and founder of Financeive , Elgamal’s invention of the discrete logarithm was also an important milestone in cryptography. “His work inspired other encryption variations and paved the way to create more advanced algorithms, like Advanced Encryption Standard,” he explains.

In addition, Elgamal was the driving force behind the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a protocol that keeps online communications like email and instant messaging secure. Because of this major technological development, he is known as the “father of SSL.”

6. The Waffle Cone

Though it may not be the most high-tech invention on the list, the waffle cone stands out not only because it’s delicious, but because not one, but four different Arab Americans claimed to have invented it. And what’s perhaps even more bizarre, is that in an origin story with so many inconsistencies, all four of the men contend that their ice cream innovation was born at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition—better known as the Saint Louis World’s Fair.

According to Nasralla, Ernest Hamwi, Nick Kabbaz, Abe Doumar and Leon B. Holwey each had their own story about how they came up with the waffle cone in 1904. “We give credit to all four of them, but we don’t recognize any of the stories as more plausible than the others,” she explains. “It remains a mystery to this day!”

But that mystery extends beyond which of the Arab American vendors (if any) deserves credit for the waffle cone. That’s because on top of these four narratives, there are several other origin stories , including some that took place prior to 1904. And though we may never know who first devised a handheld edible ice cream container, it’s safe to say that the 1904 World Fair and its Arab American dessert vendors did have a hand in popularizing what we now know as the waffle cone.

source/content: history.com (headline edited) / Elizabeth Yuko

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HEART SURGEON DR. MICHAEL DEBAKEY. CREDIT: BETTMANN ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

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AMERICAN / ARAB-AMERICAN