TechWadi

“Student’s homework site nets him $1.25M” …

 
Silicon Valley is famous for tales of young technology entrepreneurs finding success in their field. Many entrepreneurs in our community are no strangers to such success at a young age. So we weren’t surprised when recently, we came accross the story of Adil Lalani, from Waterloo Canada, who developed an educational web-based solution right out of high school which was acquired by a larger company in 2005.

Like his Silicon Valley colleagues, Adil didn’t just rest on his laurels after that successful exit … No, he got together with another Arab entrepreneur, Mohammad Al Adham and they started another technology startup, EatLime.com, focused on web-based large file transfers.

This is exactly the kind of activity that TechWadi wants to encourage within our community … Our Dec. 8 event, for example, aims to teach budding entrepreneurs like Adil and Mohammad, all of the tricks of creating a technology startup. Similarly, our Jan. 15 event, aims to reach out to technology entrepreneurs in the Arab World and give them a hand to break out in the US market.

Come and support the spirit of entrepreneurship at those two events. And in the mean time, enjoy this article on Adil and his prior company:

Adil Lalani was still in high school when he conceived the idea for SurfYourWork.com, a free, web-based school management system that lets teachers and administrators post assignments and other documents online for students and parents to view and download. Now, little more than a year later, a New York-based educational software provider has purchased the product, prompting schools across the country to take a serious look at this one-time classroom project—while reportedly making Lalani, 19, a millionaire in the process.

The company—Jasmine Technologies Inc.—reportedly offered Lalani, who currently is enrolled at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, $1.25 million in cash and stock for his fledgling, one-man technology outfit. Jasmine, which helps U.S. schools meet the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act with technological solutions designed to increase student-teacher interaction and include more parents in their children’s education, also took Lalani on as full-time employee, promising him a place to continue his pursuit of a career in computer engineering when he graduates.

The rest of the story is here … 

Our very own Maha Ibrahim, a general partner at VC firm Canaan Partners, was recently interviewed at an event focused on “Women in Venture Capital”. You can check out excerpts of the event here.

(Note: Maha is on the far right of the picture) 

Our community is fortunate to have many successful women professionals, from engineers all the way to partners, lawyers and senior VPs. To promote their achievements and to encourage more Arab American women to consider a technology career, TechWadi will host an event in the future that focuses on “Women in Technology”. Stay tuned.

One of the key drivers behind the formation of TechWadi has always been a strong belief that there are many successful Arab professionals in the technology industry in North America. However, there are no authoritative figures on this subject. At TechWadi, we have tried to compile some figures from our own databases and from our experience to try and paint a picture of Arab Americans’ contributions and presence in the Technology industry. Below are some of our estimates and observations -
If you happen to have access to better figures and data, please let us know in the comments below.

• The toughest number to estimate is “How many total Arab American professionals work in the technology industry ?” - Our best estimate is that there are probably 2,000 to 3,000 such professionals in California; 1,500 to 3,000 on the East Coast and 1,500 to 2,000 in the MidWest. That adds up to: 5,000 to 8,000 professionals overall. Compared to other ethnic groups, that would make Arab Americans a “small” minority. But compared to the Arab American population at large, that should represent a higher than average percentage in the technology industry.
• The level of achievement of Arab American professionals in the technology industry is one thing that is not debatable ! As we demonstrated during our 2007 TechWadi Award Event, despite the relatively small number of overall professionals, our community counts a large number of CEOs, CFOs, SVPs … of Fortune 500 companies.
  
• In academia, if we are to use the number of Arab Americans who are IEEE fellows as a proxy for the broader technology field, we would find that our community has a significant presence in that field. Specifically, there are probably close to 100 IEEE fellows who are Arab Americans. In Canada, close to 50% of the research chairs are held by Arab Canadian academics.
• We’ve analyzed the TechWadi membership database. While it’s only a sample of the overall Arab American technology community, we feel it gives a good representation of our community:

•  As the data shows, our community is clearly very well positioned in the technology industry, with good representation in startups, in investing fields and in senior management.
• The challenge now is to gather our professional community into a series of cohesive and vibrant networking groups to harness the power of the network !
• At TechWadi, we take this challenge to heart and we hope to make that happen, sooner rather than later. We will be initiating a series of projects throughout 2007 and 2008 to bring together an ever larger number of Arab American professionals and to encourage them to collaborate with each other.

Dr. Usama Fayyad

Recipient of TechWadi’s 2007 “Achievement in a Fortune 500 Company” Award 

Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President, Research & Strategic Data Solutions at Yahoo.

Dr. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!’s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company’s data analytics and data processing infrastructure. The analysis and management of data within Fayyad’s group enables Yahoo! to ensure customer satisfaction and develop innovative products and services that are essential to consumers’ lives. Fayyad also oversees the Yahoo! Research organization that includes offices in Sunnyvale, Burbank and Berkeley, CA as well as New York, Europe, and S. America. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Dr. Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting company. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (now Revenue Science, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and analytics for some of the world’s largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services.

Dr. Fayyad’s professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft’s server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.

Dr. Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE’s in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, has edited two influential books on the data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM. He regularly delivers keynotes and talks at government, industry and academic conferences around the world.

Dr. Taher Elgamal

Recipient of TechWadi’s 2007 “Achievement in Startups” Award

 Chief Technology Officer, Tumbleweed Communications.

Dr. Taher Elgamal is an Egyptian American cryptographer. In 1985, Elgamal published a paper titled “A Public key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme based on discrete Logarithms” in which he proposed the design of the “ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme”. The latter scheme became the basis for Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). He also participated in the ‘SET’ credit card payment protocol, plus a number of Internet payment schemes.

Dr. Elgamal obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Cairo University, and Masters and Doctorate degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.

He served as chief scientist at Netscape Communications from 1995 to 1998 where he was a driving force behind SSL. He also was the director of engineering at RSA Security Inc. before founding Securify in 1998 and becoming their CEO. When Securify was acquired by Kroll-O’Gara he became the president of its information security group. Presently (2004), Securify is again independent and Elgamal is Chief Technical Officer & Co-Chair of the Board of Directors. In addition, Elgamal sits on the board of FaceTime Communications, a company which provides security solutions for instant messaging and peer-to-peer applications and Phoenix Technologies makers of BIOS systems. Most recently, Elgamal serves as Chairman and CEO of Ektasis, a Silicon Valley startup he founded in late 2004 with co-founders Phil Straw and Mark Chen.

In October 2006 he joined Tumbleweed Communications in a capacity of a Chief Technology Officer.

Brief Bio:

Board Member
Officer and Director
Tumbleweed Communications Corp (NASDAQ:TMWD)
Tumbleweed solutions are used to make email, file transfer, and Web communications secure, reliable, and automated. Products include: SecureTransport, Secure Redirect, Valicert Validation Authority and the Tumbleweed EMail Firewall

Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ektasis , Inc.

Board Member
Hifn Inc
Hifn, of Los Gatos, California makes integrated circuits and software for storage and network infrastructure developers. Hifn’s integrated data flow technology enables intelligent secure networks with compression, encryption and application-aware classification. This is central to the.  More

Chief Scientist
Netscape Communications Corporation

Board Member
President and Chief Executive Officer
Securify , Inc.
Securify solutions deliver real-time visibility and control of network relationships and behavior between users and critical business systems. Securify uniquely delivers network security monitoring that is both application layer 7 aware and also correlated to user identities. Our solution.  More


Board Member
Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:PTEC)
Phoenix Technologies builds world-class core system software platforms, tools and applications that take full advantage of our history of expertiseat the core of digital devices, to enable the broadest set of users a more simple, trusted and reliable experience. Phoenix is dedicated.  More

Director of Engineering
RSA Security Inc. (NASDAQ:RSAS)


Ph.D., Electric Engineering
Stanford University

Ph.D., Computer Science
Stanford University

Master of Science, Computer Science
Stanford University

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
Cairo University

Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering
Cairo University

Dr. Belgacem Haba

Recipient of TechWadi ‘s 2007 Technical Achievement Award 

 Fellow and CTO of Advanced Packaging and Interconnect, Tessera Inc.

Dr. Haba joined Tessera in 1996 and is now a Tessera Fellow  and  CTO of Advanced Packaging and Interconnect.  He is responsible for overseeing next-generation research and development activities for Tessera, Inc.

Dr. Haba is also a founder of SiliconPipe Inc., a high-speed interconnect start-up company based in Silicon Valley. Prior to that, he managed the advanced packaging research and development division at Rambus. From 1991 to 1996, he managed advanced research and development projects at the NEC Central Research Laboratories in Japan and, before that, worked for IBM at its T.J. Watson Research Center in New York.  During his tenure at NEC and IBM, Dr. Haba’s activities included the applications of lasers in the field of microelectronics.

Dr. Haba received his bachelor’s degree in solid state physics from the University of Bab-Ezouar, Algeria in 1980. He holds two master’s degrees in applied physics, materials science and engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., where he also earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering in 1988.  Dr. Haba holds 87 U.S. patents, and over 135 worldwide patents. He has authored numerous technical publications and has also participated in many conferences worldwide. Dr. Haba is member of the TechWadi and the AAA-NC associations.

Sam Nakib

Recepient of TechWadi’s 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award

President, CEO and Board Member. T-RAM

Sam is an industry veteran with over 30 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry in areas of marketing and sales, business development and general management. He is currently president and CEO of a semiconductor startup, T-RAM, backed by some of silicon valley’s leading VCs (NEA, TallWood, InterWest …). Sam also serves on the Board of Directors of another VC-backed startup, Mobius Microsystems.

Prior to T-RAM, Sam was President and CEO of Berkäna Wireless, another semiconductor startup in the wireless space. Berkana introduced the first fully integrated, CMOS, cellular RF transceiver for GSM/GPRS.  While at Berkäna, Mr. Nakib also oversaw development of the next-generation 3.5G transceiver. most importantly, Sam directed the company’s acquisition by Qualcomm in December 2005.

Before Berkäna, Sam served as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Tactical Marketing at Cypress Semiconductor. He came to Cypress through its acquisition of another semiconductor startup - IC Works. Sam was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at IC Works, where he grew annual revenue from zero to more than $80 million.

Prior to that, Sam had a full career at Texas Instruments. he spent 18 years there in senior international sales and management positions.

Sam grew up in Egypt and is originally from Palestine.  He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biochemistry from California State, Hayward.

Brief Bio:

President, CEO, Board Member
T-RAM 

President and Chief Executive Officer
Berkana Wireless Inc.

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales
Berkana Wireless Inc.

Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development
Berkana Wireless Inc.

Senior Vice President of Business Development and Tactical Marketing
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:CY)

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales
IC Works Inc.

Semiconductor Sales Manager for North America , Western Region
Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN)

Senior International Sales and Management
Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN)
 

 [Editor’s note: One of the reasons for establishing TechWadi was to highlight the many technical and business contributions of Arab American professionals in the technology field. Unfortunately, few people in Silicon Valley realize the vast positive impact our community has had on the success of the Valley as the technology capital of the World.

Well, it’s time for us to set the record straight ! Every month, TechWadi will be profiling one of our members who has made a significant contribution to the technology industry. If you know of such a professional, please let us know at info@techwadi.org so we can add his/her profile !]

 For the month of May 2007, we are profiling Bassel Ojjeh, an executive at Yahoo. Bassel is originally from Syria. He remains very active in his support for technology development in the Middle East. Bassel’s support was critical for TechWadi to get Yahoo as our first major sponsor. Thank you Bassel.

Bassel Y. Ojjeh

Group Vice President
Strategic Data Solutions
Yahoo, Inc.

• Bassel Ojjeh is the Group Vice President of the Strategic Data Solutions group at Yahoo, Inc. He is responsible for building technologies that leverage Yahoo data for marketing solutions and increasing network relevance for consumers.

• Prior to Yahoo, Inc., Bassel co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of DMX Group and digiMine, Inc. (now Revenue Science, Inc.). Both companies delivered Business Intelligence and Data Mining products and services to fortune 100 companies including American Express, Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motors, Microsoft Corp, Dow Jones, AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile.

• Bassel served as Group Program Manager in the Internet Business Server division at Microsoft Corporation. He was responsible for all eCommerce related components in Microsoft’s Commerce Server Product, including Data Warehousing, Analysis, Data Mining, Advertising Server, Analysis, Personalization, User Management and Direct Marketing. His work on Version 3.0 of Site Server Commerce included advertising server and a prediction capability based on data mining technology.

• Bassel joined Microsoft in 1992 and worked on several Microsoft products and large scale systems including MSN Advertising Server and the first scalable web data warehousing/decision support systems for Microsoft Internet properties (MSN, MSNBC, Expedia and CarPoint). While at Microsoft, he also designed and built Budgeting and Decision Support systems and was involved in a number of acquisitions including Fox Software, SoftImage, Interse Corporation and Firefly.

• Prior to Microsoft, Bassel was one of the original developers at Fox Software, Inc., An RDBMS software maker. There he worked on such products as FoxBase, FoxBase+, FoxBase+/Mac and FoxPro. After spending four years in the development group, he moved on to establish the Fox Software IT organization and ran the entire business systems of Fox Software on the FoxPro product. He also was responsible for the IT infrastructure in all twenty locations in six countries where Fox Software operated. Microsoft acquired Fox Software, Inc. in 1992 for $1.5 Billion.