Kiri Mompreneur Challenge Finale

Helping Lebanese mothers improve their entrepreneurial skills

The KIRI Mompreneur Challenge, launched by Groupe BEL and Berytech in March 2019 on Mother’s Day, aims to help Lebanese mothers improve their entrepreneurial skills. Around 80 applications were received, of which 30 projects were selected. The participants attended several trainings over the past year, and went through two rounds of selection.

 

The Finale

Please join us for the finale of the Kiri Mompreneur Challenge, to support and encourage the 5 finalists who will be pitching in front of the jury to win one of three prizes up for grabs: 1st place worth $10,000, 2nd place worth $5,000 and 3rd place worth $3,000. The winners will also be enrolled in Berytech’s incubation program for 6 months.
 
Date: Friday, February 28, 2020
Time: 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Venue: BDD1280, Beirut Digital District, Bechara El Khoury Street

There is a Kids’ Corner for those who wish, animated by babysitters from Jaleesa.

 

Meet the Finalists

Afaf Balaa – Da3douka is a natural homemade play dough exclusively made from 100% food-grade ingredients to provide children, parents and teachers with alternative non toxic play dough product.

Rose Assaf Moubarak – Fill’nForm: For Lebanese young adults who have issues with governmental documents, Fill’nForm is a platform (website/mobile application) that contains user-friendly information with all needed locations and price transparency for daily life governmental documents in addition to offering a door to door service for persons who don’t have time to do them by themselves.

Cosette Chahoud Daouk – Forgotten Rainbow is a line of organic natural food colors made from blend of fruit, vegetables and algae. It is vegan, gluten free and contains lots of vitamins and antioxidants. It comes as a super concentrated dehydrated powder in the full color range.

Randa Harb – Green Robot Tech is an initiative targeting youth and kids aged 3 to 18 years delivering STEAM and DIY based projects tackling both robotics and renewable energy. All materials are eco-friendly and reused. This initiative aims to bridge the gap between scientific theories taught at schools and practical/applied hands-on STEAM projects.

Joelle Nohra – TheDigitalSHE: with its slogan “Rise, Evolve, Achieve”, TheDigitalSHE is dedicated to serve the Lebanese women aged from 18 years and above with a mission to empower women’s capabilities through offering an online portal that will help them access educational content in many fields of interest.

Meet the Jury

Asmahan Zein is Partner in Filovault Crypta sal and the President of Lebanese League for Women in Business (LLWB).

She comes with a long experience in logistics and transportation, started Aramex in Lebanon and served on different executive positions for twenty-seven years. While in Aramex she was elected the first Female President for the Freight Forwarders Syndicate in Lebanon. In 2014 Asmahan started Crypta s.a.l. that was the franchise of Infofort LLC. Throughout her career, she served on several boards, as the Vice Chair of Amideast Advisory Board in Lebanon until 2016 in addition to Vice Chair of Injaz Lebanon until 2017. Passionate about impact and social entrepreneurship, Asmahan serves on numerous boards and non-profits in addition to being the President of Lebanese League for Women in Business, she is The Vice Chair of Ruwwad Al Tanmiya Lebanon, Board member of Rural Entrepreneurs, Board member of Alfanar Advisory Board Lebanon, member on the steering committee of the United Nations Global Compact Lebanon, member of NCC/AUB (Nature Conservation Center) advisory board, in addition to being the Chair-person of Seeders/LWAF (a group of angel investors in Lebanon).

 

Bijan Azad is an Associate Professor at the Olayan School of Business (OSB), American University of Beirut and the Director of Samih Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. 

Dr. Azad teaches in OSB’s Executive MBA, Executive Education and MBA programs. Bijan pioneered the popular experiential Startup Acceleration Practicum graduate course at AUB (modeled after Steve Blank’s Lean LaunchPad). In 2016 he designed AUB’s Scale-Up Readiness Program that focuses on overcoming scale-up challenges of companies wanting to exceed $5 million revenue—supported in part by USAID. Bijan is also very active in the startup ecosystem serving as bootcamp mentor/instructor at Flat6Labs and SPEED accelerator, also as a mentor at the IM-Capital MIT Venture Mentoring Service. Bijan, in 1988 was co-founder of a successful map technology startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, GIS/Trans, was acquired later by Google Maps. In 2001, he co-founded another successful map technology startup International Land Information Systems bv (acquired by ARCADIS bv 2003), in Arnhem, Netherlands.

 

Carine Fersan is the Head of Brand Management at BLC Bank SAL.

She has eleven years of banking experience through leading the Bank’s strategic marketing planning by segment from a customer centric approach. Among which are the Individuals and High Net worth, SMEs and Enterprises, and We-initiative, which is the first holistic Women Empowerment program, launched in MENA, positioning BLC Bank as the financial institution of choice for women in Lebanon and as a global example for Women’s Market best practices. She joined BLC Bank in 2010, became part of the core team working on SMEs and We Initiative since the preparation phase, implementation and became in 2013 its brand Manager responsible for creating, developing and implementing the strategy, overseeing the execution of its financial and non-financial services and the Brilliant Lebanese Awards program.  Carine is a Financial Alliance for Women All Stars Academy instructor and mentor since 2016, sharing BLC Bank’s best practice example. She participated in the UN General Assembly 2018 tackling UN Global Compact leadership summit and CEO Roundtable to advance the agenda for gender equality. She is also a trainer and instructor in Marketing and Branding and participated as a jury member in number of startups and business competitions. Carine graduated from ESA Beirut & ESCP EAP in Paris in 2009 with a Master’s Degree in Marketing after completing a BS in Industrial Psychology and BA in Communication both in 2005 at the Lebanese University.

BOOK NOW