Errachid Montassir
Sustainability Activist
Errachid Montassir is a project manager working with the High Atlas Foundation. Through his extensive experience with youth projects, Errachid is working towards spreading the culture of participatory sustainable development in communities throughout Morocco. He has represented Moroccan youth activists at a number of international summits, including the UN Youth Climate Summit in New York.
Humanitarian
At the age of 16, Fouad Sayed Issa founded the NGO Violet Organisation, a self-funded volunteer initiative in Syria. The NGO now has over 700 staff and 300 youth volunteers, responding to health and food security emergencies, as well as working in the sectors of education and camp coordination. His organization is dedicated to integrating young people into these initiatives and encouraging them to become change-makers in their own communities.
Lina Amarch
Student and Feminist Activist
Lina Amarch is a seventeen years old full-time high school student and part-time aspiring novelist. Having always been immersed in an intellectual realm, surrounded by books, essays, and articles, she is passionate about a variety of subjects, including politics, science, and literature.
She is passionate about pushing young feminists today to develop a diachronic perspective to better understand their positionality in the fight for equality. Her TED Talk will center on feminist anthropology, delving into the subject from a biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic perspective, while offering suggestions for improving gender relations in our society.
Otman Harrak
Entrepreneur
Otman Harrak is the cofounder of Pip Pip Yalah, the biggest carpool community in Morocco with over 400K users and cofounder of Ideancy, a Casablanca-based digital and consulting company tailored for helping startups and innovative companies.
After 11 years spent in France, Otman cumulated a broad knowledge of the startup ecosystem and mastered User-Experience and Project management through his consulting experiences within big French corporations in Insurance, banking and B2C/C2C.
In December 2020, Otman left his comfort zone behind and came back to Morocco to take an active role in the development of the Moroccan startup scene.
Rime Elkherrat
Future Neuroscience Student
Rime Elkherrat, a high school senior in Casabanca, Morocco, has always been fascinated by Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience. Her interest in this field was triggered by her experience with OCD at the age of eight, when she started to explore and delve deeply into the correlation between the brain and behavior. With the Covid pandamic in full swing, she noticed how human interactions have been affected, resulting in degradation of nonverbal communication and the lack of critical habits, most notably eye gaze. In order to shed light on what she considers to be the most impactful body language tool, her talk will center on the power of eye contact from a historical, scientific, psychological, and humouristic approach, while also trying to vehiculate key insights gained from her own personal life.
Student and Islamic Art Enthusiast
Sarah Benslimane is a 17-year-old high school senior living in Fes (Morocco). For a long time, Sarah has been interested in other cultures, leading her to learn French, English, Korean, and some Japanese. However, in these last two years, she started focusing more on her own culture, especially when it comes to Islamic art. She learned about the complexity carried by the geometric patterns of Morocco's monuments and wanted to share her passion with other people. This prompted her to create ARTIS -a website about Islamic art- at the beginning of her senior year. Sarah's Talk will focus on how we can promote this incredible art through new technologies.
Zara Zaman
Edtech VC
Zara is the Head of Platform at Emerge Education, the European seed fund investing in founders solving the $8.5tn skills gap. She is also the co-founder of Edventure, the first pan-European university accelerator. In November 2021, she directed Edventure Emerge, the largest virtual conference for students and researchers worldwide, with over 70 speakers and 800 attendees. Zara is a fervent advocate of social entrepreneurship as one of the best tools with which to solve society’s most pressing issues. She is passionate about youth-led innovation and encourages founders on university campuses globally to use their expertise to innovate, drive positive change and build the start-ups the world needs.