Leadership Team

Iman Fawaz is the head of partnerships at iConnect. Fawaz is a digital media & marketing professional with over a decade of rich experience working and understanding the MENA’s digital media landscape. Her forte lies in building and developing strategic marketing offerings for fashion, lifestyle, luxury, and beauty brands across the MENA region. In addition, Fawaz demonstrates a sound understanding of the Middle Eastern consumer’s behavior and interests in terms of content consumption, response, engagement, and advertising formats.

In her previous role as Group Commercial Digital Lead at Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Fawaz led the digital commercial for Hearst magazines and was instrumental in launching and growing new digital models, concepts, and initiatives for the organization. In her previous stints, she has also worked with organizations like DMS, Mediaquest Corp., and Dotmena.

At iConnect, Fawaz leads the sales and partnerships for the influencer marketing platform. Additionally, she further facilitates influencers’ search, selection, and management for brand ad campaigns.

Fawaz holds a degree in Mass Communication from the American University of Sharjah and is a Google certified digital marketer.

Adam Chebbi is the chief product officer at iConnect. Chebbi is an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of creating meaningful products in the consumer service industry to make people’s lives easier. His expertise lies in product management, people management, startup development, and marketing strategy.

An entrepreneur at heart, Chebbi has founded multiple technology startups to put technology in the hands of the consumers. He is a partner at Adaska Product Design. In his previous stint, Chebbi was the co-founder and CEO of the restaurant discovery app, Vynd, which Monresto later acquired. Vynd became the biggest community of night-lifers in Tunisia under his watch. He was also the founding member of Tunisian Startups.

At iConnect, Chebbi is developing and continuously evolving a world-class product that will make executing multiple influencer marketing campaigns a breeze for brands and content creators.

Chebbi is a strong business development professional with a Master in Business Management focused on Business Analytics and Big Data from MSB Mediterranean School of Business. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Sciences from Ecole Supérieure de Technologies et d’informatique. Chebbi speaks English, French, Arabic, and Spanish.

Khalil Hamouda is the chief technology officer at iConnect. Hamouda is an experienced IT enthusiast with solid implementation skills. His hunger to develop product requirements and roadmaps for large-scale organizations makes him one of the best minds in the MENA region’s digital marketing and advertising industry.

Hamouda held various senior positions at organizations like Veamly and Tayara Group in his previous stints. He was also the co-founder and CTO of the restaurant discovery app, Vynd, where he managed a large team of developers to make it one of the performing apps in Tunisia.

At iConnect, Hamouda is on a mission to simplify influencer marketing technologies that will maximize growth for partners and clients.

Hamouda speaks French, Arabic, and English.

Salah Moustafa is the chief operating officer at iConnect. Moustafa has over a decade of experience in the digital and performance marketing space and profoundly understands the region’s rapidly evolving marketing and advertising landscape. Moustafa has closely witnessed the rise of influencer marketing in the MENA region, giving him insights into the requirements of brands and content creators. Apart from handling various senior roles at ArabyAds over many years, Moustafa has worked with companies like Bayt.com and Ikoo in his professional journey. In his current role, Moustafa is responsible for translating strategy into actionable goals for performance and growth, helping to implement organization-wide goal setting, performance management, and annual operating planning. In his current role, Moustafa is responsible for translating strategy into actionable goals for performance and growth, helping to implement organization-wide goal setting, performance management, and annual operating planning. Moustafa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Benha University and speaks Arabic and English.

Mahmoud Fathy is the chief executive officer and co-founder of ArabyAds. He is a physics graduate who happens to be more passionate about revolutionizing digital marketing for the Arab world.

Mahmoud founded ArabyAds in 2013 to empower the growth of e-commerce in the MENA region. He pioneered the concept of performance advertising in the region and has been a great advocate of the power of data and technology for the advertising industry.

Under his leadership, ArabyAds became the largest advertising and marketing intelligence platform in MENA in a short period. Moreover, his vision of prioritizing the client’s success and empowering advertisers with data, transparency, and precision to reach the right audience has paid rich dividends.

Mahmoud has been the driving force behind various acquisitions and successful partnerships that have significantly added to the company’s technological capabilities making it the platform of choice for the industry in the region. His unrelenting commitment to providing simplified solutions and solving the clients’ real problems through meaningful technological interventions has put ArabyAds at the forefront of the digital advertising and marketing industry in the region.

Mohammad Khartabil is the chief business development officer and co-founder at ArabyAds. With more than 15 years of experience in business development across digital marketing and advertising companies in the Middle East, Mohammad has worked tirelessly to improve awareness about the performance marketing industry in MENA.

In his current role, Mohammad has been instrumental in building and growing ArabyAds, making it a leading e-commerce marketing platform in the region. A firm believer in creating sustainable business and providing a competitive advantage, his working approach has resulted in exponential growth. Under his mentorship, the team has forged significant and long-term partnerships with advertisers and publishers. In addition, Mohammad has been responsible for creating the go-to-market strategies integral to the expansion of ArabyAds. His key responsibilities include business development, sales, product management, operations, and P&L.

Mohammad is also the co-founder of Arab Affiliate Summit, the first performance marketing annual event in the MENA region. Before joining ArabyAds, he worked at various leadership positions in TailWind EMEA, RewardCraze, and Ikoo, where he built many new properties, focusing entirely on the Middle East market.
Mohammad holds a degree in Computer Science from the American University of Sharjah.

With a career spanning over 2 decades, Gulrez Alam is one of the stalwarts of the digital industry. Gulrez became an entrepreneur with Resultrix and expanded it to become a leading digital marketing agency across USA, Singapore, UAE, and India. The company was later acquired by the Publicis Group – the acquisition being marked as one of the most successful exits in the agency world. Hereon, Gulrez led Zenith Optimedia’s foray across 14 markets in the APAC region.

From the USA to APAC to the MENA region, Gulrez has used his vision for the digital industry and its potential, to make ambitious investment decisions and drive many projects to success. His exposure across cultures and geographies has rendered him an open minded but strategic thinker. His association with Affle Holdings saw the company go public on the Indian Stock Exchange as he contributed through various acquisitions and organic expansion.

In his current role at ArabyAds, Gulrez is yet again the driving force behind the company’s strategic & investment decisions and their flourishing global expansion.

In his precious free time, Gulrez can be found pumping iron at the gym or pumping adrenaline through whizzing wheels or deep dives!

Tarek Nachnouchi is the chief product officer at ArabyAds. With a career spanning almost two decades, Tarek has witnessed the evolution and the rapidly changing dynamics of the digital marketing and AdTech space from a very close quarter. His successful professional stints with various digital organizations in the top leadership role make Tarek one of the best minds in the digital marketing industry in the MENA region.

Moreover, his varied and rich experience working across different markets like Tunis, Paris, London, Milan, and Dubai brings in an extra dimension to create products that efficiently solve consumers’ problems. Tarek had worked with several international companies like Maktoob (Search Director), IKOO (COO), Jumia Tunisia (CEO), Nextedia, Yahoo, Access, and Medianet.

At ArabyAds, Tarek handles the product strategy and deployment across the different entities of the group, including Performance AdTech, Influencer AdTech, programmatic buying, and e-commerce. He successfully builds top-notch products by simplifying the processes that increase usability and enhance user experience. In addition, he continuously strives to introduce new features in the products in line with the global trends to provide an opportunity for our clients to experience truly world-class service.

Graduated with a Master’s in marketing & management, Tarek is also a serial entrepreneur who has created multiple startups during his professional journey. He focuses on product innovation and management to seamlessly combine business and technology knowledge.

Tarek speaks Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Italian.

Bachir Siam is the chief financial officer at ArabyAds. He is a corporate executive with strong financial expertise and has a successful track record building organizations, improving profitability, and providing frameworks that enhance managerial accountability to support growth and strengthen financial discipline.

Bachir has held various leadership positions with leading global organizations like GroupM, Mindshare, PepsiCo, Motorola Mobility, EY, and Deloitte across the EMEA region in his more than a two-decade-long professional journey.

In his current role at ArabyAds, Bachir focuses on delivering commercial benefits across MENA, managing risks and compliance priorities, working through cost control initiatives and revenue growth opportunities, expanding into new markets, and assessing acquisition targets and potential synergies. His vision for ArabyAds is to create a robust and sustainable finance organization whose foundation is built on three fundamental pillars, talent, system, and process, that fuel the company’s growth.

Bachir holds a master’s degree in Finance and holds the CPA, CISA, Diploma in IFRS, CTP, and ICVS certifications. He has also completed an on-campus executive education program in corporate restructuring, mergers, and acquisition from the prestigious Harvard Business School.

Bachir likes to read, jog, scuba dive, and go skiing in his free time. He also gives personal finance advice to help create a financially independent community.

Mohamed Mohey is Chief Human Resources Officer at ArabyAds. He is a Alsun Ain Shams University graduate with a Human Resources Management diploma from American University in Cairo. He has 23+ years of experience across all HR functions.

Mohamed is skilled in culture shaping with a proven track record in organisations & leadership transformation, performance management, engagement and people assessment and strategic business planning and organisational development.

Mohamed is experienced in various leadership roles across multiple industries. Throughout his experience, he covered extensive geographies in the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa.

Barbara Soltysinka is the co-founder and chief executive officer of indaHash. Barbara started her professional journey with a PR agency before founding LifeTube, an MCN and talent agency, in 2013, which has over 217 million subscribers today.

In 2016 she exited LifeTube to start indaHash, one of the biggest influencer marketing platforms globally, along with Wlas Chorowiec, co-founder and chief technology officer.

Barbara has been honored with various awards, including the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Man of the Year by IAB, and recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Influencer Marketing.
She loves animals and is interested in biohacking. In her free time, she meditates and explores human consciousness.

Barbara has graduated in Media Marketing from the University of Warsaw and PR & advertising from the Warsaw School of Advertising.

Wlas Chorowiec is the co-founder and chief technology officer of indaHash. Wlas has been actively working in the digital space since 2004 and is an expert in IT project management, content marketing, and digital advertising.

Wlas co-founded indaHash in 2016 alongside Barbara Soltysinka, co-founder and the chief executive officer of the leading global influencer marketing platform. At indaHash, he is responsible for product expansion and growth.

Before founding indaHash, Wlas was the co-owner of LifeTube. He describes himself as a blockchain and NFTs enthusiast.

Safdar Hussain is the chief data officer at ArabyAds. Safdar has over 20 years of global experience in data science, working across telecommunications, consumer electronics, consultancy, and financial & banking sectors.

A highly skilled professional in people management, business analytics, process management, and predictive analytics, Safdar’s previous roles include leading data science, operational excellence, artificial intelligence, and digital transformations for his past organizations.

In addition, his exceptional skills in managing megaprojects of over $1 billion make him one of the most sought data scientists among the top corporations.
At ArabyAds, Safdar is responsible for strengthening the data stack of the company, making it the backbone of our various technology platforms, to make advertising more meaningful and value-driven for consumers and our partners.

Safdar holds a Master of Technology degree in Data Science from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. He also boasts of a Master of Science degree from the coveted Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Besides being a passionate data scientist, Safdar is also an author of the book “Mind The Gap.”

Patrick is the CEO of EQ2 Ventures, a Dubai-based investment holding resulting from the spin-off of Equitrust, the corporate VC arm of Choueiri Group (a large media representation group in Middle East and North Africa). Patrick is also a founding & investment committee member of Dubai Angel Investors.

Prior to dedicating his full professional time to EQ2 Ventures, Patrick acted as Choueiri Group’s Chief Strategy Officer from 2014 to 2019. Before that, Patrick had spent 20 years in banking, where he steered various acquisitions and organic development projects for Societe Generale and BNP Paribas across Europe, Asia and North America, acting as BNPP Wealth Management’s CEO for the MENA market until 2013.

A French national, keen sailor and scuba diver, Patrick graduated with a Master in Finance from EDHEC (Ecole Des Hautes Etudes Commerciales Lille) and holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD.