EXPERT VOICES

Houda began her journey at AUB with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, followed by a Master’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Telecom Paris in France. She later went on to complete an Executive Program on Influence and Negotiation Strategies at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

When Houda Soubra started her tech journey, she was surprised when she was told aggressive and selfish behaviors were the only means to become a respected leader and advance her career. She believed that her character along with her skills and expertise would make her a successful leader and endeavored to prove that true. After a few years working in Paris, she moved to the bay area and then joined Cisco Systems as a technical marketing engineer. Soubra later became unhappy with the toxic work culture and decided to look for a new position and a more inclusive team culture.

“My biggest challenge was when I ended up in a non-collaborative team that focused on individual gains. The culture was toxic and I was miserable. I dreaded going to work.” said Soubra “The challenge of being a woman in tech is exacerbated by the leadership and the team culture. Earlier in my career I was told I was too nice and I needed to be aggressive to succeed. It took me a while to figure out that I could be successful without pushing people around. I could succeed by building trust and establishing relationships that are critical for my success.

When she joined Cisco Systems in 1998, she was able to have many different roles and growth opportunities and received several promotions as the years went on. Her current position is the Head of Product Growth at OpenDNS, a cloud security enterprise that was acquired by Cisco Systems.

Witnessing the shift from hardware to software to SaaS

Joining Cisco Systems was a life-altering experience for Soubra. She witnessed first-hand the company’s shift from building hardware to becoming a software provider to selling software as a service.

“I had so many different careers [at Cisco Systems]. I started as a technical marketing engineer, then I was managing software development teams, then I went into hardware product management, then to network security and now I'm in cloud security,” she said. “I am always making sure that my role is challenging and that it is providing me opportunities to grow and learn”.

Her current role is focused on product growth, partnering closely with the sales and marketing teams to get a better understanding of the market trends and customer needs and finding opportunities to grow the product revenue.

The project she is working on right now focuses on helping customers build their security stack in the cloud, as more and more of the applications move to the cloud and employees access them from everywhere. “When you work remotely, you would typically establish a Virtual Private Network or VPN, to encrypt your data and protect it. Your data will go to your company’s data centers and from there it will go to the internet. What’s been happening over the past few years is that more work applications moved into the cloud and more people are working remotely,” explained Soubra. “You have more and more branches connecting directly to the internet and so many customers are now considering reducing the load on their on-prem security stack by building a security stack in the cloud and allowing branches and remote workers to go directly and safely to the Internet.. There’s an industry term for this architecture called ‘Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)’. It’s interesting because it’s adapting to the way we work.”

Soubra considers herself lucky to be involved in producing new technologies that will make people’s information safe. “Security is an area that will continue to evolve and have its own challenges and that’s what keeps me happy: knowing that there is a problem that I will figure out how to solve and learn along the way.”

The Challenge of Being A Woman in Tech

Many women in the tech field face unique issues ranging from bias in the workplace to difficulties receiving fair compensation. “Unfortunately bias is a reality in the workplace today and more specifically in the tech world. However, things are starting to shift, with companies like Cisco Systems taking active steps towards enabling a more inclusive work environment and improving pay equity. Tech companies have come to realize that fostering an inclusive culture increases employee engagement and grows productivity and innovation, “ she said.

Soubra believes the challenge of being a woman in tech highly depends on the work environment and to what extent it allows you to flourish. “My advice to young women starting in the tech field is to find a work environment that encourages different points of views and builds inclusive teams.” She gives the example of the women in engineering groups at Cisco Systems, Women of Impact and Women In Science and Engineering, that help women engineers grow their network and learn from each other’s experiences.

She advises early career professionals in her field to observe and identify the stress factors at their workplace and channel their energies towards roles that work for them and can help advance their careers.

After moving up in the corporate ladder, Soubra still believes that passion, teamwork and leading by example are key to advancing and prospering. She was fortunate enough to realize that early on and take the necessary steps to improve her career. Her future plan is to continue to focus on her passion which is to understand customers' needs, and help them grow their business securely. “Secure Access Service Edge (or SASE as defined by Gartner) is a promising architecture that can help customers move securely to the cloud. I'm excited about the opportunity to help customers on their journey to SASE, a trend that will continue to grow over the next few years.”

Author: This article is part of an expert series written by Fadi Daou, the CEO of MultiLane – a high speed test and measurement (T&M) company based in Lebanon. Daou discusses the move from 400G to 800G Ethernet at the leading edge of data communication, the challenges and solutions at these high speeds and throughputs, and Lebanon’s role in the industry.

[Disclaimer: The below article is the author's personal opinion]

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the already dramatic shift to online spaces in every aspect of our lives. From Netflix streaming, to Zoom calls, to sharing documents on Office365 or Google Docs, we are now using more bandwidth than ever. The speed at which data centers can communicate internally correlates directly to how fast they can provide their services. Increasing speeds at the user end – with 5G or faster home WiFi for example – requires exponentially faster speeds at the server end. To accommodate for this ever-increasing demand, hyperscalers – like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft – are constantly working on faster, more efficient technologies.

Data centers operate on the most fundamental layer of the internet, the physical layer, which deals directly with streams of bits – 1s and 0s – transferred via electrical, or, more frequently, optical signals. On this layer, different technologies that enable the rapid transfer of data come together under the Ethernet Specification.

The year 2021 has seen widespread adoption of 400 Gigabit Ethernet (400G), currently the fastest commercially available means of transferring data. Companies like Microsoft are migrating their data center infrastructure from 100G to 400G in anticipation of increasing bandwidth usage over the next five years, but other hyperscalers are pushing to go even faster.

At the leading-edge of data communications, we must always operate in anticipation of future technologies that may be two, three, and even four years in advance of what is available now. If 400G is being adopted now, then it is a certainty that the next stage, 800G Ethernet, is no longer a technology of the future but of the present, with prototypes and standards already in development.

The rapid approach of 800G Ethernet is all the more certain given that 400G relies on revolutionary new technology, which has laid the foundation for 800G and beyond. As a full breakdown of these technologies is outside the purview of this article, I will focus on two factors that are central to this revolutionary shift in data communications: the move from NRZ to PAM4 signaling and the need for heat dissipation.

A Tale of Two Signals

Gigabit Ethernet works by sending one or more signals through a fiber optic cable at a certain speed. Previous generations would send information one bit at a time through a Non-Return to Zero (NRZ) signal. At 100G and below, NRZ is ideal as it can allow for error-free transfer of data. However, NRZ signals cannot provide reliable throughput at 400G, which has caused a shift to, and heavy reliance on, a different type of signaling method: PAM4. PAM4 splits a single signal into four levels, each of which can transfer two bits per cycle. This allows for faster transfer of information and less interference at 400G and above.

But PAM4 isn’t without its own challenges.

Such a busy signal means that noise, and therefore errors – instances where a 1 is interpreted as a 0 and vice versa – are inevitable. Companies looking to implement 400G and above must be able to have a keen awareness of what these errors are and how to account for them. Testing equipment, like Bit Error Rate Testers (BERTs), advanced oscilloscopes, and loopback modules are crucial as they ensure data center functionality. Modern testing instruments can even apply methods of mitigating errors directly to see how they might be implemented in the field. For PAM4 signals, the most common way to ensure no information is lost is Forward Error Correction (FEC), which appends the data with additional bits and codewords that allow for a certain amount of data recovery even with errors in the signal.

Keeping Things Cool

Processing so much information at a time causes significant heat buildup in the pluggable modules, which, if improperly dealt with, can damage the equipment. Heat dissipation through these modules is, therefore, essential to the functioning of the entire system. Here, test and measurement equipment once again plays a vital role. The interconnects used to stress-test ports or systems, called loopbacks, run ports at their highest power threshold to see how they cope, and what additional cooling methods are required to allow for more effective heat dissipation.

(Data Center Rack Being Tested)

Connecting to Lebanon

My expertise is in test and measurement, but my passion has always been to see my country thrive. 30 years ago, I promised my father amongst the olive and pine trees of my ancestral village that I would return to Lebanon when I was ready to create high tech jobs for my fellow Lebanese. Lebanon has never lacked for talent, only opportunity, and my goal is to bring these opportunities home.

Shifting Lebanon’s economic focus from internal to international would go a long way to solving our current crisis. All that is needed is a better ecosystem that enables global competition and moves our economy to double digit growth. Updates to our labor laws would prove very helpful, as it would provide proper incentivization for international companies. However even without them, Lebanon is still rising to the occasion remarkably, all things considered.

Initiatives like my own Houmal Technology Park (HTP) already stand as a testament to Lebanon’s capacity to compete on an international scale. Even in the midst of economic turmoil, bright young Lebanese are working to turn their country into a hub for the ICT industry. One of the companies headquartered at HTP, MultiLane, is able to keep pace even with the lightning fast high-speed I/O industry, with an excess of 4000 interconnect modules shipped every week. Test and measurement instruments manufactured right here are being used in major data centers around the world.

Looking to the future, if our work continues as it has, I anticipate and continue to strive to create even greater growth and more local opportunities as the world starts to take notice of Lebanon’s untapped potential.

While technological inventions are often developed and adopted by advanced countries, they are often a much needed solution for underserved communities. This has proven to be true in agriculture. Advances in technology have introduced modern irrigation and farming methods that have saved cost and enabled efficiency in crop production for many farmers. Technology and holistic solutions to improve farming methods have unfortunately not been implemented equally at the global level. Jehane and her team are driving to fix this in Lebanon.

In 2018, Lebanese social entrepreneur Jehane Akiki conducted a field trip to Zahle in Lebanon to identify farmers’ needs and challenges. She came back to New York and formed a team of designers, engineers, architects and farmers from different organizations and started designing Farms Not Arms, a modern farm targeting to address three main issues: food security, climate change and social cohesion.

Solving food security through technology 

Farms Not Arms officially started operating in the Beqaa area in May 2021. The current team in Lebanon consists of five members, mostly women and young individuals, who manage the entire process from installing the equipment to sourcing and planting seeds, irrigating and harvesting. “It’s a women-led farm. This was not planned but we’re glad it is,” Jehane added. 

The actual farm - ‘Turba’ which means soil in Arabic - is an integrated model that uses regenerative agriculture and low tech hydroponics to yield more produce in a smaller area. Regenerative agriculture is a dense hybrid multiple cropping system that incorporates different plants on different levels and rotates different crops, explains Jehane. Farmers can plant more and diversify their crops. 

“In our model, you can plant 3.5 times more food in any given area, making farms more productive and enriching soil health while bringing carbon back into the soil, hence combating climate change. In traditional agriculture, the carbon isn’t going back to the soil compounding the issue of soil degradation because of pesticides,” she said. “If we don’t take care of the soil, we won’t have anything left to plant by 2075 and our food system will be jeopardized.”

Jehane believes that if the Farms Not Arms model spreads on 3% of Lebanon's lands then it can feed every person in the country their entire yearly dietary needs. 

Currently, her organization is relying on a grant received from a food competition it took part in last year, organized by the Rockefeller Foundation and design agency IDEO. Farms Not Arms came in the top 14 and won $25,000 to cover its first year of operation. In order to become more financially independent, the team is planning to sell a part of their harvest to end consumers and donate a percentage of it to NGOs and individuals working with the organizations. They will also run an educational program in the summer to teach unemployed individuals innovative farming techniques. The program will be offered for free to those who can’t afford it. 

(A futuristic sketch of Farms Not Arms)

Jehane’s passion for helping communities extends beyond Farms Not Arms. She has been involved in founding many startups focused on driving social change and serving underserved communities.  She is also the founder and CEO of Learning Blocks, an education technology startup that creates a skill-based education certification system powered by blockchain. Its main goal is to provide certification for underserved communities in developing countries. In addition,  Jehane is the founder of IOI Strategic Design, a consulting agency that fuses design and development to target social and governance problems. Jehane is a Global Shaper, an initiative by the World Economic Forum to create a network of young people in their 20s who are driving social change.

Her biggest concern remains “the current state of the world and what is going to happen to the planet,” she said. “The climate crisis is not just about the environment but also a mix of all the things we’re doing! All of our systems are broken in some form and this is contributing to the state of the planet.” 

Despite leaving Lebanon to pursue her college studies in Boston and New York, double majoring in International Studies and Business Management, Jehane remains passionate about giving back to her country and to underserved communities. 

One can only hope that with more people like Jehane, Lebanon will witness a rise in community-geared agriculture initiatives that can put a stop to food scarcity and help Lebanon become self-sufficient.  

Author: Ali Khayrallah has been working away at the G’s of mobile for many years. He leads a research team shaping the future of mobile technology at Ericsson in Santa Clara. He is currently focused on 6G efforts in the US with industry, academia and government.

[Disclaimer: The below article is the author's personal opinion]

Just as the main operators in North America are completing the first wave of 5G network rollouts and 5G phones are becoming mainstream, we are starting to hear about 6G (or Next G, or whatever name sticks eventually).

Why so soon and what will it do for us? This article will try to give you a glimpse of some answers.

The long game

History doesn’t quite repeat itself but it kind of rhymes. Each ‘G’ (for generation) of mobile from 2G to 4G has lasted about 10 years, and it seems 5G will too. So we can guess that the 6G era will start around 2030. What is less obvious to the general public is that the buildup also takes a decade, so the time to start working on 6G is now. As you will come to appreciate, this is truly a long game from early research to commercial deployment on a global scale. Each new G offers an opportunity for radical changes, unconstrained by necessary compatibility within a single generation. To get there, we need time: to do the research and mature the technologies that potentially drive changes; to integrate them into complex systems and figure out ways to exploit their potential; to reduce them to practice and understand their feasibility; to create standards that incorporate them; to design products and services based on those standards; and finally to deploy networks.

I will first talk about what 6G is about then discuss how to get there, in particular standards and spectrum, as well as geopolitical factors that may help or hinder us.

6G: use case and benefits

It is of course difficult today to pin down the technologies that will enable 6G networks or the use cases that will drive the need for them, but we can paint a big picture of where we might be headed.

We expect the trend towards better performance in customary metrics such as capacity, bit rate, latency, coverage and energy efficiency to continue, as it has in previous G’s. To that end, we foresee further improvements in workhorse technologies such as multi-antenna transmission and reception, in particular more coordination of transmissions across sites. Also, the insatiable appetite for more spectrum will continue to lead us to ever higher frequencies, into the low 100’s of GHz. The need for ubiquitous coverage will push for integration of non-terrestrial nodes such as drones and low earth orbiting satellites into terrestrial networks. The success of these various directions hinges on solving a wide array of tough technical problems.

Networks will also need to evolve in other ways, such as trustworthiness, which entails the network’s ability to withstand attacks and recover from them. One aspect is confidentiality, which goes beyond protection of data during transmission to secure computation and storage. Another aspect is service availability, which requires resilience to node failure and automated recovery.

We can also think of use cases that will create the demand for 6G. One use case is the internet of senses, where we expect the trend from smartphones to AR/VR devices and beyond that involve most of our senses, leading to a merge of the physical and virtual worlds and putting very tough latency and bit rate requirements on the network. Another use case is very simple and possibly battery-less devices such as sensors and actuators for home automation, asset tracking, traffic control etc. Such devices must be accommodated by the network with appropriate protocols. Yet another is intelligent machines, where the network provides specialized connectivity among AI nodes, allowing them to cooperate. Speaking of AI, it is also expected to increasingly pervade the operation of the network itself, moving down from high level control closer to signal processing at the physical layer.

Setting up standards: why do we need them?

It sounds so 20th century but there are very good reasons, the main one being mobility. In mobile communications we need well defined interfaces so network elements speak and understand the same language. Phones move around and they have to be able to connect to different networks. Within a network, components from different vendors have to work together. Standards define the interfaces to make it all work together, and they do much more, including setting the minimum performance requirements for phones and base stations. In practice, companies spend a lot of money and effort on interoperability testing to ensure their equipment plays well with others.

Three main ingredients to 6G success (or failure)

3GPP

In the mobile industry, the main standards body is 3GPP, which issues releases about every 18 months. A release fully defines a set of specifications that can be used to develop products. For example, Release 15 (2018) provided the first specifications for 5G, primarily covering the signaling and data channels to support improved mobile broadband. One particularly useful feature is the so-called flexible numerology, which enables the same structure to be adapted for use over a wide range of frequency bands. Release 16 (2020) added several features, including unlicensed spectrum operation and industrial IoT. Release 17 currently under construction will include operation at higher frequencies, more IoT features and satellite networks. From where we stand today, we expect the first release with 6G specifications to be around 2028.

3GPP standards enable mobile networks to flourish globally, making it possible to recoup the enormous R&D investments. Since the advent of 4G, there has been a single effective standard worldwide. Earlier, there were two dominant factions developing the CDMA and GSM families of standards. This split probably led to the failure of several large companies. In our industry, fragmentation is the F-word. I will revisit this in the context of current geopolitics.

Spectrum

Until recently, all mobile spectrum was in the low band (below 3 GHz), which has become jam-packed not only with mobile but many other services. The psychedelic colored spectrum map gives you a feel for it. With 5G, the floodgates have opened, with new spectrum becoming available in mid band (roughly 3 to 7 GHz) and high band (24 to 52 GHz). These higher bands are great because it’s possible to operate with wider bandwidths (in 100’s of MHz compared to 10-20 MHz in low band) and support higher rate services. But propagation characteristics in higher bands make for challenging deployment, as signals don’t travel well through walls etc. Moving into even higher bands in the 100’s of GHz will exacerbate this problem. Also, spectrum used by legacy systems will get gradually re-farmed for use by new networks. In addition, there is a push led by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to mandate spectrum sharing between networks and incumbent users such as radar as a way to accelerate spectrum availability. The CBRS band at 3.55 GHz is the leading example of this type of policy. Keep in mind that spectrum is our lifeline and we’ll take it and make the best of it wherever and however it’s available.

Geopolitics

The “trade is good” principle that has dominated government policies since the fall of the Soviet Union seems to be on its way out, being replaced by more nationally centered policies. In this context there is now keen awareness of the rise of China as a serious technological rival to the US and its allies. This has manifested itself to a full extent in telecom with all the recent attention on 5G and mobile networks as a strategic national asset.

There is wide support in congress for big spending on technology R&D, including 6G, evidenced by several proposals under discussion around the National Science Foundation (NSF) alone. Their common thread is a multifold budget expansion and an increased emphasis on technology transfer.

In the private sector, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) which represents the interests of the telecom industry in North America has launched the Next G Alliance to develop a roadmap towards 6G and lobby the government to influence policy and secure funding for R&D.

This is all good on the national scale, but it may come back to bite us with standards fragmentation and the threat of losing the global market scale. Navigating this complicated landscape will be challenging and it will be fascinating to me to see how it all plays out over the coming years.

Additional Resources:

• White paper on 6G, Ericsson, November 2020.
• 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
• Endless frontier act, May 2020.
• The American Jobs Plan, March 2021.
• ATIS Launches Next G Alliance, October 2020.
• Spectrum wall chart, NTIA, January 2016.

30-year-old Fadia always wanted a family. A naturally loving and nurturing individual, she never thought motherhood would be so fraught with trials. She and her husband, a member of the Lebanese army, are parents to a four-year-old girl who has thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, and a two-year-old boy with congenital problems. 

Fadia, a high school diploma holder, used to work as an esthetician. But the wave of crises that has recently hit Lebanon, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and concomitant closures, has left her without a job. Her modest home is in poor condition. The children’s treatments are not covered by the insurance extended to military personnel and their families. And Fadia’s faith in nothing short of a miracle continues to wane.

Since October 2019, Lebanon has been reeling from devaluation of its currency as the lira lost more than 80% of its value against the US dollar. The majority of the population has slumped into poverty in what the World Bank describes as a “deliberate depression” due to the inaction and failed policies of political and financial authorities. Apart from economic stagnation, hyperinflation and the pandemic, Beirut was marred by a massive port blast in August 2020 that killed more than 200 people and wiped out swathes of the Mediterranean capital.

It is exactly these circumstances, threatening to debilitate hard-working yet misfortune-stricken folks like Fadia, which spawned the birth of Aleb. Literally translating to “heart” in Arabic, Aleb is an initiative incubated by LebNet in partnership with Lebanon-based NGO Al Majmoua in the wake of the Beirut explosions. LebNet, a North American nonprofit organization, enables tech entrepreneurs and professionals of Lebanese descent to thrive through education and networking, with a special emphasis on women in leadership roles. Aleb, perhaps a metaphor for the collective heart of the diaspora beating in sync with that of Lebanese locals, aims to provide sustained remittances from international donors to needy families in Lebanon.

(Taken from the house of one of the Aleb sponsored families. Photo credit: Dalia Khamissy)

"This is an extremely important initiative for us", said Sarjoun Skaff, cofounder of Aleb. "As expatriates, we feel powerless watching from afar as Lebanon's economy collapses dramatically with no obvious way to help. That's why we wanted to build a vehicle for our diaspora to actively and meaningfully support the homeland. Cash assistance is a very effective form of support, and complements existing in-kind programs, so we are excited to make it available to the world."

Here’s how it works. Aleb coordinates with Al Majmoua, originally founded in 1997, to source and pinpoint indigent families. In the pilot program, 39 candidate families were on-boarded on the Aleb website. Donors can review these details and decide which family to support directly through monthly contributions of US$ 200, plus a service fee of US$ 30, for a period of six months. Donors receive program updates and an impact report on how their funds are disbursed.

Now in the second phase of the program, Aleb has identified 36 additional families for immediate assistance. The US$ 200 monthly aid package is estimated as the minimal amount for a family to procure food, clothing and medication. Here are some testimonials by recipients on how Aleb has affected their lives.

• “The first time I received money from Aleb, I used half of it to cover a previous debt. With the other half, I bought milk, medication for the kid, diapers and home essentials. Next month, I need to repair my refrigerator and the washing machine.” (Father of two children who resides with his wife, mother and sister in Aley. The father used to operate a school bus but is presently out of work.)

• “My husband recently started working as a security guard. At home, the kitchen is incomplete, and we barely have any furniture. Some rooms lack electricity. With the second remittance, we paid off debts and bought sugar, milk, rice, beans, and baby diapers.” (Mother of two children who resides with her husband in Ain el Tineh. The couple previously ran a hair salon but was unable to renew the rent.)

Often, Lebanon comes under the critical lens of the media for the pain afflicting its denizens at the hands of a feckless government. As citizens of the world, we watch in horror and grieve as we witness just a fraction of their immeasurable hurt. Distance may render us powerless to come to their succor, but thanks to Aleb, our hearts can now beat as one in a gesture as modest as a few hundred dollars. By supporting one of these disadvantaged families, we – via Aleb – can make a huge dent in their lives and help them provide for their posterity.

[Disclamer: The name has been changed to protect the privacy of the featured individual.]

Author: Danielle Issa is a Lebanese-American writer, blogger and strategy consultant who has called Lebanon home for the past ten years. A native of southern California, she worked for seven years in strategic development at a leading Lebanese bank. Today, she resides in the suburbs of Beirut with her husband and two little boys, juggling motherhood and writing, while managing her internationally acclaimed culture and lifestyle blog Beirutista.co, founded in 2012. Ms. Issa holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT (Boston) and an MBA from Collège des Ingénieurs (Paris).

Didier Moretti is an entrepreneur who thrives on creating and scaling new businesses. Most  recently he was VP/GM at Atlassian, where he led the development of Jira, Confluence, and the creation of Service Desk, a major growth business for the  company. Prior to Atlassian, Moretti was a VP/GM at Cisco, where he led the creation of significant new businesses in video and the Internet of Things. Before that, he led several startups as CEO, and was the founder and CEO of Annuncio Software, an internet marketing company acquired by Oracle.  

Moretti recently took a sabbatical from tech to explore other areas of interest. He is a water sport enthusiast – swimming, kitesurfing, and scuba diving. Didier has a passion for visual arts, when not in the water he can often be found in his art studio. If curious, you can check some of his work here. Moretti holds two Master of Science degrees from MIT, and an “Ingenieur” degree from Ecole Polytechnique in France.

1- If you had a rewind button, what would you change about your journey? 

Make time for yourself a priority – to exercise, to learn, and to nourish your spirit. Put these activities on your schedule, and make them mandatory, just like important meetings. Your biggest asset is your own human capital; and just like financial assets, it pays to start good habits early, as there is magic in compounding! 

2- What are your 3 biggest accomplishments?  

Repeat success in creating disruptive products and scaling new businesses. Creating great work environments and seeing so many people flourish. A loving family and making time to pursue new passions. 

3- What’s the best lesson you learned? 

It’s OK to make mistakes, as long as you are responsible and learn quickly. 

4- Who is your role model?

I do not buy into having “a” role model as no two situations are the same. You should learn from many people, dealing with many different contexts. 

5- How did surrounding yourself with a good support system help you advance in your career? 

The thing I valued most was having moral support to help me stay true to my values as a leader, especially through the most challenging times. I am grateful to my wife first and foremost, and to some great advisers along the way! 

6- What is one habit you worked hard on breaking to improve your life or career? 

As an introvert, I hated public speaking. I worked hard at it until it became something I truly enjoyed. 

7- What characteristics do you look for in people you choose to work with?
People who are driven, creative, and humble. 

8- What skills did you work so hard on acquiring?

People skills. I was poor at it but had to learn out of necessity. Eventually something clicked, and later on it became a forte (you could say that I am a late bloomer!). 

9- What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?  

Articulate your personal values early in life, so you can lean forward and live life on your own terms. 

10- What excites you and what worries you about the impact of technology on the future? 

I am most excited about our ability to learn, experiment, and innovate at scales that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. I worry about our impact on climate, and the burden we are leaving for the next generations. 

In the second part of LebNet’s Women in Tech video series, sponsored by Joun Technologies, we hosted a one-on-one interview with Hala Ballouz, President of Electric Power Engineers Inc. and Founder of GridNEXT.

Ballouz is a leader in the energy industry and is currently building an innovative energy management software platform to enable the integration of technology and renewable resources into electric grids. She has over 25 years of experience in energy market studies, utility grid planning and renewable resource development and received the 2020 Women in Power Award during the virtual event Experience POWER held last September. In the below interview, Ballouz advised young tech leaders to be socially responsible and think about tech implications, and shared life lessons, future vision among other insights.

At the young age of 17, Ra’ed Elmurib left Lebanon and moved to the US by himself to pursue a career in Engineering. For six months, he slept on a couch at a friend’s place until he secured a couple of jobs to sustain himself and his education. 

 With extensive experience in building startups, corporate M&A, and Strategic Venture, he held the CEO position of Shoof Technologies in 2016, developing the Wireless technology that aims to change the world of Industrial IoT connectivity. He previously served as Executive Vice President of Corporate and Business Development for PMC-Sierra, leading the company’s non-organic growth, venture investment and strategic partnership. Elmurib led the $2.5 billion Dollar sale transaction of PMC to MicroSemi and executed over $4 billion in transaction value. He also served as the GM of the Microprocessor Division and VP of WW Sales. Ra’ed was the CEO and founder of Unitec Sale, a Manufacturer Representative of STMicroelectronics, Microchip, and other component suppliers.  

1- If you had a rewind button, what would you change about your journey? 

I would make sure I start my career working for a startup with a vision of changing the world by innovating a leading edge technology. New innovations are the most powerful initiatives that human can create to impact our quality of life.

2- What are your 3 biggest accomplishments?  

1. Raising three healthy and happy kids, with “work hard, play hard” instilled in them. Having grown up away from family since I was 17 years old, it was a challenge to raise kids in a foreign land without the support system we are accustomed to in Lebanon. Striking a balance between the two cultures requires an open mind and a vision for the future generation challenges as they become model contributing citizens. 

2. Starting my first company, Unitec Sales, at the age of 30 years old. It was a goal I set for myself when I graduated from College. It was an awesome way to learn and grow both financially and mentally. 

3. Leading the exit of PMC-Sierra, as we struggled to reinvent ourselves after the bubble bursting in 2000. It took us many years to rebuild the company and change the direction and it was almost like coming back from the dead.

3- What’s the best lesson you learned? 

Resilience is the key to success. For us first generation Lebanese-American, we endured many difficult obstacles on our way to accomplish what we set out to do. New language, new culture, no network to speak of, and lacking all the necessary tools to make it happen. But with resilience and commitment to succeed, we plowed ahead and reached our goals.

4- Who is your role model? 

Every successful immigrant is my role model. I learn so much from their stories. 

5- How did surrounding yourself with a good support system help you advance in your career?

One thing I missed out on is having a mentor. It is so critical to maneuver your way through the different situations you run into during your career. My support system was my wife, Kim, as I was traveling and working 80-90 hours a week. She sacrificed her career to take care of all of us.

6- What is one habit you worked hard on breaking to improve your life or career? 

I had the bad habit of assuming that everybody had the same drive, intelligence, and ambitions as I do. Learning that we are all different at an early stage would have saved me lots of anger and lots of unnecessary disappointments. 

7- What characteristics do you look for in people you choose to work with? 

I like self-driven people, because I hate to micro manage, its a waste of time and inefficient. To succeed in life you need to surround yourself with a team that shares your vision and compliment your weaknesses. 

8- What skills did you work so hard on acquiring? 

Being patient and it is still a work in progress. I expect people to move fast, break things, learn from mistakes. I am getting a little better but I still have lots to go.

9- What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?  

Ask for help, get a mentor that you respect and leave our world better than you inherited it.

10- What excites you and what worries you about the impact of technology on the future?

Lots to be excited about. What technology has accomplished in the past 100 years is nothing short of an amazing miracle. I just wish we use it to always benefit humankind and improve lifestyles by lifting everybody up.

In 1973, when the civil war started, Daniel’s parents’ house was bombed, leaving the family wounded physically and emotionally. Trying to pick up the pieces and start a new life, the family moved to France a year later. 

Image via Daou Vineyards.

Daniel spent 8 years making wine at his garage, visiting wineries and studying the soil before launching Daou Vineyards with his brother. The family business is now operating in 50 states in the US and in 32 countries worldwide.

In the video below taken from his talk during LebNet’s Virtual Holiday event held on December 15, Daniel reminisces the small details of his journey as a kid and a young entrepreneur passionate about wine and family bonds, explains what makes a viral excellent wine and shares the inspiring story behind the name behind their best wine: ‘Soul of the Lion’.