About

I'm a program manager and ecosystem builder based in Berlin. Most good projects don't lose on substance. They lose in the application, the pitch, the twenty minutes in front of a jury, because nobody translated what the work changes into terms a decision-maker can act on. That translation is my work: I help founders and institutions make the case for what they do, and I train the people who have to stand up and say it. I learned both sides the hard way, by doing them.

I was born and raised in Egypt and moved to Germany in 2018 to study Heritage Conservation and Site Management at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, on a Gerda Henkel Scholarship. My master's thesis was the first in my programme to deal with museum digitalization through augmented reality. In 2022 I learned to code at Le Wagon Berlin.

That opened the door to the startup world. My first venture was in green mobility, supported by the Berlin Startup Stipendium, a Berlin Senate programme delivered by the Berlin Innovation Agency. In 2023 I went back to what I actually care about, cultural heritage, and founded Museful, an AI-powered museum guide. I took it through five accelerator programmes, among them Campus Founders and Media Tech Hub Babelsberg.

Museful is where I learned funding from the applicant's side of the table. I secured over €100,000 in non-dilutive support and deployed the product at three museums: the Hegel-Haus in Stuttgart, the Stadtmuseum Cottbus, backed by the Brandenburg Teilhabefonds, and the Grand Egyptian Museum during RiseUp Summit 2025. Writing those applications taught me more about how evaluators think than any course could.

Since then I've worked the other side of the table. In the Startup Community project at BTU I ran more than ten workshops and co-built the Startup Lausitz ecosystem brand. I went on to coordinate SocioInnoLab, a completed €300,000 ESF+ social innovation hub spanning twelve partners, where I designed the incubator and delivered workshops in Germany and abroad. Coordination is a different discipline entirely: keeping a consortium, a budget, and a reporting obligation all pointing the same way.

In 2025 I wrote my first EIT application, for Ignite New European Bauhaus, and scored 48 out of 50 at the first attempt.

Along the way the work picked up first place at Star Parade 2024 in the Digitalisierung category, and the 4x4 unter 40 Innovation Award in 2025 from the Wirtschaftsjunioren Deutschland.

Today I'm Program Manager at HPI Engine. Alongside that, I take on proposal reviews, full proposal development, and funding strategy workshops. I still run sessions on pitching and public speaking; it is where the case is won or lost in person.

I work in three languages: Arabic, English, and German.